Travelogue 361 – October 3
The Summit

The sun has just risen as our airliner approaches Addis Ababa. I'm watching out the window as we clear the banks of clouds that seem to have western Ethiopia firmly in their grasp. The clouds are my amusement for nearly the full final hour of a flight that is desperately short of amusement. There was one movie, an acceptable piece, despite Demi Moore's unforgiving facial work. I've read off and on. I've shut my eyes in vain attempts at sleep. The best I'm able to manage on a plane is a vertiginous state just short of dozing, in which the mind disengages from its imagery and tiny, nonsensical narratives rise like sparks. Then it's done, and I'm delicately maneuvering from beneath the heavy elbow of the fat man next to me.

The drama of the clouds is complex and fascinating. The story of the clouds is in their variety and their mixture. There are the clouds like high fogs, contiguous and gloomy. There are the happier, billowing variety, the ones that reveal themselves in detailed relief in the dawning day's light. There are the clouds that drift lightly, like shredded cotton, and soak in the roseate glow of the rising sun. They all mix in the wide sky, seeming even to be driven by different winds. The light changes every minute, adding golds and slow stains of blue.

When the clouds break, the ground revealed is remarkably green and I'm reminded that I haven't been to Ethiopia during the fall for three years now. Fall, when the long rainy season finally ends. The land below is dark with lingering night. The gentle hills are broken into irregular, small shapes of family agriculture. We are not far from Addis Ababa, as it turns out. The clouds slowly dissipate, the fields capture the new sunlight among their emerald crops. Extensive ridges and river valleys unfurl themselves for us. Then the mountains become familiar. I watch them gather momentum, and then with a start I recognize them. I'm looking down on the dirt roads that I and my team habitually run, along the ridge just north of the capital city. The morning is now glorious and clear. The roads run east down below, and I'm following them and naming the places. Beyond are the hazy buildings of the city. It's a fun way to re-enter. The plane swings south just past Kotebe and begins to circle toward the airport.

Now it's a different day. The morning unfolds much like the morning of the flight. The sun detaches from the rugged eastern horizon and rises to cast slanted light among the woods. I'm running those trails I've sighted from the plane, running with Dirige, Alaye, Cien, and Derartu. The three Ethiopians are from my team, among the most talented. And for the moment, strictly confining their talent in order to run with the faranjis.

I'm feeling some trepidation as we ride in a taxi up to the summit of Entoto. The first run in Ethiopia is usually excruciating. Jet lag tugs like extra gravity at aching muscles. My sleep cycles haven't adjusted yet. The altitude grips your lungs and makes you a little dizzy.

But today, everything feels fine. I set off cautiously, but the steps follow one another fluidly. I'm mentally checking in on muscles and oxygen. Everything's functioning. I surrender to the rhythm of running. Soon we're hitting that summit behind Entoto and higher than Entoto, running uphill toward the radio tower at the top. The miniature terrain of the dirt road adds complication to the exertion of climbing. Jutting up from the earth is a soft, pale stone that wrinkles like brain matter. You have to watch every step. Running these roads takes full attention. Beyond the summit, the wide road eases into a gentle decline among dense woods, where the danger of hyenas is greatest. The brain stone has disappeared but in its place are legions of grey, sharp ankle-breakers. I enjoy the concentration that this type of running demands.

We round the final bend before we turn back on this initial run. We turn into the heat of the sun. The light that has been coyly playing among the eucalyptus leaves is now in our faces. It's a good day on the summit.

Travelogue 360 – September 30
It's Thursday in Feltham

It's Thursday in Feltham. It's noon, and the old men are at it already, a few pints into their day. I'm at Wetherspoon's in Feltham Centre. Wetherspoon's is a blessing and curse to 21st century England, a homegrown chain of pubs that has a tradition of taking over old banks or other large commercial spaces and transforming them into massive, high-ceilinged arcades of kitsch. They provide comfy dining and drinking according to very detailed blueprints and menus. The fare is affordable and bland.

I make it into the restaurant just before noon, just in time to order breakfast. My meal takes some time to find me, so I have plenty of time to look around. The middle tables are occupied by locals and their pints. Locals also stand at the bar, quietly ordering more. No one is playing the slots yet. I take a dark booth along the wall. It happens, as often happens among self-consciously unwieldy franchises, that the décor features historic photos of the township. The one in my booth depicts the town green in 1908, little more than muddy fields by a pond and rows of wooden houses some fifty meters back. Boys of various ages pose in their caps and coats, soberly, uncertainly. Morbidly, I reflect that only seven years later, some of these boys would be fighting in France.

Fortified with eggs and beans, I explore the town. The centre is now occupied by severely modern shopping and condominiums. Wetherspoon's is not the only chain to have discovered forlorn Feltham, once known for its peas, and later for providing the world with half of the band Queen. Only the older shops along rougher lanes stand in shabby opposition to the incursion of Lord Franchise. Among these is the charmingly dark and greasy 'Tennessee Fried Chicken'.

I discover the green, matured a deal since 1908. The pond is well-contained, the green itself circumscribed by sidewalks, and the whole surrounded by well-trafficked avenues, shopping, churches, and stolid mid-century homes. Moms meander with strollers while Canada geese squawk and waddle toward refuge. Men in suits take up one bench, teens in hoods another. There is a monument to the fallen of two world wars, standing tall and neglected beside the main avenue. There are about 150 names inscribed here, men lost in World War I. I can't help wondering if any of the boys in the restaurant photo are named here.

It's Thursday in Feltham. With only a day between night flights, I've chosen not to stray too far from Heathrow in the far western reaches of Greater London. Feltham is only a few miles south of the airport. Just follow Fagg's Road or Hounslow Road down from Houslow or from the eastern end of the airport, traveling south from the Piccadilly Line. Don't be distracted by the lack of distinguishing features out here, the banal repetition of block after block. There is life

And for today, there is no rain. I'm happy. I return to the mall and take a table at Costa Coffee, another self-conscious chain that covers itself with photos from Italy. I tap into the wireless from some local pub. I talk to Minnesotans before they've woken, tuning out the day's chatter of Feltham housewives.

Travelogue 359 – September 21
The Age of Big, Part Two

The view out my apartment window unfolds like a lesson in American history. Draw a line from my twenty-first-century computer, through the glass of the window, and across the late twentieth-century asphalt of the alley, buckling and cracked, through the links of the 70s chain link and into the parking lot of the Social Security office. This parking lot fills up by nine, and people are lined up outside every business morning, ready to enter. Here, people seem eager enough to participate in socialism, the welfare state, big government.

Before Ike, there was FDR, just as before the Second World War there was the Great Depression. There weren't too many boys marching in France who weren't followed by the gaunt specter of deprivation. Dad as inoffensive ghost is nodding again. He was man of the house at an early age, his father incapacitated by the previous war, made man of an impoverished Colorado household, within a family still tainted by not-so-recent immigration and their continuing status as laborers. Not even twenty, he shipped off for Europe.

And so, first must come Franklin Delano. Even Ike called him boss. In August, 1935, FDR signed into law the Social Security Act,, centerpiece to his New Deal, demon and savior to every American since. The New Deal might rank up there with the Civil War and the Revolution in impact upon the American identity and psyche.

The building is bland enough, brick without the charm of age or ornament. I've never been inside. If a Tea Partisan strayed into this neighborhood, would he or she sneer at this squat, flavorless structure and pronounce everyone inside enemies? Would he or she fantasize about McVeigh moments? Perhaps I exaggerate? I hope.

Glide on by the New Deal, advancing in time again into post-war America. Beyond more chain link, you slide into the trough of the interstate. As I've said, this is Ike's dream manifest, though it wasn't until the 60s that the great paving project reached Minneapolis. The first section of I-94 was laid between Jamestown and Valley City, North Dakota, 13 miles of road completed in 1958.

In the 60s and 70s, the Twin Cities came under siege. Neighborhoods were torn asunder. Swaths of concrete and asphalt were laid over the raw earth, all connected into unbroken miles of communication strung across the continent. The system boasts 46,876 miles, almost twice around the planet if laid in one line. But what fun would that be?

Why are highways on my mind? It's difficult to be man on a bicycle in this neighborhood without spending serious time contemplating the sweeping, unavoidable stretches of bone that slice across the landscape, ruthlessly X-cutting this town into hermetic quadrants. Gazing at downtown from my window means sending my attentions across one raging river of traffic. A few blocks to the west, I-35W feeds into into the mighty 94, only to depart for the north a mile or two to the east. A mile or so to the east, the 55 merges in from the south. Downtown is across the 94; Uptown is across the 35W; the university is across either the 94 or the 55, or across both. Effectively, I live on a narrow promontory, and any of my daily commutes involves a choice of bridges. And one of the grand ganglions of the state is just a mile or two away, a howling no-man's-land miles square.

At night, I listen to the highway. Its hum is almost comforting. Once in a while, a truck emits a scream as it passes, and I wonder if the driver is aware of the signature he leaves behind in city neighborhoods, the cold cry of commerce, the hyena's laugh of history, the dinosaur's love song?

Note: my place is at the bottom of the photo, a little left of center ...

Travelogue 358 – September 20
The Age of Big, Part One

A fog has settled in last night. It's so thick that I can't see downtown from my windows. There's only the indeterminate form of one high-rise, lines of grey windows dissolving in grey. The view from my place usually takes in all of downtown, Nicollet Avenue progressing north to the Mississippi like a narrow tributary among the walls of the valley it has carved, the stone pillars of Minneapolis, its luxury hotels, the IDS tower, the Foshay, Ameriprise and other bastions of finance.

My vantage is removed; I see it but I'm not part of it. My abode sits among the outcasts from downtown, among one of the many stands of brick-clad buildings wrenched from town center by the discerning hand of Eisenhower.

