Travelogue 32
Wheezing Signs of Life

The touristy thing for Minneapolitans to do this summer is to ride the train. This spring, the first light rail commuter line took to the rails in Minneapolis, running from downtown toward the airport. It won't actually reach the airport until the end of the year. They haven't finished that part yet. But they will, and when they do, you can even ride all the way to that hideous growth on the landscape, the Mall of America, the blight that much of the world thinks is Minnesota's true tourist excuse.

It's been fun to watch the train go by and hear the bell. Such a minor addition to the city scene, it has significant power to change the atmosphere -- two yellow cars humming through downtown, stopping at tidy little rail stops. I came up with an excuse finally to ride. I boarded with my bicycle -- the cars have racks for bike-riders. Ding-ding, the doors close, and we slide by the high rises of downtown. It's a totally new perspective. A group of round grey-hairs board at the next stop with loud gusto. It's obviously their first ride. They crack corny jokes. One of them reminds the others that it's Jesse's train.

You all remember Jesse Ventura, of course, our former governor, the pro wrestler. Well, this was his gift to the state, finally pushing light rail through the legislature. And it's a hit. They're debating the next line to build -- expanding mass transit under a Republican governor. Imagine.

Leaving downtown, the train picks up speed. One grey-hair shouts, "Here we go!" The rest of them squeal. We rise above the road and watch the peaceful neighborhoods reel by.

This place is crazy peaceful, kind of spooky. When I run, I'm alone. The sky can be blue and diamond clear, the river ever so beautiful, I'm on my own. Today, as I'm crossing back over one of the university's bridges -- this one's a nice one, another old railway span -- I'm joined from the other direction by a young lady who could be twenty years my junior; she's running with a friend who's on a bike. She's running at about the same pace as I am, and I immediately react like any foolish male would, picking up the pace. I should take this as a sign that my spirit is bouncing back. I was always stupidly competitive, and would run myself into a muscle-burning, wheezing mess if I had a good rabbit. The difference is, I used to be good. I was training for another marathon when Leeza died. Then I stopped cold. And now, when I'm lucky to finish two miles, I'm speeding up at the sight of a teenager. That's got to be healthy, don't you think? Isn't a capacity for playing the fool a sure sign of life? I beat her across the bridge and bounded up the road toward Craig's house at a strong pace. Five blocks later, I'm a wreck. But happy.

The students are coming back into town. The younger ones wander in aimless confusion. The older ones strike disdainful poses along the main drags of Dinktown. Dinktown is the college area, abutting the east bank campus of the university. Dinky it is -- a square mile or two maybe, full of cheap apartments and bars. There are still vestiges of the coolness that used to characterize college towns before the 90s, bits of history among franchises. There's the great used bookstore and the ancient breakfast place squeezed between buildings that literally has room for a counter and a grill. People stand directly behind you waiting for your stool. Next door is the café where I've become a regular. That's a dubious privilege in Dinkytown, which has its share of oddballs, just like the hangers-ons in any American college town, I suppose -- sad, aging men, unemployed and quirky, most of them. Yep, I fit right in. Cars with trailers pass by in slow procession, dads leaning out the driver's window, looking around with weary irritation. It's just about fall.

Travelogue 31
The Ice Age is Coming

We had a few days this week that were cool and autumn-like, in that inimitable hushed and expectant Minnesota way. I enjoyed them. I wanted a taste of fall before heading back to the sun of Ethiopia; it's my favorite season. But there was also that instinctive response inside. No matter how much a Minnesotan enjoys winter, a cool day in August is alarming. We only escaped the threat of cold three months ago; this is wrong.

If you are looking for a good spell of brooding, then you really should visit Minneapolis in early fall. There's nowhere like Minnesota for the quiet walk under overcast skies, when the air is crisp and you feel the snow coming. I'll recommend, in particular, Loring Park, just south of the downtown core. Bring your Russian novel for fortification, and by the end of this tour, you'll have life figured out. If you’re stuck, you can consult the elderly Russian immigrants who favor this park for strolling.

I'm fond of this neighborhood. For me, it's the heart of the town. For a while, I took my walk through the park almost every day, usually in late afternoon. It's our Central Park, bound by city blocks and busy streets. It has little vistas from almost any part of it: the downtown skyline, the monolithic old basilica, gardens and two small lakes. In the last five years or so, they've let the reeds and cattails grow along the shores of the lakes, sometimes so high as to obscure the water. But you come around to a clear spot and look at the calm, white egrets, or the loons afloat on the surface. Eric would try to speak to the coots if he were here. It's five, and nearby Hennepin Avenue is clogged with traffic, but the paths here are solemnly quiet. The sky is low; the light is dim. You've just about got the answer to the riddle….

With a little more time to kill, you might take the bridge out of the park across Hennepin and across the highway, taking time to read the Ashbery poem along one of the top beams. On the other side is the sculpture garden. Take a right and follow the edge of the green lawn, filled with odd pieces. The predominant one is, of course, the huge cherry and spoon by Oldenburg and Van Bruggen, a landmark in this town. You'll want to run to the other side and snap a photo of you and your new Russian friends in front of the sculpture with the skyline in the background. It's Minneapolis' face to the world. There's hardly a moment of the day when someone isn't there with his/her camera, and it's featured in any promotional material about the city. There are other sculptures to see, most of them vaguely or outrageously ridiculous, but you head onward toward the small garden in back of the lawn, which is always beautiful this time of year. You walk the whole fifty feet of it or so, underneath an arched trellis, enchanted by the variety of blossoms. Come back to the east end of the walk and spend a few minutes with the one sculpture in this section worthy of some attention: "Without Words" by Judith Shea, a piece with some dignity, and something of the melancholy befitting the place. Back on the bridge, you look west toward where the sun should be setting. It's hidden by the leaden sky. Two observations are inescapable: The horizon is so flat; winter's coming.

We went to the two-dollar theatre last night and watched some movie about the next ice age descending in seven days while a Cheney-like vice-president smirks at sage environmentalists. Cool special effects. Hollywood has marvelous powers. We all felt chilly coming out of the theatre. We're looking at the skies nervously. Maybe the big California producers are correct assigning their sixth-grade daughters to write the scripts. We didn't go to watch Dennis Quaid choke up as he thinks of the mistakes he made as a parent. We went for the tornadoes tearing through LA skyscrapers. And who buys Hollywood stories anymore, anyway? Actors onscreen ceased being anything but actors onscreen a long time ago.

Travelogue #30
History in the Dirt

I've got sore arms today. Yesterday I went at history with a pickaxe. Emily is volunteering at an archaeological dig -- in downtown Minneapolis. It's in a rundown neighborhood that's trying its best to gentrify. Round about are handsome, turn-of the century, red brick buildings with names like the "Adirondack". This particular plot of land is part of a larger chunk that will soon host new condos. Someone in the neighborhood felt like there could be some history underfoot. Craig and I bicycled up to the site. About ten people were there, fooling around with dirt -- digging it up, sifting it, squatting and studying it in deep, square holes. There were traces of a house's foundations exposed -- a line of limestone blocks a couple inches underneath the surface of the soil. The house was built in the 1870s, apparently, and was torn down in 1947. I watched the work a minute, and then was seduced by the pickaxe. (I had had a frustrating couple of days before this.) "May I?" They were happy to indulge me. Craig felt obliged to pick up a shovel, so we set upon the incomplete line of the foundation. Almost immediately, we hit a dead end. Real archaeologists gathered to consult. I was so proud! It looked like the wall may turn at this point, so we went to work. There was a stone laid in that direction. I demanded that this be called Dana's Jog in the log entries. We came upon nails and glass and bits of roof shale. I claimed credit for those, too. My jog went nowhere. The experts conferred again. They murmured over maps and diagrams. This wall should have continued, they announce, so we try again, in the former direction, I with enthusiasm and Craig with a grumble. Eventually, we strike gold, or limestone. I halt and demand this be called Dana's Gap. I wouldn't budge until they agreed. Don't pencil this into your Minneapolis tour, though, since in a few days, they'll be building on top of it. Maybe you can stop by the archive or vault where they describe our adventures. Pretty interesting, though, to see how quickly life history sinks into bone chips, shards of porcelain, and some detective work.

What might be fun on your tour is to hop on your bike at 7am in order to go to a dentist across town. You can pedal across the Mississippi River on the Stone Arch Bridge, the old limestone and granite railroad bridge that has been turned into a pedestrian bridge. You'll stop halfway and gaze dreamily at the steepest of the spillways of the falls. It's straight and it's high, and it creates a good mist. On the other shore, (the west shore,) underneath the bridge are some ruins. They call them "Mill Ruins Park". Lots of limestone down there: the remains of the old flour mills that made Minneapolis the big town it is, operating through the last half of the nineteenth century. Above, the elevators of the Washburn mills still stand, along with the broken walls of the A Mill. The latter's been turned into a museum. We're all just archaeology-crazy here in the Midwest.

Keep riding, up through downtown. It’s fun to do before rush hour. You get your five or six blocks of high-rise buildings, staring up at the nicely carved cornices of another age, or at the glass of ours. And on you go, uphill to Uptown, usually the destination of young hipsters looking for fun and expensive meals. But for us, it's a bit of early morning pain at the hand of a friendly hygienist. She apologizes a lot, if you're as old and negligent as I am. She single-handedly conducts a conversation, a conversation that is disturbing on two counts: first because she keeps asking questions while she's scraping cold metal against the inside of your molars, and secondly, because she's praising the movie "Troy". Of course, Brad Pitt seemed kind of mean at first, she says, but it’s always nice to have history explained like that. Some things she knew about already, like the thing about the heel. And she had always wondered about that horse.

