More of Nice
By
Stephen M. Fragale
I am still in Nice and like it so much I am thinking of staying another day. After my mid day nap I take a shower and am back out on the street. I slowly climb down the big hill from where my Hotel sits, down to the beach and the street where all the cool restaurants and bars are. I am a dark mogul A silent fuse A dark star Maybe hunger brings me closer to madnesshow else can I explain these thoughts? Am I the thought or the thinker? Or am I the bridge between the two.
When I make it down to the main street most of the restaurants and bars are already filled with people. There are children running along side fathers and mothers and young couples holding hands who stop to stare at the street performers. There are men pretending to be statues made of rock painted gold. A small crowd gathers around them to see if they can make them move. But the men have turned into stone so cant move, they just blink. I wonder what it would be like to turn into stone?
I move with the crowd, among it, and sometimes through it. Now I am waterwatch how I flow. I notice the beautiful people the same way I would a sunset sinking into the apple green sea, or the endlessness of the metallic blue sky early in the morning. I notice everything in times like these, everything has slowed down for me. Its like life is urging me, imploring me to just watch. To notice her like a beautiful bride in her white dress! So I look down and see a beautiful bird toot tooting along, hopping hopefully, carefully.
Looking for a restaurant when your alone, and a traveler is never easy. You tend to be more careful. Or more particular. Had I a beautiful woman on my arm or even a good friend I would be less anxious. A few of the restaurants I would have liked to try are already too crowded. Finally after walking down this street back and forth at least twice my feet are screaming at me, please, just sit the hell down! I choose a place that is rather crowded but I like the menu and cool, modern, chic look from the outside. Its called La Amazone. A beautiful French hostess seats me inside. Right between two attractive women on my left and two attractive women on my right. Of course I wont speak to them because they are all speaking French and I am afraid of sounding like the typical American jerk who only speaks English and expects everyone to speak his language.
Inside the restaurant was great. It had what looked like statues of Easter Island gods carved into the wall. It was dark with big rocks and beams on the ceiling and a quiet, peaceful ambiance.
Everywhere I went in the Mediterranean it seemed by the time I sat down I was dying of thirst. Beer never tasted better than it did here. I ordered a marinated, skewered chicken with the best scalloped potatoes I have ever had and a medley of vegetables that was also excellent. Great bread too! As I ate I watched the crowd that walked by and the beautiful waitresses that seemed to float in the air. When my beautiful waitress came back to clear away my plate from what was probably the best dinner I have had since I have been traveling she asked, Coffee or dessert?
No, thank you. Dont take it personally, I said jokingly.
She laughed and said, No kidding, in her beautiful French accent.
Afterwards I stumble around awhile and end up at Haagen-dazs and have some more gelato. For some reason as I sit out at a table on the street eating my gelato the lyrics to 70s rock songs float through my head. Day after day the show must go on, sang Pink Floyd. Then something about how all the young girls love Alice. Maybe too much sugar from the gelato? Or too many beautiful girls lying on white sandy beaches. I mean how much of that can a man take? Its a sin, said the Father, the Priest, the Politician. But sin is just an old man rowing a broken boat! Chew on that Father!
I remember the ringing of the church bells in lovely Hania on the island of Crete and the beautiful sound of the chanting monks early Sunday morning. I am not religious, I have transcended religion. But I am all for beauty and all for love!
If you only knew where I was now, but I wont tell you. Ill just keep it to myself. Ill keep Nice to myself and Ill keep Italy to myself and Ill keep Corfu to myself and Ill keep Crete to myself and Cyprus and I suspect I will even end up keeping Spain to myself.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Blue Doors
BLUE DOORS
By
Stephen M. Fragale
Another evening is slowly drawing to a close and it dawns on me I now have one month exactly left to my travels. After this next month I wonder how I will have changed? What will I have become? My eyes will be different. That much I know. Even after just two short weeks I have learned to see things differently. Yes, there is a certain loneliness about traveling like this. Alone. A stranger in a strange city thousand and thousands of miles away from home. But maybe more people should do it. It teaches you to listen, to look, to pay attention, to notice things differently.