Eisenhower: #34, George Washington reborn as an apple carving, founding father, paterfamilias to DiMaggio, Presley, and Keruouac. Weren't the days of Eisenhower's presidency the best ones? The ghost of my father is nodding. But Dad didn't live to see the Reagan years. I think the 80s would have made him kick his heels. What do you make of Sarah Palin, Dad? Oops, I've lost him. One mustn't push a ghost too far past the logic of his time … though, really, as for that … the logic of Sarah … well, anyway ... the mists encroach.

Fog has wiped the slate clean, a grey silence overtaking time. The screen is black and white again. The post-war waves of real estate giddiness that shaped downtown have never happened. Dad, do you remember Minneapolis in 1954? Do you remember the Foshay, the tapering and tawny erection that defined the 'skyline' for decades in mid-century? He's nodding happily again. But there were no Twins, no Vikings. Did my parents have a little silver-screened box that gave them grainy shots of Joltin' Joe and the Yankees? News from the Kremlin, still reeling from the sudden death of Uncle Joe?

For my Dad's generation, everything proceeds from the war, everything rising smoke from that fire. Cities rose from the ashes. Nations, industries, philosophies, leaders, a generation of babies all were the progeny and reply to the war. What Dwight brought back from the war were vivid memories of his travels across Europe. Dwight was a finicky traveler. He required a large entourage, hundreds of thousands of armed men, to be specific, men in tanks and planes, men with guns and grenades.

Ah, those madcap mid-century years: it was a time defined by mass mobilization, mad for huge numbers of human bodies, whether it was Ford and his assembly lines, parties and movements, or war. These days war is a dozen demented and unshaven fools who hijack airliners. Obama's efforts in Afghanistan seem strained, quaint, messy. We've lost that epic feeling.

The thing about mass efforts, they demand Herculean accomplishments in organization. Ike was the consummate organization man. Logistics over bullets. He was impressed by the German autobahn. His civilization-bending romp across western Europe would have been impossible without the extensive infrastructure realized by mass-menschen hungry for war. Global war in the bag, he turned an analytical eye on our vast North American spaces.

And so it is we inherit the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, begun in the 50s. Any coincidence that the road emerges as a theme in literature and movies in the 50s and 60s? Can we in 2010 imagine this nation without its highways? I can't. I grew up within a few miles of one of the classic routes, Highway 10, California to Florida.

Now I live one block from another one of them, the 94, Michigan to Montana. In the fog, traffic is slow. I can see the tops of the semis creeping along beyond the chain link fence. It's always the westbound traffic that is backed up. We're still manifesting destiny, it would seem, with Daddy Dwight's blessing.

Travelogue 357 – September 12
Commemorate

Leeza lived long enough to experience Nine-Eleven. What does that mean? What part of us is made of the things we witness? The small rooms we call our life stories resound from time to time with the roar of passing trains or the shouts of passing mobs. History intrudes in its disturbing way, insisting that time – OUR time, we think – will now be marked in long memories by this capricious turn of events. Our stories have suddenly been hijacked by a dozen jihadists and a nasty Washington cabal of vigilantes. It's done.

Ethiopians don't see their lives as small, isolated rooms, I would dare say. Few of them could identify with a metaphor they haven't experienced: it's a rare man or woman over there who has had a room to him/herself. Life, rather, is the souk, the market, where all stories are wound together inextricably. The story is hijacked every day, they might shrug. Nine-Eleven? Do you think you're special?

In her last years, Leeza witnessed a few things that made her cry: Wellstone's death, Nine-Eleven, and variously cruelties up close and personal. She said she couldn't bring children into this world. Is that why she was exterminated?

Some freakish clergyman announces he's fit to judge the Quran. The press obliges him with a sustained blast of attention. Thousands of Afghanis march to protest the words of a freak. A midsummer night's circle of dancing fools link hands across the globe to perpetrate 'news'. They seek to define our day; they envision headlines becoming chapter subtitles in Kansas history books. Does progress mean that next year cable shows will broadcast a straight-jacketed mental patient shouting that the Chinese race was seeded by aliens? Will thousands of Chinese will take to the streets to condemn the West? Will it will be a fortune teller in Venice Beach declaring that Ahmadinejad is the Antichrist? Will advertisers unite to declare World War III?

Leeza's story is over. Is Leeza's story over? She takes her headlines to the grave. The rest of us carry them in our bags of banners. Nine-Eleven is one of the big ones. We drag it out once a year and scratch our heads over it. We ask, why is this a part of my story? Some of us are suspicious of the intrusion. It would make more sense if we could expand it into evil on a scale that would be worthy of a good shot of adrenaline. This is not the work of a few bizarre bands of over-excited frauds. It's the clash of empires, fighting to the death.

To those of us who need Star Wars to make sense of life, let me say this: you do not understand tragedy. You are afraid to feel it. Tragedy is almost always the result of trivial human stupidity. It makes the losses unbearable. The survivors of tragedy live on, crippled by it, trying to make sense of it. We wonder how the story could be taken so lightly by the gods.

Travelogue 356 – August 28
The State Fair

I'm sitting next to a grandfather on the bus. He doesn't look like a grandfather particularly, though he obviously has trouble turning his neck. He's got all his spiky hair. He's short and sturdy. The legs jutting out of his shorts are stout and healthy. But he introduces me to his grandson, sitting in the seat ahead of us with the boy's mother, the grandfather's daughter.

Grandpa comes from a town 150 miles to the west, a town of 400 people. He comes to the State Fair every year. He has since he was five, he says. He tells me about when they used to have tractor square dancing. He's slow with his words. He's a country gentleman. He offers his seat to a young lady, but she's too city too understand.

The Minnesota State Fair is one of the biggest in the country, bringing in millions of people. It's been going since the 1850s, offering summer-end entertainment for Minnesotans for as long as the state has existed. This year, I'm one of the featured livestock. I'm manning a table for the foundation, graciously offered a spot by Peace Coffee, a local fair trade roaster, who wants to show off its partners in coffee-growing countries.

In all my years in this fair state, I can't say I've made many visits to the Fair. My memory of previous visits feeds me blurred images of crowds and cheese curds and … more crowds. This time, I rather enjoy it. Seems like age has tempered my critical faculties. It's just for fun, Mr. Travels.

The table is set inside an old brick fairgrounds building devoted this year to the 'Eco Experience.' Outside there is a single blade from a wind turbine on display, rising higher than the building. There's a Tesla car on display inside. Peace is serving free coffee. Next to us is a cooking class, stressing the 'eat local' theme. I get to taste the results of their demonstrations.

On my break, I eat a brat. I watch some teens dancing hip-hop for the kiddies. I pass the John Deere display, wondering at all the machinery. I examine the inside of a tank at the Marines' stall. I watch a small parade that includes a high school marching band and a unicycle club. There are a couple teenage boys in the club who can do jumps and bounce around on the unicycles and twirl them underneath them. I walk down streets lined with fast food: pizza on a stick, foot-longs, taffy, cookies. I watch the toddlers on the little rides made just for them, a slow carousel, or bumblebees cars in the air. Some of the kids are mystified. Some know they should be having fun. I pass the big kid rides, and laugh at the chorus of girls' screams.

Back at the table, I continue to be amazed at the hardiness of the visitors, who shuffle by in lines, making sure to check out every display in this over-heated building, always in good spirits. Everyone is generous with feigned or genuine interest; everyone smiles and says hello. They call the State Fair the Great Minnesota Get-Together. A dated and unsophisticated slogan, but it seems to apply.

Biking back to Minneapolis, I relish the beautiful day, another in a long chain of them. I wonder how these meticulously scheduled and highly scripted events manage to lift some load from people's shoulders; how such events, hard-wired into the calendar, can create a moment of timelessness.

Travelogue 355 – August 24
Leo's Lament

There's a sudden, if subtle, change in the tempo and the light. I have to keep referring to a mental calendar. What's happening? For one thing, I honestly sense that the summer light has undergone a shift. Midday sunlight seems dimmer. Clouds have been cavorting overhead lately, dropping bits of rain, but generally maintaining a jovial tone. But when one of them crosses the sun, I shiver. Is it an eclipse? There's a degree of light gone missing. It's still warm; its still humid, but the light! I think this is when there is a new and unconscious bounce to the step of Minnesotans. They feel the slight shift toward darkness and cold. But me, a native Californian, I shiver.

Secondly, who are all these people? Oh yes, these new bodies in the coffee shops, these new yowls downtown at night, these new cars on the road, these are students! I consult the inward calendar. Yes, colleges are warming their engines. Whole villages within the metro re-populate.

The place is called the Segue Coffee Shop. It just opened. It has opened in the place once inhabited by a cafe I wrote about two years ago, when I was discovering Elliott Park. Back then this space was managed by community activists and hippies. The place was an eclectic match of tables and chairs. It had a stage for the rare performance of local talent. It had a TV exhibiting non-local talent.

The new Segue Cafe has little of the bohemian charms of its predecessor. There is lots of very clean hardwood floor. There are scarce and very tidy items of furniture, a cozy set of armchairs and a few shiny little tables. In the entire room, there are probably seats for a dozen.

I'm not comfortable with cafes that try too hard to be comfortable. I prefer big, drafty rooms packed with rows of small, scarred tables and solid wooden chairs. Tall windows, tall blank walls are great. Add some art if you must, but please apply some critical judgement.

In any case, the Segue Coffee Shop is staffed by, and largely serves, students from the nearby Bible college that is rapidly re-populating. They are a polite bunch. It must be one of those commandments I keep hearing about. Politeness while one shares caffeinated beverages was a virtue valued highly among nomadic peoples of the Formerly Fertile Crescent. They say Abraham was a man with highly polished manners, as much as his tortured son may have complained.

Bible students flood the streets of Elliott Park, saying, 'Thank you.' The sun sets earlier every day, drawing out the non-Biblical types, prowling Hennepin with impolite intentions.