You console yourself with a trip to the Institute for the Arts, which isn't far away. You might stop at the little Fantin-Latour portait of his friend Legros, as I always do, finding something fascinating and genial in this pre-Impressionist impressionism. Or you may loiter in front of Corot's canvases of sullen young ladies, wondering how he achieves that grey shimmering quality so reminiscent of Europe in early spring. Maybe you'll rub your sore jaw and contemplate one of the Rodins, and try to imagine how it feels to mould a human form in your fingers.

Travelogue #29
Diverse States

A month in Minneapolis has past, and only a month is left. Just when I'm beginning to contemplate my farewell, we celebrate Ana's. Ana is Craig's ex-wife. She's moving back to the Czech Republic after having earned her Ph.D. What she wants is a party at Craig's house, with a keg and night-long stream of guests. This he manages to provide. The event starts at 3 in the afternoon, and, as far as I can tell, I'm the last man standing at 5 am. In part, that's because I sleep in the basement and the basement is where the keg is kept, about ten feet from my bed.

Ana's party has a Czech theme, of course. Most of the American guests have some connection to the place. Craig and I have lived over there. (Truthfully, I was next door in Slovakia, but I visited Prague often.) One guy has a Czech wife. Abebaw, Leeza's cousin, was Ethiopian, and is now American, but he studied and lived in Prague for twelve years. We all get a kick out of listening to him speak Czech. We imagine the reactions of locals when he comes out with perfect Czech. We're planning a trip to Prague in May just so we can see. Abebaw has taken the nickname "Topinka" among the Czechs. It means "toast".

Robert, Ana's current husband, says that this is what he'll miss the most about America: the diversity. There's a word that normally raises the hair on my neck. I've spent too many years in the American educational system and working near social services. But in his accent, it's wonderful. "Diversity". The bunch of us on Craig's front porch are a pretty picture of it: old and young, a Buddhist monk, Chinese, Czechs, Ethiopians, and the stiffest of Norwegian-Americans.

The evening shows finer stripes as the hours wear on. Ana peaks and passes out before the sun is down, but not before dancing, crying with parting friends, and playing Johnny Cash's "Your Own Personal Jesus" once for each chapter of the Good Book. I should explain the beauty and the terror of Ana. She is petit and charming, and sexy in a mischievous way. She has a sharp tongue, and holds nothing back. She's taken me to task for more personality flaws than I have bones in my body, and shouts at me like a football coach that I have to get over Leeza's death. I've had to watch her drink my friend Josh into a stupor. Aside from having almost a hundred pounds on her, Josh is a proud Scotch-Irishman, and still he had no chance. He made the mistake of claiming some kind of ethnic edge in drinking. Well, she led him to the keg that night, and what followed was a bloody rout, peppered with many withering sarcasms about Josh's manhood. Anyway, tonight, she's been weakened by emotion and a long day without eating. She's out cold. Friends arriving late file past her like she were a president in state. We carry on in her memory. Robert tries to convince me Bush has charisma. Craig tells the following joke. "What does one cannibal clown say to the other? Does this taste funny to you?"

A few hours later, the front door bursts open and Ana appears on the porch, hair rumpled, mascara smeared, and she's ready to go. She takes a central seat, and Robert holds forth for twenty minutes on how this is a greater miracle than the resurrection of Jesus. We toast to a happy Easter.

Night progresses and disorder gains. It's a form of diversity, really, expressing itself in degrees of nonsense. Robert has to explain to another Czech at the party what a wedgie is. He decides it's easier to demonstrate. "Do you want to be an astronaut?" It so happens this Czech is in America to study astrophysics. Parties and bars are closing around the neighborhood. Kids are wandering by in clusters. Some want our beer. One, a cheerful young lady, wants to tell us she's been to Prague. Unfortunately, it's just when Robert has decided he's "Veggie Man". He's wearing the Czech flag as a cape and has decorated himself with hors d'oeuvres. His only reply to her is, "Well, what do you think of this?" as he pops a broccoli into his mouth and smiles. Her friendliness falters.

After we put Ana down for the last time, things wind down. The conversation in the kitchen gets maudlin. Diversity suffers: we discuss love, and we mean it. Some of us stare with teary-eyed vacancy. Some creep toward sleeping nooks. Craig ends up on the patio bench. I make it to my bed, and have reason left at 5 am to read. It's Robert Louis Stevenson, and I'm being pursued across the heather. I dream of strange cities.

Travelogue 28 -- July 28
Hootenanny's

So Troy and I are playing an innocent game of chess at Hootenanny's when they come bursting in, swaying and shouting by the dozens. It's not a big bar, and they pack the place. We are annoyed -- first, because they've completely blocked access to the bar just when we're ready for another round of gin and tonics, and secondly, because they have raised the ambient noise levels beyond the norm, which is TV static and drunken screeches around the pool table. Even on a Saturday night, Hootenanny's is never crowded. You've got your regular Northeast Minneapolis types, guys with primitive needs and primitive humor, women with scratchy bar voices and cackling laughter to cool men's blood. But Northeast is famous for its bars -- small and dingy, serving drinks cheap and stiff. To say they're intimate is probably a misuse of the word, but it comes close. And this fame draws nightlife tourists. Here's a busload of them now. We give up on the drinks for a while. A couple of young guys stare at the board. They tell us we're better than the sports channel, and they seem to mean it. They whisper and point and make their predictions. This happens more often than you’d think: the chess board has surprising gravity among the barflies. A couple of women dance their way up, being slinky to an approximation of the beat from the jukebox. "Playing chess?" The shorter one with sleepy eyes sidles up next to me. The tall blonde has more response in her eyelids and a steadier voice. "Whose turn?" It's mine; we're just starting a game. I invite their advice. The tall one moves my end pawn forward. Okay; I'll just have to live with that. For my next move, the short one pushes a pawn diagonally three spaces. She breathes into my ear, "How's that?" as she grinds one breast into my shoulder blade. I explain that the pawn doesn't move that way. I hold up the bishop. "This is the piece that does that." She doesn't know it, "but I betcha he'd look good naked," she says. "Don't you think?" She grabs it and turns it over, exhibiting the green felt underneath. "See?" Well, who am I to disagree? This woman drifts away quickly. I'm not dancing. She settles onto the knee of the round man behind me. Her tall friend has more focus. She starts a halting conversation: something like, "I like this place. Do you come here often?" She even gets around to my occupation. I'm none too responsive. "I'm a teacher." I try to make it sound dull. She tells me they're on a bar crawl, and I realize this is a single's event. I'm on display. Troy and I start giggling. All these drunken, horny people tramping bar to bar, boys with boys and girls with girls, scared of each other but brazen with the locals they find. Eventually, someone rounds them up and out they go, dancing in a chain. We denizens sigh, and look at each other wide-eyed.

Speaking of biology, I have to brag about my baby robin. I just watched him take his first flight. We've been observing the two babies that hatched a couple weeks ago, enjoying their peeping, bobble-headed phase, endured the hostile glares of mom when she brings the worms and clears out the poop. It's been fun. I can't believe how fast they've grown! Eyes open, feathers sprout, and soon they're crowding each other in their tiny home. I stepped onto the porch this evening, talking on the phone, and noticed that one had stepped out of the nest and was standing bravely on the narrow platform at the top of the porch's pillar. After a moment, he fluttered down to the lawn. It's more of a cushioned fall than flight. Glancing back at me, he begins to hop on wobbly legs out toward the street. Mom is chirping at him. I try to herd him into the bushes for safety, but he goes right out into the street. I have to chase him all the way across. He makes it and stares at me from the other lawn. So that's the way a new life begins.

All right. I've put off Part Two of the walking tour again. We'll get there. It's summer, and anything worth doing is worth doing leisurely. But I do want to inform my loyal readers of the Plan, so they have something to look forward to. The ticket is in hand: I leave America September 2nd. I stop in London on the way. Expect jarvis reportage. And once back in Africa, I promise reports from travels around Ethiopia and to neighboring countries. Come spring and summer, next year, destinations farther afield during the Ethiopian rainy season. All this in the interest of high-quality entertainment. Stay tuned.

Travelogue #27 -- July 24
The Third Base Line

And then there's baseball. I know I'm diverting from Part Two of the Mill City walking tour, but it's important. If you're visiting the American heartland in summer, particularly from overseas, it's vital you make it out to a ball game. And to do it right, you have to find the local minor league team. Ours is the St. Paul Saints, notorious for being part-owned by Bill Murray. Craig and I pulled out the bicycles last Sunday and pedaled our way to the stadium. It's out on Energy Park Road, the name of which should signal fairly well what kind of neighborhood the team has been consigned to. In every American city there are these lost zones with street names like "Technology," and "Energy," and "Commerce" to let you know you should turn around, unless you like looking at warehouses, industrial parks, broad, bland corporate lawns, or train sidings. We're running a little late. The street is clogged with parked cars, and the national anthem is blasting. All these good Americans are duly standing for the song, even the tailgaters in the parking lot. Tailgating, by the way, is a tradition I only became acquainted with in the Midwest. It's nothing more than partying in the parking lot. You open up the back of your pickup, set up the grill and the cooler and pump up the radio.

