Travelogue 392 – April 27
Carnage and Drizzle

The moisture doesn't help the stink. If anything, it makes it worse. This year, some jaded young sky god has threaded together the 'small rains' of spring with Fasika, the day Christ rose from the grave. Easter being a holiday of unusual savagery and the rains in Ethiopia being a time of low skies, dense atmospherics and mud, the combination is unfortunate. The carnage has still not passed. There are animal parts strewn by the side of the road. Sheep skins are piled here and there, often with a sleeping head set on top, homage to the peace of death, a challenge to the Son of Man, who would intrude upon that slumber.

I walk to the end of my road, where I catch a taxi to the cafe where I work. It's a road made of dirt and rocks that would seem ill-suited for a road. Many of them turn sharp edges up toward our feet and toward the tires of our occasional motor vehicles. I pass a few shrines to the Lamb, piles of skins and hoofs and skulls. The indolent boy in the sky gives us only the scorn of his indecision. Light showers start and stop. The dirt road is slimy mud from previous rainfall. There is a rot in the air, legacy of the soul's salvation.

I always seem to get out of the house during the morning rush hour. There are no taxi vans at the asphalt road. There are dozens of people milling about at the intersection, most waiting for the next taxi. I know the routine; when a taxi does show up, the people run for it and crowd around it as though this were the blessed ferry to salvation. There is little courtesy for the meek or the foreign at the door of a taxi van.

I slip the second strap of my heavy backpack over the second shoulder, readying for the hike downhill. I pick up my pace, weaving among the crowds walking to work or school. The planter's tinnitus in my left heel is aching me, but I push on, knowing that exercise tends to loosen it up, attenuate the pain.

Later in the day, I will head up into the mountains for a workout. Shimeles will take us all the way to the top, since the small rains are attended by a chill in the air that comes as a relief to small automotive engines. As we three athletes, insignificant in the eyes of the snide young sky god, will pile into the car by my house, we will be soaked by a sudden blast of rain. We will eye the skies anxiously as we climb the mountain. We will see breaks in the clouds above the summit. The rain will be concentrated below, in the city. As we run, the ground beneath us will be a little slick, slightly treacherous. Light sprays of rain will come and go. I will pull on my runner's jacket as I run, only to shake it off again a few minutes later. This will be an experiment; this will be the first time I run in the rain in Ethiopia. I will be rewarded at the end of the run by a full rainbow over the mountain meadows. In Amharic, rainbows are called kapto demena, the cloud's belt.

I've been fighting off a slight cold that wants to invite in its evil associate, asthma. I don't mind the long walk first thing in the morning, because it seems that my best ally against this plague is exercise. The remedy is counter-intuitive. I want to make myself breathe hard, though breath comes with difficulty and with pain. Giving in to it, though, especially in Ethiopia, is only to surrender to very long convalescence, and probably to other bugs that prey on the weak.

I time each segment of the walk: seven minutes down to Medhane Alem; four more to the university gates; five to get to the other side of the Sidist Kilo roundabout; five more to my cafe. Not bad.

I salute the guard in forest green at the gate to the cafe compound. Everyone knows me here. I say hello to the city parking attendant, who has worked here as long as I remember. He is small and bent; he does his job on crutches. The waitress asks me, 'the usual?' Yes: zebib cake and Italian espresso. Above, the effete boy flicks a finger and rain beats a new pulse on the iron roof.

Travelogue 391 – April 23
The March

The days of 2011 march by. The days of every year have their own pace, I suppose. Some years stroll by, some dash, some skip. These are the days of the forced march. There's some small element of joy missing. We're taking the plains, taking the towns.

The days march. First there was Hosanna, Ethiopia Palm Sunday. Men and boys wear homemade hats and rings made of slim palm fronds. It seems as though someone in every house has the knack of folding palm fronds into neat little square temples that rest above the knuckle or in the center of the forehead. Christ has entered the city. We celebrate his entry.

Shimeles's taxi won't make it up the steep incline of Entoto anymore. A few weeks ago, we had to start training halfway up the mountain, at a place called Kusquam. So we lose the gentle slopes, the high meadows, the soft, mossy forest floors. In exchange, we have rugged hills, brambles, gullies, rocks, and roots. The hills turn into hikes instead of runs. We are running at midday, and this is the hottest season. My phantom disease, plantar tinnitus, flares up again.

Yes, the days have none of the light spontaneity of the chaka, where one runs with cool ease in cool shadows, joyfully weaving among the tall trunks of doomed eucalyptus.

Yesterday, Jesus paid his debt to God and man. To celebrate, we met up with Cien and Chris at the Chicken Shack, a new place in Bole that serves BBQ chicken wings and curly fries. The place is owned and run by a big guy who played football in America. The flavor is somewhat dampened by the din of ESPN. Onscreen, there is a southern football coach informing a young athlete with a smirk that if he plays in France, he will have to learn another language. The young man nods earnestly and takes note of that in his spiral pad.

Menna and I flee the crash and boom of sports television to the relative calm of the Ethiopian multiplex, where Helen Mirren continues her streak of reprisals of classic male roles. And of course she pulls it off with heartbreaking dignity and grace.

No, the role isn't Prospero; this is Hobson. The movie is a remake of a personal favorite as a hard-drinking college boy: 'Arthur'. If it weren't for the profound distraction at the core of the project, the riddle of how the the lead female was chosen, a woman who would be lucky to reach as high as 'leaden' in her performance, someone as unlikely to excite the romantic interest of someone like Russell Brand as a lamppost, a woman who compares so unfavorably beside the sophistication of Helen Mirren as to make the audience avert their eyes; if it weren't for this flat Hollywood mystery dumped in our laps, the movie is a fair go as a light comedy. Brand as Moore works out well. Cuing pathos comes easily to him. And his toxic buffoonery is suitably cute and unthreatening.

There's a not entirely convincing moral at the center of this Arthurian tale, that joy is the measure of life. This is most explicitly unpacked for us in a monologue in which our hero asks the question, who becomes a systems analyst? the pretext being, of course, that the spoiled billionaire now has to get a job. Well, okay. I suppose the point needs to be made once in a while, even if it's by a fantastical, pretty-boy alcoholic who lives and breathes within ninety minutes of chaos and then unaccountably falls for the blandest blonde in Queens. It's an ancient prerogative, joy.

Today Christ lies in dormancy. The men in Shiro Meda have donned their palm headbands again. The sky is a stew of clouds and hazy blue. The sunshine touches us once in a while, but most of each hour is grey. Tomorrow He rises. We will share in the Father's joy. We'll all eat lamb.

Travelogue 390 – April 2
Daguma

I would have to say, if pressed to say anything about philosophies of life, that a pretty good one is finding the moments that impart perspective – those moments that inspire wonder and put one in proper relationship with the big, wide world. I don't think humility is something you cultivate by righteous thought. I think it comes about through a challenging dialogue with the world. The challenge is as often a pleasure.

We have arrived at the airport. It's late in the evening. The four of us have been entertaining ourselves at a nearby hotel. That means sitting in plastic patio chairs under the night sky under tall, sheltering trees, listening to Ethio-pop, listening to the horrible karaoke next door. We have had an argument with the waiter because he brought the women in the group bad wine. He insists it's all right. Then he suggests adding Coke. Oh well. We enjoy the evening air.

We have timed our evening travels well, we get to the airport just as the arriving children are waiting for their baggage. We can see them from outside the departure gate. Bole International stands tall and bright as ever, the vast and antiseptic white hall glimmering with cheap lighting. We mill around outside the gate, sleepy and cheerful. We catch glimpses of Daguma in the baggage hall. He waves his long, adolescent arms. The Tesfa crew wave back. We're his family tonight. He lives with only with his mother in the village of Ekodaga, and she hasn't come to Addis.

We're standing with some of the families. They are all country folk. You can tell by the sturdy brown suits of the fathers and the traditional gabis of the mothers. Their faces give them away, too, a weathered and dazed look to them. Some of the mothers have tears in their eyes. They have started with a sing-song muttering that seems to be half prayer and half monologue of thanks and amazement.

The children emerge. Dr Hodes is standing inside the rope that creates a corridor for emerging passengers. He greets them first. The doctor is one who has arranged all this. He has saved countless children with back and heart issues, referring them on to specialists who donate their services once or twice a year, fundraising year-round for the airfare and costs of travel and operations.

Daguma is about thirteen. He grew up with an severe case of scoliosis that bent him forward, gave him a hunchback, and threatened to crush his lungs before he ever reached adulthood. In spite of his disfiguring disability, Daguma has a great spirit. He walked to Chancho every day for school. He was always first in his class. When construction began on the school in Ekodaga, Daguma was on-site, ready to work every day. He hefted huge rocks when the site had to be cleared. He pushed the wheelbarrow when dirt was moved away, or mud was needed for the walls. He was tireless, and always in good cheer.

He's in good cheer at the airport, too. We all hug him – delicately. We stare: he's unbent and taller. I don't understand the particulars about the operation, but I think it's something like taking the distorted bit of spine out and replacing it with a friendly bit of metal. In any case, it's changed him. He looks like a regular gangly early teen now. There are some bumps and bulges in his torso that shouldn't be there, and maybe he will always carry some as mementos. But he stands erect, and he breathes.