O sad, embattled August! Proud month of lions, named for emperors; month that embarks like gilded warships on a summer campaign; month of strongest sun; lament! Lament that your final week should be yield to foreboding autumnal winds, shuddering indecision, and ill-mannered tribes that have eyes only for coy September. Lament that your days should end among such distractions! Look to next year for greater glory.

Travelogue 354 – August 21
Noir, Fade to Cream

I remember the Cold War. Why does it seem so long ago? Where's the nostalgia for Communism? Who wouldn't prefer crusty old Brezhnev to Bin Laden? Bin Laden has no stock of fine vodka and Cuban cigars in his cave, I assure you. He's got no Sputniks; he's got no grandstand Politboros, no May Day parades. Frankly, Osama is an unfortunate symbol of our times, all gleaming eyes and humorless mission. There's no clownish Yeltsin in the wings for Afghanistan. Such impoverished, such earnest times.

I've been reading spy novels again. It's an indulgence. The spy novel is a Cold War art form, and for greatest enjoyment, one must return to the Cold War authors. These days I'm revisiting an old favorite, Len Deighton. The book is one of his originals, written in '64 or so. It's set in occupied Berlin. We follow the chain-smoking, wise-cracking spy (is there any other kind?). This spy is British. He's a spy with no name, a true spook. By the way, it's an interesting fact that namlessness is a great devise for getting to know a character. Somehow it submerges one further inside the narrator's POV. No one hears his own name. 'Jarvis is leaving home. Jarvis is walking right out that door. Jarvis turns and puts the key in the lock. Jarvis is out.'

The novel's cast of characters is suitably dark, savvy, and indirect. 'Indirect' is understatement by several orders. It would seem that spies dialogues with one another in adolescent-style wink-and-a-smile dialects delivered with fair proportions of pose and bluff. And a good spy keeps a gun ready for the bizarrely sudden moments of violence – nothing like current movie violence, which washes against one like waves from a passing speedboat, along with the boat radio's blast of unsympathetic music. And above all, there must be a whiskey-soaked world-weariness about it.

The key descriptor is dark. That's the era of purest noir, isn't it? These days we play at noir, but our noir amounts to little more than the narcissistic perversity of spoiled rich kids. It's Holden Caufield kicking a can. The Cold War generation earned its noir, a few world wars and the Depression in their knapsacks. The midnight swagger, ciggie between the lips, sharp suits and demure glances, it's all a bit of a show, don't you think? A pantomime by the disillusioned who have staggered into peace and prosperity, their souls in shreds, and should be enjoying life a lot more. It's cool because it's a put-on. It's Vladimir and Estragon acting out War and Peace. These are matters of life and death, one intones, sprawled across the park bench. Wipe that bloody smirk off your face. Am I smirking really? In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo. Oh dear, wrong war.

I wander my own little post-war post-city, lost in my own time. I realize that guys only ten or fifteen years older than me did NOT fight in World War II. A part of me remains frozen in youth, when men who looked grizzled were WWII veterans. No, these are veterans of the 60s, (a totally different satchel of post-traumatic stress conditions that I'll unpack in another essay.) Some day a man will realize that the grizzled men lined up at the bar have NO memories of the 60s, like the elders of his childhood did. What will have been lost?

What would be the opposite of noir? It might just be Scott Pilgrim, a perky blanc that I swished and spat last night. What do we learn from Scott Pilgrim? Can it stand in as a glimpse into the soul of America, August, 2010? If so it will the most fleeting of glimpses, the revelation after a third shot of espresso. Pilgrim's world weariness goes only so far as impatience with what's on the radio. His poses are manifestly awkward, his rebuttals stubbornly dumb in the manner of pre-teens. His morality pokes about leisurely on a plane of rare and expansive airs. If Pilgrim's grand and great grandparents may not have understood the humor, they might have appreciated the flattering comfort behind it. Didn't they murmur to themselves through gritted teeth that they were fighting for their kids? Their kids would have it all. They would get to make flippant movies. Their kids would get to frown over guitar riffs. Their kids would get to argue over hairstyles. How wonderful.

Maybe there is after all an historical or genetic helix linking Bogart's sad eyes with the vacuous ones of young Cera. Maybe the links in that helix are strong and right. The young blank-eyed hero meanders in his own time toward the pillow-soft truths. It's a funny film. Why not?

Travelogue 353 – August 14
Ada Abides

A delicate dragonfly gets trapped inside Stephanie's water glass. It struggles against the circular walls of its confinement and then drops into the water. Such simple things confound the things that live and breathe on Planet Earth. Stephanie quickly pours the unfortunate out with her water into the garden. The dragonfly crawls away.

We sit high above the River Thornapple. Our piece of river gently curves below a steep decline populated by towering pines and low brush that, despite their green numbers, still don't seem to check the erosion. The water is peaceful and green. It doesn't appear so greedy as to feed on Stephanie and Marc's land, but it does year by year, centimeter by centimeter.

The hawks and herons still trust the high-wire pine branches. The hillside still supports visiting deer. Hummingbirds hover inquisitively over the back patio. The flowering brush entices butterflies and dragonflies, grasshoppers and crickets. At night they join forces to send forth a symphony of survival. Geology hardly intrudes, hardly seems violent today.

I'm in Michigan for my summer visit. Stephanie has put together another lovely event in her house, guests filling the spacious house, spilling out onto the dangerous patio, teetering on the precipice of Earth's hungry science. Little do they realize that they stand suspended high above the river's future expanded course. They drink Stephanie's wine and laugh; they view rows of art created by children in Africa.

The nearest town is Ada, a quaint little town founded in 1821 by a man named Rix. Fortunately, the sage town fathers saw fit to skip over that bit of history, and to name the town after the first postmaster's daughter. So forward she skips, cute little Ada in pigtails, hand in hand with the resident genial giant, Amway. The giant does well staying out of sight, out on hissing, multi-lane Fulton.Street, Route 21.

On my runs through Ada, I make sure to cross the historic covered bridge, constructed just after the Civil War. It's one of only nine still standing in Michigan. It's always cool inside and smells of old timber. There's a green baseball diamond adjacent to the bridge, and the vignette is enough to remind an urban tramp he's in America. Beyond the bridge, I run through the quiet blocks of tiny Ada, where none of the shops seem to open with any regularity.

One night, Marc and I convince Stephanie and friends to watch 'The Big Lebowski'. I haven't seen it in years, and the Dude has been on my mind. (I won't analyze that.) But it's a fine ride, despite the sober and baffled silence among the other guests. Just the 'arc' (popular word among script and screenplay writers) the arc of Mr. Bridges's facial expressions is enough to keep one delighted throughout. Plot has always been a secondary concern to our beloved Minnesotan brothers, the Coens. Old fans understand. Meaning lies among the slow creases of well-chosen actors' faces, among the ridiculous solipsisms in the dialogue, and among the lurid visions of camera and director. The characters here really shine. Yes, the dude abides.

Travelogue 352 – August 10
Flutes and Buckets

We're sitting in a hotel lobby sipping champagne when the rain comes. We are celebrating. The Hotel Ivy is only a few blocks from the Westminster Church downtown, where we staged the event. This hotel is where Miluska is staying.

Miluska quoted Emerson in her short speech, so I'm happy with her. I didn't quote anybody, and I had three times as much time in the program as Miluska did. I could have quoted Nelson Mandela or Haile Selasse or one of my brilliant children in Ethiopia, but the only one I quoted was myself. I think the highlight of my talk was when Richard's three year-old girl wanted my opinion on 'pooping her pants'. I was commendably broad-minded, remaining scrupulously neutral. It's been a while since I've had anything intelligent to saying about pooping one's pants.

Miluska also introduced us to the new Hotel Ivy, a spare but comfortable beauty downtown. The building is an historic structure, actually built to serve as a complex for the Church of Christ Scientist in the 20s. It was built in what is referred to as 'Ziggurat style', I suppose to appeal to the dramatic aesthetic of Christian Scientists. Perhaps they feel were hoping to channel those feeble healing energies from above. In any case, they never got a chance to try. By 1930, the church had given up on the project, an initiative that could not be healed by prayer.

Perhaps the funnest thing about the hotel is the diminutive, ancient tower that the developers of the hotel gobbled up as part of the package. It still stands whole, but connected to the hotel and converted into rooms and a restaurant. It's a funny little structure, looking like a clay model that was rolled in a box of sand and pebbles while still wet. Now its Flintstone windows look complacently out on Second Avenue with the dressings of style.

We can't open our bottle of champagne in the church, so we follow Miluska back to her hotel. We rearrange some tables in the lobby. Someone scares up some glasses, and we toast our success. Events for small non-profits are always successes. It's a matter of fragile morale.

If I need solace, I can find it in my dress. Roxana and her sister made sure I would not embarrass them with my traveling-guy's Target wardrobe. I'm all in tight black, looking like a mid-level narcotraficante. It might not fit the mold of earnest charity guy, but I'm enjoying myself.

We had rented a large and attractive room at the church, and we managed to keep it from appearing too empty. Roxana arranged for great Mexican food. The program was short and sweet: history of our work, Astrid's reverie about poopy pants, Richard showing off the new website, and the push for help and donations. Afterward, as the storm clouds gathered over Minneapolis, a good hour of chatter.

Roxana has boxes of stuff from the event in the back of her car. After our stop at the Ivy, we go to her workplace to unload. The storm is in full gale now. We back up to the door of the building, as close as we can get, but the eave still ends right above the back door. Every time I bend over to pull stuff from the car, streams of cold water pour onto my back. My class ensemble is soaked.

We retreat into a nearby bar. Running from the parking lot, we are soaked to the bone. The AC is on high, a common phenomenon in Minnesota, where people become anxious without a comforting sense of chill. We shiver and toast again a job well done.

