THIS IS THE CITY, Los Angeles. But rather than being down in that sprawl that stretches across the hot desert belly of California, we were up in the impressive heights around Hollywood that somewhere connected via a patchwork of canyons and elevations to Malibu and the waves that smash against the rocks. It was here that we, after disembarking at LAX, stepped onto a train that traveled the heights. The cliffs were astonishingly, breathtakingly steep. In fact, as we were told by the train conductor, accidental falls were a leading cause of mortality throughout Los Angeles, as tipsy aspiring actors and actresses were prone to defenestration. As the train rolled along, we saw a woman tumble out of a condo to her death. I remember her black hair, the way the wind pushed against her, the sparkle of her dress.
Later I went out for a stroll, leaving the rest of our tour group behind. At some intersection downtown, I encountered Jõehobu, the elite Estonian diplomat, whom I was convinced was secretly running the state, though he brushed away all insinuations of being a deep state actor. “Jõehobu?” I said. “But what are you doing in Los Angeles? I didn’t notice you on the plane.” “I arrived yesterday,” he said. Even though it was a hot day, he still had on his sweater and his gray hair was meticulously combed to one side. His gray stubble was at its standard length. His wise blue eyes smarted behind pince nez glasses. He carried a book of Bertolt Brecht’s plays. “Come with me,” he said. “Welcome to LA! I know where we can get the very best espresso!”
So we went to a small café somewhere in the jungle of LA. An older woman was working at the counter when I placed my order in Italian, and she answered me back in a halting way. Then a man arrived, delivering my drink. He was a black-haired fellow in a white chef’s coat. Parli Italiano? I asked him. Un po, he responded. “What the hell do you mean, un po? This is an Italian café! You have the best espresso.” He then began to speak to the woman and to Jõehobu, who was already sipping his coffee at the bar. He was speaking to them in Estonian. “Don’t you know we’re in the Estonian House?” Jõehobu said. He was reading a two-day old edition of The Los Angeles Times. “But you said they have the very best espresso.” “They do,” he said. “Just try it, man.” I stared down into the black liquid and lifted it. “This better be good,” I said. Jõehobu only nodded. “Trust me. Why would I lie? This is the best coffee in Los Angeles.”
I TOOK A GREYHOUND, deep into Middle America. Through green hills, corn fields, byways and highways. For whatever reason, I was heading for Wheeling, West Virginia. From there, I was supposed to connect to a bus that would take me to Reading, Pennsylvania. However, I believe my departure point was Portsmouth, Virginia. At least that’s what it said on my ticket.
When I got to Wheeling, I disembarked and decided to go for a stroll. We had about a two-hour layover in West Virginia. I came up the main drag, there were small crowds of men and women standing around, as if they were all unemployed. They were dressed as if it was still the 1930s, and the place had a Great Depression feel. Their trousers and skirts flapped in the wind.
Walking along those streets, I remembered that there was a mass shooting in America almost every day now, and that it was best not to get too close to large crowds of people. Instead, I walked by the facades of buildings, always thinking of where I could hide myself if there was an active shooter. The First National Bank had wide columns that would make a fine hiding place.
Somewhere up ahead, I turned left, along an old river canal. Here the bridge was badly in need of repair. There were clumps of dark weeds sprouting up through the cracks in the sidewalk. There were some old garages and shanties along the canal, and when I peaked inside one, I could see Americans sleeping on the dirty floor, maybe half a dozen to a dark room, in sleeping bags and old cots with their mouths ajar. They all had those rosy Normal Rockwell cheeks.
I came back to the bus station, thought I might get a bite to eat before the long bus ride to Reading. A woman came out of the station at that moment, heavy set with short brown hair and said, “Hey, I know you. We bought your book when we were in Tallinn last summer on a cruise!” “You did?” I said. I was suspicious. How could it be that people in Middle America knew who I was? “We all know you,” she said. “We’re all fans of Estonia. It’s a lovely little country.”
AN ARREST WARRANT was issued for me due to an unpaid parking ticket in the Pärnu Beach area. I went to the police headquarters and turned myself in to await the outcome, and was told to head downstairs. The punishment would be about a night’s incarceration, and I figured there were worse fates than to spend a night in a Pärnu jail in December. While not a deluxe Danish facility, they had comfortable bunk beds, and surely I could get some reading done.
Once I got downstairs though, I discovered that there was no one there and nobody came. After about half an hour of waiting, I decided to leave the building. Again, nobody was watching me as I walked off toward the Port Artur shopping center, where I ordered some Hawaiian food from a very complex menu. “Did you want the spam with plain rice or with fried rice?” the woman at the counter asked me there. For reasons unknown, my parents were with me and they also wanted some Hawaiian food. My father was glum about the whole police situation. “You know you’re going to have to go back to jail,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time.”
Later, I went with my family to a new adventure park that had drawn upon East Coast maritime themes. There was an old whaler’s church, for example, and a series of Algonquian wigwams made of fresh birch. My wife and I went into the picnic area with our children and had something to eat. By this time, I had forgotten all about the Pärnu police and that they wanted me to do hard time for the parking infraction. But then a police officer turned up at the adventure park and announced my name through a bullhorn. He said that I had to return to Pärnu police headquarters at once, that I still needed to serve out my one-day sentence.
