The Solitary

(Originally written April 27th, 2014)

The lights are dim save for the flicker of the bulbous tv in the corner. On it plays a kung-fu movie dubbed in Croatian but with French subtitles. I like to hope that the driver doesn't know French, as he seems to be the only one watching.

There is a dying rhinoceros on this bus too. It is very early in the morning now, and I have had a lot of time to come to this perfect analogy.

After another catastrophic snort, one of the old ladies (of which there are more than several) submit what I can only imagine is their own interpretation in Croatian. The rest who asuredly are not asleep either, respond in an explosion of laughter. It suddenly becomes abundantly clear that besides me, the two drivers, and a dying rhino, the entire bus is old ladies. I must have missed it when I drunkenly stumbled on the bus. Now, sober as one can be under the circumstances, I am surrounded by what I liked to my mental image of the term “knitting club,” only maybe they've had a few a few drinks and for some reason are on overnight bus from Munich to Zagreb.

There is another jab at the rhino’s dignity (whatever in this moment he could even possess, the poor asshole), and now they are really rolling. It goes back and forth, left rows and right, with each line they get more excited and shrill. The bus's restless culminates into hysteria until, finally, he wakes when one pokes him for the loudest of the crew to land just the most killer of jokes.

Is he mortified? No, he is hardly even perturbed. Turns out he doesn’t give a fuck. Not even a little one. After one solitary admonishment he passes out super hard and resumes his patented chaotic consortium of throat tremolo once again.

Seconds later from the back of the bus comes another Croatian squeak, and the bus is boisterous again, rolling along through the European borderlands.

To be honest, while there have surely been innumerable times throughout my travels where an abstract tongue has caused me an envious desire to learn more languages, there never once was so much or more than in this moment, this insane eruption of giggles at three-in-the-morning. Have you ever heard a belly laugh from a bus full of Croatian golden-aged women? It is surely a sound I'll hold close long after the bus docks, the plane lands, and this journal lost and forgotten.

In the mean time we careen into the rainy night like thus. The driver hyped on karate, stampeding a bus full of hi-jink knitters, a rhino, and me, towards, presumably, Croatia.

The Unravel

The night fades to the clicking of the U-Bahn, the blink of the ferris wheel, and the filling look of an old cobbled spire from our revolving vista. It is so supremely Germanic, especially after two Maß in a beer hall. Suddenly, the surreal-ness of my departure is overwhelming, until suddenly again, it just isn’t anymore. The spire slips back behind Frühlingfest's carnival backdrop.

I find my seat on the bus after plying it from the first old lady to give up and move her bag. The paramount moments once a subway ride away pale to the rhythm of the unraveling weeks. Then, the unkempt days of a candy bar brunch just for the 75 cent cash-back (laundry money). The unwavering smell of spring stumbling out of thin air, heralding in the indomitable nature of who-the-fuck-knows-what-next. The patter of rain on the empty Abrahms windowsills as I walk through its faded halls, echoing its nothing at all but the 'zzt-zzt' of motion sensing lights.

It is too early for the sex-shop to be open in Zagreb’s bus station. The immediate presence of a sex shop in such a public place coupled with the fact that it is one of the few hours it is closed evaporates the last drops of beer from behind my eyes. It is so gray in the infinite dawn of a cloudy day. For a moment, my soul wants for my bed, but even before I can remember that I no longer have one of those, in a questionable where with an indiscernible when, I start to wonder why. Why the constant upheaval? Why the hungry discontent? Why not Colorado?

Between a cracked plastic pane I find the teller. We both know the name of where I'm going, but we are unable to share much else. The rain is intermittent on the way to Karlovac, but the promise is blooming and constant. On the side of the road, looming concrete-grey Soviet-era apartment towers bleed a darker grey. Their expressionless facades mingle with a day that shares only the hue.

Now, at the next station, I order a cappuccino from Vilma. It costs less than a euro and it is all flavor and foam. There is this delicate sweetness too that starts to rub at the edges of the wandering stark. No one in this country knows my name. And after a thought or two, I am perfectly fine with that. I remember then, again, why the boxes and roads. The desolation and destitution makes sense in the slow sip.

And I think, just one more bus. Then, later, maybe another one. And after that probably a few trains or a plane, but right now, just one more bus. One more bus to find another life wanting, begging to be lived and loved. I feel so wonderful to not be in America, Germany, or Italy, and to be somewhere new. It was a feeling I felt so briefly in Slovenia, this fantastic burgeoning wonder.

Another sip of coffee. Another moment in another country where I am anything. Where I am only me, my primordial self. In the departure I may have been essential, but arriving I'm absolutely nothing.

And another sweet sip. And for a moment (maybe a moment before I think about where or when my next sleep will be, the pack on my back, or even the next leg of my journey), for one moment, I am absolutely free.

(Originally written April 27th in a cafe near Karlovac's bus stop)