Travelogue 351 – August 5
Weird Creatures of the Mind

There's a new art show at the Caffetto coffeehouse. The artist draws in the style of manga. One painting portrays a cute blob of a mouse against an orange background. The mouse is shooting black gas from his forepaws. He also seems to be blowing a blue bubble from the top of his head. A smaller drawing depicts a ravenous raccoon chewing on the head of a little girl. In another painting, the mouse seems to be wearing a boa and his mouth is foaming. He has bull horns now. He holds a small bunny by the ears, and the bunny seems to be dissolving, one eyeball hanging from his melting face. In a small, multimedia piece, a pretty little frame is mounted by a stuffed version of our mouse, sticking his tongue out. His head rises out of what would appear to be layers of red felt gore. Inside the frame is a xeroxed drawing of a girl's face held in place with a pin. Dripping down from beneath the paper girl is a trail of red paint, that even overflows the lower lip of the frame.

This morning, the musical selection at the cafe is violins and accordion surmounted by a robust woman's voice saying nothing much. I notice that much of the music played at Caffetto features folksy sounds and non-lyrics,a kind of iteration of nonsense or saccharin bromides repeated like mantras. Somehow it matches the weirdly bloody manga.

I'm meeting Richard here. We're working on the foundation website. I've been working non-stop on this little project. It's something of a fantastical creature in itself, like a cute, carnivorous mouse with horns. It's would be trite to affirm only what everyone knows, that the internet doesn't really exist; it's 'virtual'; and yet so many real things draw life and blood and substance from the ethers, just being plugging in. To think, this tappety-tap over a cup of coffee affects the lives of children in Africa, my little laptop becoming like a chunk of iron tossed into one tray of Rhadamanthus's scales, weighing against the terrible judgement of poverty. It's disorienting. I walk outside, into the thick August heat. I stare at the SuperAmerica across the street. SUV, Prius, Corolla, SUV … Coke, Mountain Dew, Red Bull ...

What does it feel like to live so much of my life in conversation with a ten-inch screen of light while outside the very real month of August has settled in? Isn't there something very distinct and very palpable to the sweaty, quiet month of August? For Minneapolitans, the month arrives with much fanfare, several major art fairs and the Fringe Festival kicking off just as August moves in. But somehow, even these monstrous events get swallowed up in the humid contentedness of ripe August, with its big hazy skies and cicadas. Stand outside Caffetto and watch the beehive clouds drift slowly, as slowly as your anesthetized thoughts. Far below the majesty of the troposphere, Bob shoves the nozzle into his gas tank, clicks it into action, stares through his shades at the numbers tripping.

Let's see. Somewhere across the world.

Four year-olds are playing. They get an hour on playground toys they've never seen before. Mothers sit patiently. One mother sits nervously in the office chair while she's interviewed. Heart-breaking anxiety in her posture. The only kindergarten. A four year-old stares into Menna's camera, intrigued by the machine. Her magnificent eyes probe through the lens. The image travels across the world. Her eyes are examining all of us.

I have to get back to work.

Travelogue 350 – July 30
Spooky

A gentle front has blown in, shushing the town, softening its summer colors into Oregon greys, shedding barely perceptible mists over the streets. Biking around Minneapolis has been spooky this week, even before the fog blew in. It seems so empty. It's late July, heading into sleepy August. The skies are dense with heat and moisture, shimmering with white premonitions when the sun is out and hosting great pile-ups of thunderclouds on many an afternoon. The city population seems to have lapsed into a long Mississippi nap. I bike the streets downtown nearly alone, coasting lazily, pedaling only to keep in motion. Today is just a little more morose than the sunny days, the city somehow even more abandoned.

My errands lead me in circles around downtown and adjoining neighborhoods. The foundation has an event coming up. Perhaps that's a bad bit of calendar Feng Shui, trying to fan currents of enthusiasm among the dead heat of mid-summer. My job today is to solicit gifts from local merchants for our fortunate event guests. I'm making sales calls, mounting the bike again to coast toward the next, casting a slow eye along the store fronts for new ideas. 'Would you like to donate?'

I stop by a tattoo place, thinking that a gift certificate from a tat parlor would be solidly cool. It's on the second floor of a small building, up above a Dunn Brothers, and I think I must take a wrong turn because I push through an unlabeled door and find myself in dim and nearly empty quarters. I've never been in a tattoo parlor – yes, my hide is pristine and unadorned – so I don't know what such a place should look like. In one room is a couch, looking like something for massage or something out of a clinic. There's nothing else in the four or five rooms, except the dark-haired woman sitting at a desk in the back of the furthest room. She circles the desk and shuffles out to meet me. She has broad shoulders; there's a menacing sort of physicality to her. She has dark jaded eyes, encircled with tired shadows. She scowls when I make my pitch.

'Too late,' she says, and turns away. 'I'm going back to California.' She makes her slouching way back to her lonely post. 'Oh, yeah? I'm from California,' I try to make conversation. 'Where are you from?' This doesn't go far. She pauses over her seat, black irony flashing in her eyes. I'm suddenly ill at ease alone with her in these empty rooms.

I'm reading a novel that I can recommend. It's called 'Sharp Teeth', and it's a noir written in free verse about werewolves in LA. Thank you: an author with a sense of fun! And it actually works – though it does appear that with free verse Barlow, the author, feels an awkward imperative to cap each scene with a poignant flourish. That becomes tiring in a long format. But I forgive. I mean, where else will you delight in scenes of werewolves playing in bridge tournaments against cheating blue hairs? He even has the audacity to make his main character a dogcatcher. Come on!

It's most often a sin to burden authors with creaking loads of metaphor. But that won't stop me from piling a few on the werewolf. As I hurry down the stairs away from the dark lady's chambers with a shiver in my spine, I think that the pertinent metaphor is one of secrecy. Every so often, one stumbles upon an unknown hallway in a familiar building, inhabited by shadowy people, and the world seems strange. The imagination responds with dreams of parallel universes and secret monsters.

The modern world is almost impossibly complex. Every year the conspiracies run deeper and deeper. Super heroes rise from our unconscious, fertile as the primeval Nile, and still we can't keep up. The wolves invade our bridge parlors. They move in above Dunn Brothers.

I'm back on my bicycle, an innocent on the empty streets. Where is everyone?

Travelogue 349 – July 24
Caffetto

It's a lovely summer day outside that big picture window. I'm not looking at the work on my computer screen. I'm looking at the sunshine on the grass in the yard across the street. I'm looking at the young couple at the outdoor table. I'm watching the man at the table just inside the window as he fishes for something in his coffee with the earpiece of his eyeglasses. He's very intent. He has a big belly inside his yellow Old Navy T. He wears high-water jeans that are light blue. He has long fingers to apply to his task. His mild smile never varies. What he extracts from his coffee, he gently places on one wrist. It's a moth. He returns to typing on his computer while the moth climbs up his hand and onto a finger. The man nudges the visitor onto his other arm, and the moth goes the opposite way this time, hiking up a hairy arm, a sleeve, and onto his host's shoulder, all while the man juts his chin toward the laptop screen, maintaining his sweet smile.

This is Caffetto, the cafe that has emerged as my favorite this summer. It's a bit of history for me. Wes and I were regulars at Caffetto in the early 90s. It occupied the same location – a rather prosaic setting, across from a gas station, off a particularly drab section of Lyndale – but it was only one room then. It was owned by Ali the Turk and featured a dazzling payroll of colorful young ladies.

Today it has expanded to two rooms, (with two basement rooms below where you can play ping-pong or very old video games). It's owned by a good-looking young couple, who also do most of the barista work. And now it's the task of the rooms themselves to be colorful. One ceiling is aqua, another is brick red. One wall is gold, one is yellow-green, one is red ochre. One wall is patched plaster, another is exposed cinder block, another is eroded concrete. The first room, where the coffee bar and display cases are, is an explosion of kitsch and clutter. One of the couple is a fan of ships apparently, because there are many silly representations of clipper ships and sailboats, from dusty mantelpiece paintings to string art. One wall is devoted to small kitsch pieces, including puppies, sad clowns and big-eyed little ballerinas. In the second room, there are plants and piles of books, small couches and diner booths, lamps with shades, and shelves with board games. There's some local's exhibit of paintings up. There's a painting of a floating gorilla with cavorting starfish. There's a red and black piece with headless people meditating. There's another of a ghoulish bunny on fire.

When I came in this morning, Tammy was behind the counter on all fours. The electricity had apparently blown. The place was eerily dark and silent. I ordered a muffin, but had to wait for my coffee. A gaunt, unshaven local was assiduously working at one of the outlets. Tammy is apologetic but smiling sweetly as ever. If this cafe is a museum, she is the display of sunny temperament, never wavering in her almost unnerving good cheer.

The whole house is now absorbed in their computer screens. The moth has flown, but the man with yellow rounded shoulders does not seem to miss her. He smiles at his laptop and presumably the laptop smiles back. Tammy smiles at every customer, and they can rarely resist smiling back. The ships sail off into gilded seas, and the clown sheds another tear. I must get back to work.

Travelogue 348 – July 13
Enduring

Sometimes we prove ourselves stronger than we think, and sometimes it's the reverse. For example, I've been running like a pro this week, against all odds, against the weather. It's been a warm one. I step outside in the mid-afternoon into the blast of sunshine, heat and humidity, and I tell myself I'm doing a quick three-miler; that's it. I set out; my pacing is steady; my breathing is steady. At three miles I make it five. At five I make it eight. I finish on a hill, and I pour it on – meaning both the power and the sweat. Not all weeks go like that, but training is a joy when they do.

Yesterday was the anniversary of Leeza's passing. I felt no dread of the day as it approached. No waves of despair that an anniversary can send back and forth in time. When the day came, I thought that I might be off the hook. I felt fine.

Only later did I realize that I'd been acting out some old routines. A week or two before the date, I had spontaneously picked up my memoir project again. I started writing about Leeza, writing about grief. When the day is over, I find that, without thinking about it, I've checked in with all the friends that were by my side then. Some called me, remembering the date. Others I called, and I thought it was on a whim. Put that in one paragraph and it seems unlikely, but accusing details from the unconscious can hide inside a full day. It's all true: I wasn't aware.