Daguma's beaming. How was Ghana? we ask. It was okay. 'They don't speak American English,' he says in Amharic. How was the food? He didn't like it. He's emphatic about that. He can't wait to get some ferfer and wot. He's taken away for photos with the group. Cien stands in for family when each kid gets a family shot. Then the sleepy families start to drift away. The doctor tells us Daguma can't travel by car for a few weeks, especially to Ekodaga, where he would have to cross some rough terrain. He will stay with the doctor. In a few days we'll bring Daguma's mother down to Addis.

We bid the boy good night. He waves as he walks off. We all watch him and admire.

Travelogue 389 – March 23
Itinerary
Part Two

It's fun to drive on the highways of Holland with an American. Kim is talking and weaving among the springtime construction on the roads. It could be anywhere. But it's not. It's the Netherlands, flat and green. The highways are tidy, like everything else Dutch. When we pull off, there is no city. There are no distinguishing features at all to mark this locale off from the surrounding farmland.

This is the village of Wassenaar. A village with no village, that I can tell. Not far from the highway is the American School. This is an international school for children of diplomats and industrialists stationed in Holland temporarily. This is a phenomenon of the post-war era. (I feel like I give away my age when I use the phrase 'post-war'. Won't the current young adults scratch their heads at that? Which war?) The international schools are colonialism meets post-colonial educational standardization. Most capitals have a few of them, an American brand, a British one. A third of the schools will be well-to-do locals, the rest itinerant sorts from all over the world. The education is usually top-notch, the children bright and interesting.

We have a few student guests at my presentation, and yes, they are bright and interesting. The boy, probably 16 or so, has already been to Ethiopia and volunteered for a local charity there. The young woman is an athlete, so she wants to hear about my team of runners.

The school itself is huge and well-appointed. I tour the library and the various wings of classrooms. I see through the eyes of the Ethiopians and marvel. The place is huge and appointed with every convenience and improvement. The children act like young professionals on their way to meetings, except for the two teens chewing on each other's faces, whom Kim has to break up. 'Disgusting!' she pronounces.

Nicole, another teacher, drives me back to Amsterdam. Both teachers have been in Holland for years. One married a Dutchman; the other came with her American husband for the job. They have adopted from Ethiopia. Like many adoptive parents, they are very committed to the culture and people of her children.

For the moment, the brief and passing moment, I am committed to my Dutch city. On Sunday night, I decided to suspend judgement on the decadent old centrum of Amsterdam, and to go exploring. I wanted to see the Jordaan district.

I needed reminding that Amsterdam is a big city. It looks small on maps, particularly the centrum, contained as it is within the circles of canals. But there is lots of room for those high and narrow little buildings. I climb off the tram at the Centraal Station, and head west just a block or two from the Ij River. The blocks go on and on. In the distance, beyond the centrum, you see the vast machinery of industry. I pass through a variety of micro-hoods, suddenly besieged by cheery cyclists and strolling among ad hoc pub patios, tables set up for customers to drink their beers and enjoy the spring sunshine. And then, just as suddenly, I'm alone on quiet residential blocks, mum households stretching off toward the next canal.

I wander until I'm in the Dam district again, the hub of old Amsterdam, the hub of the new, more decadent Amsterdam, too. I arrive from an unaccustomed angle, and quite unexpectedly, there it is! There is the university building in which I took classes so many years ago. I don't know where I had stored it on internal maps, but I had no idea it was so close to the Dam. It's one of those moments where you feel a tingling realignment happen inside you, sweeping through you from head to toe. I walk around the building. Unfortunately it's closed for the weekend, and I can't enter. But I solemnly reflect on the past as I study the old building. I remembered it slightly differently. The building is not Dutch traditional; it's Euro modular, looking like it was put together by earnest children from plastic tubing, perhaps a kind of plastic rendering of Gothic aesthetics. Now it's older, seems streaked by the soot of age.

I walked all around the building, sinking into reminiscences of a dark sort. That trip was decisive in many ways. I had developed a quick and ardent love for things European and Dutch, and yet I left early, lacking the character to commit.

I sat at a hotel bar nearby and stared into the mirror behind the bar, overcome by regret. There is no defense against oneself and one's narrative. That's the only psychological advantage to youth, freedom from the condemning past.

I walked around the Dam, and finally settled in at the Beer Temple, with its list of international beers that takes up a wall. I got the bartender to admit that the Americans were the kings of the specialty brews. I indulged in a Colorado IPA, not thinking I needed to check alcohol content until too late: 8%! Oofta. I pried myself from the bar stool and went in unsteady search of the Number Two tram home.

Travelogue 388 – March 22
Itinerary
Part One

I'm back at Schiphol, neither the most nor the least comfortable of airports. I'm paying top dollar to sit in the brasserie on the second floor of this terminal. It's either that or crammed in among orange plastic chairs, chewing on dry pan au raisin and sipping coffee from plastic. In an hour, I'll be boarding the KLM flight to Khartoum and Addis Ababa.

I took the bus in this morning, the ol' 197 that I catch at the dreary bus hub by the humble medieval church of St Anne off Amstelveenseweg. I have to get up early for the privilege, calculating in the last-minute packing and final glance through emails for life-or-death messages.

I'm not always so virtuous. When I arrive in Amsterdam from Addis, it's often after an overnight. I'm wrecked. I walk straight to the taxi stand.

But today, I'm virtuous. I awake at 6:30. I clean up and pack and clean up, and I set out for the bus stop on a virtuous spring morning in tender-hearted old Nederland. I contemplate my long visit to Europe. It was a fun time. It was a busy time.

My last day in Holland was certainly a busy one. I had to hit the road, due at a meeting in The Hague. No, it was not an appearance before the World Court. That would be something to write about! Imagine committing a crime worthy of the World Court. My mission is something less grandiose: I'm meeting with some teachers at an American international school. And actually, it's not even in the Hague, but in a village outside. So, instead of alighting on the Hague's train platform to be escorted by uniformed policemen, I alight in Leiden to be met by a teacher in jeans.

I arrive early. I want to put in some rushed tourism. I had visited Leiden years ago, but remembered nothing about it. It remained in my memory as an insubstantial name suggesting beauty. The reality now unfolds itself in the hour I have to tour: a pretty town, a ghost town, an anomaly.

Emerging from the station, you see high-rise business buildings all around. It seems like it should be a bustling town. I'm meeting my teacher friend at noon. It's 11am now. I aim toward the church steeples, intuiting that I'll find the historic town center there. I pass a large, traditional windmill on a small green sward by a canal. I find cobblestone; I find canals lined with the typical Dutch houses, everything pink with ancient brick, the water in the canals green and silent.

The further I go into town, the less people there are. I check my watch again. Yes, it's after 11am on a Monday. Some cafes are just opening. Many shops are closed.

Again, my memory of Leiden is just a feeling, that it had been a destination when I studied in Holland years ago. Now I recognize nothing. I turn every corner anticipating the Dutch Golden Age splendor that drew me. Nothing like that appears. It's a cute town, though. And it occurs to me, prompted by the sparse morning population, that it might be a notable party town on the circuit. Otherwise, cute and quaint is as high as the meter goes. Though I would recommend the Hooglandse Kerk, one of the furthest sites available to you if you have an hour to tour from the train station. The bulk of this church is medieval Gothic, and very pretty.

I return to the station, and there meet Kim, the teacher from the American school. We jump in her car and head toward the Hague.

Travelogue 387 – March 15
Sunset in Salisbury

The title of this entry is the title of my magnificent portrait of the Wiltshire town, and I'm hoping I have the presence of mind to post the brilliant photo with the text.

I'm navigating my final days in England, and I must say, navigating them without much poise. I feel for the commuters of the world. In six business days, I've made two day trips to London, packed with meetings, one to Oxford, and one to Salisbury. My brain is not well. Thinking in the aftermath feels like collecting debris from a tsunami – an insensitive metaphor if there ever was one, but there you go.

I'll digress now, digressing all the way to hazy sunshine on green hills. It was warm enough for short sleeves today, for the first time during my England trip! And I responded to the weather's call, emerging from my house in a new, white T-shirt, a shirt which I quickly stained with sweat. I was also wearing shorts and running shoes.

Running has become my method for exploration of town and country. The chaka revolution works on me still and always, the revolution that makes me think of training as a measure of time spent wandering, and work time spent most enjoyably. The ancien régime, when training was Point A to Point B with grim determination, has passed forever. And especially as I recover from my near fatal plantar something-or-other, I am driven by tender concern for body parts and their recovery.

Just the other day, I made my way by zigs and zags to an incredibly cute town just south of Bath, called Southstoke. Well worth the footsteps, I must say. Don't be fooled; travel never stopped being work. Arbitrarily, I'll distinguish between travel and tourism here. Tourism is blinking at packaged sights; travel is discovering sights in more or less a natural state. The little village of Southstoke, set among farmers' fields, is just such a pleasant sight, with its barnacled old church in Gothic-minor.

