Travelogue 100 – September 30
Burning Crosses

The holidays come and go with sound and fury. Meskel is one of the biggest of Ethiopian holidays. It celebrates the finding of the true cross, “meskel” meaning cross. It also happens to be my birthday. Abasha find it funny that I make a big deal of the day I’m born. “Meskel is my birthday!” I repeat shamelessly until they understand it’s important. A lot of Abasha don’t even know the date of their birthday. But they indulge me.

As with many ancient holidays, Meskel’s fun has drifted forward into the eve. The day before Meskel, we celebrate the demera. I awake that morning to the sound of Girma, our guard, pounding through the concrete of our courtyard. He’s making a hole for the cross. A tall stick is stood up straight in the hole. Other sticks are braced against it, tepee style, and then those bundles of sticks, the cibo, are laid around the whole of it. A crossbar is attached to the central stick to make it a cross. The pile is decorated by grass and clusters of Aday flowers, a bright yellow daisy-like blossom that is emblematic to Abasha of the new year, and there is your demera.

Before any other festivities, there is the matter of my birthday. I’m invited into class, where they have arranged all the chairs in a circle, with one seat of honor in front of a huge, round loaf of Abasha bread that Melesech, Leeza’s mom has baked. The kids sing one line of the Happy Birthday song to me over and over, clapping. Then, in single file, they come forward with drawings they’ve made for me. Each shakes my hand and says, “Happy Birthday.” We all eat cake.

It’s time for the demera. “Wendoch, over here.” The boys follow Girma and pick up cibo, which are taller than they are. Girma helps light them on fire. Barely able to maneuver the burning bushes, they use them to light the demera. Quickly, it’s ablaze. The kids stand back and watch. They clap and sing traditional songs together.

Not exactly up to American safety codes, I realize – a fierce bonfire in the middle of our little courtyard, kindergarteners gathered round – but we pull off the old ceremony without a hitch. The demera burns quickly, and the charred cross inside falls toward Saba. The direction the cross falls signifies something, though no one call tell me what.

Of course, the demera is supposed to happen at night, but the kids are dismissed at noon. I was planning on going down to Meskel Square in the afternoon to watch the lighting of the big demera. This tradition is what gives Meskel Square its name. But I am getting reports throughout the day that there will be trouble. The big demonstration is planned for Sunday, but it seems some opposition types can’t wait.

Traveling across town later in order to meet up with some people, I pass through Meskel Square, and I get to see the monstrous demera prepared for the evening’s ritual. It looks to stand about fifty feet high. There are blue-clad federal police standing with guns ready at intervals of about ten feet throughout the whole square.

Sure enough, we hear later that protesters have assaulted the police with stones, sending tourists and other innocents running for cover. Fortunately, the police haven’t opened fire.

I go with some friends to watch the demera at Kidane Mehret (kidan-EMret,) a church up the mountain from me – the one I hear voices from every morning. It’s dark by the time we arrive. The winding road is clogged with people in their church whites and carrying tall yellow tapers, the flickering stars of which flow in a stream up the hill. We have to park and join the slow crowd. The demera is already burning, and the cross inside, about twenty feet high, is leaning. It lurches forward at one point, sending the crowd on that side surging backward, crying in delight. There are perhaps a thousand people pushed tightly together. A group of teenage boys is dancing around the demera. One beats a big drum. They’re singing something about the power of God.

We leave before the cross actually falls. News of the violence at Meskel Square is reaching us, and some in our party are nervous. Predictably, we find Norm surrounded by a large group of little girls, smiling his sweet, saintly smile. He’s having Henok take picture after picture of them all. We tear him away and rejoin the stream of candles.

Travelogue 99 – September 23
The Kunicha

Rumors are flying. Police are marching. Maybe they are army. I can’t really tell them apart. The costumes of these various branches of armed men are as arcane as the colors of the Orthodox priests. The ones that predominate in the past few days are dressed up in blue, blotchy pseudo-camouflage. Who thought up this design, anyway? Arctic camouflage for Africa? Or marine camouflage for a landlocked country? Anyway, they are everywhere.

The major opposition parties have called for a demonstration one week from Sunday. It’s what I’ve been dreading. Everyone is speculating on the odds of violence. Muluken says the people will not stand by idly this time if the police fire on them. Saba says it will be an excuse for thieves and trouble-makers.

The catalyst for demonstration now is the approaching convening of parliament. The opposition parties have protested the elections, saying candidates were intimidated and polls were rigged all around the country. Election observers from the EU and the Carter Commission have judged the elections as unfair. And, indeed, it seems to be the general consensus on the street, except among staunch and belligerent government supporters, that the CUD party won the elections in something like a landslide.

The CUD formally protested. The government-appointed elections board eventually ruled against them. Now the question that has dominated political news and gossip for weeks has been, will the representatives from the opposition boycott the parliament? The international community has urged them to sit in; the people have been urging for a boycott. No word yet on their decision. But they have called for a “unity” government until new elections can be called.

It seems the departing parliament, heavily dominated by the governing party, passed a few new rules of procedure. My favorite is that it takes a convenient majority to introduce a bill in the parliament.

The parties here have little nicknames. The governing party, which has been in power for fourteen years now, is called Yehadek. Their real name is something long and faintly ridiculous, in a way reminiscent of the scene in Life of Brian where rival Palestinian liberation movements kill each other. I believe the initials are EPRDF.

The CUD’s nickname is Kinichit. You see this name scrawled on the back of taxi seats everywhere. They won hands-down in Addis Ababa, where observers were thick on the ground. It happens I learned this name, Kinichit, the same day I learned the name for fleas, which is kunicha. So I started asking people if they were yehadek or kunicha. Muluken found this amusing, but he has lectured me numberless times on the difference, never considering that I may be having fun.

So next weekend, I face a tough choice. Do I flee from home for a night or two, stay in a hotel? If things get out of hand, I will be isolated. Taxis went on strike last time, and nobody that I know lives nearby. Nor are there any sizable markets or restaurants nearby. If things really get out of hand, there may be looting, and I’m sure the lone faranji’s house in the neighbourhood will be a prime target.

I don’t know what to do. I can’t say I’m too impressed with anybody who runs this country or who wants to run this country. The governing party has shown no finesse, blithely excusing itself, for example, for firing on civilians in June, and openly insulting the EU commission. The opposition calls for a demonstration that it knows full well may provoke violence. Meanwhile, the nation has had a record five years of peace – a tense peace at that. And the economy is sliding through the floorboards again because of this crisis.

What can you do? I haven’t decided what I’ll do next weekend yet.

Meanwhile, I’m content to stay at home and watch the afternoon school routine. The kids nap. Saba and I have buna. I sit in a pool of new year’s sunshine, and I watch a bird wash in a puddle left behind from Jackie’s bath. The dog glares at the bather, shivering with cold at the end of her leash. Birds are her nemesis. They like to swoop in and steal the bits of bread that the housekeeper leaves for her. Above, a strong breeze hisses in the leaves of the high eucalyptus trees. I watch the trees sway. All is peace.

Travelogue 98 – September 17
Addis Amat, Part Two

I sleep right through the midnight festivities, oblivious to the fireworks down the hill at the Sheraton. It’s the biggest party in town, of course, bankrolled by the richest man in town. The most famous Ethiopian pop stars are performing. The ticket is 1150 birr, over $100, well over the monthly salary of most Abasha I know.

I wake up to the sounds of a normal day, birdsong and chanting from the church, but in addition, there is singing and clapping from around the neighborhood, mostly kids. It lends a truly happy air to the day, unlike the stale and sullen vibe of most American holidays.

I’m due at Leeza’s family’s for lunch. I get going in a very leisurely way, ambling out the gate in late morning, joining the sparse crowd in the streets. There are the gory piles of sheepskins everywhere, typical of holidays here. People are smiling and weaving even more aimlessly than usual. Many are dressed in beautiful traditional clothing, especially the elderly and the children. Men are in spotless white, from the gabi over their shoulders, to cotton blouses and pants, down to white sandals or shoes. They carry the traditional fly-swatter, horse-tail on a stick.

I pass through Arat Kilo and Piassa on the way to Saba’s, and I’m astounded at how deserted they are. These are commonly the most crowded and bustling parts of the city. It’s pleasant; I take my time.

I’m in Saba’s neighbourhood a lot these days. Dr. Mickey’s office is just down the road. I pass the old Cinema Ethiopia, which is a Haile antiquity, gold and hulking. This sidewalk is usually impassable, with taxis swerving in, newspaper vendors, people lining up for the movie. Today there’s nothing.

Turning a few corners, I come to the broken alley between buildings, where shanty huts of thin wood and mud and corrugated iron are crowded together in several lines. It’s paved with fragments of stone and concrete leftover from whatever was here a long time before, and it stinks. Leeza’s family lives in one of these huts, a room about a hundred feet square, with a common kitchen in the back. They’ve invested in new furniture since Saba has been working with us, so the place is crowded with several couches, a cabinet for the new TV, a bunk bed. There’s little room to maneuver on the buckling linoleum, covered in long, green grass to celebrate the holiday. A stool is set up with a low table with cups. This is where Melesech, Leeza’s and Saba’s mother performs the coffee ceremony. First they have to stuff me with food: lots of meat, because it’s a holiday, and lots of injera, the spongy bread with which everything is eaten.