Tonight as I sat outside my Hotel, just a little table sipping iced Greek coffee and listening to the radio playing from inside the café, classical Greek music, I looked up to the balcony of the building directly in front of me and noticed the blue pastel shutters and doors. It was Fantastic the way it offset the color of the rest of the building and way the light of the moon arched and dipped in such a way as its light especially illuminated this fantastic blue balcony door. I looked up in awe and thought wow I would love to live in a house with a blue door and shutters like that and a balcony to overlook such a picturesque street. To come here on dark lonely nights with my Greek coffee and watch all these interesting people walk up and down the street. As if they had nowhere else on the earth to be, then right here right now!
Later, I got up from that small table after having finished my iced coffee and I wandered down the street high with the night and the caffeine and I felt like I was in another world, a world I never wanted to leave. I stopped again, this time to marvel at a lime green door, it was so old and rustic with the paint peeling off, but there is no way I had ever seen a door quite like that, so old and yet so filled with style and grace that it could go on being a door there for another hundred years. I then thought about all the people that had ever walked through that door and how many more in the years to come? Who were those people? I wanted to know them, to touch them, feel them! That night back in my cozy Hotel with the pretty Italian hostess with the sexy accent that crushed my heartI could hear her on the phone all through the night, but I didnt think of her as I drifted off to sleep. I thought of blue doors and the people inside.
By
Stephen M. Fragale
Another evening is slowly drawing to a close and it dawns on me I now have one month exactly left to my travels. After this next month I wonder how I will have changed? What will I have become? My eyes will be different. That much I know. Even after just two short weeks I have learned to see things differently. Yes, there is a certain loneliness about traveling like this. Alone. A stranger in a strange city thousand and thousands of miles away from home. But maybe more people should do it. It teaches you to listen, to look, to pay attention, to notice things differently.
Tonight as I sat outside my Hotel, just a little table sipping iced Greek coffee and listening to the radio playing from inside the café, classical Greek music, I looked up to the balcony of the building directly in front of me and noticed the blue pastel shutters and doors. It was Fantastic the way it offset the color of the rest of the building and way the light of the moon arched and dipped in such a way as its light especially illuminated this fantastic blue balcony door. I looked up in awe and thought wow I would love to live in a house with a blue door and shutters like that and a balcony to overlook such a picturesque street. To come here on dark lonely nights with my Greek coffee and watch all these interesting people walk up and down the street. As if they had nowhere else on the earth to be, then right here right now!
Later, I got up from that small table after having finished my iced coffee and I wandered down the street high with the night and the caffeine and I felt like I was in another world, a world I never wanted to leave. I stopped again, this time to marvel at a lime green door, it was so old and rustic with the paint peeling off, but there is no way I had ever seen a door quite like that, so old and yet so filled with style and grace that it could go on being a door there for another hundred years. I then thought about all the people that had ever walked through that door and how many more in the years to come? Who were those people? I wanted to know them, to touch them, feel them! That night back in my cozy Hotel with the pretty Italian hostess with the sexy accent that crushed my heartI could hear her on the phone all through the night, but I didnt think of her as I drifted off to sleep. I thought of blue doors and the people inside.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Santorini
Being here is fantastic! Yet between these moments of feeling fantastic as the wind blows hard through my sun streaked hair are moments of quiet sadness. Because these moments are too short. Moments in beautiful places just like moments with beautiful people, are too short.