Today's run, since it's likely to be my last British excursion of the season, has been preserved for the final frontier: the top of the hill opposite our valley, Lansdowne Park above Bath proper. I weave down from my hill, employing recently patented shortcuts, crossing the River Avon a little west of town center, running alongside Royal Victoria Park, and then up and up and up the hill behind, passing through neighborhoods in which the houses have names, passing two aristocratic academies housed in sprawling stone mansions that must date from the Tudors or the Stuarts, and eventually reaching the crest of the high, wooded hill, (near the site of a famous Civil War battle in the Civil Wars, by the way). What a glorious run!

But I have digressed rather far. Let's return to Salisbury, shall we, outside of which is a village called Downtown, where a tiny church primary school has maintained a long connection with our Mercato school in Addis Ababa. It's my first visit in three years. The children in second year who hosted me last time are now in fifth year. They still remember me. First, I get a tour of the school from three girls from the second year. We visit classrooms and gardens, peek into cupboards and cloak rooms, and catch some of the older kids singing and giggling. I visit two classrooms to answer questions about Ethiopia. I am guest of honor in the school 'worship', or assembly. The children are so gracious and so smart, the day is great fun.

And now, tuckered out from the visit, tired out from weeks of business and travel, I'm watching a clear, blue sunset out the window of an ancient pub. Fortunate Salisbury has plenty of history still standing in shadow of the famous cathedral, neglected as the town was by the Nazi bombers. Lots of the buildings present in classic Tudor style, leaning over the street with their jutting first stories, tarred beams, and Coke bottle windows. This pub is an old one, inhabited sparsely by old specimens of the species, who tell creaking stories and jokes, make frequent trips to the bar, and otherwise slouch and stare.

You'll notice the mastery of the composition of this photo, capturing today and yesterday in perfect balance, glass and Gothic, deep dusk and the flash of the camera's light. Notice the warped supports of the window. Everything Tudor twists, striving for straight lines and marvelously failing, and then, often as not, covering errors of the plane with the carving of a quirky human face, made to jut into the room like curious wood sprites.

The sun sets successfully – it so seldom botches the job – and I'm left to negotiate the evening's journey back to Bath. It's a three-car train, traveling through quiet valleys, stopping at Warminster, Westbury, Trowbridge, stopping at Bath Spa. There aren't too many lights aglow as I walk home from the train station.

Travelogue 386 – March 6
Go, Green Man!

It's chilly this morning. The sun is lingering behind a set of surly clouds, due to peek out later. He has been doing so for days now, making feeble impressions of Good Spring.

Oh, this is not just any morning, my good reader. This is the morning that will witness the Bath Half Marathon. I have very publicly made a commitment NOT to run in this venerable event, this long-standing personal tradition, dating back all of one year. This was to be my second run of the Bath Half, during which I was to crush my already astounding PR (personal record) of 1:38.

Alas, it was not to be. Instead, at the peak of my prodigious powers, I incurred a grievous injury. It's a plague of the heel common to runners, called plantar something or other, that feels like you're tearing the muscles that run the length of your sole.

So, as many of you, my devoted fans, know I regrettably announced my retirement from the field of the Bath Half. … Can you see where this story is going?

I'm running the race. I charted a slight improvement in the heel, and I took that as the nod from God and Body to run.

I put on shorts and shirt. I review the map for the rather complex staging areas for the start of the race. They have to accommodate 11,000 people, after all, and Bath was not a city built for 11,000 people to do anything in one place. I study the chart for attaching my time chip to my shoe. I have coffee with the family I'm lodging with. They think it's hilarious that I'm running. They even commit to coming down the hill to cheer me on. I climb the stairs to take my last pee and put on the last layers. It's 10:45. The race starts in 15 minutes. I curse.

I have to jog down to the start, and by the time I find my place among the masses, the starter's gun has already fired and I'm sweaty. I'm aided by the five minutes it takes the crowd to cross the starting line after the official start. We start at a creep. I'm already warmed up; I'm resenting this pace. I start the bob-and-weave that big races invariably become for at least the first two miles.

About one mile on, I hear the roar of my landlord, shouting out my name. I wave and step on a young lady's heel. Onward! There's very little pain in my heel. Once again God – very concerned about events like this – has shone his favour upon me.

Except … just as happened last year, by the third or fourth mile I've involuntarily become attached to one of the folk heroes of the race. This year, it's Green Man, a runner completely encased in a green body suit of some sort. And I mean completely. His shoes are inside. There are no eye-holes. He runs with a strange, grasping lope, elbowing and kicking people as he goes.

He's terribly popular. Again, I run the race inside a rolling bubble of laughter and cheering. It's not for me. No one is shouting, 'Go Normal Guy with Plantar!' They're shouting, 'Go Green Man!”

I try to shake him, but we're too evenly matched. And if it's no fun running next to Green Man – he might elbow you – it's not very pleasant running behind him, either. People in body suits rarely think ahead about the effects of thirteen miles of sweat. It accumulates at the base of the spine, just above the hard-working buttocks, and from there it spreads its unappealing stain up the channel of the spine.

Green Man and I complete the entire course. I arrive to raves and shouts and wild applause … all for Green Man. For my part, I've wilted quite appreciably in the final miles, but not so much that I don't perk up at the sight of the grand video screen showing us all rounding the last corner.

Good job, Green Man. I smack him on the shoulder on the other side of the finish. He's unveiling himself, but all I have time to see is the back of his shaved head. I want to get my hard-earned medallion and start the hike home before the heel starts complaining in earnest. I did it!

Travelogue 385 – February 25
Picnic Parties

I have a free day! Or I should say I have an expensive free day. I've committed to coming into London at least once a week for foundation business. This week, it's been twice. And that during 'half-term', when all the children of England are on leave from school, and train tickets prices nearly double. And since all appointments but one have fallen through for the day, I've spent a good deal of money for a free day in London.

I can't say I mind too much. The price has been paid, and I don't get many free days anymore. I leave Paddington Station by the front door and stand blinking in a neighborhood I've never seen before. I have arrived often enough at Paddington, but have always headed from the train straight to the Tube.

I hadn't quite realized before how close the station was to Hyde Park. I meander around the park for a while. I feel obliged: the sun is making a sincere effort, after all. The park is crowded. I return to the streets by Speaker's Corner (where once again free speech is a dead letter) and Marble Arch, and I veer around busy May Fair.

My evening meeting is in Marylebone, so that's where I head. I've taken the long route from Paddington. And it's fortunate I did because I encounter some old friends at Manchester Square. Some of them I ran into just a few weeks ago in Amsterdam. These are an elite set of friends, I must say. Not just anyone gets to see them. One has to know where they hang out – or to be as lucky as I am.

Rembrandt isn't looking his usual stunning self, but Frans Hals is convivial as ever. His 'Laughing Cavalier' captures some of his finest spirit, the roguish underside of the old, black-clad Dutch imperial soul, captures the sarcasm without which a Nederlander would be a German.

This is the Wallace Collection, a very fine museum in this city of museums, and one I hadn't heard of before. Well worth the visit, though: the booty of five generations of aristocratic collectors lodged in the urban palace they called home, replete with all manner of knick-knacks. There's exquisite eighteenth-century furniture and porcelain, old armour and weapons, sculpture bronze and marble, snuff boxes, and just a few paintings. Beside my Dutch friends, there are lots of Boucher and Watteau, Rubens and Reynolds, Van Dyck and Canaletto.

My loves of the day were Van Dyck and Watteau. Anthony Van Dyck shows up with a half dozen or so tall portraits, my favorite being that of Philippe Le Roy, savvy illegitimate son of some savvy merchant in Antwerp. He's obviously done well for himself, securing his place among the great portraits of the day, scratching the head of his hunting dog and looking generally contented with himself, and well he should, being drawn so well. He's beautiful.

I'll pause before applauding Watteau, just to tip my (brimless) hat to Monsieur Fragonard, who produced 'The Swing', one of the funner pieces of the exhibit, showing two languid gentlemen pushing a lady on a swing in one of those idealized little Rococo woods dotted with classical ruins. The lady condescends to make a kick just above one smiling gentleman, opening a view up her voluminous skirts. Her look is one of scientific detachment and pity, really – his, one of simple rapture.

But on to Jean-Antoine Watteau, our trickster of the day, the originator of the genre that Fragonard has had such fun with. Moving along the museum wall, from one piece of Watteau to another, is to advance through a veritable forgotten decade of parties, debauched aristocrats making merry in dozens of idyllic parks and woods, furnished with the detritus of a thousand years of classical architecture and statuary. There are music men in ruffles, and lounging men and lounging women, sniffing dogs, and all under the shade of fair trees, Midsummer Night's Dream for the Gallic leisure classes, Arcadia by Versailles. And what's funny is how the woods predominate over the diminutive partiers, making the paintings fantastical landscapes as much as anything, studies in mortality as much as studies of revelry. Placing them in bizarre classical theme parks just makes them appear all the more fragile to my mind, whereas I think the point was to glorify humanity a la Mirandola.

There's an interesting set of portraits on one wall, three takes by three of the most prominent British painters of the eighteenth century, all of a young lady nicknamed Perdita. Perdita is one of those British actresses that rose to heights near legend in the centuries after Shakespeare had created roles like … Perdita. It was playing that particular role that she – sadly – caught the eye of the raunchy young Prince of Wales, the future King George IV. The affair made her and destroyed her. These portraits caught her in that all-too-brief shining moment between the two. And the portraits are remarkably consistent, preserving the eyes of brilliant mordancy, the beauty poised at its passing fullest phase.