The coffee ceremony is only a ceremony in that it takes a long time – roasting the beans, crushing, brewing – and in that it’s repeated every day, with the same little mortar and coal stove and traditional, thin-necked coffee pot. My favourite part is when everyone has to take a whiff of the roasted beans. The host walks around the room with them, and everyone pulls the smoke toward himself with a wave of his hand.

It’s a family day. There’s a neighbor’s baby on the bed, rolling around and exercising his little hands and staring at me. The mother is helping prepare the food. I can’t tell if she’s acting as a servant or just lending a hand. Melesech is kind of queen of this little subdivision, a designation she’s earned with kindness, as I understand it. There’s a mother on the couch with me, impassively feeding her three children at once. I can’t help picking one up and playing with it. She fits in one hand. Here eyes are wide and curious. She has claws already and clings to the skin on my hand. She has tiger stripes. She bites my little finger. Everyone here prefers dogs. I tell them I’ll trade this tiny one for Jackie. Jackie has started eating her poop and looking up at me with bright eyes while she does it.

The sky opens up with a powerful rainstorm. We can’t hear each other talk. We can’t hear the singing from the TV, where a fascinating pair from northern Ethiopia are singing traditional songs. It’s an amateurish video – one stationary camera set up in their home. The woman is hypnotizing. She looks straight into the camera and rocks gently back and forth as she sings. She doesn’t blink nor smile, just sings on and on.

Travelogue 97 – September 12
Addis Amat, Part One

It’s New Year’s Eve, and I have a gunfan, a chest cold. Still, I’m out at the café, trying to get some work done. I’m trying to jot some notes into my notebook, but I’m having difficulties. I have a huge blister on my index finger. I had a battle with an aerosol can the other day. I had gotten my hands on some bug spray at one of the markets. When I got home, I gleefully started spraying down everything in my bedroom, with something like Nazi intensity. I noticed that my finger was burning, but I didn’t care. I was envisioning fleas and mosquitoes and flies and bedbugs and silverfish all turning belly up, and it was a terrible sort of joy. When finally I had spent my bloodlust, and I looked at my finger, the tip of it was frozen solid. I was stunned. I don’t remember this hazard to spraying insecticide.

I’m nursing my frostbite in Africa. Outside the café, standing in the light rain are the newspaper boys. One of them has a chicken in his other hand. It’s New Year’s Eve, so chickens are everywhere. Tomorrow we all feast on doro wot, chicken stew. Some jolly guys at one of the tables tease him. He takes it well. It starts to pour. He takes that better than I do. I shut my notebook for the day. I listen to the roar of the rain on the iron roof. I watch people dashing by. When it dies down a bit, I head home.

I spend the afternoon at home. The rain moves on, leaving louring clouds in their wake. We have a few hours respite, so I can sit outside and watch my laundry dry. I’ve already discovered that my housekeeper has pulled her old trick and washed all my bed linen, on the day I’m sick. It’s all on the line, dripping with the latest rain. I’ll be sleeping under a gabi tonight. A gabi is the white cotton traditional shawl that men and women wear, especially on holidays like New Year’s. They’re not all that warm to sleep under.

All around the neighbourhood, you hear the cry of roosters who know the end is near. Next door, the dogs have been baying for days at their new family rooster. The unfortunate bird manages to fly up to the top of our wall. It blinks at Jack and I with fear. Within seconds, the old lady is banging on our gate. I have to shoo the poor chicken back to its fate. We hear the last of its clucking sometime around sunset.

From behind the wall on the other side rise the day’s billows of bitter smoke. Every afternoon, they light up this noxious blaze. Today, it must be a whole tree, along with all the neighborhood’s plastic refuse. The wind is against me; our courtyard is a blue haze and my sinuses are burning. I pray for the rain to return. That’s a safe prayer these days. It starts up again, eventually picking up into a downpour, nearly dousing the fire. Somehow, it still spits out meager clouds of smoke.

Just as it gets dark, Girma, the school guard, brings to the house two tall bundles of sticks. “Cibo,” he says. It’s a New Year’s Eve tradition. We stand in the courtyard and we each get a bundle of sticks. With the help of his little water bottle full of kerosene, we light the ends of the sticks on fire. Normally, this is accompanied by songs and dancing, but we just watch the fire creep up the sticks.

“It’s the old year,” I say in Amharic, resorting to metaphor to see what the meaning of cibo is. He agrees complaisantly and laughs. “In America?” he asks. No, we don’t do cibo. “Rockets?” Yes, that’s it. There’s an envious light in his eye.

The sticks are a little damp, so we run out of kerosene quickly. Still we persist, like little boys intent on the fire. We use up newspaper and matches keeping the fire alive, eventually turning all the wood to ash. We crouch over the embers. “Malkam Addis Amat!” Happy New Year.

Travelogue 96 – September 7
Stomach Zero

“Congratulations,” I said and raised my little cup of buna, or coffee. My school staff roll their eyes and laugh in embarrassment, but they do it. “Congratulations on a job well-done!” We touch buna cups and drink. One academic year completed! The kids have just left, and we’re sitting in the courtyard. There’s some hazy sunshine, and I’m the only one sitting in it. Even after three months of rain, all the Abasha would rather sit in the shade.

The kids are sweet. Before departing, they hug and kiss each one of us. Only that day have we finished the video that we’re sending to our new sister school in England. We caught the last two kids who had been absent, saying hello in English, waving, staring in bewilderment at the camera. Metsananat forgot his name. Waving like a zombie, he says, “Hello. My name is Kalkidan,” repeating after the girl who went ahead of him.

One year done! We take two weeks off for Ethiopian New Year (September 11) and then we start up again. To celebrate, I offer to take the staff to see Lucy at the National Museum on Monday.

Monday is gloomy. We’re supposed to meet in front of the nearby St. Mary’s Church at ten. I’m not surprised when I see none of them. I’m standing alone among the usual swarm of vendors and beggars who gather in front of the gates of churches. I’m shaking my head, wondering whose bright idea this was. I stray toward the small vendor’s stalls down the road, followed by three boys whom are regulars along this strip. They introduce themselves repeatedly, “This my name is Biniam. Hungry, please. One birr, one birr, bica. Stomach zero.” Their lovely smiles and playful demeanors undermine their plea of desperation, despite the practiced whine, but the cute factor helps them. I ignore them and shop. I bargain over a dog-eared copy of a biography of Thomas a Beckett.

“Mister, stomach zero.” Okay. Nobody’s come to meet me yet. I take my boys over to the bread shop across the street and buy them a huge loaf for 25 cents. They’re all smiles and thumbs-up. I leave them at the church and cross to the museum. I’m reading about the martyr in front of the museum when I get a call at 10:20. “We’re at La Vera Cucina. Where are you?” “Muluken,” I reply, “no one ever said anything about La Vera Cucina.”

We finally make it to the museum. Everyone has a cold but me. It’sthe first time in Ethiopia I’m the healthy one. We’re stopped at the gate and searched. The guard’s baby daughter searches me, at least up to the knees. Everyone laughs. It’s two birr for Abasha, ten for me. Inside, we immediately go downstairs to the fossils. I read again with disappointment how fossils aren’t really bones; they’re just the mineral deposits left in the place of bones. Even Nature is a fake. Even Lucy is a fake. They’ve taken her off to Washington DC, of all places. She’s a fake of a fake. I study the man-made bits of bone that wasn’t bone from the skeleton that held her up 3.2 million years ago. The pieces couldn’t hold much up now. Why did they coffee-stain the fakes, if we know they’re fakes, I wonder.

I take the ladies upstairs to look at Lucy’s husband, whose head is kept in a display box behind a staircase. A reconstruction stands beside the skull. He’s a truly ugly boy. I enjoy the ladies’ laughter as I point out he’s their ancestor. How come he stands only three feet high, but his head is bigger than ours – and his brain is a fraction of the size of ours?

More fun for me is the exhibit upstairs of ancient artefacts. I’m a sucker for carved rocks. We’ve got a pair of seated notables who look Sumerian. We’ve got inscriptions in Southern Arabic script from 2,500 years ago. It looks nothing like modern Arabic, and a little like modern Ethiopian. It’s the progenitor of Sabean, which develops into Ge’ez, which is papa to Amharic and Tigrenya, the language of northern Ethiopia, and of some of Eritrea. Actually, the script of these modern languages is Ge’ez. It hasn’t changed in about fifteen hundred years. We’ve got limestone cabinets with more Sumerians lords in Egyptian positions under borders made of cavorting ibex.

In a glass case, there are Axumite coins. The Axumite empire ruled northern Ethiopia for about eight hundred years, during the late Roman Empire and afterward. If you look closely, the inscriptions on the coins are Latin. There’s no one to ask about that.

Carry on into the throne room, where stands Haile Selassie’s wooden and ivory throne. It doesn’t look very comfortable, but thrones rarely do. Muluken assures me he was a short, slight man. His feet were swinging far from the ground. In glass cases are jewelled crowns of the great emperors; robes of velvet and silk, ostrich feathers and lion mane; and swords inscribed with Ge’ez.

Outside we sit among various construction projects on the museum grounds, and we wait for Wogayehu, our teacher, who is very earnest about this visit. She’s jotting notes in a tiny notebook. I’m feeling lonely without Lucy, and a little stomach zero. Time for bug, I decide, and we walk together toward Arat Kilo.