It's a perfect day for baseball, hot and hazy. It's made all the more perfect when someone hands us free tickets and saves us $4 each. We stand in line for our brats and lemonade and wind our way among the crowds to seats in the general admission stands, out past third base. Third base because a friend of ours is working the stands. "Beers! Ice-cold beers!" We do our part, and she gives us a sunny smile. Now, here's a scene for you: We're in the midst of a dense crowd, kids, teens, old couples, all of us sitting on our ass-busting benches. She can't reach us, nor we her. She pours the beers and hands them to a guy in the front row. He passes them back, and, hand by hand, they make it to us! Only a fraction of the miracle: I do the same with the money. It flows down, staying whole; the change climbs up, arriving safely in my palm. Is this old-time, true-blue, Honest Abe America, or what? Would those shifty Europeans in their soccer hysteria do the same? Well, you know where to find old-style virtue now.

So how to describe baseball without treading tired ground and sounding like George Will? There's lots of green ahead of you, but that's no different than soccer. Well, I can think of a few divergences. One is that all the action in baseball happens in the corner with the bases. There you've got the famous "diamond", the lines between four bases and all the freshly raked, red dirt. For us, that's off to the right, surrounded by people with the good seats. We sit in our poor man's exile, the sun beating on our necks, drinking our beer, eavesdropping on the silly teenagers. The pitch -- high and wide. Okay. Now, the common complaint is that baseball is too slow. But, really, isn't that the beauty? Aren't there days like this in summer when the proper game allows the hitter to strut around between pitches while you buy your crackerjack from the pretty vendor and stare up into the blue sky? The pitch -- crack! The batter makes contact, and he pauses to watch it. You check the wide sky for the ball; you watch the outfielders as they maneuver, necks craned back. Now, here's where all the green comes into play: the dance between flying ball and fielder. It's the only time that space gets used. They run across the grass; they bob and circle, waiting and gauging. Or they run to the wall and watch the ball sail over. And across all that green from you, there is no one else. The seats are arrayed along two sides only, beside the diamond. So in St. Paul, you look past the fence at the oddly spare building with large windows that someone finally tells you is the fire department's "fire house". It's where they train. They can make fire spew out of any corner. And on July 4th, they light it up for fans. Or, between pitches, you can watch one of the trains as they chug by on either side of the small stadium. Remember, I said we were in that neighborhood.

It's a decent game. We score nine runs almost immediately, on five of their errors. But late in the game, they (Winnipeg's team) have a big inning, and they end up tying in the top of the ninth. Baseball has only nine innings, and it looks like it'll be going into overtime. But no, the second pitch is caught squarely by a St. Paul bat, and it's gone. The fans go wild. Well, not so wild, actually. That's baseball on a lazy, summer afternoon. The funnest parts aren't necessarily the sport. For example, between every half-inning, there's some sort of goofy promotion, sponsored by local companies. Sometimes it's as simple as a clown running around throwing peanuts into the seats, but usually it's an activity. My favorites are Chase the Kid, where a little, tow-headed boy from the audience starts from second-base and has to make it home before the guys in animal suits on first base can catch him; or Bowling for Yogurt, where a fan gets put inside a big, plastic bowling ball and has to run down a bunch of tall, stuffed pins looking like yogurt containers; or the Fifth Inning Drag, where three ugly guys dressed in ridiculous wigs and dresses drag the big rakes around the diamond to smooth the dirt.

Well, that's the state of America's sport. Not exactly the intensity of soccer or the grace of basketball. The fans are sleepy and as engaged in gossip as in runs. The players are paid as poorly as teachers. They fight for their concentration against passing trains and ludicrous promotions. But, wobbling my way home on my bike toward the late afternoon sun, the back of my neck already burning, I'm pretty well satisfied.

Travelogue #26 -- July 18
God Loves

I'm finally settling into the rhythm of this place, easing into the strange, am-I-awake-yet peace and comfort of mid-America in summertime. So, in the spirit of my re-found native soul, I offer up a cool walking tour of downtown. It costs nothing but the cost of coffee and a muffin, and that much because the tour begins in Taraccino's Café on East Hennepin. This is on the east side of the river. The neighborhood is called Northeast, a venerable old piece of city with working class history. Taraccino's may be a bit overdone in coziness, but they make their own muffins, and Jerry, the owner is always around to chat you up about baseball or community politics. Do it right and be up with the summer sun, by 5am or so, and be waiting at their door at 6:30 when they open to get the freshest muffin. By 7, you're out the door and walking down East Hennepin toward the river. If it's the weekend, you'll have the city nearly to yourself, (though you'll have the constant company of the bunny rabbits that have overrun this town.) Take a left on 2nd Street and take a look at Minneapolis' oldest standing church, Our Lady of Lourdes, a fun amalgam of stone, brick, and wood. It's little, green and yellow steeple is a landmark on the east side. Across the street is a stairway down to the river. Directly ahead of you is your first Kodak spot, the small trestle bridge crossing to Nicollet Island that dates to 1889. You stop in the middle and stand on the planks of the bridge's sidewalk, leaning into the iron railing, and you gaze into the calm, green current. The cottonwoods on either side are dropping bits of fluff into the water. The surface curls in lazy eddies dotted with jumping bugs. In the distance is the white Third Avenue Bridge and a hint of the falls. Sufficiently soothed by greenness, you carry on. If you take the right after the bridge, you'll eventually come to a beautiful bit of dirt road by an old railroad bridge. This quarter mile of road is a gorgeous stroll in summer, under a canopy of sunlit leaves. If you go left instead, you'll soon swing around the tip of the island and be rewarded with some nice views of St. Anthony Falls. I should explain that now you're looking at some serious Minnesota history, (even if nothing actually looks like it used to.) The Falls were the attraction for the white settlement that became Minneapolis. It began in the 1820s with an army outpost. By the 1850s, we had our first saw mill using river power. By the 1860s, the flour mills were rising that would make Minneapolis a dot on the map. We started tinkering with the falls early, building dams and channels to maximize power. What you're looking at now is not a bit natural; it's all concrete spillways. The water is directed down in two levels in the part of the river we're going to see. From the island, you see the first spillway, a half-elliptical arc of pouring water. About two summers ago, someone got too close with his motorboat and got stranded on that ledge. He was saved, but the boat remained all summer, seeming always to teeter on the edge. You continue around the end of the island. You pass some nice decks with picnic tables where you can sit and compose odes to falling water. Heading back upstream, you pass the Nicollet Island Pavilion. At 7am, you'll see nothing here but Canada geese leaving quantities of dung in the grass, and maybe a homeless person on a bench. If you're here later, you might catch a wedding party come for a photo backdrop. They'll be more casual than an Ethiopian wedding party, strolling around with easy smiles, maybe barefoot, the photographer following along in a tight tux, holding a long lens lifted to the heavens, waiting for that magic moment that, once captured, will provide fortitude to the aging couple. Follow the meandering asphalt trail up the hill, and you'll find some more of that public art that makes city life so inscrutable. This one is nicer than most. It's a gift from our sister city in Japan, Ibaraki. It's a bronze arch set in stone. Embedded in the top of the arch is a bell that you ring as you walk through. It's supposed to be a prayer for world peace. Be careful of rousing the guy on the bench, however. Cross the road ahead of you and head for the stairs up onto the Hennepin Avenue Bridge. It's a classy bridge, you'll notice, a suspension bridge with two square supports covered in tan stone to match the limestone motif of much of the riverside downtown. The cables are green. The supports have green lights on top that add a nice touch to the view of the river at night. Climbing the stairs, you stop where someone has stenciled in black paint, "God Loves Ugly." "Loves" is signified with a heart, of course. Take that with you as the seed of today's meditation. What's a walk without a bit of philosophy to chew on? Halfway across, stop and feel the breeze. Look behind you at the famous old Grain Belt billboard, a bottle cap hanging above the bridge. Ask yourself if God loves ugly. Look the other way at the skyline. You can't see too much of it here yet, but I think it's a nice one -- the prevalent tan and green motif mixed with icy blues for winter. When I first moved to this town, the only skyscraper was the IDS building, the blue bulging domino there in the middle. Now they have a Mary Tyler Moore statue across the street from it. Does God still love ugly? From this bridge, you can't see much. Most of it is obscured by the bulk of the main post office, a beauty from the 20s or 30s, tan and carved and a cool time-travel on the inside. Take a detour from my route here to go inside. Buy some stamps from the machine and get dollar coins for change -- Susan B. Antony and Pocahontas. Part Two on the walking tour next time...

Travelogue 25 – July 13
13 Worms

My brother wrote to me, referring to one physicist’s theory that time is a series of independent moments, frozen universes we somehow move through. He says he has trouble believing it's true, and so do I. But it's a convenient metaphor for how life feels to me.

Our picture was in the paper Saturday, Leeza's and mine. The foundation had a fundraiser for the school the same night. The photo is one of several I was able to find for the reporter in the hard drive of my old Imac. It dates from our trip to Rome two years ago.