Death and the Art of Lying
by Jarvis Lawrence Mundi III
Phase One, in Which Doris Gets Her Oats
February 24

You know, Mr. Ishiguro, the question the artist must ask him or herself at all times is, 'When is it ruined?' The 'it' here is undefined, as, of course, most art is. Let's frame it in the broadest sense: when is life ruined? Or, better: when is a human being ruined?

It's odd that one of the previews before the screening of your film would be the new Herzog film that claims to take us to the roots of art, to the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc cave in southern France, where human kind's earliest paintings are preserved, some 30,000 years-old. Oh, dear old Werner.

Mr. Ishiguro, do you know what the paintings portray? Animals.

It was the last night your film would be showing at Bath's precious 'Little Theatre'. It's been here since I arrived, and I gave you my word I would see it, didn't I? You didn't tell me that you yourself would be introducing the film at this very venue on Sunday night, which will in fact be the last showing.

I had two dubious reasons for wanting to view the film. The first is that I read your novel, the basis for the film. The novel was heart-wrenching, quietly bizarre and affecting. My second reason can be found in the promotional poster, an entrancing shot of Keira Knightley. She is so clearly looking at me every time I walk by, and trying to tell me something. It might be something erotic. More than likely, it's something mournful. It's a sad thought that hasn't occurred to me yet in all these years of morbid thoughts.

The author has produced the film adaptation. The author has claimed his stake in the hieratic line of homo delectus, the creature that lavishes hours on his portrait of water buffalo on submerged stone walls.

I've seen a lot of you lately, Kazuo, among the shreds of newsprint left on cafe tables. You have posed for photographic studies of Zen sensation, chilly celebrity. You render studied spoken-word paragraphs about the wonder of new parenthood. You speak about life. Your countenance, subdued as it is, by artifice, speaks of life.

The animals portrayed are alive. Blood flows through their veins.

There's something amiss in your film rendering, Kazuo. I don't mean to offend, but I read in your meditative news photos a willingness to hear. The actors are great. In fact, in the manner of many art-house films these days, the acting is the show. It's on display, much like certain mixes of gunpowder on the Fourth of July. One might just lose the trail of the story in admiration of the acting. And then, one awakens to the discrepancy between film and book. One remembers how one was moved.

Oh, Kazuo, I'm so tired of death. The old man with the sickle has been standing by for so many years now, I'm weary of him. He has the breath of a decrepit dog, or maybe of decaying autumn leaves lying too long in wait of a late winter. I wake at night and detect that stench. I know he's been warming himself at my feet, reading Dostoevsky, puffing a cold Meerschaum. I recall a dream in which I'm crying hopelessly.

When is it the milk has spoiled, Kazuo? 'Read the date,' he replies. When is a man ruined?

Watching your film, I'm enchanted by Keira. I'm even more enchanted by Carey Mulligan. But all it takes is a moment, like the careless step of the artisan in the marketplace, when he loses control of the fragile silver mirror, and it shatters. We all stand over it, and we privately mourn. Very privately. One moment I'm admiring lovely Carey, and in the next, I see only Leeza.

That's when the tear comes. One tear comes. It demands something of me. It's all good and well to indulge in the abundant talents of actors while safely indoors. But outside, the storm makes its demands.

I have to confess, my dear friend, that in that moment I know you're a fraud. You love beauty too much.

Do you think the artist of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc painted the water buffalo because he thought it was beautiful? Don't be fatuous, Kazuo. We might think his painting is beautiful; that is a very different matter.

I'm so tired of Death. I feel the weariness in my bones, like a debilitating flu. It aches in me. It pulls me down at night with insidious, gentle force. And the old man sucks in a chilly breath in delight when he reads about Ivan Karamazov. 'My, my,' he whispers just below the level of hearing, 'such beauty!' I awaken just then from another dream about Leeza. She is still beautiful.

Do you think that Leeza was beautiful because she loved beauty? That sweet soul? You offend me, friend. You really do. I dream about her. She is still beautiful. And every time I awaken, I must give her back to dust.

Who is the real heir to the artist of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc? Think about that late at night.

Travelogue 383 – February 19
My Space
Part Two

I've learned a few key things about myself living in Bath. I've learned that my average walking speed is between two and three miles per hour. I know that because I pass the bus station every evening on the way home. As I walk beside the ramp for buses, a sign flashes a message at me in red: Slow Down! And it gives me a reading for speed. When I'm cheery, it's three miles per hour; when I'm down it's two. Most times, it alternates between the two as I pass.

And there are the more disappointing things I've learned about myself. I'm staying in the loft room of a rather nice home on the rooftop of Bath, at the top of Beechen Cliff. This is Pey's neighborhood, of course, and one I'm very familiar with, and still infatuated with. I look out one window and see, well, Pey's house. I look out another and I see a panorama of the hills south of Bath. Looking right, I also see the green fields stretching toward Bristol. I am fond of that prospect. One day a few weeks ago, I set out to run to Bristol, and I passed among those very hills and fields. The run itself was something of a disaster; it did wonders for my now infamous injuries. And I wasn't even able to finish the entire course, only reaching the outskirts of downtown Bristol before I stopped at the sight of a supermarket, into which I staggered, insulting and shoving aside a pregnant woman who stood in front of the juices. A pint of orange juice dispatched, I grumpily boarded a local bus to the train station.

Anyway, my house in owned by Becky, and occupied by her and her two pre-teens. One day, I'm stalled in the middle of changing for my daily run when I get a phone call, and simultaneously there's a knock on my bedroom door. I vaguely say, 'Yeah?' and the door begins to swing inward. It's the boy of the family inviting me downstairs for lunch. But I don't know who is coming in, so I retreat, mid-sentence on the phone, behind the corner by my bed. The boy takes no clues and follows me, staring at my bare chest. 'Right. No, thanks there, James,' I reply politely, standing in the dark corner of my room, feeling only silly embarrassment.

One imagines there must be a submerged and, hopefully, an adequately repressed thrill in occurrences like this, (at least if 'one' is a post-Lolita urban Westerner). But I'm here to report, there is no joy in standing nearly naked before a pre-teen. What's left of the artist in me is disappointed. What's a good bohemian without indecent, illicit, thrills?

More disappointments: I'm learning again that I'm horrible at accents, and this is really one of the great tragedies of my life. I have always loved the company of those who can do accents. They have my permission to indulge in accents all night with me, and I'll delight like an idiot the whole time. After a few days in Bath, my internal voice speaks in a Bath accent. It's a very fun one. In any case, I am incapable of translating that voice into the external world. My attempts are embarrassing. What makes it all the worse is the teasing I receive at the hands of said pre-teens. They would naturally find the American accent amusing. When I try to mimic theirs, I just get laughs.

I'm learning that I don't mind the rain so much. I have made a great point in the past of my general opposition to the concept and experience of rain. I have taken care to differentiate between rain and snow, as a good Minnesotan should. Dry precipitation is quite acceptable in my book. For best effect, don't start the storm until it's well under freezing. The only exception to my rule about snow is if I have to drive. But I have equally strong objections to the concept and experience of driving, so that by rights falls under a different subtitle. (And driving in Great Britain merits another entire diatribe.)

But rain in England is simply … appropriate, isn't it? I prepped myself psychologically while in sunny Ethiopia. I know northern Europe far too well. What's more, while I was still a runner – oh, those glorious days … only last week – while I was a runner, I found clouds and drizzle pleasant. 'Clouds and drizzle' just about covers it. That's ninety percent of the weather here. I harbor entirely different emotions for a gentle drizzle than I do for rain. It's meditative; it's melancholy. It doesn't ruin your clothes. It doesn't ruin your hairstyle. The latter is all the more important now that I can't afford a visit to the barber.

I wake in the mornings. I assess the day's variation on clouds and drizzle. I watch the impacts of the precipitation on the skylight, against the weak and grey northern light of the sky. If I can count the raindrops, it's nice enough to go out. And that's most of the time. The air outside is fragrant of lush growth and mold, fresh with the rain.

Travelogue 382 – February 18
My Space
Part One

It's Friday night, and I've allowed myself to work too late. The consequences are unique to England. I should back up and set the scene. I'm just about two weeks into a working vacation in Bath, England. I'm renting a bedroom up the hill in Pey's lovely neighborhood on top of the steep hill above and south of town center.

I keep the work going. Work never stops, no matter what the locale. In Bath, my day is divided into three shifts, Sunday to Saturday. The morning shift is all about Ethiopia. I walk down the hill and enter the precincts of lovely, centuries-old Bath stone, looking for my work station. I spend loads of time in front of the netbook. And then my second shift begins. That entails the first of many hikes back up the intimidating hill, back home. After some tidying up of the morning's work, I'm off to train. I'm training for the Bath Half, March 6. I'm only achieving mixed results at best with that work, dealing as I am with a host of old-man maladies and injuries.