Travelogue 95 – August 29
Macchiato in the Time of Amputation

It’s Sunday. I wake with the roosters. I listen for rain. I check for pain, rolling my tongue across the ravaged tooth. For the first time in nearly a week, it doesn’t scream. Something Dr. Mickey gave me is working. For a few days, something he gave me was giving me fevers and muscle aches, but that has passed.

Well it was bound to happen. I’m losing a body part. After all the insults upon my body, I should have known Ethiopia would eventually claim a part of me. Dr. Mickey says in his polished accent that it’s got to go. He shows me the x-ray. Yep, the roots curve and branch ominously, and the filling made by my American dentist is too close to the nerve. The wisdom tooth that has stood by me for decades has been sabotaged.

I get up. The skies are dark. Tuesday I have the tooth yanked. Even with my newfound faith in Dr. Mickey, I’m scared. I search for signs that I’ll be all right. It starts to rain. The clouds are black. As I watch, it turns to hail.

Dr. Mickey also shows me the broken tooth from a few weeks ago. The cheap filling placed by the other Ethiopian dentist has already fallen apart. Dr. Mickey will fix that. The price for both operations will be less than the other clinic charged for the one bad filling. Dr. Mickey patiently explains all the mistakes of the other dentists. He’s Armenian, young and serious and bald. By the end of his consultation, I’m wishing all my dental troubles would come in Ethiopia.

The rain passes. The black clouds break and succumb to white ones that look like piles of vapour miles high. There are fleeting patches of blue. As an omen, I’ll choose this one over the hail. Isn’t that how omens work? Then I notice that two enormous wasps are stationed on either side of my bedroom window. Up above, they’ve started a new home underneath the eave of the house. How should I read that?

I decide I had better search for omens outside of home. I’m going out for a macchiato. I’m not sure Dr. Mickey would approve, but why deny the dying tooth a last taste of sugar?

I notice there are a lot of priests out today. I pass the patriarch’s office, where there are a cohort of them lined up, greeting visitors arriving in big cars with tinted windows. The priests are like jungle birds in their plumage, clothed in robes of black or tan or deep maroon, with round, flat-topped hats. I don’t know who gets to wear which color, but it just seems right that they dress so richly. What’s the use in having plain-clothes priests?

I’ve come to the traffic circle at Arat Kilo. It’s one of the busiest neighbourhoods in a busy city, near the university and full of coffee shops and stores. In the center of the circle is a column topped by a stone imperial lion. Colorful priests regally pass in pairs or lines of three or four among the students and bustling businessmen. I notice that a circle of blue sky has opened above us, corresponding almost perfectly with the traffic circle. Good omens, all.

And yet images of doom haunt me. I see the dentist’s chair. I hear the creepy drill. Dr. Mickey says he only needs local anaesthesia. I don’t want to be awake for this. I can’t imagine how he will get into the back of my mouth and pull. The last time I lost a body part, I was a pre-teen ready for braces. They put me to sleep. Last night, I dreamt of shattered teeth and blood.

Ethiopia is in my gurgling stomach. It’s written all over my skin, like a map of red stars, all my bug bites. I’m back to my monkeyish habits morning and night of counting my wounds. This morning, they’re on my bum. I stand scratching as I wait for a taxi. I’m travelling all the way to Bole for my macchiato today, hoping to absorb a bit of the good-times vibe of the well-to-do down there.

As I enter my taxi, a young lady has to move over for me. As she does so, she presents me with a whole lot of macchiato skin down her blouse. I say, “Thank you,” and take my seat. I feel the stirring of humanity. I take that as a very positive sign. It’s been a while. There’s nothing about dentistry that inspires those feelings, pain or cure.

At the café, sugar and caffeine coursing through my blood, I tally my omens, and say they are good. Bole gets good weather, being lower in altitude and some distance into the plain. The clouds take on a benevolent shade. And they have a good orange cake at the Café Paradiso, so sweet it makes your teeth ache.

Travelogue 94 – August 23
Under the Effects

It wouldn’t be fair to my readers if I didn’t admit right now that I was composing this entry under the influence of drugs. Regrettable, but if I don’t write now, I’m afraid I’ll end up allowing too much time between logs. I’ve already had complaints. I can’t even tell you which drug, which is sad. That’s half the drug-user’s joy: name-dropping. Back when I had my chipped tooth, the dentist prescribed these little nameless tablets. They do provide relief.

Out in the school courtyard, a summer sun beats down on the concrete. It’s not the timid sun of kerempt, dashing from cloud to cloud, weak and joyless, but the Ethiopian sun that I remember, blazing in a sky of royal blue. Is kerempt waning? Sunday was nearly a whole day like this. And then on Monday, I cheated by taking another trip to Nazarit, where the rule of rainy season is tenuous. It was hot, and I blamed the headache on the glare. Riding back in the bus, you watch the cloud front smashing darkly against the mountains over Addis Ababa.

The kids welcomed me back this morning by yelling my name and mobbing me. What can I tell you about the kids, after nearly a year of acquaintance? They’ve grown. My back explained that to me when I picked two of my girls up at once. That was the first of today’s persecutions.

I’ll skip the part about “cute and lovable,” and tell you they’re eager learners. There are days I enter the classroom in the morning, before school begins, when they are allowed playtime, and a group of them is sitting with books, sounding out each letter like they’re reading out loud. During recesses, I’ve seen them playing school. One or two of them, usually girls, stand before a semi-circle of kids seated on the ground. The teacher(s) points to letters that are stencilled onto our gate and walls, and the children name them.

They persevere, smiling and playing so consistently that it is easy to forget about the trials of life outside our gate. Last Friday we went to a luxo for the father of one of our boys. A luxo is something like a wake, though I don’t know where the body is. Benches and chairs are set up inside and outside the house of the bereaved. Friends and extended family take care of the immediate family and guests. People come at any time during the next few days and quietly take a seat. They stay for minutes or for hours. Often a tent is set up outside with benches for visitors. Walk around town routinely and you’ll see these tents fairly often, just as you’ll notice that a discomfiting percentage of women here are wearing the black of mourning.

This boy comes from one of the poorer households. He lives with his grandmother in a tiny mud hut that’s morbidly dark. The mother is gone. The father has been dying from AIDS for a while. The grandmother sits on her bench at the luxo, and she sighs and she groans. She has seen six of her seven children die.

But the kids go on, and I’m proud of them. It’s as close to the pride of parenthood as I’ll get, I suppose. And doesn’t every parent experience the misery of one disappointing child? Isn’t that part of the package? That’s where Jackie comes in. I’ve had to face the difficult reality that she just isn’t the smartest pup to grace this planet. Case in point: she’s had to learn how to live with a chain and collar since I’ve been back. I didn’t think that would be a challenging concept, even for a dog. For the first week, she raced to its length and squealed. Her bewildered eyes broke my heart, as much for the lack of wit in them as for the pain. The next and continuing stage was tying the chain in knots around the pole and staring from her inch of slack. I let her go in the late afternoons and she runs wild. We play stare-and-pace, which is her version of fetch, and I sigh sadly. Yes, I understand parenthood now.

Massive clouds are catching up to the sun as the afternoon shadows stretch. I wonder how much longer my pills will protect me. Around noon today, the headaches of the last few days exploded. I was besieged by waves of blinding pain, and in between the waves, I realized with a corresponding emotional pain that my adventures with Ethiopian dentists were not over. This time, it’s the other side of the jaw. I pray the pills carry me through the night, and through the jostling taxi ride tomorrow, and through the to the answer of the agonizing questions: why now? why in Ethiopia?

Travelogue 93 – August 14
Mr. Flower

Nazarit is balmy and inviting. The sun is out. The air smells clean. After we check into our hotel, we run our first errand: meeting a big boss in the city administration. Muluken sets out at a trot down the busy avenue. Muluken is older than I, though a touch of grey is the only indication. He’s wearing a suit, and still he’s outpacing me. We’ve already walked this neighbourhood from one side to the other looking for accommodation, but he’s off to the races again. I beg him to flag a taxi. He grimly cites the cost, but I get him to compromise. We catch a taxi-van. We ride to the end of the line, and then we have to walk another long way. We’ve gone to the wrong office. We walk back. Another van, another walk. We find the right office, but it’s lunch hour.

We go for tea. We seem to be downtown. The crowds are thick. The buildings are two-stories and full of small businesses. I haven’t seen one other faranji yet. Business lunchers stare. Boys begging and boys selling are so relentless I begin dismissing them like flies mid-sentence. They stand aside and fix dark eyes on me.

We meet our bigwig. He enters with the customary frowning formality. All city officials with authority that I’ve met bear the same load of ice on their shoulders. He sits behind his desk and invites us to present our case with a solemn nod, which Muluken does, with the requisite flatteries and humble timbre. The boss passes judgement in gloomy cadence: he’s grateful for our interest. They’ll do all in their power. He refers us to his subordinate, who has sat in the meeting with us. Outside, Mr. Ilala, the silent subordinate, is jolly and welcoming and full of ideas. He refers us to four kebeles, or city wards, where the need is greatest and where we will probably get most support. We bow and shake hands. Outside the gates, I stop Muluken and I insist on a taxi. He laughs indulgently.