I ran the marathon on that trip. Now I can barely finish two miles. I jog Sunday morning, out along the Mississippi River, a piece of my old training course. It's early enough to avoid most of the weekend traffic, Midwestern city dwellers determined to find recreation. The sky is hazy, mottled, muggy. There's foam on the river's surface from the falls behind me. The high banks are that vivid shade of green that always seems impossible to my California sensibility. A group of well-fed, smiling people have gathered by a bit of grassy beach. Canoes are drawn up at their feet. A man whizzes by on his bicycle, coated in all the latest gear, looking like an android. The smiles go on.

Culture Shock wants to tell me this is a forlorn town. It has all the atmosphere of a twelve-step meeting -- coffee and donuts and fluorescent lighting on formica. What is man-made is so planned it tastes like chewed food. And the natural beauty is the brooding type of the plains. It lowers at you when you leave the house. It disdains any talk above a whisper. This is where she died.

You walk along the Mississippi River downtown. It's a melancholy weekday evening, cool for summer, still a bit cloudy. The peaceful surface reflects back the deepening blue of dusk. You stop to watch fish feeding on the myriad little water bugs. You see the fish tails; you see their mouths. Across the water; across the first, shallow drop of St. Anthony Falls, you see the trees of Nicollet Island, and the old brick buildings on the other shore that date to Minneapolis’s mill town past. It's quiet. There's not another soul along this new concrete promenade -- other than the cluster of rough-looking guys hiding out among some park trees. One of them is shouting about how he was knifed. You come to something inscribed into the sidewalk concrete: "Can you find 13 worms?" You ponder. Is this a conversation the city is having with its fishermen? Is it an academic puzzle, a kind of existential koan? Is it meant for kids? As you progress, you pass a series of bronze turtles and frogs placed on top of a short concrete border along the city side of the walkway. But where are the worms? The odd puzzle dissolves without any answer. The cloudy city’s existential riddle.

Culture Shock takes lots of walks.

But at night, we go out. One night, it's to Mannings, a classic American corner bar. A row of three tables between booths and bar. Beer and wine and grill, TVs in every corner. On one, we watch the Tour de France. On all the others, the trivia channel. You order a board, punch in your answers, and compete with bars across the country. We sit with Doug, a grey-beard with an enormous gut in a cardinal red T-shirt. It's seven, but his eyes are bleary; his voice is bleary. We sit with Joanie, small and plain, smoking and teasing. I can spot the moment she decides I'm gay and forgives me. While pitchers keep coming at an alarming rate, we play the game. I'm useful once or twice -- Parma is the only inland city among the list of European names -- but most of the questions are about TV shows and sports. I fall into a daze watching the riders, pink and blue and green, coasting through the rain in Brittany. Distantly, the question reverberates, 13 worms, 13 worms?

Travelogue 24 – July 8
Bikes and Clouds

It's raining. I carry it around with me like my shroud, this rain, wherever I go. Ethiopia or Minnesota, the sun will not shine on me. But I'll say this for Minnesota rain. It's soft and warm. It's the kind that won't deter you from getting on your bike for short trips.

Craig and I go to watch a band play outdoors at the university. His house is a few blocks from the university. I should explain a few things about Minnesota. First, there's the summer mania. When the snow melts in April, and the threat of snow melts in May; when the first buds open in May; when warm weather appears in June, Minnesotans become a bit giddy. They're running around in shorts as early as March, and by summer their eyes gleam like drunks'. The festivals begin. By July 4th, festivals are popping in the Twin Cities at a stellar rate, three or four per weekend -- parades, art festivals, outdoor stages, dances, shuttle launchings, what have you. It becomes distracting.

I have the good fortune of having in Craig the ultimate guide through the maze of activities. If it's cheap and interesting, Craig will be there. He has an uncanny sense for the best and the most fun.

We sit in the gentle drizzle in the plaza in front of the Northrop Auditorium. The band is nestled in among the massive Ionic pillars of the façade. It's a stately, huge building, about a hundred years old, part of the mall that forms the center of the original university. If you're trapped in Minneapolis, the mall is a worthy sight, -- classical, venerable, green -- something of the old respect we had for academia.

Blithely we sit among history and the drizzle, and we listen to a French tune almost fifty years old. Front and center is the accordion player. Behind the right pillar is a guitar player, and behind the left one is the violin/mandolin guy. And behind the audience is the soaked stage they were supposed to occupy. The musicians are unruffled. As I listen, I'm reminded of the virtuosity in this town. It's amazing the variety and depth of the talent here. In their one hour set, this band swings effortlessly through jazz and blues, old French pop and old American, adding a dash of their own flavor to everything, and playing superbly. I missed this while I was away. The rain-misery disappears for a while.

It didn't rain on July 4th. If I have any readers aren't familiar with this date, I should explain it's one of America's biggest holidays, -- Independence Day -- more beloved for its fireworks than for its significance. I gather with Josh and friends in Bryn Mawr park, a wide expanse of grass and baseball diamonds just outside of downtown. It's our tradition to play croquet, usually in a state of advanced inebriation. It's a glorious afternoon. The big clouds above are white and unthreatening.

If I were to recommend Minnesota as a tourist site, prominent in my recommendation would be the big summer clouds. There's something magnificent about them. Maybe it's the big sky here, the horizon being so flat. They have plenty of stage for their procession. Clouds like these are often compared to great ships. It makes perfect sense, with their stately movement across the blue sky, their massive hulls and sails. They lend themselves readily to long meditations. Their white billows pile upon each other intricately, and take on icy blues and dark grays, suggestive of the next thunderstorm. They're the soul of summer.

Underneath the flotilla, we take to the beers and the mallets. I actually win my game, without one sign of skill. I demonstrate the same lack of grace when we try a game of soccer. I'm excited because of my conversion to soccer overseas, and I run around like a fool, kicking wide every time. I'm immediately winded, and it's back to the clouds.

Biking is another pleasure I can recommend for this town. I pedal across town after the croquet, heading for Emily's house where we will sit while the crickets start up outside -- and then the booms and whistles of Independence Day. It's a long way from Bryn Mawr Park, but easy by bike because of the "Greenway": a railroad track converted into a bike path that cuts east-west across Minneapolis, starting up among the city lakes. I'm happy. You have to give credit to an American town that recognizes the sublime pleasure of the bicycle. It seems like I'm following the clouds as I go. Stately they may be, but they're making good time.

Travelogue 23 – July 3
Is It a Dream?

It's a Minnesota summer: hot and muggy. Fluffy clouds drift lazily, threatening an afternoon thunderstorm. I'm alone in the back of the taxi bearing me away from the airport. No yelling, no bargaining, no squeezing by others huddled together in the van seats. It's just me, and the taxi charges by the sixteenth of a mile. The driver makes his sleepy way down residential streets.

The city is spooky quiet. A few sleep-walkers are out, looking intent in their inscrutable purpose. The adults look like kids in their khaki shorts and neat, white sneakers. The teens prefer to play the part of zombies in their dark tatters and tattoos prematurely blurred. It doesn't play too well, though, in a town that looks like a miniature golf course.

The green carpets of house lawns are squared to the millimeter. The houses themselves flow by like stock background celluloid for a TV cartoon. Is this David Lynch or is it Warner Brothers? I'm not sure, but I struggle to awaken. Do people live here, or is it a quaalude retreat for the reality-challenged?

I'm dropped at Craig's, and we sit on the porch and catch up. We watch the clouds gather up the last daylight. We stare at the occasional jogger, whose back is erect and who turns perfect ninety-degree corners. Just as occasionally, an SUV guns its engine as it launches into our block.

I'm enjoying seeing the rabbits and squirrels again. They seem to manifest more purpose than the humans. A robin has built a nest above us inside the porch. She's jealously guarding her blue eggs there, flying in and eyeing us, then swooping away and scolding insistently from the lawn. BBQ and beers. The world seems almost right as the sky glows a dark, richer azure, and the mosquitoes collect for their feast. A long day's travel weighs everything in me into the deck chair.

The next day, I get the tires on my bike filled with air and I take a ride. It's what I most missed about this place, cycling around the clean, flat streets, crossing over the river and through this city's green and peaceful parks. It feels good to pedal, but again I feel as though I should stop and rub my eyes. There are cars downtown; they seem to be in a hurry. I see people emerging from offices; they appear serious. So why does everything seem so insubstantial? Movies set in America feel more real than America. The thousands of unemployed drifting along Addis Ababa's streets have more presence and project more purpose.

I stop at one of my old cafes, one of my most comfortable haunts before. I try to drink tea and write, but the tea doesn't taste right. The writing is trivial. The chairs are cushioned. The floor is carpeted. The walls are picturesque brick. The barista has thought too much about his hair. His T-shirt is tight to just the right degree. He wears cheap bracelets that he measured quite precisely for their effect. The loud banter with his co-worker is calculated to be frivolous. The music is clever and produced to sound unproduced; it's contrived to throw ironic light on contrivance. I'm distracted by trivia; it intrudes upon my mind like benign, popsicle-colored viruses that chatter meaninglessly.

I peer into the boxes of stuff I left behind. It's all a bit alien. This person collects kick-knacks! How did this happen? When I left America, I culled my possessions down to about twenty boxes. More than half of those contain only books. How did the knick-knacks get in here? I'll look again later. The Fourth is tomorrow; maybe I'll have recovered America-vision by the end of the day. It'll make sense on Independence Day.