The third shift is generally writing. That has to happen in a pub. The English pub is a wonderfully inspiring work space. It follows a nearly invariable pattern, in its décor and in its hours. Since I'm fond of early evenings and early bedtimes, I like to get right to work after training, ordering my first pint by five. The earlier the better. There are practical reasons for that. The after-work crowd comes in soon afterward. And on a Friday night, the crowd is unruly.

I'm working ar Molloy's tonight. At six, the boys enter. They start in with me right away. The lads are not from Bath; their accents are broad and hard to follow. One of them seems to want to tell me about how fit he and his mates are. Another is very curious whether I'm up to business or to porn. 'Are you a businessman, are you?' No, I'm …. Another one seems to want to know about my digestion, or possibly my bum. All of it is delivered in a rapid-fire, drug-accelerated patois that I only partially understand.

Glenn takes a special interest in me, and the boys have a good laugh while he chats me up. He could be from a movie, possibly from a cartoon, he's so street-Brit skinhead. He's small and wiry, and looks perennially ready for a brawl. His eyes are piercing and mocking He wants to know who I am, where I'm from, and what I'm doing. Magically, the only thing I have to do in order to avoid a thrashing is to talk with him.

See, Glenn is from Swindon, a larger and more working class city not far from Bath to the east, on the way to London. In Bath, he says, leaning into me in his muscular and confidential manner, the people don't reply when you say hello. They're just blank, he says. 'It doesn't cost much, does it? Just to say hello? Some people, it makes their day, doesn't it? Just a friendly hello.' I cannot disagree. I ask about Swindon folk. He informs me they are 'skatty'. 'You know, they come out with the most random comments. 'They might say, “Good morning, ma'am. How are you this morning, and could you please tell me how are your sausages are getting on?” You know, something like that.'

Glenn and I are quickly mates. The blokes wander off, bored with teasing Glenn, who takes no notice. He's having a good chat with his new mate, Dan. (That's me.) There are so many things he wants to tell me about. He wants to tell me about raves. He tells me about the biggest of them all in Stratford-on-Avon. He fishes for the phone in his deep trouser pockets. The screensaver on the phone is photo of a young lady with a very fine figure and unblemished skin. She's showing lots of that skin, her legs spread. Glenn starts scrolling through photo files until he finds several videos, informing me as he does about the size and craziness of this rave. The video is less than crazy. There are people meandering among tents. 'You like bass and drums?' He demands, and he shows me the drum and bass tent. There are bobbing heads and a stage far off. 'Wow,' I say.

Glenn wants to tell me about doing the bungee jump at the rave, all 'pilled up'. His accent is getting the better of me, and I nod. It seems the line for the bungee event is a long one, and he combats his boredom with another set of pills, borrowing a bottle of water from his neighbor in line. (This last detail involves a story of its own, several minutes long, that slides right by me. Glenn weaves in the seat next to me, continually swinging back toward me, nearly butting heads and never letting his gaze waver.) 'Can you see it, mate? Bungee jumping on pills (on pi-ws)? How crazy is that?' I never find out what the pills were, and I wouldn't be shocked to find out that he never knew himself.

The lads have moved on. The boy who is 'fit' comes back. 'How are we doing, laddies?' It occurs to Glenn that this is his time to exit. He rises, and he makes several attempts at an exit, returning with vital observations. And then Glenn is gone. I could work, but my computer is packed away. I'm done for the day.

And that's the challenge of working in English pubs. The people are very friendly. On one of my first nights in Bath, I'm working at the Bear, a local pub up on the hill. Suddenly it's quiz night. People are flooding in. Tables are reserved. Richard invites me to join his group. Richard is another chatty bloke. He, his mate, his girfriend, and I form a quiz team. I tell them about Ethiopia. They tell me about their business – selling sex toys via the internet. I'm sure they're yanking my chain, but they earnestly insist. Richard backs it up by naming a sex shop in Minneapolis that he had heard about in … trade magazines (?), a place he remembers because it is owned by 'serious lesbians'.

For the record, our team does fairly well. There are six rounds, and my biggest contribution is during the round about dictators. Go figure. We lose it in the last round, the subject of which is British soap operas. It's worth losing to see the pub denizens creasing brows and slapping knees over who was so-and-so's fourth wife, the one who subsequently rose from the dead to exact vengeance.

Oh, fortitude, lend me fortitude, my Muse, as I try to craft a brief life and a brief book in old Bath Spa, so unresponsive to the hellos of Swindon lads but so overflowing with brotherly feelings for the writer from bloody America.

My readers will be relieved, it occurs to me, that I was able to catch the match between Arsenal and Barcelona the night before last, against all odds … but that's a tale for next time, innit? Cheers.

Travelogue 381 – February 3
Some Miles

My second day in Amsterdam is gorgeous! Even before I left Ethiopia, I resigned myself to clouds and cold for the whole of my European sojourn, but here it is, my second day in the gloomy north, and the sun is proudly shining. The sky is boldly blue. I rise from bed astonished and fortified by abundant daylight. It's exactly what I needed on a day set aside for loads of work and many miles training for the half marathon. The sun gives me strength.

Living at the HEM Hotel gives me access to two of the largest of Amsterdam's city parks, the Vondelpark and Rembrantspark. I set out in the afternoon, after a morning of work in the cafe on my netbook, after my breakfast of egg and bagel has digested. I throw on the battered running shoes that double as walking shoes on this trip, shoes breaking through in the toes and with arches that gave up the ghost long ago. I set out from the HEM, chasing the geese along the first canal, crossing over on the concrete bridge and heading north until the canal takes a ninety-degree turn. Carrying on in that direction, I eventually reach the Vondelpark.

The Vondelpark was opened in the mid-nineteenth century, one of those grand city parks so much the rage in the flush of the industrial age. It is reminiscent of New York's Central Park in its narrow shape, acting as a sort of bridge among some of the city's most traveled districts. I run the park's length along one side of the connected ponds in the middle of the park, running all the way to the garish casino that stands opposite the park's grand entrance at the first of the centrum's canals. And I run back again along the other side of the ponds, exiting the park toward the north.

I feel my way along the streets north of my neighborhood, guided by the google map in my head, eventually finding the Rembrandtpark, another sizable rectangle of meadows and paths squeezed among the dense blocks of Amsterdam. This park is more modern, dating only to the middle of the last century, partaking of the bleakness of post-industrialism, feeling more like a place of our times, 'urban' in the ugly way of our belated age. Poor old Rembrandtpark can't help that it was assigned some more down-and-out districts of the city to serve. It spans a few miles of the north-south axis of the city, vs. Vondelpark's posh east-west section of the town. By the time the park reaches its northern terminus, all pretense has been dropped. Precious city park acreage is devoted to a drive-through KFC. I jog by the scarce locals, the hookers, and the punks … twice. In order to get my mileage, I have the run the circuit of Rembrantpark two times, and then go back and circle Vondelpark one and a half times.

The next day, I'm sore and tired. The sky seems just as used up. Ignominious clouds have crept back. The HEM locks me out of my room while I'm out for coffee. The elevators don't work, so I walk up and down to the third floor three times trying each new key they give me, until finally a cleaning woman lectures me about check-out time and unlocks my door with Teutonic authority. I'm kicked out forthwith, and have to wander the dim streets until my evening flight.

Since I have the time, I figure out the bus route from Oud Zuid to Schiphol – that's the 197 for anyone interested – and then stare into some canals, stare into some coffees, stare into my computer screen. I'm tempted to check out another museum, but find I just don't have the energy.

Evening inches forward. It's been coming on since the first glow among the clouds. As the light fails, I find my bus stop. Amsterdam recedes into the night, strange rows of high rises removed from the centrum like corporate colonies. Half the people disembarking from the Schiphol bus are fast food and hotel and baggage employees, sulking teens and tired ghetto moms. Airports: where the jaded and the bone-weary meet to exchange soiled bank notes. Airports: monumental fluorescent-lit halls where the sleepless wander – the closest thing to a zombie movie you'll find in the real world.

Travelogue 380 – February 2
The Neighborhood

I've adopted a neighborhood again. That's what I do. In Rome, it's Colli Albani. In Addis, it's Shiro Meda and Amist Kilo – the north side. There's no compelling logic to my choices. They're often led haphazardly by the first contact, the proximity of my first hotel or a friend's place.

Neighborhoods suit me. Neighborhoods are how people live. My patience for historic / touristic town centers is wearing thin. I like the day to day. And mundane doesn't mean uninteresting. People live with history. History lives through people. 'Regular' districts of major cities can offer some surprising discoveries.

My neighborhood in Amsterdam straddles Slotervaart and Oud Zuid, as near as I can tell. There are always fine distinctions among neighborhood names that a non-native won't catch. My home base is the HEM Hotel, a rather nondescript place dropped in a small bit of nowhere. On the next block is a school named 'St. Jan de Doper'. Only Amsterdam would honor a Saint John the Doper with a primary school. Price is the only thing to recommend this hotel. One can almost always find a cheap room here online. But the place loves its rules, and it makes up for low room rates with the innumerable charges for extras. Breakfast is about $20. Early check-in costs ten euros per hour. Late check-out costs twenty euros per hour. Etc.