Our favourite kebele is 03, the last one we visit. Kebele 03 is a cheraka kebele. Cheraka means moon. Basically, this area of the city was settled by squatters, who built their houses under the light of the moon. Now it’s accepted as a legitimate city ward. The taxi can’t take us all the way to the kebele office. We have to walk a ways down a muddy, narrow lane. The gate to the office is crowded by solicitors, as they often are. People are astounded to see faranj in this setting. They stare in shock as we pass through. The police sitting on benches inside the compound also stare. We’re led into a room by some young guys who I assume work for the kebele. Muluken explains. They send word to the kebele boss. This man enters and grabs me, shouting the Oromo greeting in my ear and laughing. He’s a bear of a man and dark-skinned. He listens benevolently to Muluken, and when it’s his turn to speak, he tells us he’s grateful for our interest; they’ll do all in their power, speaking in a basso profundo that makes the mud room vibrate. His name is Ato Ababa: Mr. Flower. The name is pronounced a little like “Bubba,” which I think might be more apt. He roars good-bye in Oromo after me.

Muluken and I celebrate at the Bekele Molla, a hotel on the Strip with a peaceful patio. We share some tibs and some fries. We toast to our success. I’m crying. It’s not the emotion of the occasion. It’s the amazing amount of dust in the air in this town. By evening, I’m sneezing and my nose is running like a faucet. The hotel patio is a mild respite, being off the street. I learn something new there: why those pretty, yellow birds are called weavers. They are busy flying around the trees of the patio. I finally notice their nests. They are little woven bulbs, like Chinese lanterns, hanging from the end of branches above. The birds enter from below. The handiwork is impressive. At first, I think they’re man-made. Then I’m wondering if we didn’t learn weaving from the birds.

Travelogue 92 – August 9
A Trip to Vegas

I arrive at the bus station at 7am. To call it a station is generous. It’s a muddy lot with rows of aching, idling old Eurobuses. People with bags are wandering around the iridescent puddles. The air is thick with noxious fumes. Muluken isn’t here yet, so I look for a café.

We’re going to Nazarit, a small city about 100km southeast of Addis Ababa. I say small city, though Muluken is quick to point out that Nazarit is number two in the nation now, in the same league as Bahir Dar and Dire Dawa. We’re investigating the town as a site for our second school.

Once Muluken has arrived, we search for our bus. We are the last two on board, so Muluken is squeezed into a sweaty back row, and I’m perched on a hard, little fold-down seat at the end of a crowded row. There looks to be close to a hundred people packed into this stout bus. We roll forward, angling around in the mud a while, among the other buses, and finally roll out onto the street.

My apprehensions about riding in this crowded a vehicle are put to rest. Ethiopians are mild-mannered people to begin with, and well-used to patience in crowds. Men read the paper. Women raise a hum of chatter. Everybody is still and cozy. A pudgy boy in front of me is particularly well-behaved. He jokes quietly with his mother; he passes out gum to his family. The man sitting next to me is an old friend of Muluken’s, which is not surprising: everywhere we go, we find friends of Muluken. Mulugeta is his name. He shyly points out sights for me along the way.

We pass Leeza’s graveyard on the way out of town. The town goes on and on after that. The bus station is at the southernmost edge of my Addis Ababa, the city that I know. I was vaguely aware that some neighborhoods stretched on from there, but it takes us a half hour to get clear of the city. Most of it is ugly industry, with the occasional ugly corporate building posing as style.

City buildings give way to the corrugated iron roofs of small suburbs, which give way to thatched roofs, which give way to fields and hills. It’s vividly green out here, in mid-rainy season, with abrupt and beautiful green peaks rising from the gentle hills. There’s not a soul out among the meadows and fields. These fields are not the vast and uniform farm fields of the American Midwest, but small, rough squares among the riot of natural greenery, obviously tilled by hand and by animal. There are no machines out there. My overly romantic imagination sees medieval Italy.

About the time my backside is too sore to sit anymore, we head down a long slope into the Rift Valley. Things dry out. The Seattle skies clear. We wind along among rocky gullies, eventually passing over a ridge that overlooks our destination. This is city number two? I wonder. It’s like entering Las Vegas fifty years ago, coasting down the one desolate road into town, passing hotels, silent desert ridges overlooking – though these are dotted with a bit of rainy-season growth.

It’s just like Vegas: there’s a convention in town, and there are no rooms. Nazarit is a business town, and also a government center. Until a few weeks ago, it served as capital for the Oromo regional administration. (In a bit of dirty politicking, the present federal administration moved it to Addis, in order to complicate matters for the new opposition party that will be taking over Addis’ City Hall.)

We walk and walk, led by Mulugeta, who has a computer training business in Nazarit and knows the town. We amble from hotel to hotel, along the dusty shoulder of the one asphalt road in this part of town, dodging taxis and the staring crowds. The one hotel that isn’t full wants to charge me a faranji fee. We pass.

Okay, so it’s not like Vegas. Dusty little boys tag along after you, peddling peanuts from a cone of newspaper. Horse-drawn, wooden two-wheelers stand idle here and there, ready to take you to your convention. Cattle with loose-skinned throats cross the avenue.

Mulugeta leads us off the asphalt, onto a wide dirt channel that will one day be a broad new boulevard, about a half mile to a solitary hotel that stands incongruously among the mud houses. It is used to being a luxury stop, but the road construction has diverted business. We get a great deal: hot water and mosquito nets, echoing walls of cinder block and plaster, a view over grassy courtyards and the open-air Pentecostal church next door, all for about six dollars a night. We drop off our bags and head to the Strip.

Travelogue 91 – August 2
The Voices

It’s not raining tonight. If it were raining, all I would hear is the steady percussion of water on my iron roof, and on everyone else’s iron roof. Every shower is a deluge here, to judge by the sound.

Instead, I faintly catch a hint of something else. I stop and listen. It sounds like a crowd. It sounds like someone shouting through a bullhorn angrily and a crowd roaring something in approval.

The day before, more results in May’s federal elections were announced. That’s why I listen intently. A few months ago, these elections led to demonstrations and the deaths of forty people when the military opened fire on protestors. The city shut down. Everything was closed, and taxis were parked.

I listen outside. The echoing shouts are eerie. I climb up the school’s jungle gym to catch the sound better. It drifts down our little valley, undulating, reverberating. The air in these little vales is thick with voices. We get them day and night, from the churches, from children’s shouts, from radios, from salesmen and policemen up the hill with megaphones. And what is this now? The night is so peaceful, I think it might be something from another time. Maybe it is; it seems no one else heard them.

We had a delegation of important visitors a week or so ago. They met our children and their parents, all huddling inside the classroom against the rain, watching the TV that Saba brought from home for the occasion. The kids shyly sang and posed for pictures. The parents watched the visitors, humbly, expectantly. They asked what would happen to their children. Our guests gushed with American affirmations: any opportunity is theirs to have. The parents sigh happily and grasp the visitors’ hands and thank them with trembling emotion. I feel guilty for having brought them. As they’re leaving, one guest puts money in my hand and says to treat them all to lunch.

Ethiopians love ceremony. A week later, we arrange for a big feast at the school. Before eating, the staff and the parents trade small orations. The parents want to tell me again how grateful they are. One mother tells us how she feared her boy was autistic before enrolling him in our program. Now, he talks and plays. He was abducted by beggars once when he was little. Apparently, they like to grab little children for begging companions and maim them for effect. Fortunately, neighbors spotted the little boy in time.

A tall grandfather with a mischievous and nearly toothless grin wants me to know how happy they are with our teacher, who treats their children like family. He wants me to know how much it means to them that I live with them in their “slum.” I make promises. When they eat, they eat quietly, and with a decorum that might be awakened by the classroom atmosphere.

It’s at this meal that I break my tooth. We staff members eat after everyone has gone. It seems that bits of bone settle toward the bottom of the pot. We rush off to the dentist. This is one business sector I was ready to boycott in Ethiopia. I find the types of pain I encounter in dentist’s chairs to be unforgivable. I beg dentists for novocaine, even for cleanings. They tsk-tsk. But now, being forced to face those murderous instruments far from home is one more reason to question God’s good will.

Luckily, I haven’t chipped it too deep. That evening, the dentist on staff, with hostile stares and incomprehensible mumbles, installs a temporary filling. It only hurts when he pours air over it, like hurrying a wet sock with a hair dryer. The next morning, I face an Asian lady who is even more incomprehensible. I stop her, drill in hand. “Pain!” I say with intensity. “No pain, no pain.” And to my credit, I surrender to the ordeal, sweating and ready to cry though I am. For the most part, she is correct. When she isn’t, I jump in a very communicative way. It’s over quickly. She peers at the filling. She picks at it and worries it with her drill. “How’s that?” the cute assistant asks. I smile. I’m discharged. A day later, my tongue is raw from the sharp edge left over. Shall I return?

Travelogue 90 – July 26
Clouds

On my flight from London, I sit next to a young man returning to Iraq. I gather somewhere along the way that he is Kurdish. He’s happy to fly. I’m judging he’s never done it before; I have to show him how to find his seat and how to buckle his seatbelt. He wants to know where the toilet is. He excitedly peeks at his cell phone throughout the flight, the screen of which features an unflattering, candid self-portrait. When he’s not doing that, he’s leaning over me to gaze out the window, his hand on my arm, even when there’s nothing to see but cloud tops. He turns to me with a wondering smile.