Travelogue 22 – June 28
Despising Lavoro

“Odia la Guerra; Odia il Lavoro,” says the graffiti on the pizzeria wall across the mini piazza. I would translate this roughly, (and probably incorrectly,) as “Hate War; Hate Work.” It’s an airtight philosophy, and it fits pretty neatly into mine. I’d say I’m demonstrating it well this noon hour in Trastevere, Roma at my little cafe in the mini piazza. And when I say mini, I mean it. Five alleyways the width of a European car converge here, and I could toss my cappuccino cup across the space ahead without breaking the stricture of “Odia Il Lavoro”. I could do it underhanded -- though, actually, it looks like it might be uphill. The cobblestones look more like Pompei’s lava field than a roadway. The only level space is the manhole cover in the center of the square. A row of Vespas is parked by the yellow building. The cafe building behind me is crumbling mustard. The one across the road to my right was once russet before it contracted leprosy. There are laundry and ferns hanging over my head. Down the alley ahead, there are glimpses of high, red-tiled roofs, and below, a collection of carabinieri, gathered around their squad cars; they’ve been idle as long as I have. I think most of my readers know my capacity for idleness.

But why lavora? It’s noon. The sun reigns at the center of a marvelously blue sky, scorching, allowing no shade. Rome is in bloom, all green with cypress, pine, maple and palm, and rooftop gardens among the peach- and apricot- and squash-colored buildings. It’s abloom with bright sun and white skin. I somehow thought pink flesh would be distasteful after Africa, but it does have its sugary charm. It gathers by the ton at the Ostiense railway terminal, on its way to the beach. I find my will sorely tested when we arrive at my station, the one for Ostia Antica. The history-lover in me vanquishes the mortal aesthete, and I disembark to stroll the remains of ancient Rome’s port city. At first, it’s a relief from the cacophony of capitol cities: birdsong; dandelions and red poppies among the old flagstones rounded and spread by two thousand years of weather; ancient red brick, silent and decrepit underneath the grand, red-trunked pines; the peaceful, green Tiber rolling by. But morning advances toward noon, and the air seems a bit too white and rare, and I’m getting dizzy. When I left Ethiopia, I taunted friends there with all the sun I would soon be enjoying. If only they could see me now, ducking from shade to shade and fleeing to the shelter of the train station. In the evening, I admire my new red crown, glowing in corners exposed by the Ethiopian buzz cut. Today, indolence is king, under cafe table umbrellas.

Yesterday afternoon, I’m investigating a new neighborhood in the south of the city, research for the novel. I’m resting in a park set square in the middle of a dreary traffic hub among blocks of apartment buildings set up like dominoes. There are dusty trees; there is shade. Three old men share one bench. The rest are vacant. A trash can is overturned. I notice, halfway through my pizza, what the crowd of boys to my left is up to. On a clear bit of pavement, they’ve set up a long and convoluted track for their battery-powered race cars, which are about the size of one’s hand. They’re entranced by their buzzing little robots circling almost faster than the eye. A grey-haired man with a pipe joins in. Passing teens stop to watch. A touch of innocence in the urban scene: I’m struck again by the amiable nature of kids here. They’re loud and boisterous – and God knows, their sense of style became stunted some time around Reagan’s last memory – but fundamentally, they bear no one ill will. Generations mix naturally, without a bit of self-consciousness.

Someone shouts and I flinch. Ethiopia has added to my already considerable burden of complexes and neuroses. All the voices in the street are directed at me! Children want money. I turn away and shake my head “no”. I respond with “ow” to anything an Italian says to me. (It’s Amharic for “yes”.) They pause sadly and think, “Mama mia, these Americans are sensitive.”

Travelogue #21 – June 23
We Adore Our Customers

I'm having a macchiatto at the Open Door Cafe near Addis Ababa University while an afternoon shower threatens. Opposite me, along the aluminum wall of the patio is a painting, right on the metal. "We adore the customers," it says in white lettering that hovers inexplicably across a sunset sky over silhouetted mountains and a desert valley. Equally inexplicable are the huge wedding cake, cup of coffee, and assortment of fruits that figure in the landscape. Crossing one corner, like a black comet, is the silhouette of a strange, rootless palm tree. A team of Jungians couldn’t interpret this.

It's Friday night, and I decide at the last minute to run to the Hilton, where they have a program on Ethiopia's traditional musical instruments, hosted by the Alliance Francaise. I'm half an hour's walk away. I fight the tide of workers headed home. I take a wrong turn and end up opposite the Sheraton. I resign myself to having to resort to one of the "contract" taxis -- the small, individual ones. They always bilk me, and the negotiations are exhausting, so usually I avoid them. But time is running out. I call one, and I buy a handful of peanuts from one of the women crouching by the side of the road, selling them from their woven baskets, while I wait for the driver to pull around. Even she bilks me, for 12 cents. It's okay. I'm enjoying the sunset over the hills. The taxi is one of those Ladas that kind of shimmies in a sickly way, side to side. It's a little disconcerting on the winding roads in this part of town. We wobble into the Hilton grounds, and I run in to buy my ticket. Seated inside the auditorium, I realize I'm not in the mood. The program is running on Abasha time (indefinably late) and the people make me uneasy: French vacationers, white American kids that are too smart and well-groomed. I abandon the plan, and look for the bar. This week, because of the European Cup, I've become a sudden soccer enthusiast. I settle in for the game. The sexy young lady next to me starts a conversation. Being sexy is her profession, as it turns out. While she scouts the room and smiles coyly, we share a beer and laugh about it. She says she’s taking classes on the side so she can get a regular job. She’s bright, if I’m to judge by her English. When I ask how much she charges, (just for curiosity’s sake, I assure you,) she shrugs. “Sometimes, I need rent; sometimes I need tuition.” Beside her, the aged, fat Norwegian tamely cheers for Denmark. On my side, the Brits mock the Norwegian. They tell me things got out of hand last night during the English game. Go figure. I leave at halftime. My lady friend has had no business.

I’m looking through the last batch of pictures; the ones from Bahir Dar. You may recall I dropped my camera at the falls. The photos are funny. There’s a bright haze to everything, and scenes drop off on the side into orange light. There are strange yellow lines like sub-atomic particles colliding, and burning geometrical shapes. We subjects smile, faded and oblivious to the fireworks. I like these pictures. People laugh because of my preference for drugstore cameras, but it’s just for these effects. It makes photography fun. If I want the perfect snapshot, I buy a postcard. I’ve never seen a picture yet, bought or taken myself, that looks like what I saw, so why not have some fun with it?

I'm packing. That's why I stop to look over pics. It's time to head out of this particular dream. What's strangest about it, about this dreamscape, is how thoroughly I became accomodated. The shouts along the sidewalk as I pass; the stares; the beggar with withered legs bent behind his back; the crazy traffic that stops for cows; the twelve sturdy pop tunes that have played in every cafe, taxi, restaurant, and office since I arrived, (I never want to hear an American complain about "overplay" back home;) the blackouts mid-composition on the computer; the slimy streets lined with corrugated tin, behind which families huddle in bug-ridden rooms; it's all quite "normal" to me now. I reflect on the shock I felt in my first weeks, and wonder at the powerful adaptability human psyche. There's a beauty to the squalor, and even the irritations here have a certain charm. And now I close the chapter. Bring in the shamans, and read it for me.

Hey, if anyone out there is reading, keep checking. Jarvis continues.

Travelogue 20 – June 19
Shades of Haile

Ah, morning. The rain has cleared. Our habitual haze hangs over the town from a city burning its trash. The hills of downtown have a brown pall over them and the air has a faint, acrid stink of burning plastic. Workers rush by on the way to the power station down the road. Another set of workers lazily drive their aheya (donkeys) the other way.

My life is a series of meetings now as I prepare to leave. Much remains to be settled about the school. (See Fregenet link.) But I have my moments in between, and my luxuries. I stop by Fil Wuha for a shower. Here I should humbly offer to correct an earlier impression – that Addis Ababa has no downtown to speak of. Not entirely true. At the top of the hill that is the district of Piassa, Leeza’s family’s area, is City Hall, a large concrete complex with a clock tower on which it’s always 2:00. This tower is how I spot Piassa from my own neighborhood. Anyway, a broad boulevard, called Churchill Road, runs down the hill from City Hall and across a wide valley to what used to be the train station, (and is still called Lagar -- a bastardization of Le Gare.) Standing at one end or the other, you can see the whole span of the boulevard, and it can be quite striking, with the hills behind. Along this road is a sort of downtown. Its style seems vaguely 1960s Sunset Boulevard -- square concrete and flat, colored windows; concrete balconies; some California experiments in shape & color -- a circular building, some ugly textures, a few funky-primitive curves in a facade. And in between, squat, little souvenir shops, all selling the same things. Shop owners sit outside and shout at you. Pitiful mothers from the country, babies on their backs, and toddlers trained to beg swarm around you. "Father, father." It appears to me that the only contribution to town from the 70s is the imposing obelisk-like war monument in front of the Black Lion Hospital, complete with hammer and sickle and red star. It dates from Ethiopia’s socialist regime, now in its grave thirteen years. But it’s a far sight better than most of the 90s & 00s contributions out on the city’s fringes, where style means godawful pseudo-pseudo marble tiling.