I could pick any spot, and I would still have this feeling of calm peacefulness. This feeling of belonging, of, this is where I am supposed to be. I forget now if it was on the island of Santorini, or Crete, or Athens. On Santorini, known as Thira to the locals, we sat, my brother and his girlfriend and I, on this old wooden balcony over looking a cliff and down below were black volcanic rocks and all the small white washed cubicle villas, and hotels, and houses, bars, and restaurants. Beneath that, just the emerald, mercury sea. The sun was setting and as the waitress brought my beer, a cold Amstel, I said "I could sit here forever!" And I meant it. With my feet up against the wooden ledge, the sounds of decadent rock music coming from the bar, the American bar tender/waitress with the easy smile and sarcastic comments not caring a bit about pleasing her customers, only caring about enjoying these moments just as I was. I wondered what it would be like to be her? To live this life…to own a bar on top of a cliff with white washed walls and where the sun is easy and the breeze is gentle and the people are friendly and when it is too hot I go down to swim in the warm Mediterranean sea. The hardest part of my job every day is figuring out what drinks to serve the tourists, and understanding what it is they are ordering, as some are American, and some are Greek and some are German, and some are French and some Spanish, and some Italian and I would even learn to love that. The sound of all the languages a perfect backdrop to the sound of the bluesy decadent rock music that is playing from her cheap stereo. No surround sound here. No dolby speakers. No flat screen TV's. Hell she don't even take credit cards. Who needs the hassle. Okay true if it was me I would have more on the stereo than just rock music, the cliffs and the sea and white cubed houses call for something more, Bob Marley, Miles Davis, John Coletrane, Nina Simone, Billy Holiday, hell maybe even some classical because nothing goes better over a cliff than some violin or Cello music. It makes you want to fly. I 'm going to fly, with the first of my beers almost gone and the sun burning into my chest and eyes I too feel as if I can almost fly. If I just stick out my hands I can touch the clouds and I do touch them and imagine cotton dipped with honey that is what it's like touching the clouds. Cotton dipped in honey I can dig that. That too is fantastic. Me being here is fantastic. I have so many rich ideas here rich like the deepest darkest chocolate. You know what I mean? On the way back from the bar meandering through the maze like alleys of the town I let my hands glide across the walls of the alleys, leaving a trace. My fingers on the walls, or the walls on my fingers? I turn my hands over now and they are covered with white powdered dust from the alleys, like sand from the sky, or like honey dipped cotton from the clouds.
places just like moments with beautiful people, are too short.
I could pick any spot, and I would still have this feeling of calm peacefulness. This feeling of belonging, of, this is where I am supposed to be. I forget now if it was on the island of Santorini, or Crete, or Athens. On Santorini, known as Thira to the locals, we sat, my brother and his girlfriend and I, on this old wooden balcony over looking a cliff and down below were black volcanic rocks and all the small white washed cubicle villas, and hotels, and houses, bars, and restaurants. Beneath that, just the emerald, mercury sea. The sun was setting and as the waitress brought my beer, a cold Amstel, I said "I could sit here forever!" And I meant it. With my feet up against the wooden ledge, the sounds of decadent rock music coming from the bar, the American bar tender/waitress with the easy smile and sarcastic comments not caring a bit about pleasing her customers, only caring about enjoying these moments just as I was. I wondered what it would be like to be her? To live this life…to own a bar on top of a cliff with white washed walls and where the sun is easy and the breeze is gentle and the people are friendly and when it is too hot I go down to swim in the warm Mediterranean sea. The hardest part of my job every day is figuring out what drinks to serve the tourists, and understanding what it is they are ordering, as some are American, and some are Greek and some are German, and some are French and some Spanish, and some Italian and I would even learn to love that. The sound of all the languages a perfect backdrop to the sound of the bluesy decadent rock music that is playing from her cheap stereo. No surround sound here. No dolby speakers. No flat screen TV's. Hell she don't even take credit cards. Who needs the hassle. Okay true if it was me I would have more on the stereo than just rock music, the cliffs and the sea and white cubed houses call for something more, Bob Marley, Miles Davis, John Coletrane, Nina Simone, Billy Holiday, hell maybe even some classical because nothing goes better over a cliff than some violin or Cello music. It makes you want to fly. I 'm going to fly, with the first of my beers almost gone and the sun burning into my chest and eyes I too feel as if I can almost fly. If I just stick out my hands I can touch the clouds and I do touch them and imagine cotton dipped with honey that is what it's like touching the clouds. Cotton dipped in honey I can dig that. That too is fantastic. Me being here is fantastic. I have so many rich ideas here rich like the deepest darkest chocolate. You know what I mean? On the way back from the bar meandering through the maze like alleys of the town I let my hands glide across the walls of the alleys, leaving a trace. My fingers on the walls, or the walls on my fingers? I turn my hands over now and they are covered with white powdered dust from the alleys, like sand from the sky, or like honey dipped cotton from the clouds.