The innocent Kurd disembarks in Amman, a stop that the flight makes on the way to Addis, and I can’t help wondering what kind of dangers await him after his next short flight. Most of our passengers leave with him, one of them in a gurney. A Jordanian emergency medical team boards and escorts her off the plane. I don’t know what happened to her. She’s apologizing to us as she goes. After that, it’s quiet. For four nighttime hours, it’s quiet, and I’m amazed to find myself on a painless flight. We arrive at 3:00 am. Muluken is waiting for me. I smell Ethiopia in the night.

I awake to rain. I knew to expect it. We’re well into kerempt, Ethiopian winter, the rainy season. The concrete in our little courtyard is slick with moss. My breath escapes as mist. The hills above are shrouded in diffuse clouds. The hills below, beyond the wide valley, the ones that were always a desert brown, are green with grass now. Every day is the same. The sun is rare. Some time in the day, it will pour.

Afternoon is my favourite time of day. I sit on the front step of the school, facing the empty playground. It’s quiet -- except for the echoing cadences of the priest in the church up the hill. He’s preaching hell and brimstone and broadcasting it to the whole valley. At dawn, it’s a haunting voice raised in hymns. This afternoon it’s all angry words of love.

Threatening clouds pass overhead, rolling in from the south, toward the mountains. There’s no wind. The tall eucalyptus trees surrounding the house are still. The small songbirds that usually wait for crumbs are zipping around overhead. It takes me a while to spot their prey: some long-winged insect fluttering across the sky, maybe fifty feet up. They’re all going the same direction, looking hopelessly vulnerable among the zooming birds. A wing from one doomed bug floats down to us. Jackie sniffs it and tries to eat it.

Jackie has grown! I feared for her when I left last spring because she was stuck in her awkward adolescent ugliness. Her body was stretching forward and backward, making her look like a scruffy dachshund. Well, in the intervening months, she’s become a pretty little dog. The dachshund gene lives on, but it looks like the weiner dog was bred with a red fox. She’s grown a luxurious coat of fire. She prances around daintily on light feet. She turns a tiny face up at you with bright eyes and huge ears, and once again, you’re convinced she is the cutest mutt to ever grace the continent.

Travelogue 89 – July 19
Bath

When I visit Pey, I stay in the topmost room of her tall Edwardian home, the home that stands in a row with other tall houses of yellow stone. It’s a cozy room under the steep peak of the roof. There are two large windows cut from the slant of my low-slung ceiling. I stand at one and look out over most of Bath, snug among the hills of the green river valley. The river is the River Avon, eagerly running toward Bristol, the Bristol Channel, and the sea. The air here reminds you of Oregon, and I think of the ocean, though Pey’s husband tells me it’s not close enough to smell.

From the window, I can see all the yellow buildings of the old town. The famous abbey is to the right, with its high square tower. You can just about make out its fifteenth-century façade, where angels climb Jacob’s ladder, and olive trees with crowns are carved to commemorate Bishop Oliver King. The abbey overlooks the hot springs that gave the town its name. The Roman ruins were only discovered in the late nineteenth century, and are now surrounded by a slightly ludicrous structure from that era, memorializing the Roman roots of the town. Next door is a Georgian structure that houses the Pump Room, where royalty and lords rubbed elbows, received their treatments, drank the mineral waters. A tour of the baths is well worth the time. The site is redolent with history, from ancient Celts to Romans to Brits. Most fun is learning how the Romans built and enjoyed their baths. There is a collection of Roman curses that were tapped into bits of metal and thrown into the springs for someone else’s bad luck. Directly across the valley from my window is the Royal Crescent, an imposing set of eighteenth century houses standing above a beautiful, expansive park and garden, mirroring in a way the younger set of worker’s rowhouses on this side of the valley.

It’s summer. The perennial cloud cover is broken, and blue shines cheerfully over the quiet town. You wake at dawn, which comes so early here. You listen to the sea gulls. You listen to the muffled roar and the clacking of the train below.

The train brought me in yesterday. Pey wasn’t home yet, so I sought out the Caffe Nero that I remembered from last time, passing along the central shopping avenue, surrendered to pedestrians. I’m numb from travel, but the short, quaint buildings several centuries old, the accents, the Italian of the visiting school kids all work to revive my spirits.

In the crowded café, an older couple shares my table. They recognize my accent, and ask where I’m from. She’s impatient when I answer, “The US.” “Of course, but where?” They love America, they tell me. They have traveled there often, particularly Florida and Texas. The man has a sweet, yellow smile. His face is deeply creased, and he looks the part of ageing sailor’s son. His voice is gentle and cultivated, and you have no problem believing his story of being lost in the bad side of Miami, asking some “colored children” on the corner for directions, and receiving quite naturally a polite reply. “It’s all in how you treat people, isn’t it?” he purrs.

Speaking with him, I feel like I’m warming up from a week in the icebox. And I don’t refer to Minnesota, which was sweltering when I left. I mean the numbing agonies of bad travel: waiting some thirty hours for Northwest to find us a plane, (as we mere passengers play pawns in their labor dispute with the mechanics,) suffering next to a fidgety teenager all nine hours of my overnight flight, stumbling from train to train on my way to Bath, slipping from brief black comas to open-eyed hypnosis as tidy, green English fields trip by. I’m deposited in fair Bath. Pey will be along later. I swing my bags over unfeeling shoulders. I walk and I listen, and slowly I awaken to Europe again. Its accents have saved me before.

Travelogue 88 -- July 11
Acceptance

I tilt away from the computer; the bed tilts toward me. Eventually, dreams make their way through the stagnant heat. I wake up at first light, dim light in the basement windows. I sleep again until the dreams stand and leave. I stand later. The bed tilts away into its concrete corner, where mould creeps up from the soggy carpet. It's always murky down here. My morning mirror is an odd bit of art someone installed in Craig's basement. They painted a rectangle of grey -- I think it's grey, but in this light, it's hard to tell -- and added daubs of white paint, in which they had a cat leave its paw prints. Among these are shards of a mirror glued to the wall. My face is shadowy there. I have to return to my 98 Imac, to watch my work flicker in the unstable screen. But I look into my eyes and say, "This is my life."

What I'm looking at are dead man's eyes. I have to go again, suddenly. Minnesota stands and leaves. It seems the foundation has a golden opportunity in Addis Ababa. I have to go meet it. Summer tilts away, just as the cicadas are warming up their instruments. Last sights are pale.

The sky today is blank and dense. I go to St. Mary's by Lake Calhoun. It's Greek Orthodox; it has a small golden dome; it stands on a green bluff overlooking the lake. The interior is light and airy, unlike those of sister churches in the Old World. There are no teenage girls lining up to bump heads with icons. Instead, there are toddlers getting out of daycare. Several are screeching outside the sanctuary door as I try to pray. It's awkward praying for another soul. I want her to be happy. She loved this church; she came here often to find peace. I look up into the dome and try to decipher the Greek. There are the four evangels, painted in modern primitive imitating ancient primitive. The toddlers are led away. There's peace.

I've gotten some calls and some emails from friends who have remembered it was two years ago she died. These messages seem to come just as the pain is most intense. When Eric calls, I'm sitting in a park in her old neighborhood. The sky is heavy and glaring, just like the days after she died, when I wandered these blocks like a ghost. Maybe I thought my ghost could find her. The sky was so flat and bright, I began to think it was night. Eric called just after I had heard a Whitney Houston song that my Leeza loved. Whitney Houston in the coop? It's never happened until today. Whitney Houston: I used to laugh at her.

Coincidences don't surprise me. There was always something magical about her. The night she died, before I knew, Troy and I walked onto the railroad bridge across the Mississippi that was close to our apartment complex. The sky was alive with the aurora borealis. It was only the second time I have seen it, and this was nothing like the first time. Green waves of light danced across half the sky.

When I got home, there was a message from Leeza's cousin. There was an accident. No one would tell the family anything. He gave me the number they were given. Yes, she was there. "What can you tell me?" I asked, full of terror. The man answered irritably, "I can tell you she's dead."

Leeza tilts away. She finds her new place. I remember that I lost all my breath. I sank to the floor, and it took forever. I couldn't find my voice to talk into the phone. Some time later, I find it again. And all it has is a long, jagged, "No!" I've thought about that cry often over two years. It was a sin. I pray to cleanse it.

"This is my life," I say to the shadow in the mirror with dark eyes. I turn back to the computer. In a while I'll eat again. Some time I have to start packing again.

Travelogue 87 -- July 4
Fictions, Part Two

It’s Independence Day, and two columnists raise their voices about the threatened imprisonment of two journalists who protected their sources against Bush administration prosecution. Instinctively, you set them aside, hidden inside the lightest section of the Sunday paper – the four-page opinion section – and root around among the real stuff. You glance at headlines – death in Baghdad and holiday traffic – and pick up Entertainment. Now we’re talking. Hall and Oates are back, and there’s a web site that analyzes box office statistics. Read why “Cinderella Man” didn’t rake in what it could have. Page after page.

“Praise Fukin Jesus” the sign says. Ben and I are taking a stroll along Venice Beach. I’m drawn to the rambling, magic-marker posters hung beside the sidewalk. There are about a dozen of them, and they rant in dense, meandering text about religion and poetry. (Behind them, bright sand to the blue ocean edge.) “Praise Fukin Jesus” crows the title of one of the posters. I’m intrigued, but I find little to grab onto in the accompanying diatribe. A long list of LA people are false, he’s reporting.