The day passed, and I thought I might be off the hook. Then came the 12th. I had anticipated a full day of work, but the day never seemed to get going. By mid-morning, I was losing altitude quickly. I wandered around town lost on my bike, venturing out and then back on ghostly errands, forgetting what I was about, and losing focus. Before I knew it, the day had dissolved, and I was deep in it.

What's interesting is the delay. Why the day after? Maybe it signifies a shift in the pain. The crux of this year's sadness isn't in the death but in the dubious rebirth. The day after is la vita nuova, the day of vocation, the day the work begins. I feel it; I feel all the work of seven years.

Is it a coincidence that I'm writing about the first days after she died? The wake, the first discussions about the school, the funeral. The return to work at the college. The work, the head-shaking wonder & dread of the things we take on in life.

Travelogue 347 – July 6
Kicks are for Kids

This was the weekend of kids' power. Escaping the heat, escaping the drunk and the reckless, escaping fools who shouldn't be handling gunpowder, one retreats indoors to the theaters. The tradition of July Fourth blockbusters seems watered down this year, but a summer move is a summer movie is a …

The first show we see is adapted from a comic book, which is nothing unusual these days. Going into this weekend, the director had exactly one last chance with me. Shamalamadingdong has created a long series of increasingly awful productions, the last being a horror sham in which the plants of the world are killing us off.

This one is the story of the Avatar – no, that's no reference to James Cameron's glow-in-the-dark world of blue cat-people. This one is the savior of a world made up of tribes dedicated to each of the elements. This Avatar is a child of the Air tribe, as are all Avatars, should you need informing on fine points of hierarchy on the world of …element people.

Wait! Before you read on, before you take your seat at the theater, let me impart one revelation that turns the experience of the film on its head: It's a children's film! That's a detail that apparently preview editors find too trivial to impart. It took me a full minute to figure it out, and then … actually I was quite happy with it. Once you've achieved that little mental transition, you might really enjoy the movie. I did, and I can say that Shamalamadingdong has earned a reprieve.

The greatest gift Mr. Shama brings to the world of film is his eye. The film is a gorgeous object to look at and admire. I think that's Mr. Lama's priority. The 'actors' were clearly chosen not for their ability to deliver lines, but for their ability to dance. Sticklers will argue with my use of the term 'dance'. That is martial arts, the sticklers will say. Look, any movement executed primarily for aesthetic purposes is dance to me. And there is some beautiful movement in this film. Mr, Ringer, the star of the show, formerly a preteen nobody Texas blackbelt in Taekwondo, is a real joy to watch.

And watch is what you do; that's your job as audience member here. There is little else for the intellect to engage in, and just so, Mr. Dingdong. I'm happy that you brought in the star of 'Slumdog', and a few other Bollywood celebs. This is one more step in the dialectic between East and West, between the natural and the choreographed. Movement fan that I am, I'm rooting for the Bolly touch.

Just so, Mr. Miyagi. The art of movement on the screen is a venerable tradition, is it not? And while there is not much singing in the rain imprinted on film anymore, there is plenty of kicking butt. Mr. Miyagi does not believe in kicking butt for its own sake. And, truly, it's worth contemplating: butt-kicking on screen or stage is not really butt-whooping, but movement for aesthetic pleasure. Right?

Then why is the pleasure in the Smith-Pinkett production seem so compromised? These are twelve year-old dancers, not fighters. But the blows are not very playful, and the Chinese villain-kids are frighteningly effective warriors. Are we paying the price here for the ambitions of a pair of high-power parents who can't wait a few years to release their kick-ass little creation on the world? Need we judge by the many pointless stills of mommy and daddy in the credits?

Or is there an aesthetic to scrawny twelve year-olds whacking each other in the head and kissing shy Chinese girls? If there is, I'm not sure whether it's an aesthetic that harmonizes most with comic books – the sort of green room reading appropriate for young Jaden – or with other types of paper-bag magazines.

Perhaps the real issue is with the screen mommy. The premise follows, after all, from mommy's unexplained transfer from Detroit to Beijing. (??) I admit that part of me got stuck right there. Mommy does a better job integrating culturally than her twelve year-old. In fact, she does so well that while little Dre gets mauled in the kung fu ring, she cheers like any proud Little League parent. It's all a little odd.

As Smith and Pinkett send their child into battle, how are we being asked to respond? As you applaud the victory, think about whether you're applauding the battle.

Travelogue 346 – June 30
The Mysteries

There's one sound that is entirely bewitching to me, the whisper of wind through the cottonwoods. I'm coasting along the bike path, just fast enough to stay vertical. The trees are cleared away from the path. I look into their swaying tops, the way one turns illogically toward a sound, and I discover the seven o'clock sun traveling though the crowns of my cottonwoods, flashing among the rustling leaves.

The only competing sound is the whir of bicycle tires. This is the hour of testosterone. The bike paths are commandeered by men in their 30s and 40s who have discovered unsuspected reserves of youth dressing in silly cycling suits and speeding on their expensively accessorized two-wheelers. Whir! they go, and they are concentrating.

I'm experimenting today. It's the third gorgeous day in a row here in southern Minnesota. I've drifted west along the bike paths out past Uptown, aiming for the sun so as to keep it in my face. Here's a path I've never taken, the Kenilworth path, veering north off of the Greenway. The path sign says 'Cedar Lake', and I'm excited to see the elusive Cedar Lake.

It's been many years since I moved to Minneapolis and yet I don't think I've ever had more than fleeting glimpses of Cedar Lake, the mysterious Cedar Lake. I've always heard about it, received ecstatic word of nude beaches and exultant hippie rituals. There's a canal that links it to the very accessible Lake of the Isles, and there were times I gazed down that canal dreaming of sunshine on the water and free love. But Cedar Lake is not a place you just stumble upon.

I have to content myself with glimpses yet again. I see water; I see the surface of the lake, between the trees! And then it's gone. I can feel it, just beyond the trees and the rise of earth that supports them, glinting in the bright sun. But I keep pedaling. I promise, dear readers, that I will gaze upon that lake's mysterious surface before this summer is over, and I will report the experience in this journal.

Even without Cedar Lake, the rewards of the path are manifold. Within a few hundred meters I feel as though I'm in the country. Except for the insect whir of the conquistadors, I might be on a forgotten county road threading like beads lost counties, the like of which Kevin Costner might conjure. But I'm still in city limits. And after a few miles, I'll be coasting back toward the towers of downtown.

For the nonce, I'm concentrating almost as intensely as the whirring sportsters. I'm a menace to them, drifting along the path as I am, captured in the spell of sudden light. The light is enhanced by mid-summer's bright greens. It's summer by the calendar; it's spring by color. It occurs to me now that in earlier times I would have stopped. Life's rare delights are to be enjoyed. No, more: they are to be drunk through a straw, savored, and attended like a French film. 'Sit', my old self says. 'Pitch a tent. Never leave.'

There you go: impetuous youth. Youth believes that time warps for love, turns upon itself in protective bubbles for the lover. Youth believes that beauty can be held in one's hand. I'm not so young; I keep pedaling. Midlife believes that passing time is instrumental in beauty. Midlife believes that beauty is sweetest in glimpses. One never forgets the unexpected blaze of light among the cottonwood leaves. But nothing fades so quickly as an afternoon of purposeful lounging among resplendent sights. Take it or leave it; that's how those gears turn.

The subject of fleeting beauty must remind me of dear Leeza. It's nearly the anniversary of her passing. She appears to me. Our favorite color, one of those impossible intangibles that we shared, was the shade of blue in a clear sky just between dusk and night. It lasts a second and appears in only a thin and indeterminate band curving across the sky. Then it's gone.

Travelogue 345 – June 29
Sure Enough

You know that the US has been sent home from South Africa when you have to ask the gym attendant to turn the channel. This is my cheap ticket to the World Cup, my gym membership. Game time is under-attended on the machines, and I usually get my front-row elliptical, facing the screen. That's the beauty of being self-employed, under-employed, a self-made man, a cave man, an unmade bed, whatever it is I am.

What it is I am, or not to be, is a matter of some anxiety to me right now. I sit in front of open notebooks and open windows. The windows call for the pages; the breeze beckons for them. Good intentions aren't enough, are they?

I was a little embarrassed by American soccer fans, anyway. At best, they're awkward. They sense that, even in an American bar in the heart of the well-conquered continent, there's a cultural element to soccer – can I just call it football, please? – that they're not getting. And their fears are well-grounded. There's something in sports fans here that makes them want to grimace like the Hulk and to assert ugly dominance. But in football that's a sure yellow card. Inside even the most brutal of European football hooligans lurks the clown. Football is … fun. Fiercely competitive, source of many a pub brawl no doubt, but always the 'beautiful game', graceful, colorful, and vivacious. The fans here don't realize that losing is no shame; more shameful was the dearth of pretty boys on our squad, America flouting another great football tradition.

There's an old guy watching the Twins at William's. He sits at his regular station, in his usual chair at his usual table. I'm watching him from behind my own table, which is strewn with 'work'. I've fled the summer breezes in this cellar bar. I'm watching the old man. He has several ways of expressing himself. He cheers and claps when the Twins pull off a good play. And in between Twins successes, he whistles along to the 80s soundtrack. I like his whistling; I think he was once or is still a musician. He has long, unkempt hair underneath his hat, the front brim of which is folded under. He has a long, grey beard. He is garbed in a raincoat and shorts. He has doffed his sandals for the evening. This is a philosopher.

When I prevail upon the gym attendant to change channels, the woman two machines down tsks and flaps a magazine page with disdain. Years ago – if you had found me in a gym – I would have snapped my own page in accord. I'm living proof of a stereotype, that sports is largely the domain of aging men. This unsettling phenomenon leads to frequent attempts to classify sports as a branch of philosophy.