About in the middle of Churchill Road, you turn onto a winding side road and head toward Fil Wuha, the historical hot springs I mentioned before. If you keep going, you emerge into a small pocket of beautiful cityscape. You might, for the span of half a kilometer, forget where you are. On one hill is the grand United Nations complex, housing the Economic Commission for Africa. Up the hill is the Hilton. On an adjacent hill is the famous Sheraton, a luxurious compound, a la Santa Fe, where world leaders sip champagne. Down the hill, a few more hotels. My favorite is the Ghion, where Abebaw, Leeza's cousin had his wedding reception. I like it because they cultivate a huge lawn and garden (for their bustling business in weddings,) and it is visible from the road. At the top of the hill, past the hotels is one of the old palace grounds, now occupied by Meles, our current leader. Another palace occupies a large bit of ground across from Fil Wuha. Between the Hilton and the U.N. complex is a broad avenue with an island down its whole length as wide as any street. The whole stretch of it has been bought by the owner of the Sheraton, and it is currently under construction to create more entertainment for the 1% of the population who can afford such things. Beauty has its price, and I have to admit I enjoy this corner of the city, in spite of its bad politics. Continue down the hill to the end of the road and you find yourself in Meskel Square. Meskel means cross. It used to be Revolution Square in the socialist years, and the grand leader of the day, Mengistu, made grand addresses there to enforced crowds. It’s a broad, dirt amphitheatre, and in the mornings, it’s the practice arena for runners, who have measured how many kilometers it is to run every level of seating.

It was last week I was walking along that connecting street to Fil Wuha, when I met Solomon, an old man modestly dressed. He seemed eager to talk to me. These days, I walk faster when someone is eager to talk to me. But he was persistent, and wasn’t asking for money. We were passing the lower palace of Haile Selassie, and he told me he met the emperor when he was a child, several times. It seems he was a student at Haile’s own elite school. The emperor would visit, pat heads and pass out fruit. At the end of the year, the number one student would receive a suit; the second a pair of British shoes. Solomon decries the state of affairs now. The kids today …

Travelogue #19 – June 14
It Never Rains in Ethiopia …

Whatever you call the season, it’s raining every afternoon. The clouds move in over the mountains, and for a couple hours, it comes down – sometimes in a downpour. The by-roads, particularly my own street, have become stretches of slime. The shoe-shine boys are making a mint.

But my business goes on. That includes the serious business of tourism, which I’ve neglected. Last week, I visited Lucy. She’s one of the dignitaries of this city, and there’s talk she may move to America for a while, so I wanted to see her on this trip. She’s a slight and frail old lady. If she ever stood, she would rise to a mere three and a half feet. But she can’t. Her muscles have withered away to nothing. In fact, there’s little left of her at all. Collect the fragments of bone and she would handily fit into my backpack. That’s what three and a half million years will do to you. All in all, I’d say she’s handled it well: the oldest pre-human skeleton in the world. She has some cousins upstairs in the National Museum, who left us more complete skulls. I wouldn’t say they flatter the original owners. The one for which they reconstructed flesh, hair, and eyeballs would win no beauty contest, even among chimps. Maybe Lucy found him irresistible. Even an Australopithecus has to be loved by someone. There was a time when Lucy was hailed as grandma to us all. She’s since been relegated to great-aunt: they’ve found some older ancestors, including a new Australopithecus not far from where Lucy was found, dating back four and a half million years. Auntie, proud in her glass case, boasts of being one of the first monkeys to walk erect. Ethiopia was one of the best schools for walking back in the day, being recently stripped of its jungle by the Great Rift and a change in climate. Grassland encourages height for seeing distances, and marathon endurance for traveling. By the way, the Abasha don't call her Lucy. They call her Dinknesh, which corresponds roughly with, "You're precious".

My other notable excursion was to Fil Wuha. As I’ve related in an earlier blog, Emperor Menelik settled himself and his court up on the mountain, Entoto, some time in the 1880s or so. Being a simple man and a warrior by heart, the settlement remained fairly spartan. It didn’t take long for his wife, Taito, to discover the hot springs down in the valley and to begin dreaming of an easier existence than living on the mountain. She set her mind on a new and more comfortable capitol. One day by the springs, she sighted a new blossom, (called Ade in Amharic – I still have to research what it is in English,) and she made a plan for the new city: New Flower, Addis Ababa. These springs still exist in the heart of the city, and are called Fil Wuha. In Haile Selassie’s day, it was built up as a series of public baths -- a natural destination for yours truly after a week with no water at home. You pay your fee at the gate to the complex, something just less than a dollar, and you head up the hill to the long buildings with rows of shower stalls. Give your ticket to the woman with the mop and she gives you a towel and a hotel-style bar of soap, and there you go. It felt wonderful, but then again, how could it not? Was it therapeutic? Absolutely. They have a physical therapy clinic on site. I asked a doctor for a tour, and he happily obliged. They have hydrotherapy and massage. I will be back. We had tea and we chatted a little in Spanish. He was trained in Cuba, naturally, during the socialist Derg regime.

Does a movie count as tourism? I attended my first one in Ethiopia last night – in fact, the first since I left home five and more months ago. The movie was something American, something I don’t believe was ever released back there, with subtitles in some mystery language. Nothing remotely East African. It was pleasant enough. My expectations were low, recalling the movie experience in Kuwait, where people mill about and chat, come and go, make calls. Once you’ve navigated the swarm of beggars and peddlars outside, and sweated for a while in the overcrowded lobby, waiting for the previous movie to end, you’re all right. It’s an old-fashioned, cavernous movie house with a big screen, and, aside from the almost continual clatter of overturned pop bottles, distraction is well-contained. There are three movie theatres in town that play foreign films, one that shows local ones. There’s no directory. You taxi around among them and make your choice. Afterward, it’s dark. The air is fresh with the rain just passed. You slide back into the muddy streets.

Travelogue #18 – June 9
Seizures

I’m back after a couple days convalescing. Addis Ababa and I have been sick. Every so often, my back seizes up with some kind of muscle spasm. And it seems that Addis has similar sorts of fits. It’s been about five days since we’ve had water at my place. There’s road construction down the road. (The amount of road construction here feels like one palpable link to my hometown, Minneapolis.) There have also been more power outages than usual. It happens regularly that whole sections of town go down. But it must be three times this week it’s gone out while I sit at my neighborhood evening hotel, the GG Royale. This is my favorite place to unwind lately. They have an outdoor terrace on the third floor where you can watch the sun set over the fields and hills of town. It’s very nice. When it gets cool, I go in for a beer and CNN … until the lights go out. Nobody bats an eye. Maybe it’s a seasonal thing. Rainy season approaches. That’s what they keep saying, though already it rains every afternoon. I’m counting the days until departure, to Roma, where it really is summer.

For about as long as the water’s been out, the phone at my internet place has been out. Every day, it’s “tomorrow”. This morning, they couldn’t even get the computers started. The closest they came was getting one of the power bars to flicker. “Okay,” they said. “Try.” I said, “Naga. (Tomorrow.)” So life grinds to a halt. Not that it was going so fast, anyway.

These back spasms are excruciating. I had motivation to experiment. I decided I would try the clinic across the street from GG. The name of this clinic is “Jest”, so I had my doubts. But the pain moved me -- I wouldn’t dare try a taxi in this state. The diagnostic procedure ran like this: I gripped my shoulder; they suggested a massage. It sounded good to me. So upstairs I went and undressed for the masseuse, another one of Ethiopia’s army of gorgeous ladies. If I was embarrassed, it wasn’t my scrawny body but the fact that I hadn’t bathed in days. I hoped she understood. I got the full-body massage, for about $7.00 – very nice. Except for the part where she dug into my shoulder muscles mercilessly, ignoring my writhing and cries of pain. “You will be free,” she kept repeating cryptically. In the end, I suppose I was. I had a few more degrees of motion in my neck, and I got to take a hot shower to rinse off the oil. That was my happiest moment. I was in a good mood as I crossed the street to have my beer and sit in the dark.

The next day, I returned for another treatment. “You will be free,” she said, and I said yes. I suffered through the ruthless clenching of my neck muscles, all the while dreaming of the hot shower to come. She’s chatty today. She tells me how she likes Americans. They leave good tips. I take the hint. She recited her mobile number for me, and I’m not sure how to interpret that. But I promise I’ll be back next week. A few more minutes and I’m free – to run to the shower. Yes, all is good is Addis, I think. Sophia and I sit in the dark at the hotel, and I list my woes for her amusement: no water, no internet. The landlord accosted me in the morning, asking for another month’s rent. I have to spend fifteen minutes with him counting until he realizes that from April to June is just two months, and I’ve paid for three. Sophia laughs: “These are problems?” I try to explain what neurotic means. This is new vocabulary in Ethiopia.

Travelogue #17 – June 4
The Hello Revolution

Anyway, I’ve been back in the big city for over a week now, and prey to big city problems. I’m sure my readers are familiar with this one: having to stay in a hotel because they arrived home after dark. That was my fate last night. Most housing is in compounds, and most have guards, but my landlord is too cheap to hire one. He locks up the gate himself. Therefore, I have a ten o’clock curfew. But time is funny in Ethiopia, as I’ve noted before. All clocks said nine thirty; the gate said ten. I get to visit my old friends at the Debre Damo Hotel. The silver lining is my first hot shower in months.