The author isn’t false. He calls to Ben from behind his table. He’s black, with short, kinky dreads. He tells Ben that he looks like Bruce Jenner. Ben pauses to chat. When the man finds out Ben is a musician, he’s full of nodding encouragement. But don’ t sell out, he advises. “Don’t walk over the gold to get to the coal, man,” he shouts as we’re leaving. “That’s what Jenner did when he put himself on that Wheaties box, man. Don’t do it.”

It’s my second trip to Venice. Carolyn brought me on my first day in LA. We walk along the sidewalk together, beside the merchants and their wares. T-shirts seem the money-maker along this strip. At one stall, you can get just about any slogan you can imagine with the word “fuck” in it. There are tattoo parlors, of course, and music vendors. There’s even a bookstore. Vendors at their tables are plying crystals and baskets and African art. There’s a steady stream of people on roller blades.

One of them wears all white, including white shin pads and a white turban. He’s playing an electric guitar and coasting along behind a pretty girl, serenading her with a blissful smile. Carolyn tells me excitedly, “That’s Harry! He’s famous.” Later, Carolyn’s brother informs me that Harry is a runner. He’s seen Harry running all the way up in Malibu, white turban and all. We come to Muscle Beach, and I laugh to see it. It’s like a petting zoo, and I wonder what attraction it has for the animals. They’re scarce today. One stands in chiseled languor, rolling massive lozenges of metal over his shoulders, apparently massaging them. We move on. I’m enjoying the sun and the sea, wishing I had brought my running shoes, so I could breathe deeply of the salt air all the way up to Malibu myself.

Craig, Eman, and I stumble out of the discount theater, having enjoyed the evening’s romp of the stars across the Sahara. The lead couple close the movie in self-aware displays of beauty on the beach at Monterey. We leave them there and lurch across the dank and peeling lobby, where the counter kids are romping unself-consciously. One has a trash bag over her shoulder.

We go to Manning’s, the neighborhood bar behind the railroad tracks from Craig’s house. They have free popcorn. A barista at my regular café sits in the booth behind us. She has an angelic face. Her smile is beautiful as ever, but her big, blue eyes are glassy and rimmed with red. They’ve been drinking a good log while. I find out she was a film major. She’s written a screenplay, something about girlfriends from different races, something “you don’t see in Hollywood.” She’s moving to Chicago to take a Master’s course in media studies. I want to ask what that is. “It buys me some time,” she says with a shrug.

Suddenly she says, “Dude, you’re friends ditched you.” I turn around, and sure enough, Craig and Eman have sneaked away. They’ll get a good laugh out of this later. The barista stares foggily after them. Her friend tells the story of being ditched by a man named Ditcher. They talk movies. Merrily, we carry on, swapping movie plots and favorite scenes for another hour.

Travelogue 86 -- June 29
Fictions, Part One

I haven't been to this theater before. There are about four or five discount movie theaters in the area. This one's in a suburb called Roseville, (which hosts the mall called Rosedale, as opposed to Southdale or Brookdale ….) It shares space with a run-down supermarket. The seats are slowly collapsing forward. The lobby seems vaguely eastern European, and the theater is dank. But we're here to beat the humidity and while away some time. I get a chance to escape obsession over my foundation. We're going to travel to the Sahara: that's the name of the movie. We pull up for the late show, just as the summer sun settles into its bed of angry reds.

The movie is better than expected. That means it's entertaining. That means it has beautiful co-stars. That means it’s unbelievable in less irritating ways than most Hollywood productions. It’s set in Africa. It begins in Nigeria and moves into Mali, both of which are real countries. The last Hollywood movie I saw that was set in Africa, “The Interpreter,” made up a country. The Mali in “Sahara” is ruled by a photogenic, evil general named Kazim. Hollywood claims a lot of dramatic license in Africa.

Maybe it’s that Hollywood identifies a kinship with Africa. There’s something otherworldly about both. I visit Hollywood the night before I leave LA. I stroll Hollywood Boulevard with Carolyn, Ben, and Lauren. I’m unabashedly staring. It’s been twenty years since I’ve been in Hollywood. It has evolved. Note: there is a reason we have separate words for “improve” and “evolve.”

There are helicopters hovering noisily overhead. Ben says it’s either a premier or a pursuit, two of the most characteristic of LA happenings. There’s activity ahead. The boulevard is blocked in front of Grahman’s Chinese with cop cars and tape. We advance.

It’s late at night. We encounter a group of break dancers. They’ve gathered a small crowd, many of whom seem more interested in their own dancing. We pass Marilyn and Elvis impersonators. We pass a clown who is apparently on break. He’s smoking and gossiping with friends, and I remark how his face paint loses coherence without the actor’s participation. We pass tables where Scientologists are staring down their would-be converts. The signs on their tables say, “Stressed?”

They’ve built a huge mall on Hollywood Boulevard. Above it are strange monuments – homage to the old movie “Hollywood Babylon”, Ben says – huge elephants and a pseudo-ancient gateway. We’re closing in on the block in question. Ben’s guessing it’s a premier. Maybe it’s because on one side of the street is a movie theater lit to noontime intensity advertising “Herbie.” A cop is pulling down tape. Competing with the roar of the copters, we ask. It was a pursuit.

We only have a minute to prowl the courtyard at Grauman’s Chinese, looking over the handprints. I came here several times when I was a kid, sticking my tiny hands in the wells left by the greats. We head back down the boulevard, and I watch the stars in the sidewalk, test myself. We stop in at Musso and Frank’s, an old-time Hollywood watering hole. Dark wood and red lights and golden wallpaper above us, depicting pheasants in the woods. We sit at the bar, and Lauren tells me about Fung Shui and her movie career. I’m guessing Carolyn and Ben are discussing restaurants. Carolyn is a connoisseur. I’ve done a lot of fine dining on this trip, and I’m starting to enjoy it.

I’m thinking of the plane flight into LA. It’s mid-afternoon. My view of the sprawl is too clear. I’m leaning my head against the cabin wall, staring down at the grey blocks and highways unfolding. I’m thinking I may pick out the neighborhood I grew up in. I’m thinking it’s funny I’ve my hair grown out, so it looks just about the way it used to when I lived in California. I’m thinking, “My God, I hate this place.” A week later, staying up late in Hollywood, I have to admit to Ben that I’ve had a good time. It might be the first time I’ve had anything nice to say about California.

Travelogue 85 -- June 25
In Our Skins

I'm back on my bike, headed toward the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis's notorious modern art museum. The sun is intense. It heats the stew we're all moving through, the Midwestern humidity. Everything glares and the glare swims. I'm making very slow progress, stopping every chance I can, for coffee, or for a bit of staring at the green grass in a park. Vaguely, I worry about my skin. I brought back a bit of brown from my week in LA. Carolyn's dad, whom we visited in Oxnard on Father's Day, was telling me about his periodic visits to the doctor, where they burn off the proliferating little skin cancers that always come back. He served in embassies in Africa and Australia and New Zealand. Skin is my only distressing thought. I stare at the grass, savoring the fun of the trip.

I'm going to see Paul Auster talk at the Walker. He's a contemporary author, another one whom I don't know whether I like or not. After eleven novels, I'm not sure what's he's said. He's more interesting talking about art than producing it -- a common phenomenon these days. But I enjoy seeing the Walker, just re-opened after a major expansion. The first time I saw the new building was in a story in Newsweek that I read on the trip home from Ethiopia. It's the first effort by the Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron in America. They're big in Europe, and they're designing the Olympic stadium in China.

I saw the new Walker from the freeway a few times, once I was back. It looks like a grey box standing insolently over the tangled skeins of traffic on Hennepin Avenue and on the freeway, beside the brick box of the old Walker, which stands beside the glass front of the old Guthrie Theater. (The Guthrie is getting new digs of its own by the river. The building is just taking shape, looking like a stout tugboat with a rounded bow and two planks for bad performers, all being covered in skin like midnight blue glass.) In front of these two venerable cultural institutions is the sculpture garden and its hedges, and the iconic cherry-and-spoon sculpture. Behind is one of the few sets of hills in flat Minneapolis, home to our own little Beverly Hills, Kenwood.

The new building is a grey box. From a distance, it could be dull plastic. Closer, there's a sheen to it. The surface undulates. "Herzog and de Meuron are into skins," a Walker worker tells me. This "skin" is made of aluminum tiles that are actually fine screens and shaped with wavy patterns. They were put in place randomly, according to a plan generated by a computer. All materials were cheap and local, dictated by the philosophy of the architects. Inside is fun; there are no straight lines. Halls meander; you walk uphill and down among white walls and strange shapes.

Frank Gehry doesn't like straight lines, either -- (though I'm told he hates the new Walker.) Carolyn and I get a tour of his new building in downtown LA, the Walt Disney Concert Hall. The inside is crooked and unpredictable, like the Walker's, like a carpeted maze, where views over railings take in several other floors. Windows and skylights show you bits of superstructure and the back sides of those wild silver wings that surround the exterior. The outside, the skin, will remind you of the Weisman here in Minneapolis, also designed by Gehry, with its gleaming metallic curves. Apparently, when the concert hall first went up, its crazy walls, burnished to mirror intensity, were baking neighbors in their apartments. The walls have been brushed now to a duller glow. Still, when I step outside after the tour, I'm squinting painfully from the LA sun off silver walls and white pavement and car chrome. It's all a bit dizzying.