A sport follows rules doesn't it? That's almost the definition of athletics: I am writing down a list of arbitrary rules; let's see how you do. You will run 100 paces; not 125; not 150. You will run 100 paces. I'll count one-and-a-two-and-a …. It's a beautiful thing. And it should absolutely be a source of laughter and joy. The older cultures understand.

I watch the old man with envy. O Diogenes, guide me with thy lantern! I want to know the rules. I'll give you this notebook, and this form, and this pen, and this mouse, and this reference book, and this brochure, and this website, and … no, not my gym card!

A note about my business. There are a lot of people who do what I do – except that they have degrees, and they have CVs, and they get hired to occupy positions, and they get paid. They follow lots of rules. They go to lots of meetings and conferences with people just like themselves. They go to bars together and they makes Hulk faces when their teams score. I will donate my papers to the breezes. I will paint my face and wear fright wigs, and I will cheer them on. I will laugh myself silly, whether they win or lose.

Travelogue 344 – June 24
Spirit

Once you're successfully over the crest of the pedestrian overpass, heading west away from the rising sun and toward your work at the Spyhouse cafe, you coast downhill astride the spiraling ribbon of cement that will deposit you, after one full circuit around the massive supporting column, on empty 24th Street. On the east end of the bridge, you had to carry the bike up two flights of stairs, but here you let go, except for a light grip on the brakes. You want to allow some momentum coming off the ramp because you have a hill ahead.

24th is a sleepy street, surrendered to a sleep not unlike Snow White's, society's magic gone bad. The neighborhood is silent by design, sheltered from the highway by high wooden walls. The street runs east into blank, sun-bleached and wind-worn planks of urban planning.

Evidence suggests that the neighborhood was once a fashionable one. The evidence is architectural. Even the low-budget apartments, silent as the street but whispering of all the dread attending poverty, are housed behind peaceful ivy-grown brick. One block north is St. Stephen's, erected in 1889 from – appropriately enough – blood-red stones of man-crushing size. It has a humble beauty, lost as it is among sad, neglected blocks, fitted with green shingles and a green steeple that rises above the highway wall and can be seen from the other side, my side of the great divide.

Pedal up the hill and you are awarded by arrival at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, housed in a full city block of Greek revival supplemented by less inspiring additions. The front entrance on 24th Street is London grand, a monumental staircase flanked by Oriental lions, leading white to white columns and pediment, framing a basilica's wooden doors that admit one into the atrium that revolves around a Roman nude. But out front is one of my favorite sculptures of the museum's, a bronze by Ernst Barlach, German expressionist known for his anti-war works judged blasphemous by the fascists.

One somber angel stands upon the back of a wolf that seems to be arching its back in rage like a cat. The man holds a sword, but holds it contemplatively, even seeming to rest his face against it in a moment of thought before action. If it's to be violence, it will be morally guided. But better is the sword never swings. Better to master the primeval beast.

This statue use to stand by the other entrance to the museum, the one that also accesses the Children's Theater, but now it's been demoted to the seldom-used front entrance. Without thinking about it, I had always assumed it told the story of some Christian saint about to strike down the Roman wolf. This wolf has odd sawtooth shapes along its belly that might suggest the teats that nourished Romulus and Remus. But the sculpture is named Fighter of the Spirit, and Germany in 1928 is not quite the moment to celebrate the triumph of Christianity.

Across the street is Washburn Fair Oaks Park, the very epicenter of Minneapolis high society when the town was Mill City. The park was once the grandest among a set of mansions, some of which still stand. This one is now a city park, trees and rolling grass hillocks, where benches serve as bunks at night. I coast through on my bike, along the cracking sidewalks. Two grizzled gentlemen sit at a bench, looking like they just managed to roll upright a few minutes ago. They turn that look on me that drunks have, one of slow amazement. They want to ask me a favor, one of them says. I roll on. Ahead is another old man, shuffling through the grass. They all might be comrades from the jungles of Vietnam, I think to myself. He's wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with one word on the back: Suitcase. It's a troubling koan for a quiet morning.

Travelogue 343 – June 14
Overpass

In these days of rain, in these days and forty nights, in these Blade-Runner-realized and global-soaked days of unrelenting precipitation, – between Addis and Minneapolis, I've seen about twenty blue-sky days in 2010; forgive me – in these grey days of windbreakers, when wet tires hiss, when hours of gentle rainfall envelop the Twin Cities in maternal mists, timeless and somnolent, I steadfastly set out each morning on my bicycle.

This week, I start my workdays at Spyhouse. That's a cafe, an old regular. I've outgrown the need to please the uber-hip crowd here, so now I enjoy the atmosphere, one that a time-traveler from the 70s might confuse with that of a library. Everyone peers owlishly at computer screens, books, or quiet conversation partners. To our time-traveler, the dress of the urban hip in 2010 resembles nothing so much as nerdwear in his own time. Every computer-nannied kid complements his plaid and carefully ungroomed hair with picture-frame engineer's glasses. Speaking of picture frames, the kitsch references in contemporary art look like … kitsch. The anime looks like … cartoons. The mid-century pop references in the music sound like … mid-century pop. I settle in at the library and launch the netbook, comfortably lost among generations. And by the way, the coffee at Spyhouse is worth biking through the rain, across a patchwork of dreary urban blight, across the highway, into neighborhoods served by a higher class of drug dealer.

Crossing the highway is the high point of the journey, literally. There's an arching pedestrian overpass that seems to curve for about a quarter of a mile over heady streams of traffic plummeting toward or escaping from downtown. Underneath, the highway is captured in the nearly biological act of splitting into four strands. From the peak of the overpass, it might be four fingers with the two middle digits painfully crossed, all digits dipping into the honey pot of city delights.

I project when I say 'painfully' in reference to crossing fingers. The third finger on my left hand has never healed from the equestrian accident in the countryside of Ethiopia. If anything, it's worsened, the poor digit frozen in a crooked, Scrooge-like position. It has driven me to extremes, to doctor's visits. Daily routines have been disrupted. There is no smooth withdrawal of my wallet at restaurants: too clumsy and too painful. No smooth withdrawals of my keys as I reach my door. Instead, an awkward fumbling, my warped hand too bowed a shape for the slim hip pocket, especially in my expanding American frame. Surgery? Is that the terminus in this ugly episode, in efforts to escape ugliness? I'll keep you posted.

In any case, the rounded span at the top of the world is a place to pause. The mist will not pause, but the human does, mesmerized by the achievement of his species. Directly below, the achievement is hardly a source of pride, mismatched blocks poised forever on the verge of irredeemable decay. The peeling walls don't shine but they do seem to mirror. Up here, the handsome old skyline of new Minneapolis is a multi-faceted ziggurat dedicated to handsome demiurges, Paris, David, Barack, Ronaldo, all the good forces of progress. And it's silent. Perhaps it's only the still life that really excites admiration.

There is proof that I am not the sole admirer. One morning,, there is an old couch left at the peak of the arch, abandoned by night wonderers. It's been scrawled all over with black graffiti, either the property of tag artists or the victim of very quick work during the rainy night. The peaceful old sofa points mutely toward downtown, testament to fascination. By the time I return, after a session in the library, the couch is gone. The concrete span is slick, and I'm too busy rationing the brakes as I pass over the crest, as I switch from labored pedaling to high-altitude coasting, to admire the deadpan buildings. The work of man I most admire at that moment is the chain link fence that will bar me from free fall should the brakes fail. The riddle passes by unattended until I get home. Whence the couch? Whither the couch? What phantom of the rain did I miss on the heights, by a second, by a minute?

Travelogue 342 – June 11
Games and Peace

And it arrives, a moment to breathe. It's Friday eve. Work takes a pause. Scottie's birthday party isn't until later. I'll sit in Maxwell's a minute. I might sneak in more than a minute of baseball. The game will begin soon, a game being played a mile or two away in the new stadium.

Outside, the sky broods its way toward a low, late sunset. Since a crazy 3am thunderstorm, the clouds seem spent. They break formation and admit pools of humid sunshine. Then they close ranks again. But they have no strength for storming.

I've been back in Minnesota nine days now. Already everywhere else in the world seems months away. I've found that elusive Minnesota gear, something like second-and-a-half, hidden between the slow chug of second gear and the jump of third. It takes time to find it. It takes a determined effort: for example, sitting very still at a bar and staring into one's lager for five full minutes, then slowly lifting one's gaze to the TV, where the third baseman is scratching himself. Springsteen far in the background seems to help.

Maxwell's is a bit of history that serves to ground me. Ten-plus years ago, a good friend of mine was the manager of this little bar on Washington. That's before this strip of avenue was built up with condos and upscale restaurants. It was a shabby stretch of road that most locals drove through and by on the way from downtown to the highway. It's a small bar, homey and quiet. Some time after Rob left, Maxwell's burned to the ground. If you visit today, you can see photos of the disaster hung along the brick walls of the rebuilt establishment. It was a defining moment for a relatively anonymous bar. The food's not bad, by the way.

This month is becoming a bit of heaven for the clamoring sports fan in me. My two favorite sports are in full swing. The Twins are swinging, their lineup among the heaviest hitters in baseball. They lead their division, perhaps inspired by their chic new stadium, tall & steep, Roman and modern, tucked neatly as a puzzle piece into its snug space downtown. Need I repeat how much I like this team, still young and spirited, led by the squeaky clean duo of Morneau and the local boy Mauer? They're a pleasure to root for.

And today! Today begins the sports event of the year, the World Cup! It pops up everywhere I go today, like sudden images of myself reflected in shop windows. I stop at Centro, and the South African team is swarming around Mexico's goal while a Spanish-speaking announcer adds feverish commentary. I go to the gym, and France is battling Uruguay. Ugly old Ribery takes a tumble, but I'm sure it feels like a kiss compared to his treatment at the hands of press and courts – a smutty kiss, just the way he likes it.