It takes only a block or two's stroll to discover the virtues of the HEM's location. Two blocks north is the #2 tram, which runs frequently and reaches the centrum in 10-15 minutes. Walk two blocks east to the canal, taking note of the enormous white geese, noisy but harmless. Cross the canal and walk a few more blocks to the next canal. Then turn left and walk up to the main road, the street that hosts the tram. What you'll notice, besides the geese, are the pleasant brick residential buildings, the scores of people on their bicycles, the peacefulness, and the many little shops and pubs along the sidewalks and bike paths.

On the tram street, across the canal, you'll find my breakfast place, the 'Bagels and Beans'. Everything there is good, coffee, sandwiches, and yes, bagels. Having crossed that second canal, you'll find that the eastward walk becomes by degrees more fun, more posh. It's a few miles until you reach the centrum, and frankly the centrum is where things get seedy again. Stick to Oud Zuid, I say. North of the tram road are loads of little shops and eateries, and several of the larger city parks. My favorite meals this time are at the Gent aan de Schinkel. Gent is 'on the Schinkel', another canal. To make the name most fun, you have to pronounce Schinkel properly, making your 'ch' rise from the throat in a deep 'h' sound. Dinner on the Schinkel is heavenly, lamb with apricot and hazelnut, venison with lentils, complemented best by a few pints of LaChouffe. I'm very happy walking back to the hotel, stopping at the used book store where the elderly proprietress recognizes me. She turns on the light in the back room, where she keeps the shelves of English language books. It's interesting to see which authors pop up in different international locales. In Amsterdam, it would seem that among the most popular authors in English are Graham Greene (true everywhere,) Jerzy Kosinski (!), Len Deighton, and Virginia Woolf. Okay.

I arrived in Amsterdam at 7am. The HEM kindly offered to let me check in at 11am, for an early charge of only thirty euros. I declined, shouldered my pack, and headed for the tram. The sun still hadn't risen, and it wasn't easy to tell even when it did because of the thick fog. The day was never more than dim, and the wind was sharp and cold. It was a good day for a museum.

I haven't been to the Rijksmuseum for many years. For half the price of checking in to the HEM early, I bought the privilege of a few hours with the Dutch artists of the Golden Age. There was Frans Hals, happy-go-lucky portraitist with the light touch and loose hand, fond of painting debauching bourgeoisie. There was Rembrandt, early and late, profoundly sensitive to the emotion in a face, as demonstrated in his famous portrait of Jan Six, and profoundly attuned to the power of light, and to the power of one daub of paint, in an eye, on a button. I took in the famous 'Night Watch', his repackaging of the tradition of group portraits of the Dutch militia, refreshing it with action and depth. It blows the mind to think that a later generation would slice off pieces from either end in order to make it fit on their chosen wall.

But the piece that captured my heart was one by my perennial favorite, Vermeer. The piece is the called 'The Milkmaid'. She is in the kitchen, pouring milk from a pitcher into a bowl. On the table are a basket of bread and another pitcher. She stands before a window. Hanging on the wall is a wicker basket. Behind her on the tile floor is a little charcoal stove. Along the bottom of the wall, you see typical Dutch blue tile. Simple.

So what is it about Mr. Vermeer? I can't really say, in any final and all-encompassing way. But I can say he has a vibrant shade of blue that's all his own. I can say that there are details that jump out at you as amazingly sharp and convincing: the basket, the bread, the stove and the floor it stands on. Even the plain wall behind her is almost bizarrely convincing, including nail holes, chinks, and indentations, including the irregularities in the plaster, including the uneven impact of light and shadow on its surface. But a good painting isn't just about verisimilitude. It's a painting. The face is an impression of a face, a beautiful impression. If Mr. Vermeer had lived in the time of photography, would he have tried to match the accuracy? I tend to think not. However astonishing the detail in the wicker basket, it's the lovely face that everything else complements.

Travelogue 379 – January 23
Lessons of the Chaka
Part Two

We're about forty minutes into our hundred-minute run. I can feel the time in my body. I'm right behind Tesfahun, following with a kind of Stockholm fervency. Fikre is behind me, I can hear her footsteps. Tesfahun's favorite course begins in the chaka (forest) at the head of the meadow above the church of Entoto Maryam. Tesfahun likes a rough course, and this chaka is especially uneven. He takes many a sharp turn, and heads suddenly up steep hillsides, among treacherous roots and rocks. He squeezes between the closest trunks and dodges under low-hanging branches. I'm swatted in the face by swinging eucalyptus leaves and I'm clutched at by nettles.

I confess that I particularly like these sections of the run, the most like dance. I was holding forth last time on the five-fold path of the chaka. The dance was the first sacred principle: watch how you move, and enjoy it. I notice how clumsy I am while I turn to fit between tree trunks. I can feel all the extra weight I carry these days. I feel it as I lumber down a steep slope, rock to rock, landing with every step, rather than moving forward with light transfers of weight. I stay aware of all movement.

We're approaching halfway. I can see the wide dirt road that traverses the ridge. Across the road is a field where all the trees have been harvested, leaving only trunks and a bed of branches and leaves. This is another slick tactic of Tesfahun's, high-stepping among these fallen branches, each step falling among the leaves on uncertain ground. We're in full sunlight now. I feel my energy dipping.

Principle Number Two: managing one's resources. A long distance run is like an ephemeral little economy. One has limited resources – some of us more limited than others – and one must spend them wisely. So the dials require close monitoring, dials roughly corresponding to water, fuel, ready energy and latent energy. One monitors muscle fatigue, and body heat, and some of us monitor their portfolios of injuries, recovering at their various slow rates.

My despairing ankles and knees survive Tesfahun's minefields. We re-enter the chaka, this time on the other, the northern side of the range. The woods here are confined to a relatively narrow bit of land above a steep drop. One catches glimpses of the many miles of golden hills rolling northward, toward Selulta and Chancho and Fiche.

It's early afternoon and the sun is at its strongest. The play of shadow and light among the leaves and stones at my feet can be dazzling and distracting. Because I'm the faranj, I'm always second in line, which means that my field of vision is very reduced. I see the terrain ahead only a few feet at a time, practically as my feet discover it. Principle Number Three: one must stay alert. Aside from immediate distractions, such as the dazzling light, there are many temptations to draw one away from the present moment: the soothing views of golden fields and distant hills and whole hillsides of eucalyptus; the business of the day, crawling back ignominiously to nestle among the brain waves; daydreams about the glory of the race, or even the pain of running itself. Monitoring pain and thinking about it are two different things. The latter eventually creates its own problems.

Pain comes darn close to being a principle of its own, very salient to the athlete, or even to the dilettante-athlete such as myself. What saves pain from being a principle is that it is an experience. Among world-class philosophers of pseudo-sport, this is a vital point. Pain is real as a tree trunk, purer than thought. To the chaka runner, pain becomes more, becomes a familiar,becomes the witch's cat, the pirate's parrot, the Athenian's daemon, whispering in the ear. To an amateur, pain says, 'Stop!' To the chaka runner, pain whispers sweet promises.

In a roundabout way, this leads right into Principle Number Four, which is Focus. Running is an achievement of the mind. Alchemy bubbles in the brain cells. Pain becomes promise, and distances telescope. Eyesight dulled by computer work becomes acute. Muscle movement made dull by mundane routine becomes precise. Where jogging up a flight of ten stairs in the city feels like a fatal punch in the gut, half a mile up a rough mountainside is controlled, ecstatic agony.

We head back toward home. I can feel it before I realize it. Eventually we emerge from the chaka into the fields of dry grass where we started. Tesfahun usually wants to finish with five minutes or so in these broad fields, which are pretty but which very effectively undermine my confidence. This is when I am most tempted to hate Tesfahun with all my heart. The fields are discouraging for several reasons. First, we have an audience. Families are washing clothes or collecting water in the spring. Invariably, this means catcalls and jeering from all and sundry, just when I'm most tired. For another thing, I find the stimulation of the close woods stimulating. Emerging into open space where one sees the full distance one must conquer, and lacking the somewhat artificial sense of speed afforded by dense woods, robs one's sails of considerable wind. Lastly, these fields are set at a steep slant. Invariably, Tesfahun is taken over by Satan and arranges for a steep uphill climb to cap the long run.

Test now the Fifth Principle of chaka training: measure and check your reactions. Emotional and mental fatigue are more potent than physical fatigue. You can work with physical fatigue. Pull in your resources. Rather than slumping forward and giving in to a desperate and sloppy forward stride, pull it in. Straighten your back, measure and regularize your pace, and place each footfall precisely. There are always cycles to strength and energy. Pulling in is like laying a new base for the next cycle. Power returns, and your resilience will surprise you. But not until you regain some precision and economy of movement.

The final stretch is down the original dirt road, hard as asphalt in places, dodging donkeys and children and emerging into the dirt piazza in front of the church, Entoto Maryam. There our fan club gathers around us, a ragtag bunch of little boys who mimic our stretches and laugh. Shimeles backs his taxi out of the shadow of the church's wall. Once we've warmed down, we set out for the city. Addis Ababa lies spreading below us, reaching for Debre Zeit across valleys full of yellow teff.