Downtown LA is coming back, they'll tell you. I remember it from years ago as silent-film era brick and stone with dirty sidewalks hosting hordes of homeless and poor Mexicans. That still exists, down by Broadway. Some of the architecture there is gorgeous, and sadly neglected. Carolyn points out the grand old theaters, open only once a year for admirers. But walk down in numbers, and up the hill, past Pershing Square Park, and you emerge on this shining plateau, presided over by the concert hall.

Carolyn takes me to work one day. She works at the Getty Center in the hills above West LA. I wander the complex all day, somewhat blissed. And why wouldn't I be blissed? It's as close as I've ever seen to heaven in modern architecture. No modern building has seduced me into believing in human potential like this one. For skin, this set of structures has Italian travertine, big blocks cut to preserve its textures, and cut to exhibit hundreds of fossilized leaves. The Center glows on its hilltop, especially as the sun sinks toward the hills to the west. You can stand on a variety of beautiful terraces, looking out over Brentwood and Bel Air, or over hazy LA all the way to downtown, or over the hills to the sea. You meander among buildings designed by people with a refreshingly classical taste of beauty. You meander among fountains and meditative niches between buildings, where stones sit in suggestive little arrangements. You amble down through a wonderfully tasteful garden that is oriented toward the Pacific. You return to the galleries, where you stand in front of Monet or Van Gogh's "Irises" or Renoir's "Promenade" among a rabble of school children. I suppose children do get admission into heaven, though maybe they won't be as noisy in the real thing.

And here it is at the Getty, it must be said, that I met my first knight. Carolyn has made an appointment for me with "Sir Ken," who works in their education program. I'm not sure whether to bow. I wouldn't do it properly, anyway, so I make myself uncomfortable on the edge of the chair, and I marvel, as he addresses me genially enough. I marvel how much he looks and sounds like Michael Caine.

Travelogue 84 -- June 15
Neighborhoods, Part Three

Just up the coast from Duino, the train stops at a town called Monfalcone. I stop at Monfalcone. I have my bag with me. I used up my two nights at the James Joyce, and all other hotels are full. Besides, I'm sick of the Teutonic haughtiness of Trieste people. I have to stay in the area because I fly out of here in a few days. Monfalcone is close to the airport. It's a short ride from Trieste. It's a couple hours from Venice, which I'll revisit on my last day in Italy.

Monfalcone is a port city. You walk downhill from the station. People look at you curiously. There's a small downtown, with cafes and restaurants and a miniature basilica not yet a hundred years old, adorned with a mosaic of a big-eared Ambrose. There aren't many hotels. The first one I see is far too expensive. The second is little less. I sigh and ask the clerk where I can find a cheaper hotel. "You can't," she drawls. She looks at me with classic Italian indolence. Her eyes are bright blue, though her hair is black. "Okay," she starts again, and she offers me a lower price. I ask again. There must be somewhere cheaper. She reacts with lazy irritation; she lowers the price again. I shake my head sadly. In her languorous accent, she continues the argument, touting the virtues of the hotel. She's kind of pretty. She's gangly. She bites her nails. She has a big nose in a long face, but there's sex appeal. Maybe it's the "wonder bra." Later, she proudly tells me all about it. This is Lisa. I begin to haggle, having fun now. She eyes me with heavy shades of irony. We find her last price, and I agree, though I shouldn't pay that much. Over the weekend, she tells the story of my haggling to all her co-workers, with a mischievous grin.

"Why do you stop in Monfalcone?" she asks with distaste. She hates the place. It's so boring. She likes Trieste, where she went to school. She's from Trento in the north. She lives here with her boyfriend, Ranieri, which I think is a great name, especially so near Duino. But he has sexual problems. I hear all about them over wine that night. She wants children very badly, and the problems make that difficult. She sighs and shrugs. She attacks. "America," she spits. "It's a culture of violence." She laments over Iraq. I nod. I say it reminds me of Mussolini in Ethiopia. She smirks and drops it. When I say I don't like the people in Trieste, that I think they're snobbish, she says, "What do you expect? You look like a German tramp." I laugh. I'm happy with that.

Lisa promises to take me to a nice beach town nearby, but she doesn't. Instead, she takes me home the next night and makes me dinner. I'm surprised by her place. It's a picture from a bourgeois magazine, stainless steel in the kitchen, huge TV screen in the salon, cabinets with doors of smoked glass. She shows me her collection of lingerie and then starts cooking. I get to hear more about Ranieri's sexual dysfunction, and some about other men. There's a famous professor in Venice who takes a shine to her. He won't touch her, except for her feet. He keeps stool samples. She shrugs dramatically. "Why do I find these men?" She smokes and smokes. "You don't mind?"

Her co-worker in the day shift is a stout, grizzled old fellow who arrives on a Vespa. He reads crosswords under his glasses and glances wryly at Lisa when she tells her stories, implying he doesn't want to know. She tells him about her new negligee. "Hmm," he replies. Her co-worker at night is a young guy. She tells me he has three girlfriends. He nods contentedly. We pour ourselves sangria from the counter stock. They talk rapid fire and I almost understand. They laugh. He says Lisa's bed is even cheaper than the deal she gave me at the hotel. She informs him with an evil grin than I am a gentleman. A friend of the other night clerk mistakes the schedule and comes in with a black hooker. Lisa stares balefully. After they make their retreat, she comments, "They say white men take black wives because they want slaves." I tell her she's full of shit. She grins and fixes me with girlish blue eyes. In the morning, I'm sad. "Lisa, I'm leaving for London." She smiles, and those round, blue eyes take a moment to rise to meet mine. She shrugs.

Arrivals and arrivals. I make it to Psycho Susie's, the bar in Northeast Minneapolis next to the car wash, the one with the line of motorcycles in the parking lot. Entering the patio area, you wade through dense stares. These are the hoi polloi of hipness. The waitresses are exhibitions of blue and green and orange skin. I find my table. They're a boisterous group. It’s Stella's birthday. She introduces all the woman. They've nearly all slept with one another at one time or another. I can't keep track. They shoot each other with water pistol watches. Talk turns to sex, and turns again to sex. I learn some things I didn’t know. I have more indirect proof of Woman's elusive libido. It capers about before me in the dusk, dancing among the sprays of water from plastic clocks, among the bawdy laughter. I don't fit in at all. I'm happy. I'm home.

Travelogue 83 -- June 13
Neighborhoods, Part Two

There's not a soul on the street as I bike. I don't mind. It exaggerates the eerie beauty of the sundown. Just me and the animals. Their kingdom has gone riot. While we of the dominant species scrupulously observe our routines, the animals crowd into our yards. Every day now, I see baby grackles hopping around the grass irritably, while a parent screeches at it from the safety of a tree limb. It looks up at me with exasperation. "Yeah," I say, "that's kind of how it goes in this world. You may as well play along." I keep an eye out for cats. This very morning, as I exit my daily café, my cute barista is bent over a baby bird gasping on the window sill. Its gangly half-wings are spread. Its bill is gaping angrily. She's shooing it with an ad for a local band, until the poor thing has retreated along the sill away from the sidewalk and into a doorway. The human shrugs to me with a sunny smile. "That's better, isn't it?"

With a shrug and a mordant smile, the hotel clerk acquiesces. He doesn't have to give me the cut rate on a holiday weekend. But it's the first quote he gave me over the phone. Maybe it's because there's construction going on outside the window. Maybe it’s because he's Croatian, and details are all a matter of shrugs to a Slav. He's as friendly as they get in this town, which means he always greets me with an ambiguous grin, and he modulates his sarcasm. I usually find him slouching outside with a cigarette.

This neighborhood of Trieste, just south of the great piazza, seems to be the analogy to New York's Village or Minneapolis' Uptown: where the hipsters have built nests. There are strange little cafes with alternative flair, manned by people with unorthodox hair and humble mien -- that half-friendly, half-mocking fatalism that marks the savviest youth these days. There are lots of people walking dogs in the late afternoon as I explore. They stop for earnest hello's among themselves and then push on. I push on with my exploration, passing pretty but forlorn little parks, passing Svevo in bronze, but eventually the town exhausts itself against the steep hills that run into the sea. Uphill are residential streets into the clouds. I turn back. This is it -- Trieste: a gem of imperial beauty abandoned to this somber bunch of dog-walkers. In the day, they dress up and jostle each other along the avenues. They don't look up.

One night, there's a classical choral performance in the church of San Nicola by the water. I arrive early, but not early enough for a seat. I stand behind the reserved seats in the middle, most of which remain empty until the show is well under way. Shrewder people have arrived early enough for the beautiful wooden benches along the sides. I'm excited. The combination of nations that is so unfortunate out on the street should make magic with the opera. Indeed, once we finally get going, the spectacle is dazzling: the choir, all women, stand in black evening gowns in the midst of this sumptuous Orthodox church that is choked with icons and silver and electric candles. The music soars. The locals check each other out. The citizens with reserved seats stagger their late entries for effect. I've made the mistake of carrying in the books I've had with me all day. I keep them in a plastic bag. Afraid to rustle, I stand still on the stone floor until my hips and knees and ankles are screaming. I beat an early retreat.