I give the boys on TV a nod. We're all athletes here. I'm working away on the elliptical. I'm breaking a sweat. Yep, we're all just hard-working sportsmen. It's a hard life, but it's our passion.

Now it's evening. It's the second inning, and I decide I'd better get on my bike and head Uptown to Scottie's party. I tip my cap to the boys in blue. They're taking on Atlanta tonight, and they're a point down. Maybe the game will be on at Dulono's.

Travelogue 341 – May 28
Hysteria

London is mad today. The metropolis whistles electricity, it chants business, it rushes feverishly for miles at every point of the compass. It's got two thousand years of karma to sweat off. This is the urban circle of purgatory, and we must chase and rant like madness is redemption.

I spent yesterday afternoon on the run, landing in an eastern airport, rushing to a meeting in the west and then hurling toward a rendezvous with the boys in the center. All the wheels of the London machine spin and scream for me, putting me on my feet in all the right places … until rush hour catches up with me at Edgeware Road. We sit stalled in the subterranean tunnel for fifteen minutes and then, as we crawl into the Edgeware station, the driver announces that this will be the end of this train's service, and in fact of all trains going east out of this station. I'm supposed to be meeting the boys near King's Cross at just about the moment that I disembark. There's no choice but to walk.

I gauge my direction by the sun and set off at a brisk London pace, weaving among the crazed crowds. I realize quickly that I've discovered a pocket of the city that I haven't traversed before. I'm happily soaking it all in as I walk: Marylebone Road, Baker Street, Madame Tussaud's, the entrance to Regent's Park. It's a posh little area, one in which pop stars like to play house. Marylebone becomes Euston, and eventually I spot King's Cross and make it to the pub on time. In fact, I beat the buses. All along Marylebone Road, I was passing and re-passing the same buses trapped in the lava flow of traffic. They've been left behind by the time I make it to Euston.

The mania of Marylebone suffers the more for the contrast with Ealing. Ealing is where I'm coming from when I collide with Edgeware Road. I've had a meeting there with Ben, who is conducting some athletics workshops in schools out there. I say 'out there' though Ealing is technically a borough of London. But I've had to travel to Zone Four on the Tube, and when I emerge from the station, I'm confronted only by a sunny park and suburban-like homes. I'm early. I sit in the grassy park, foregoing the shade of the trees. I watch the commuters arrive in small groups and walk home through the park. I've traveled across the entire extent of London to get here, to stretch out in a meadow and soak up rare English sunshine.

The next evening I'm in another park, ironically back in the pocket of London that I'd become acquainted with on my crazed walk to King's Cross. I'm in Regent's Park, one of the prettiest parks in London, established and planned in the early nineteenth century by the jolly Prince Regent, later George IV. Yes, this would be the misbehaving son of crazy George III, the reprobate responsible for some of the most beloved architectural wonders of western London, including Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus, and Regent Street.

Neil has tickets to a production at the open air theater in the park. They are staging 'The Crucible'. This is penned by an American author, of course, and it is set in the emotional and physical wilds of seventeenth-century New England. Still, the setting in central London is oddly appropriate. The backdrop to the simple stage is high trees and the darkness of early evening. When the would-be witches leave the stage, they run off into the forest.

The production is passable, but I'm left hoping for more from London players. Many are a bit shrill, like they haven't mastered vocalizing from the stage. But who remembers anymore how to speak from a stage without sounding like one is either shouting or whining? In this production, we have a whining John Proctor who loses the battle for justice and the battle for the audience's hearts to a pack of hysterical teenage women. The latter are lent more momentum by choreography that has them moving together in occult undulations together. Whiny young John never had a chance. Indeed, this production seems as much about teenage hormonal problems as anything so remote as Cold War McCarthyism.

It rains during the second act, a light London rain that is seen more than felt. It is captured by the stage lighting, silver and translucent. It adds something magical to the show, underscoring the atmosphere of an overwhelming sad fate descending upon the players. For a time, in fact, it is the most eloquent of the players, saying as much about the passions and paroxysms of history as old Rebecca Nurse. The hormonal apprentices run off into the rain. John whines his way to the scaffold. And we head to the pub.

Travelogue 340 – May 25
Il Mare, Il Mare

The portrait is impressionistic. That's not because I'm dabbling in philosophies – God help me, – chewing on oils, or even dabbling in color. It's because the portrait is painted spontaneously.

My usual landlords in Rome own several places. The first is in Colli Albani, the praises of which I've sung on other occasions. The second, which I had never visited until now is several Metro stops closer to the centro, and a few blocks from Roma Tuscolana – temptation.

Roma Tusolana is a train station. It's early summer. Rome is delightfully awash in spring sunshine and refreshingly humid. The countryside is bright with greenery, young crops, and blossoms.

I debate for just three seconds outside my lodgings this morning. I turn left, away from the centro. A few minutes later, I scan the departures board at Roma Tuscolana. I'm delighted to see there's a train setting out in fifteen minutes for a seaside town with the fascinating name of Civitavecchia, a form of 'Old City' that manages to keep a bit of broken-down Latin inside, like a Roman section of wall holding up a medieval defense.

The Old City in the plastered flesh offers few suggestions of venerable age, being victim of very effective action during the Good War. And the wooden pleasure palace on the water, the 'Pirgo', that made the town a sensation during the time of Piemontese kings and the pug-faced Leader, was washed away in 1941 by a tidal wave.

It isn't easy to imagine tidal waves on a quiet day like this, nor good-hearted democrats in buzzing propeller-driven bombers swinging their way in toward the harbor. For that matter, it isn't passing easy to picture fantastic pleasure palaces in this prosaic city, on this understated sea. The mild blue water, blurred in friendly haze, emerges a half hour before the Old City, just a mellow suggestion beyond mellow tilled fields that canter down from mountains that might just have been – in a post-traumatic flash – a lost highland range in Ethiopia. But they're not. I take a deep Mediterranean breath and turn toward the western train window: il mare, il mare.

It's a pleasant coincidence that I'm reading 'The Sea, The Sea' by Iris Murdoch, an author forever blurred in my imagination, fused as Italian sea and sky are today, with Dame Judi Dench. The book has moldered in Ethiopia among a cache of serious reading left from serious times, and I was drawn to it as a kind of balancing weight to all the John Irving I've read on this sojourn. She's a match for Irving's talents and a tonic to the feeling while reading Irving that you're being shaken awake at 3am by a sad clown.

I'm a Murdoch fan. I return to her regularly. But this isn't the first time reading her that I feel like I'm a a witness to the demise of fiction. She reads like the last of the novelists. Her lovely language is cut like crystal into grotesques that contrast sharply with the classicism of her expression, quirky and distorted, as in a post-modern funhouse mirror, with plot twists like knots that are tied to give way, with characters that labor through fogs of the unlikely, fiction that isn't real. It's fun, but close enough to a perversion of talent, just close enough to Lord Nelson in plastic, to Marilyn in day-glo, to inspire sorrow. And there are those disturbing you-tube videos of Dame Iris discussing philosophy. I feel locked in a windowless room.

So the truth of fiction is revealed: it's liberating as flight to the auditor and confining as a clean, well-lit cell for the author. The Old City's resident graffitista speaks to me: 'E meglio vivirla.'

My God, what a day! I'm strolling seaside as the morning's last haze evaporates into the flawless blue sky. What beach there is, is all pebble. I sit there a long while. Of all the senses engaged by the sea, hearing seems the most vital. The gentle lapping of salt water against an acre of smooth pebbles is meditative. Plane journeys might encourage an abstract sort of reflection, set in the future, but the sea is reflective in a way evocative of the life lived.

All seas connect, and so all shores must. My mother lived near a shoreline in her last years. Her shore was rougher, made of dark sand and rock. The waves rolled in with severe, crashing purpose, massive and tinted with menacing hues of steel and grim bottle green. They brought with them dense rolling fogs to blanket hundreds of miles in damp anonymity. It was an ocean, formidable and unknowable.

There was something of Dame Judi to my mother, now that I think of it, steely and awkwardly vulnerable, a 'classy broad' my dad and his generation of golden-hearted GIs might have said. Formidable and unknowable. I stand on a high cliff over the chill mass of seething water while my mother lies dying in a nearby hospital. The sea, the sea. It's hungry for all the life it fostered.

There's little to explore of the unfortunate Old City, so barraged by recent fights. There are fragments of Centumcellae, the original post established by the emperor Trajan. (Not so terribly old a civitas after all, is it? Just a settlement of nearby Rome, already in its Gibbonian decline.) Walk along the seaside and you'll see it all in twenty minutes. Most interesting might be the fortress, a restored stone mass that was once a sweet fusion of Rome and Renaissance, now nearly dwarfed by the cruise ship moored to one side and the grain silo beside it, looking like a bit of nineteenth century Minneapolis dropped here undetonated by our farmboys. The Old City has retired from history. It meditates the sparkling sea from thousands of decrepit concrete balconies arrayed along a wide crescent among the gentle hills, painted orange and apricot and peach and grapefruit.

Santa Barbara is another bit of sand beat upon by the tides. I attended university there, amid sun and fog, amid the odor of seabed tar, amid parties, parties, and more. I strolled, ran and slept on the benevolent sands. Those were frivolous times. Dame Judi would never have been cast in any role from that period, although I intuit that Dame Iris could have teased a story or two from the tawdry plots of our trivial lives. The tide ebbs. I wouldn't go back.

I spend the entire day in the Old City. There isn't much to see, really, but I've lingered by the sea and let my spirit play gypsy. I feel refreshed. As the sun's last rays stretch across the pebble beach, small children swim in their underwear; lovers splash each other and shriek; a young couple pleads with their wriggling errant puppy: 'Vieni qua!' And I'm none of them. I turn my back, and I walk back to the train station, the sea at my back.