Travelogue 378 – January 22
Lessons of the Chaka
Part One

I'm feeling aggrieved because I have to rush to my biggest training run to date, straight from long, back-to-back meetings. I'm out of breath and five minutes late, jogging up the hill from my place to the asphalt road where I meet my taxi driver and my trainers, Tesfahun and Fikre. In fact, I'm a feeling a little macho about how brave I am, … until I hear from Fikre that she's coming straight from the stadium, where she just placed third in a race of 10,000 meters. I'm chastened. I ask her to see her medallion. It's a big wafer of metal with the Pepsi symbol on one side and a simple picture embossed on the other of female runners encircled by spare Amharic script.

We start the drive up Entoto mountain in Shimeles's old Lada, a vehicle that takes the incline so slowly that I get plenty of rest before the big run. We tease each other, asking chubby Shimeles when he's going to join us, taunting quiet and diffident Fikre about how difficult she is. I get teased about how much I suffer on these runs. Today we do 100 minutes in the chaka. I'm running out of training time in Ethiopia. Next week, we'll do the run from Entoto to Kotebe, something of a tradition now while I'm in training. I rent a minibus and invite a good crew from the team, and then I treat them all to lunch afterward. Kotebe is roughly half a marathon's distance from Entoto along a rocky dirt road that follows the ridge of the mountains. It features a few monster hills, but winds downhill for its second half, nearly breaking my morale with its relentless stones, gullies, and switchbacks. But that's the kind of thing runners think is fun.

We arrive and we stretch. I'm watching Fikre. She's so thin. She says she's seventeen, which is patently untrue. That has to be at least five years off the mark. Athletes here habitually lie about their age. She lives on her own and works as a housekeeper part-time. Her hands are over-sized and tough, a sign of the manual work she has always done to survive. Tesfahun tells me she was leading during the whole race today but wasn't able to hold onto the lead at the end. She has no kick. I'm no expert, but it seems clear to me why: she has no muscle. I'm pretty sure she gets nowhere near the protein she needs. I'll take her out for a celebratory feast tonight.

We start. I've admonished them to take it easy on me today. I'm comforted that Tesfahun is leading. Fikre unconsciously accelerates when she leads. The sun is strong today. Though we're in the shade most of the time, the dazzling light and the heat get to me early. I'm feeling light-headed. My breath is uneven. Past Entoto we're over 10,000 feet, according to Cien's mountain-man watch readings. I find that I never totally adapt to the altitude. I have moments of short breath and dizziness no matter how long I've been in Ethiopia.

But as I've mentioned before, one must stay alert and nimble in chaka training. One can't let one's feet drag; one can't lose concentration. Chaka training has become a kind of zen practice and yoga for me. One hundred minutes of pinpoint meditation and body awareness.

Shall I share? Here, in a nutshell, is the five-fold path of chaka training:

1. Since returning to running a few years ago, I've discovered that age may not bring wisdom, but it certainly forces one to look for it. When I ran as a boy, the body didn't resist. There were few dues to pay. Getting relatively serious about it at this age, I found myself battling injury after injury. Thus began the path of posture. After some perfunctory research, I decided that posture accounted for most of my injuries. I was fortunate in that my subsequent experiments were successful.

I got into the habit of monitoring my body as I ran. I checked in with feet, with back, with knees. I adjusted as I ran, straightening up, pulling in my stride, making sure my feet were underneath me, making sure I was rolling off the whole foot evenly. One injury would fade, and another would appear with another lesson.

In the chaka, I find myself even more aware of body mechanics. Maybe it's because of the variety of terrain, making for more variety of movement. It's a fascinating study, and profitable in the pursuit of fluid running.

Travelogue 377 – January 14
The Chaka

We're about halfway through the dry season. Since the small rains a few weeks ago, the sun has been steady and hot. The skies are glaring. The grass on the hillside is golden. It crunches under our feet. The three of us are passing single file across a broad sloping meadow underneath Entoto's peak. Nearby mountains spread their own gentle slopes to the east, yellow meadows and patches of eucalyptus. Below us are several families sitting among the grasses, washing clothes, watching livestock.

We are heading toward the woods for some training. I'm behind in my conditioning for the half marathon in March. I've been battling bronchitis for weeks. I've got to get some distance in. We enter the stands of orderly eucalyptus and begin the sixty-minute workout.

This is the most characteristic of Ethiopian training: chaka training. Chaka means forest. We dive right in among the trees and begin circling among the thin trunks of eucalyptus. Athletes might count themselves among the only beneficiaries of deforestation in Ethiopia. The entire range of mountains here have succumbed to the Australian invasion. The eucalyptus grows fast and is harvested fast. It is planted in tidy rows. Underneath is only bare red earth or moss.

Fikre is leader today. She is one of our top female athletes; she came in 26th in her distance in the recent cross country championships. She's tiny and very thin. She has a bright smile, and a certain innocence in her round eyes, in her girlish laugh. Behind me is Tesfahun, one of the short distance guys. He's in college and speaks English well. They are both extremely kind and patient. Running at my pace is trying, there can be no doubt.

Ahead of me, Fikre flinches when she hears me stumble or snap a stick in two. Chaka running takes intense concentration, which is one of the reasons I love it. We wind among the trees in tight formation, weaving among close trunks of trees, sailing over rocks and limbs, dancing down through gullies, down steep slopes and back up. You have to be very alert, and you can't let fatigue slow your reflexes or drag down your stride. During my first few runs, I experience a few severe 'benders', ankle twists that could have stopped me cold. But my ankles are pretty tough after years of running, and I force myself to keep going. If one stops, the ankle swells too much to run on. On my second run, I let my feet drag and tumble over a root. I roll down a slope and gather a few good scrapes, but again, I force myself up and running, though limping for a good five minutes. This is why Fikre flinches when she hears me being clumsy.

We run sixty, seventy, or eighty minutes. I need to boost this to one hundred soon. It's funny, because in eighty minutes, you literally never stray further than a few miles from your launch point, knitting complex patterns among the woods. At first, I struggle with that. My linear nature wants to cover some ground. I want to go from here to there. But after the first run, I'm hooked. The compensation is the connection among the runners. Chaka running becomes hypnotic. After the first ten minutes or so, you feel like you're all attached invisibly, and the leader's movements are your own. You are pulled forward by the leader and sustained by the one behind. The hypnotism of open-road running is the pace. Here it's somehow the opposite: the choppiness and variability of the terrain and pace induce a kind of hyper-awareness that a more pleasant trance than the lulling rhythm of street-running.

The dry woods are pretty. Once in a while we pass a crudely tilled field, a lazy horse or lying sheep. Every so often we see the wood-collectors in the distance, stout women who will bundle branches on their backs and walk down the mountain. Occasionally, there's a ragged man with callouses gripping an axe, showing us a startled face. The sunshine glows brightly in skipping spots along the forest floor. Light breezes hiss among the long leaves of the eucalyptus. Fikre winces at another clumsy step.

Travelogue 376 – December 30
The Small Rain

The clouds have gathered in recent days, taking nothing away from the beautiful daylight hours, adding nothing more than spells of shadow and cool mornings. Suddenly last night, they piled up above the mountains, black and flashing with lightning, and they released torrents of rain. Fortunately we were down in Bole, the city's furthest district from the mountains. We watched the light show for an hour before the rain reached as far south as we were.

It's still raining this morning, mildly, steadily, like a mood almost spent. It's still raining when Derartu and Altaye arrive. They come by the house every other morning. Derartu and Altaye are athletes on my team, a young woman and young man with talent in the short-distances, the 800 and 1500. MWF they run speed drills written out by one of the U of M athletes, and TTS they do strength training with Cien. Sometimes it's weight training, and sometimes it's drills borrowed from a video that Cien brought with him, lunges and jumps and twists to driving music.

Kerempt, the rainy season, is a long way off. The autumn is usually all blue skies. The winter and spring months will see occasional 'small rains'. We're getting an early one. We are lulled during the night with the patter of the rain against our metal roofs.

I'm exiled to my bedroom during training. I have work to do. I set up the netbook on my bed and I type to the beat of Cien's southern rock. Occasionally I join the clan in the living room just for a laugh. Being top-notch athletes does not guarantee grace and poise. Many of the movements required are beyond them. This kind of thing is alien. They didn't grow up with PE classes, gymnastic, or ballet. One day they decided to run. That particular motion they've mastered. But the finer distinctions among forward and sideways lunges, bounces and sidesteps, wide arm movements while balancing, all escape them. It makes for comical workouts. When Ijigu is around, he tends to simply jump from side to side no matter what the video exercise.

This starts with Altaye. He's a boy blessed and cursed with talent. He grew up with a contemptuous father in tough country. Somehow he escaped to the city and has survived with virtually no skill, knowledge or talent beyond his running. He can't read. He needs his instructions delivered three times over. He cuts corners like a boy half his age. But he has a winning smile and raw talent as a runner. He requires strict supervision. He needs some muscle, and he needs some specialized training. There is no body fat on him, but he can't do ten push-ups. He can sprint around the track with the best in Ethiopia, but he's unfamiliar with spikes and blocks. Before we got hold of him, he had run on a real track a few times per year. Now he's prancing around the courtyard with Cien, a little mystified but in good spirits.