Yes, big city life goes on. When the loudspeakers are out at the church, the deacons pile into somebody’s car, probably a taxi, at 5 a.m. and cruise around the neighborhood honking the horn and calling us to prayer. The roosters take their cue and start up. The army of old men begins their peregrinations. Bent bodies wrapped in dirty cloaks, grizzled pates in white head scarves, they begin their day of prayers. They shake a handful of coins in the open taxi door, intoning a blessing. They poke their heads into cafes and chant. The proper response is something like, “God bless you; thank you,” and they grudgingly retreat. But most of the crowd is occupied with their cell phones. Prayers are wasted. Modern life has swept us along in its tide. God knows, we may live behind mud walls and under corrugated iron, but our pockets bulge with “mobiles”, as they’re called -- even if the technology hasn’t quite kept up. They look nice; they ring all right. It’s just that nine times out of ten there’s no one on the other end. “Hello! Hello!” the mobile owner shouts. “Hello! Hello!” he shouts a half dozen times in case the solar flare passes. It rings again. “Hello! Hello!” he shouts and shrugs. The fashionable café becomes like a pond at twilight. A tree frog peeps, “Auld Lang Syne,” or the “Marseilles,” and the bullfrog answers, “Hello! Hello!” and across the still waters, there’s a reply, “Hello! Hello!” The refrain catches, and they croak from all parts, “Hello! Hello!” That’s how it is in the big city.

There’s the problem of faranj hair. I thought I had resolved that one with Mimi, my discovery last month. She was a haircut the way it should be done, the way I remember service in the Middle East, but with a woman’s hands. I was smitten: an hour in the chair, plied with tea and American videos, delicate fingers turning your chin and clipping so carefully, attentively. She gives you a shave and washes your face, and closes the ceremony with a shoulder massage. I counted the days to my next cut. And it was everything I hoped for, everything except the cut itself. One doesn’t mind as it’s happening, as they pour your tea, and one young lady stirs it, and another squeezes lemon in. One doesn’t mind during the scalp massage. But afterward, one faces the cold truth. Mimi isn’t all you thought she was. The next day, you go to an old man, sure he’ll understand. And he does, with sharper clarity than you were ready for. He sits you down and sets the razor only once. He has the barber’s touch; he’s gentle, but ruthless. Off it goes. Snip, snip; he clips ear hair, eyebrows. You haven’t been this hairless in years. He washes your face, and he brushes you off with a huge multi-colored feather duster. There you are, out the door in ten minutes, in shock and feeling naked. Later, you study your skull. It’s been a long time since you’ve seen the shape of it like this. You wonder if there are phrenologists in Ethiopia. This would be the perfect opportunity. You also see like never before how high your high line has receded over the years. Everyone says you look younger. You know better. The pretty barista says you’re konjo (good-looking,) and you’re tempted to believe her, until she explains that your face is wofram (fat) now.

It’s not the best timing to go bald. The weather is inexorably rounding that corner toward what the Ethiopians call winter – the rainy season. Clouds are starting to linger overhead. The temperature is dropping, until one hesitates before one’s early morning cold shower. In a few days, it’ll be Sunny, the Ethiopian equivalent of June, and the rain moves in. The name causes an Abbot and Costello moment between Saba and myself. I say something like, “But June is rainy, right?” “No, it’s Sunny,” etc. Anyway, that’s life in the big city.

Travelogue 16 – May 31
Cannibals and Angels

Around Lake T’ana are a bunch of old churches that are world-famous among those who like such things. By such things, I suppose I mean history and art, and especially when the two meet. You pile into a motor boat off the hotel’s pier, an hour later than planned, per Ethiopian etiquette. You sit next to Saba and a couple guys from Addis on one side, a Swiss couple and a Japanese lady on the other, and you set off across the peaceful waters. It takes a good hour to cross to the Zegae peninsula, stopping by Abay Ras (the beginnings of the Nile) in order to gawk at the glistening backs of some hippos. They oblige us with some horse noises as they spit out water, and I’m reminded that their name means “river horse” in ancient Greek. It takes an hour, and you wonder how far you’ve come. The Swiss couple has a guide book, and you realize by looking at the map you’ve only crossed the little lobe at the bottom of the huge lake.

At the shore, you’re greeted by a horde of kids. They escort you up the wooded path, trying to sell the usual trinkets, plying their English, trying to get your address. This latter is a mystery, unless it’s a long-term investment strategy, thinking that, with years to wear you down, you might finally buy them a visa.

There are three churches on this headland, two within walking distance. One supports a little museum, as well, which is really nothing more than a display in a wooden stable, where you can look over some imperial crowns and crosses and vestments. The churches are generally fourteenth century or so. They all follow a similar floor plan: round, with an open portico around the outside; in the center, the sanctum for priests, and then the passage around it for worship. No tourists enter the sanctum. On the walls of the sanctum and the rafters above are the art, painted by monks and priests way-back-when on cloth and then hung upon the walls. The themes are patterned, as is the style. St. George killing the dragon is always prominent as you walk in, and the doors of the inner sanctum are guarded by two angels, Gabriel and Urael, or maybe Rafael. They are beautiful depictions, colorful, kind of cartoonish, but somber. We follow the life of Jesus in one set of panels. In another, we get gory representations of martyrs. In another, Mary cries over the blue-skinned sinners in hell. Above, the classic Ethiopian cherubs dot the rafters: big-eyed faces with wings attached. In one church, the paintings are fading, but still vivid. In another, locals have executed an awful restoration, in the colors of the Ethiopian flag, and with modern donors joining in the Biblical events. The latter reminds me of Italy, where medieval patrons are attending on Mary’s presentation in the temple, and so forth.

My favorite is the island monastery. The women have to go to their own island, where, unfortunately, the convent was burned down or bombed in recent history, and everything is newly built. On our island, the church hasn’t been restored. The church is ancient, the paintings faded, and it’s wonderful. The pattern of subject matter changes. Archangels glare at you from the columns. Mary and child are painted by Luke himself on one wall! And in the “museum”, aside from the usual crowns and crosses, is a library of medieval manuscripts, which the monk in charge is happy to open and let you touch. Illuminated goatskin, written on in Ge’ez, the forefather of Amharic, and one of the grand old Christian languages, dating back nearly as far as the church itself.

And so, a rather severe old religion carries on. At the gates of every church, you take off your shoes, and I curse my long laces. Saba and the other Abasha cross themselves, bow, and kiss the door frame three times, touching it with their foreheads in between. At the door of the sanctum, they kneel and bow. We pause at the painting on the right hand wall of the sanctum that you see in every church, the story of Belai, I believe his name was: an upright farmer tempted by the devil into cannibalism. Every artist portrays him gnawing with a manic look on the severed teat of his mother. Some residue of piety moves him to pour a drop of water for a Marian hermit, so, towering above this panel of pictures is Mary herself who saves Belai by dropping the shadow of two fingers into the archangel’s balance as the demons at her feet are grasping at the desperate soul of Belai, who is cringing and hanging onto Mary’s cloak.

“You aren’t very religious, are you?” she asks. This young lady would like to take me to a service of the Jehovah’s witnesses. I have to answer no to her question, reflecting that I don’t say yes in my heart, like I might have at an earlier date. There is no one coming to my rescue. Every day they hang on the walls of their churches, I wonder how I go on without my Leeza.

Travelogue #15 – May 29
The Woofs and the Zafs

My landlord gives me looks in the morning now. He has to open the gate to the compound so I can get out. I’m always awake and waiting for him when he emerges in his robe and wrinkled face. I’m not sure how to read it. I might label the expression “mystified”. Last night was a party night. I call it “Meles Day” because I can’t remember the real name. It’s basically a celebration of the victory of the present leaders over the last -- Meles, our prime minister since 1991, over Mengistu, socialist dictator who overthrew the emperor Haile Selasie in 1974. Anyway, maybe it’s just a hangover.

In Bahir Dar, I didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission to leave my hotel room. I just strolled out my door as light dawned and took a seat on the gorgeous terrace overlooking the lake. The rooms at the Ghion Hotel are in a poor state of repair. The staff are all hustlers, sweet-talking the faranj into one more expensive tour. But the terrace and the garden are beautiful. At dawn, I’m alone on the terrace. The lake is absolutely still and misty. Above in the sprawling warqa tree, an amazing assortment of woofs (birds) hop around. My favorite you can hear growling up there before you see him. He swoops from branch to branch, head bigger than his body. It’s a hornbill – something like the toucan, except less colorful and with an extra ridge on top of its enormous bill. He’s as big as a small dog, and he spends his day picking what I assume are dates from the palms and then coughing them up on another branch. There are parrots and bullhorn geese. And once you start your breakfast, the bright yellow little weavers show up, some alighting right on the table. I’ve mentioned the huge warqa tree. There are two zafs (trees) in Bahir Dar that instantly put you in the Africa mood. This is one. Its limbs spread and twist horizontally from a broad trunk. The leaves are wide and dusty feeling. It took me several days to find out what it is in English, and my information is incomplete. At first, they insisted it was a fig tree, which I knew was false. Then one Frenchie informed me it was a sort of sycamore. A ficus? Pronounced like fig. Anyway, the other tree is the jacaranda, that sometimes blooms in beautiful, scarlet flowers. These trees are not only cultivated on hotel grounds, but can be seen all around town, and even out in the dry hills.