Travelogue 339 – May 24
Perspective

It's time to leave. It's been a long trip; I've been away from home since Christmas. The plane taxis away from the Legoland Bole Airport. It takes off. The Ethiopian capital falls away, sinking among its mountains into a soundless obscurity. Usually the departure evokes a sigh of relief. This time it's a sigh of a different tenor. I'm sad.

What's different? Maybe I live it now. Addis is no less maddening than it ever was, but having become mundane it becomes endearing. The city quickly recedes, retreating into its highland fastness, and I'm left to a mild and passing mood of grief.

It does pass. Altitude makes for cold perspective. Reflection is the artificial mental atmosphere of flight. One sees one's house, one's street, one's city. One looks down on the towering mountains; one looks down on the landscape of human endeavor, etc. It's liberating, but it's a liberation that feels a lot like television, abstract, engaging at the lowest of energy levels. And after six or seven hours, seated in desiccated stasis, the abstraction grows stuffy and unsatisfying. One grows dismissive. London, Paris, Addis Ababa – it's all the same. Why bother? *Sigh*

When I'm off the plane, the sky opens up again. The clouds ascend into heavens grown vast again; the air is aromatic and humid. The landscape, so tame from the air, expands and finds dimension. Hillsides beside the train tracks flower with yellow and purple and the silky scarlet of poppies.

The city opens its arms. It's early evening. People have taken to the streets. Shops are bustling. I have little time, and less inclination, to dash into the center of town. I habitually lodge among the sprawling southern neighborhoods, where few tourists venture, and here I remain for the balance of the day. I weave among the citizens, one thread among a generous fabric of rudimentary routine. I join in the contented cycles of the avenues. I listen to the voices. I make mindless little inventories of the shops.

This side of town was originally a disappointment in my early visits. Back then, my gaze was directed exclusively and steadily upward. Compared to downtown, the architecture here seemed dreadfully modern, uniform and dreary, making an impression like vistas of giant, pastel-colored concrete dominoes.

Today things look differently. I see the people. I see the shops. I'm able to see intriguing variations among neighborhoods that years ago had appeared the very picture of monotony. The contrast between today's vision and its antecedent came as a realization that stopped me on the sidewalk for a moment. How and when had that happened?

I scan the buildings overhead. They don't at all seem monotonous. There is life among the surfaces, colors, and styles of the structures. The skyline jumps as its runs south, skipping heights and dodging from street-side to recessed fronts, peeking out of square and modern windows and entries, doorways fronting marble staircases, windows masked by drying laundry; peeking from neo-classical frames, green-shuttered windows outfitted with flower boxes, secretive doors blocked by tyrannical crones.

The districts speak with the voices of its shopkeepers. All shop doors are thrown open at this hour. Clothing and perfume, electronics and groceries, video games and pizza: every place is a short text about its neighborhood. Teens shop; families stroll with messy gelato in hand; old men sit at outdoor cafe tables, issuing running critique with sour faces. One pizza vendor with pungent alcohol breath wants to tell me about his relatives in New Jersey. He wants to tell me about Robert DeNiro, prolific photos of whom hang about the parlor. He laughs to hear himself say 'Minnesota Fats,' and indeed his accent and manic laughter does make it hilarious.

I didn't fly here. I didn't see the sights. I'm here. It's nearly summer. The sky is tinted, as if by the nearby sea, as if by the day's accumulating gravity, the sky that spans such heights, the sky that harbors clouds as roomy and unique as a bustling city district, the supernatural sky turns a sharper degree of blue. It will be night.

Travelogue 338 – May 15
Mercha

Walk around Addis these days, and you'll catch some new visual interference. On every post, on every blank corrugated-metal wall, there are posters. It's election time. The posters follow an interesting pattern; you might not even notice them, but for the stark uniformity of them. They're nearly all A4 size, printed inexpertly, featuring unsmiling faces in low res, like family photos from one hundred years ago. And every candidate comes with a symbol within a circle, a party symbol, presumably for the illiterate voter. The most prevalent is the bee. That's the symbol of the ruling party, EPRDF or the 'Yihadeg' party, party of the current and forever prime minister, Meles Zenawi.

The next most popular by symbol is the open palm, pointing upward as if in greeting. I believe this stands for the Medrek party, a new creation for 2010, a coalition among several smaller parties, inheritor of the dubious legacy of the CUD or 'Kinichit' party of 2005. Another symbol is the yellow daisy. I have no idea who that stands for. There seem to be dozens of parties, most of them ethnic or regional in nature, many of them drifting particles from the CUD supernova of 2005.

The mercha is next week, one day before I fly out of Ethiopia. Mercha means choice, literally; in denoting elections in Ethiopia, the term is a little disingenuous. It would be my choice to be gone well ahead of time. Long-time readers of Jarvistravels might recall my election reporting from 2005, which largely consisted of despairing notes from isolation. Bands of reptilian police were roaming the city; taxis and shops were parked and shuttered for a week; I was living alone up the mountain in Shiro Meda, where the reptiles were doing nightly sweeps for teenage boys and young men, hauling them off to prison camps.

This year seems calmer, a sign that the citizenry has been successfully cowed. The reptiles in blue camouflage are out in droves, sometimes stacked in the back of their white trucks with their rifles pointed outward. Sometimes they are lined up along major roads, one standing every fifty meters or so, guns at the ready. At night they occasionally have to pull head-busting duty at the university, where quixotic kids are acting out the behaviors of dissent. My guess is that we won't see the riots of '05 this year, at least not in Addis. But we're all waiting to see.

Rumors circulate. Last night, Gelila called to cancel on plans that would mean traveling across the city. She had heard the reptiles were swarming Piassa. We called Ramete, who lives in Piassa, and there was nothing. People are a little jumpy. One night last week, there were reptiles in the road, directing traffic to take another route. My way home passes the university. Our taxi turned around and took another route, a road that winds upward behind the university. College kids were streaming out back gates of the university, and there was an air of urgency. People had a wild look in their eyes.

Elections are strange dramas, vehicles for Aristotelian catharsis, really. There are those who would say that African elections are proof of the bankruptcy of the concept of electoral democracy. Who can't have sympathy for that viewpoint sometimes? One hardly need travel further than Florida. In any case, we'll complete the tragoidia, the 'goat song', lacking other entertainments that conjure so well the protean spirit of 'History'.

Travelogue 337 – May 9
Didier and Tony

One finds his heroes where he may. This week, they come mediated and packaged from faraway. The blockbuster at the Edna Mall, Addis Ababa's only multiplex and venue for new English-language releases, is (can you guess?) the story of a man in an iron suit. No, let's modify that: it's the story of a brilliant and dead charming middle-aged reprobate who finds his conscience in an iron suit. It's not just an iron suit, as we find out in the film: it's that elusive piece of technology that brings world peace. So argues the clumsy and acquisitive military types in the film. But no, argues Tony Stark, it's the conscience inside that works the magic.

It's America; the conscience must be wrapped like an onion inside loose layers of wit and disheveled polish, or polished dishevelment, nonchalance and charm, and a stubborn disregard for propriety. In other words, he must be lovable, in a way parallel to GW's boyish, head-wagging trust in God. (He read it on a coin once: 'Trust in God', and it's not every moral axiom that is minted in silver.) And yet, Tony knows what is right, and he gets the job done.

Or does he? I enjoyed the film, but I couldn't help scratching my head afterward. Much is made in the beginning of the film about the Pax Starkana, but little history is offered. I remember that in Part One, Tony flew to Afghanistan to right some wrongs and wrong some righteous. Is that the template for his peace-keeping missions? Or is it just the threat ever after of his one-man reprisals? I'm not sure. In another unfortunate echo of GW, the action of the movie ends with a rather empty celebration of victory. Not to mention a sweet rooftop kiss, too, while below half a city is ablaze. Hundreds of people have apparently been trampled or shot by Mickey Rourke's robots, but now that the Wrestler has been pinned once and for all, it seems the wounded can mend themselves. And what actually was achieved? Whatever it was, the first priority afterward is the kiss and some repartee with Don Cheadle – and I'll sit through some silly dialogue between Downey Jr. and Cheadle, I'll admit.. But I can't shake that image from recent history, a crowing statement on the deck of an aircraft carrier. 'We won!' We won what?

There's another plaguing question: who was Samuel Jackson? I don't get it. No doubt he's the obvious choice for a one-eyed deus ex machina. He's been floating an inch above the mortal pavement since the 90s. But exactly what secret white-hat agency was he representing? Maybe it doesn't matter. Secret white-hats are a modern necessity. They allow us a comfortable degree of stupidity. When Tony fumbles, Samuel L. Jackson is there to pick up. Even better he sends an impossibly sexy bodyguard. If those are the terms, dress me up in an iron suit and a bottle of whiskey!

Where would the European intelligentsia be without our intelligence services? Since Paul, since Augustine, through Aquinas, through Milton, the Europeans have needed a name for Evil. By now, 'CIA' seems like a code hatched in the Big Bang, Lucifer cast out of heaven. It's very metaphysically satisfying. Especially in the person of Jackson.

Anyway, as much as I love Downey Jr., maybe his heroes are too complex for me. For the moment, I'll stick to the simple inspirations of the football pitch. This week, Chelsea secured first place in the Premiership, led by Didier Drogba, the beefy 'Ivorian'. 'Ivorian' is a term employed by British commentators. Awkward? It makes me imagine Didier with tusks, or playing piano next to Paul McCartney. Chelsea has two 'Ivorian' strikers.

Didier the Ivorian was all hero, turning in a hat trick that thrust him ahead of Wayne Rooney in Premiership scoring. I even enjoyed his unembarrassed pouting in the first half, when Lampard was given a penalty kick instead of him. Silly, but human. Foibles within proportion. We needn't be frightened for the species when Didier pouts. If anything, it comfortably puts all in its proper place. Every day, heroes pout. Just like every day they put on their uniforms, and every day they achieve forgettable feats. But when they lift up their trophies, the numbers add up.