places just like moments with beautiful people, are too short.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Buon Giorno
BUON GIORNO
By
Stephen M. Fragale
How can it possibly get any better than this? I am sitting in a city park in Florence, Italy. If I was back home in Amerika I would be alone, everyone would be home watching the evening news, or the Simpsons, or Friends, MTV, Survivor, American Idol, CNN at best. Here people are sitting in a park, a bar, a café, or just walking the crooked streets right out of a drawing from Escher. I love all the bicycles here as well. I think of the song bicycle by Queen and start humming it. The Italians just shake their head at this American fool. Anyway, the bicycles here arent those fancy mountain bikes or cool bikes with ten different speeds and so many new gadgets that its harder than driving a car. Nope. They are just simple cool hip black bikes held over from the 50s. The kind of bike Henry Miller rode in Paris before the War, the kind with the straight handlebars. Im perplexed as to what I need more right nowone of those bicycles or a woman? Not just any woman will do. She has to be tall with a sexy Italian accent and long branches and green shady leafs.
There is locust humming in my head. There is a new silver beetle Bug driving down the street. What can you do with all this information? It cant really mean anything, can it? All the girls here have cell phones like back in America. But they chatter away in Italian. I wish I knew what they were saying.
I half think about going back to the wine bar I was at earlier where I had two great glasses of wine and a margarita pizza and stared furtively at this Italian girl with dark crazy curly hair. I could go back and wait for her. Surely she would return. More than once our eyes connected in the dim light. The last time I stared at her she walked by on her way out of the restaurant and had this smile as if to say yes I know your smiling at me and yes I am smiling too but I am not going to look directly at you and let you know that I know your smiling at me, I could just be smiling at anyone and maybe I always smile this way when I have had too much good Italian wine. As she walked away out the door I should have said, buon giorno.
By
Stephen M. Fragale
How can it possibly get any better than this? I am sitting in a city park in Florence, Italy. If I was back home in Amerika I would be alone, everyone would be home watching the evening news, or the Simpsons, or Friends, MTV, Survivor, American Idol, CNN at best. Here people are sitting in a park, a bar, a café, or just walking the crooked streets right out of a drawing from Escher. I love all the bicycles here as well. I think of the song bicycle by Queen and start humming it. The Italians just shake their head at this American fool. Anyway, the bicycles here arent those fancy mountain bikes or cool bikes with ten different speeds and so many new gadgets that its harder than driving a car. Nope. They are just simple cool hip black bikes held over from the 50s. The kind of bike Henry Miller rode in Paris before the War, the kind with the straight handlebars. Im perplexed as to what I need more right nowone of those bicycles or a woman? Not just any woman will do. She has to be tall with a sexy Italian accent and long branches and green shady leafs.
There is locust humming in my head. There is a new silver beetle Bug driving down the street. What can you do with all this information? It cant really mean anything, can it? All the girls here have cell phones like back in America. But they chatter away in Italian. I wish I knew what they were saying.
I half think about going back to the wine bar I was at earlier where I had two great glasses of wine and a margarita pizza and stared furtively at this Italian girl with dark crazy curly hair. I could go back and wait for her. Surely she would return. More than once our eyes connected in the dim light. The last time I stared at her she walked by on her way out of the restaurant and had this smile as if to say yes I know your smiling at me and yes I am smiling too but I am not going to look directly at you and let you know that I know your smiling at me, I could just be smiling at anyone and maybe I always smile this way when I have had too much good Italian wine. As she walked away out the door I should have said, buon giorno.
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