The warqa spreads its limbs wide out in the hills around Tis Abay. That is the name of the waterfall in the Blue Nile that you’ll see displayed in any tourist materials on Ethiopia. The name means “smoke of the Nile,” to describe the effect of the mist from the falls. Sometimes it’s called Tis Isat, or fire smoke. If you’ve seen any pictures of it, they are at least a few years old, because, sad to say, Tis Abay is pretty much a thing of the past. They have just completed the hydroelectricity project that diverts almost all the water of the Nile around the falls. The day we saw it, the whole of the falls was a thin strip of water along a long, rocky cliff that once was roaring water. Still beautiful, but disappointing. You hesitate to complain, knowing the needs of the country have to come first. You just enjoy the hike among the hills, followed by a ragtag bunch of locals, mostly children, who try to sell you bamboo flutes, tepid pop, and calabash water vessels. You climb down to the pool of water underneath the falls, where kids are enthusiastically swimming, and, if you’re not too bright, you jump around the rocks like I did and drop your camera, breaking it open and spoiling most of your shots. It’s a nice little tour, going to Tis Abay. You hike from below to above the falls, crossing the oldest bridge over the Ethiopian Nile below, a vestige of Portuguese presence, and then crossing back in a boat, hoping to catch sight of alligators. You climb back on the tour bus, satisfied despite the anemic falls, and brace for the long ride back along dirt roads.

Back in town, you pass some hours staring at the lake, and then, as sun nears setting, you and Saba take a walk through town. The lanes are crowded. It’s a small enough town that you almost walk the whole perimeter, walking by the tall minarets of the mosque and by the community center blasting music and by the old Italian library, and you stop by the dabbo bet (bread shop) and you pick up a bag of rolls that you pass out among the street children.

Travelogue #14 – May 27
The Tankwa

I’m up at 5:30 again. I take my cold shower before the sunrise. I examine today’s bug bites. Seems like my roommates, the insects, feel entitled to extra portions because I starved them for five days. I was away feeding other bugs. I was up in Bahir Dar, a town northwest, an hour by plane. Its name means “by the sea”, though it’s not by the sea at all. It’s by a lake, Lake T’ana, and since T’ana is the third largest lake in Africa, I suppose the name is acceptable. (Another “third” about Ethiopia: I read yesterday that Addis Ababa is the third highest capital city in the world.)

Bahir Dar is where I got into the habit of 5:30 awakenings. Yesterday, I’m up and out the door at 5:30. I have to meet my tankwa connection. I leave the hotel grounds and walk. I can’t go too fast in my new, green, plastic Captain America sandals. (We called them flip-flops in California. Is that a general term in English? I know here they have a name that’s too long to recall. The more common the item, the more syllables in Amharic. Abstractions get the one- and two-syllable words.) I’ve been wearing them so much here they hurt.

I cut through the church grounds and scramble along the dirt paths through the village of huts behind it. These people farm a plot of land between the church and the next hotel, and they fish. I get to lakeshore, picking my way delicately down the rocky slope. My contact isn’t here yet, so I wait. Sitting on one rock pile are two young guys with blankets over their heads and shoulders, bibles on their knees. One reads aloud. The other is singing mezmur, the Ethiopian hymns. As you walk through the village, you hear similar voices inside the huts.

My connection arrives – Demelesh, a young fisherman. We don’t say much. He knows what I want. He wraps his arms around one of the tankwas leaning against the rock pile and throws it in the water. He tosses in a bundle of papyrus for a seat. I get in, adjusting my balance, careful not to tip over. He hands me the two-headed oar, gives me a push, and I’m off. I glide through the still water, past stones and past the high papyrus that supplies the fishermen with their little boats – the tankwas, made of reeds. The water is profoundly still, as it is every morning. The days here follow an unvarying pattern: still and sunny in the morning, winds from the north and some clouds in the afternoon, then sunny again as the sun sets. I struggle with my paddling technique. The oar is a thick, round branch with paddles nailed on. The fishermen wrap their hands around the top of the branch and paddle side to side. My hands aren’t strong enough to do that. I have to hold it from the bottom, making me slow. But I am steady. After a while, I can develop a flowing movement, side to side, keeping the papyrus point of the boat straight ahead of me. When you see a tankwa from the distance, you see the oar turning like a windmill. I fancy that I look like that from shore. The sun comes over the brown hills in the distance. I stop and sing a mezmur to Helios or to Ra. Actually, I don’t know any mezmur. Not even a prayer. But I’m reverent, and hopefully that’s enough. I row for an hour, past various marshy coves, past another few hotels. Tankwa men shout, “Hello, Mister,” and wave. Several enormous pelicans paddle close behind me, looking for scraps of fish. Egrets fly overhead. I believe I spot an ibis. In one cove, I circle around a lotus flower.

After an hour, I arrive at my destination. There’s one little cove, and another. You see the water encircles an island here. There’s a wooden shack on the island and a yawning man. There’s cactus on the bluffs. You see that the water continues on beyond the island. Ahead there’s another inlet. This water flowing so peacefully inland all collects into one river, beyond sight. This river is the Abay River, the Nile. I’m looking at the beginnings of the Blue Nile, one of the two sources of the great river. The other is Lake Victoria in Uganda, the source of the White Nile. The two Niles join in Khartoum, Sudan. (I saw this from the air, actually -- an impressive sight in the middle of the brown desert below.) I float here a while, soaking in the sun which is rising higher over the hills that recede along the Nile valley. It’s utterly quiet here, except for the subtle lapping of a tankwa’s paddle in the Nile waters. I search the waters for the backs of hippos. On a previous trip -- in a motor boat that time – we saw them, sunning as peacefully as I am now.

I don’t stay long. I know they need the tankwa. On the way back, Demelesh catches up to me. He shows me some of the morning’s catch from his nets. I slip him some birr. I don’t want to give him money in front of his friends in case they become jealous. We stop at another of his nets on the way back. I wait for him while he untangles a bit of it that has knotted around the float, a piece of styrofoam. We row back together. It’s bathing time at lakeside, and a bunch of naked people laugh and wave at me from the rocks. A couple boys dive in and try to catch me. The boat back on shore, I head back to the hotel for breakfast.

Travelogue #13 – May 20
All About the Laughs

“Buon giorno, Mario,” I say. It’s a pleasure to have an Italian acquaintance here. I get to practice a little Italian. And who can’t love the accent? Almost every morning we encounter each other at my café. I think he comes here because it’s the closest thing he can find to an Italian breakfast, which is really just an excuse for a quick infusion of sugar and caffeine. For the brioche, he substitutes cookies. He’s trained them how to make an approximation of a cappuccino. And he’s relaxed enough in thirty years in Africa to even sit down for breakfast. He’s a cheerful fellow, about sixty years-old, tall, healthy, shaven-headed, with bright blue, laughing eyes. He teases the ladies here and kisses them on the cheek -- always in a gentlemanly way. “Where in Italia could a man my age kiss a pretty woman like this?” His theory is that Mussolini meant the women when he cited “natural resources” as the reason for invasion. Mario happens to hale from a town where I spent a few days this winter, and in which I actually set a short scene in Chapter One of Jarvis’ big novel, which I haplessly struggle with every day at this very café. He tells me how the centro of his town has changed. When he was young, everyone wanted to move out into the country. Now their kids are moving back into the centro. Sounds like America. When I ask him about his work, he obliges me with the classic gesture: fingers and thumb together, up, and shake loosely. He shakes his head. That’s all.

Mario is the coolest faranj in Ethiopia. Generally, there’s something in the air that denies us any coolness, any savoir faire. We make an ugly lot. Most of us are old, getting in some last-minute good works. There’s a set of 90s swingers in the bars, long hair and ties, and a contingent of the starry-eyed Birkenstockers. There’s a small middle-aged PC crowd, weary and reclusive. Nothing redeems our pallid self-consciousness on the street. One quickly sees our ugliness through their eyes. Not the jolly Chinese are immune to this effect, nor the intense sari-and-suit Indians, who are buying up all the real estate for their next lives. So it goes.

That’s not to say the Abasha are cool. That quality really doesn’t exist here, except as an anti-matter produced by the faranj. Jaunty maybe. Everything’s natural: the grin and wink of the breast-feeding mother on the street; the laborers piled into the back of the dump truck, singing and clapping; the teenage boys on the sidewalk practicing some dance step they saw on TV; the sullen stare that’s friendly in an instant. You just have to joke. Make everything a joke and you’re fine. Laughter is the currency here. You hear that all the time about Africa. Actually, it gets to be grating. Everyone starts to look a little manic, and playing for laughs gets tiresome. Anything goes. I remember the morning I saw a naked man strolling down the middle of the street, cars streaming around him. As we passed, no one in the taxi batted an eye. The same morning, in a different taxi, we passed an obese women, (unusual itself in Ethiopia,) sitting on a stool on the sidewalk and scrubbing herself. No reaction. But the faranji get a laugh. So it goes.

Sanbat, my little street girl, is coming along. She runs up behind me in her one, midnight blue , felt dress too big for her. She smiles brightly and holds my hand. We are able to hold a little conversation in our second language. How are you? Good, thanks God. What do you want today, I ask? “Dabbo!” she says. Bread. So I pull the little loaf out of my backpack and give it to her. She runs back to her family, which sits together on the same corner every day, looking shamelessly happy. I watched them one day, laughing, clapping to some song the mother was singing. The boy, a toddler, is trying to dance.