I'm inside staring at the computer again. For some reason, Januarys have been our most hectic months, even more so than Septembers, when the school year gets going. I can't say why, but it seems the prime month for visitors. Next month does more than prove the pattern; it pushes it further. We have far more going on than I have hours in my planning day, week, or month to take care of. Advances are made before there is the structure to support it. That's where I come in as trouble-shooter, and keep coming in, year after year. These are the growing pains; these are the small rains.

Derartu doesn't need much supervision. She is eighteen. She has run with our team since she was sixteen. But when it's time to train she is the adult in the room. While Altaye wears his goofy grin and cuddles up to Cien, Derartu attacks every movement with a creased brow, clean movement, and blunt muscle. When we take Derartu out for the occasional meal – a good dose of protein, she stares straight ahead silently. The rare smile is beautiful, but she is not here to smile. She is paying her dues.

Travelogue 375 – December 13
Amsterdam, Part Two

It's so hard to get up early in northern Europe. It's dark, and then it's dark some more. I eventually climb out of bed. Outside, the sunrise tints the clouds pink. It's 8:30.

I'm going to walk into the centrum. The canals have a film of ice on them. Seagulls stand on the ice as though they are dazed by the slow dawn.

The trams are humming by. Loads of people are cruising around on bikes. There's bustle, but there's never chaos in Amsterdam. It's the happiest town for A-type stoners. Bike paths accompany every street. Intersections are governed by intricate electronic choreography, and everyone obeys. Everything is tiny and cute. Only the detail and individuality of age saves the town from feeling like a model train set.

It's early enough, and I'm having little enough luck finding a place wide enough for a comfortable work session, so I commit to the walk into the centrum. I do make one stop before I make it there, a plush brasserie, where a diminutive machiatto costs three euro, where sheer white drapes hang beside ceiling-high mirrors. Some of the clientele could be TV stars. The men talk like producers. They wear bold ties. Their hair is Netherlands shag.

I continue my walk, along the Number Two tram line. I eventually arrive at the imposing Rijksmuseum. Passing that building and the Van Gogh Museum, I arrive in the centrum, crossing the first of the inner rings of canals. From here, everything just gets smaller, more squeezed, and more precious.

I stop at the Kandinsky Coffeehouse among the inner rings. It's Amsterdam cramped, all up and no width, off the beaten path, and exhibiting only a modicum of the charm of the classical facades around it. It has a counter downstairs and a few seats. Upstairs consists of four tables on poles set before a ragged L of a cushioned bench along the balcony, divan-style. The tables are barely big enough for my netbook. The music is made of bleeps and chants and hip-hop rhythms in water drops and bubble-gum pops. The downstairs has just enough space for several predictable murals featuring Oriental pleasures.

The barista is a tired-looking eighteen year-old blonde, who is eager to please, which means she is ready with a preemptive show of angry irony. 'Hello,' she drones, her tone saying she has my measure. 'Yes, you can sit upstairs but you have to order downstairs.' Oh? 'You can try to order upstairs ….' I think her English fails her here. Biting wit requires too much agility in a second language. I'd like to see the prices for coffee, but the menu only features hashish and 'Dutch Grass'. They have what seems like a nice variety of these items, several pages worth, anyway, and they're rated by 'stone'. Hmm. You know, I'd just like a coffee. She bucks her head dismissively. 'What kind?' I'm apologetic. I'm missing the tinsel celebs of the brasserie.

Travelogue 374 – December 12
Amsterdam, Part One

It's the truth. I find it odd to be back in this old city again, find it strange and stirring. I've had a pass-through or two in the time since the halcyon days when I lived here, but those isolated snapshots are yellowing themselves, in their way more perishable than the impossibly distant autumn of my residence.

It was the fall. I was a student. It was the season, by chance, that witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall – an event that I'm afraid rings as old these days as the moon shot, as Civil Rights, as the Civil War. But some of us walking the earth have held pieces of the Wall in their hands, gripping them like crystals, and wondering at the sensation of history, at the Right-Here-Right-Nowness of it.

That was my first extended trip to Europe. It was my first chance to experience the contrast between Europe the Romance and Europe the Reality. I was settled into student buildings stacked like blocks of cement among dozens of others of its kind in the outer rings of the city, reached by humming trams. The rooms were square and sterile, functional in a way that I found intriguing, appealing. The Dutch are indeed urban planners. They have centuries of practice squeezing dense populations into precious small space, all reclaimed from the North Sea. I remember feeling the sea, present though out of sight, grey and cold. Once you're outside the centrum, Holland asserts itself. One might think the high narrow houses, all with their hooks, characterize Holland, but instead I think of the flat, green fields, the narrowness of the land itself, the sprawl of flavorless buildings in neat blocks that halt abruptly along a line that the eternally thoughtful planners have scratched across a map.

I remember the light, Flemish skies expanding into expressive banks of cloud. Lying below those over-ripe impressions was the blunt fact of our latitude: the skies grew dim as the solstice approached. Frost gathered in the lengthening shadows and never melted. The omniscient concrete melded into the season's light.

I remember the Dutch, smart and sarcastic, the men with their stubborn blonde shags that were already dated. I remember their quiet domesticity. I remember the ruthlessly egalitarian spirit of the Dutch, tiring in its stridency. I remember being the only American in my language class. I fell for my teacher, young and fiercely intelligent, who not only didn't speak English – an oddity among the Dutch – but made a point of it. I remember American classmates from other classes, and drinking with them into the wee hours of the deep northern night. I amused them with ball-point portraits of their beer-numbed features. I remember Napoleon, my Colombian classmate, who entranced me with his uncanny salsa.

What I don't remember very well are red lights, canals, and 'coffee houses'. These pictures reside at the core of most modern tourists' impression. Amsterdam has become one of Europe's party cities. Book a short flight and commence drinking; make great shows of carousing; take photos with prostitutes; that sort of thing. I confess that, with the exception of Vegas in my teens, I've never conformed well to that mass mandate of travel. I've certainly 'partied', but I've never felt the need of a pack or a sanctioned city in order to do it.

Amsterdam in image is 'cool' in that mysteriously hypnotic way of our time. Age does much to strip away the mystique, and suddenly 'cool' evaporates and leaves something amazingly banal. What is more common, in fact, than intoxication and the jaded, self-aware merchandising of sex? Is this how it was in high school? Did we all swoon before mediocrity, just because we were entranced by its self-confidence? 'Cool' metastasizes into philosophy the way a drunk's ramblings on a bar napkin become art, in a sort of bold sleight-of-hand that consists of nothing but boldness. To the extent that the Dutch call their libertinism 'culture', the more they trivialize themselves. Fortunately, history preserves for them a better place.

Travelogue 373 – December 11
Christmas in Bath

The Kennet and Avon Canal has chunks of ice in it. The Bath area has emerged from a bitter cold spell just in time for my visit. I'm thankful. I need a long run, and I don't have cold weather gear. The towpath is very sloppy, offering either puddles or orange mud to the runner's careful foot. I choose the mud.

It isn't by any means warm out, nor is the afternoon terribly inviting for nature walks, glowering with clouds and already gloaming at 3pm. But there are still a good number of hardy Brits out still, unsteady on their old bikes or hunched inside their long jackets, their dogs by their sides.

The countryside still offers its charms, even in winter. The hillsides are green, lined in a very few fields with traces of snow. The trees are bare and brooding. Everything seems more damp than usual in the frustrated light of near-solstice. There are places slick with frost that never goes away. The sun rarely hits the ground in the northern shadow of tall hills.

The city offers a contrast to the vanquished silence of the hills. Today is Saturday, and Christmas is two weeks away. Bath is the shopping town for the region. The shopping streets downtown are jammed with milling people, and people remarkably cheery for what strikes me as a season of anxiety. Everyone is with family, window-shopping, gobbling sweets at cafes, carrying bags in every available hand. They're smiling, greeting, and chattering. Musicians are playing at corners. There's a group of high school girls standing before music stands and marching through carols with flutes and African drums.

I'm meeting a new friend at the Jika Jika cafe. It's a little restaurant and cafe at the top of the main shopping avenue. Word is it was opened by a rugby player who was drummed out of the sport because of his drug habit – and I'm not referencing steroid use here. The cafe is narrow and deep in layout, as to be expected in old Bath. The fare and service are that curious blend between hippie and posh, organic and refined, that caters to the conflicted appetites of modern urban types. The furniture seems rough-hewn, like sitting at picnic tables. Families loudly consume, while on the walls above them are displayed sophisticated photographic nudes.

I eat very little, and very simply. I have a plan to run soon after lunch. And I'm trying to be careful. Everyone in Pey's house has a cold at some stage of development. The smallest, Bea, has it the worst. She's been confined at home for several days, looking dejected and emitting hollow, regular little coughs. I'm being very careful to avoid the germ.

I limit the distance of my run because of the imminent, gathering dusk, settling down over the valley like the sad illness I'm trying to avoid. I know that stars will be out before five. But arriving home, I want a long warm-down. I pass the house and jog the extra several hundred meters to the top of their hill. There's a park there, and a little circuit around the hilltop that amounts to a third of a mile. I do some slow laps. From this vantage, you see a lot of the town, opening up below you, like scenes from a play, and then repeating. The scenery is very pleasant, but the action is far away and muted. The darkness deepens, and I realize I haven't learned much from the play. Scaling the heights doesn't give you the town.