The next day, I take the bus up to Duino. There, a small castle clings to the rocky coast just north of Trieste, the humble retreat of a princely family that owns it to this day. The von Thurn und Taxis were an enlightened bunch, fond of inviting artists and poets like Rilke, who made the place famous with his Duino Elegies. The bus drops you off right at the castle entrance, in the heart of the tiny town, which is really only a few cafes and some winding residential streets. You take the tour of the castle and its gardens, looking at family portraits, climbing the tower, gazing out windows over the sea. When you're done, you walk down the street to where the "Rilke" trail, (having nothing to do with the poet, in actuality,) leads you along the top of spectacular cliffs all the way to the nearby town of Sistiana, where yachters gather in a pretty half moon bay. You try to compose poems as you walk. Or, when it's clear the Muse has abandoned this coast, you improvise limericks.

There was a young man named Maria
Who never once practiced santeria
Instead he wrote lines
For circular minds
Saying love is God's best panacea.

And then you give it up, and you look at the blue sea instead.

Travelogue 82 -- June 6
Neighborhoods, Part One

I'm happy. I'm bicycling to Psycho Susie's. That's a bar in Northeast Minneapolis where there's a large outdoor patio, where the waitresses all have extravagant tattoos, where I'm due to meet Scottie and a merry pack of lesbians for a birthday party. I'm happy. The sun has been out a few days now, even as it dodges stubborn legions of clouds. Right now, it's setting and teasing the clouds with blasts of pink. I'm biking through blocks and miles of peaceful neighborhoods, house after staid house. The sky and its gentle colors seems like an extension of the neighborhood, a field of contentment. I'm so happy it starts to feel like a burden.

You travel up the east coast of Italy, up past Venice, and you might notice a certain change in atmosphere. For a while, it seems like a normal day on the Italian trains. Black-haired students jabber; a businessman spars on the cell phone; an old woman trains unwavering black eyes on you and frowns. Outside, the fields roll by, punctuated by cute towns and their small stations. Tame hills undulate out to the horizon. And then, you may notice some of the teenage girls getting on have rosier cheeks than they should. Some are blonde. But they chatter blithely on with the same twang as the rest, popping bubble gum in their teeth, and oblivious to strangers, just like any Italian kids. There's something disturbingly Aryan about them, nevertheless. And then, suddenly, rocks push out of the peaceful hillsides, pushing them up, making them mountainous in a scrubby, Sierra Nevada way. The coast emerges again, and it’s eerily similar to the Greek coast. Not so eerie, I suppose, since you've turned the corner onto the east coast of the Adriatic.

I arrive in Trieste, and the first thing I notice is the grandeur. I walk out of the train station onto the bustling streets, and I wander into town, my jaw opening a bit wider with every block. Admittedly, it's because I'm tired. My bag has grown heavier at every stop. And the hotels are a ways from the station. But it's also the impact of the city. I'm back in the Empire, back in Vienna. This was, after all a Hapsburg port for centuries, and one that experienced a boom in the early eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. You see its wealthy nineteenth century lining the streets, neoclassical beauties rich in the grandest ornamentation, in the wide avenues and the proud plazas.

I learn something new about Italian culture right away. There's a holiday they call Liberazione in April, commemorating Mussolini's political and/or mortal demise. It's a three-day weekend, and Italians make the most of it. All the hotels are booked. One nice hotel clerk calls around for me. She finds me a room in the James Joyce Hotel. I should explain that Trieste was home to the Irish author for some years.

I pass Joyce himself on the way to the hotel. He stands in bronze beside the Grand Canal looking dreamily into the distance. The quote says he left his soul in Trieste. I'm not sure what Irish visitors think when they see that. Maybe they don't see it too often. One thing I notice about this city: you are hard-out to find any tourist literature or even postcards. Apparently, the city has yet to wake up to its own attractions, or maybe it resents them in some hybrid German-Italian way.

For I'm also quick to notice the change in attitude among the citizenry. Sidewalks are crowded with frowning people who won't vary from the straight line they're walking. Pedestrians wait at traffic signals. They rush into office buildings after brusque and functional conversations. I have strayed across some border.

Making my way to the hotel, I pass through several of the prettiest areas of the city. One of them centers around the Grand Canal, where Joyce dreams of being where he is. Stately structures line the sides of the canal. Small boats are moored beside outdoor café tables, where a chilly wind chases away all but the hardiest. At the head of the canal is the stark, green soul of neo-classicism, the Sant' Antonio Nuovo Church, Roman temple from dome to steps. More interesting is the Serb-Orthodox church on the canal, St. Spiridon, with its blue domes and gilded mosaics.

Walk on, south and parallel to the sea, and you come upon the Piazza Unita, heart of the town, and stunning every time you see it. It opens up onto the sea, and on three sides it's lovely facades. In front of the ornate City Hall with its clock tower is an eighteenth century fountain with allegorical figures cavorting among rocks, a la Piazza Navona. Behind the City Hall, behind the piazza, the town runs up the sides of the mountains, pausing at a Roman amphitheatre and, further up, a medieval castle and cathedral. Just before sundown, you'll want to enter the piazza from the south. The sun is descending just out of sight, to the left, making the mosaics on the Palazzo Governo shimmer with color. You approach the sea. Crossing the seaside road, you walk out onto the pier and you watch the sun set over the water. The hilly coastline stretches off toward your right, catching all the last glow, and diminishes in the direction of Venice.

Travelogue 81 -- May 30
The Potentates

God is playing with us. Or the gods of global warming. Bands of quick clouds fly over Minnesota, dumping rain here and there, painting the skies dramatically. When it's dry, the air is thick with fluff from the dandelions and cottonwood trees. June's a few days away, and no one dares take off his or her jacket.

Raul paces the parking lot, a dwarfish bobcat. He was due twenty minutes ago, and now he crosses the asphalt in front of us, not acknowledging us, murmuring into his cell phone. As it happens, we have to speak to this man, who owns the lease on the building that Baja inhabits. Eman and Craig have plans to open up a café, and there's space for rent in this vestige of old, brick Minneapolis.

Finally, he hangs up and approaches. For us, he has sulky glances and, "You wanna see the place?" We enter. It's one long room, spare wooden floors, high ceilings, and bare brick walls, divided arbitrarily by the skeletons of a few new walls. He grumbles that if there isn't enough interest, he'll sell the building. We've already had it from the bartenders at the Baja that Raul doesn't own the building. In fact, he's facing a few legal battles over his trick of asking payment on bills a few times over. We explain our plan, and he nods sullenly, checking his cell phone.

Ravenna is a surprise. I like when places surprise me. It's smaller than I expected. I suppose a few things can happen in the fourteen hundred years since a city is the western capital of the empire. You have to catch a small regional train from Ferrara or Bologna to get there. I also, ignorantly, expected a sea front. But it's a whole lot of marsh away from the sea. In fact, the town seems to face away from the sea. You exit the train station and walk inland into town. I quickly recognize that I've re-entered northern Italy. It's the way people walk and the way they train their eyes. No more yelling, no more cocky gestures. It's back to that familiar, cold European irony and self-assurance.

My first excursion is to find Dante's tomb. It’s the reason I came, following through on my resolution a few years ago to complete the Dante tour. Here's where the poet died, after years of exile, a guest of the ruling Da Polenta family. Some four hundred years later, the town built this neo-classical tomb. On my first day, I have to be contented with looking in through the closed gate. But I pass it many times on subsequent days. Once, I file through with a bunch of high schoolers. And then finally, I happen to pass when it's open and empty. I pay my respects to his spirit. His remains, I don't know exactly where they ended up. There are many stories of their peregrinations around town during wars, and there are even little monuments nearby: here's the box where the monks hid Dante's remains during the such-and-such war ….

Ravenna's real claim to fame are the mosaics. Early, end-of-the-empire Christians carried on this very Roman art form for several centuries into the new era. Justinian took back Ravenna for the "Roman," or Byzantine Empire in the 530s, and quickly, he and his put their stamp on the city. We can visit him and his illustrious wife to this day in the Basilica of San Vitale. In the apse, he and his men stand over the altar on one wall, while she and her attendants stand over it on the other. These famous mosaic images are fascinating in the way they convey so much personality and presence, in what is essentially very simple, if sumptuous, craft. The mosaics glow, as they do in the earlier mausoleum of Galla Placidia, mother of one of the final western emperors, which sits behind San Vitale. It's an amazing little domed building, plastered everywhere with rich mosaic color, little alabaster windows admitting dim light, four massive sarcophogi quiet in their alcoves.

There's an exhibit while I'm there of Roman imperial art, centered around the ritual of the banquet. They have several mosaic floors dug up from somewhere nearby. Apparently, it's all the fad in this period -- I seem to recall it's the third century AD -- to install a floor that depicts the remains of a messy feast. So the fragment I'm looking at portrays fishheads and walnut shells and the bones of fowl and even a mouse chewing on crumbs. Outside, there's a workshop, where a woman creates a duplicate. She breaks off individual tesserae from glass or stone and places them in her lime concoction spread across a board on her easel.

I enter a café to kill some time before the Italian restaurants open in the evening. All eyes are on the TV. I see crowds in St. Peter's Square in Rome. I figure out they've sent up the traditional smoke signals over the Sistine Chapel. Eventually, the door on the balcony of St. Peter's opens, and some cardinals bustle out. We're breathlessly watching the old men prepare. Their lack of polish is refreshing. One takes the mike, and in a surprisingly short announcement, the news is conveyed. "E il tedesco," the café owner spits and turns away, shaking his head. Excited chatter sweeps across the café. People share awkward smiles and blink at each other. What does it mean? Il tedesco emerges, robed in white. He holds his hands high. His grin is uncomfortable. The café patrons watch him quietly. A few chuckle at his Italian when he speaks.