Not knowing what to do, I kissed my family goodbye and headed toward the tip of the peninsula, where I found my old friend Annikki selling crafts at a fair. She was there and her mother Liivika was there, and her three children were climbing all over her. I bought a coffee from a vendor and complained loudly of my plight to some Estonian journalists I knew, one of whom had been just recently posted to Kyiv, and so had seen far more in his time than I had in mine. Here was a man who has seen the charred bodies of drone attack victims, and I was crying about spending a night in the Pärnu police station. “Your father was right,” he said, while biting into a powdered donut in the concessions area. “You have to go back to jail.”
Just then I noticed some police officers approaching, and I took Annikki by the hand. We hid beneath a blanket, and I watched her breasts rise and fall with her breath. She was wearing a skirt and a black top. Annikki smelled quite nice, maybe of lavender, and I was surprised that I had never noticed her scent before. Her mother Liivika came walking by and noticed our legs sticking out from beneath the blanket. “What do we have here?” she said. “We’re just talking about Annikki’s handicrafts business,” I told her. Annikki was happy to hold my hand, but just that. She wasn’t ready for any below-blanket hanky-panky. “I expect much more from a man than holding hands below a blanket,” said Annikki. She had very blue eyes and very platinum hair and was very beautiful. “Especially a man who is being pursued by the Pärnu police.”
They started to pack up their wares from the festival and Annikki was loading boxes of goods into the back of her car. They were set to go to Tallinn to another festival. Her children were climbing all over a nearby playground like happy woodland squirrels. I kissed Annikki on the cheek and began walking along the bluffs overlooking the seashore toward the bus station. I came down long, sandy lanes dotted with pines and hedges. At the intersection of two streets, a young man was out selling a whole house full of handwoven traditional baskets. It was really just the bones of the house filled out by long shelves, stacked up with his goods. I tried to take a picture of it, but by the time I got my phone out, he had begun putting the baskets away.
I looked down at the sea and noticed how strange the coastline looked. There were large underwater knolls in the water, and I could see how vegetation had grown up and down the sides of these features, and how little whirlpools had formed between them. Down the way, I came into a seaside tavern, and then was ushered into a back room, where a group of Estonians had assembled to sing traditional songs. They began to sing together and as they did, I looked through my bag, only to realize I had left my journal with Annikki! My prized journal, full of all of my darkest secrets, brimming with compromising material. I left the singing room and called her at once. Annikki picked up. “I know everything now,” she said.
“For your own sake, please don’t read any more,” I told her. “I’ll come up to Tallinn to retrieve it. Just don’t read any more of my journal.” “I saw what you wrote about that girl,” she said. “You said you wanted to …” “Oh, this is just horrible!” I said and hung up. What a day, pursued by the Pärnu police and now a missing journal? At the tavern I was approached by some Indian students, three or four of them. “Don’t you recognize us?” one of them said. “No,” I answered. “We’re studying at TalTech, you wrote an article about us last year.” “I did?” “Yes, it was about our new steam apparatus.” “It was?” They all looked at each other. How could this journalist have forgotten everything in so short a time? “Are you okay, man?” one asked. “You don’t look so good. Let us buy you a beer!” “It’s the Pärnu police,” I said. “They’re after me.” “Even more reason to start drinking,” one of the students said. The singing room was just letting out and one could hear the lovely chiming sounds of kannel music playing gently in the background.
IT HAD BEEN YEARS since the name Cody Brigham even passed my lips, or flickered across the deck of my mind. To be honest, he had been relegated to dust, like everyone else I went to school with. I could never understand why people thought that school ties were the ties that couldn’t be undone. Sure, I knew them, by face and name, and maybe I knew a little about their personal lives — I think Cody’s parents were divorced and he was spending a lot of time at his grandmother’s house on Beach Street. But other than that, like most New York things, indeed, American things, they could have all been serial killers. Yet Cody Brigham hadn’t, in all of those decades since LL Cool J ruled the airwaves with “Mama Said Knock You Out,” forgotten me.
This I found out in an unusual way, as I walked the rainy December streets of Helsinki near the Kamppi shopping center, passing by shadowy Finns in raincoats and winter jackets who always looked away or down. Trams and buses rocked past me, and I trudged on carrying a parcel of books to be sold at an engagement in a local Finnish casino, as my career as a regional celebrity writer took on new, ‘Elvis in Vegas’ undertones. There I was coming up the street, when a man shouted down to me from one of the balconies. “Hey,” he said. “Come on up!” Then, to make it clear who he was, he said, “It’s me, Cody Brigham, from Sconset Elementary!”
He had been, all this time, aware of my movements and even was aware of my coming to Helsinki because of social media, and even knew the precise moment when I would pass under his balcony. Because of this knack for timing, he had managed to record video of me coming up that street. There I was, my hair slicked wet from the rain, with my big satchel of books. He showed me the film in his finely furnished apartment, which was situated in a large hotel.
“But why are you here?” I asked Cody. He looked more or less the same, of stocky build and of Northern European ancestry, with straight blond hair that was mostly intact, a solid, friendly countenance. It was him. Random weird things were my speciality, but this one took the cake. Or the karjalanpiirakat, as they say. “After I graduated from the University of Rhode Island, I went into hospitality,” Cody Brigham told me. “Do you want something to drink, eat? Lapin Kulta? Koskenkorva? Leipäjuusto?” “No thanks,” I told him. “Suit yourself.” He opened a bottle of Lapin Kulta beer and took a swig from it. “I worked in hotels all over the world, and eventually I was offered a job here in Helsinki, Finland, so I took it. And so here I am, man.”
How strange that a former classmate would be working in Helsinki and I would have known nothing of it. The whole situation seemed weird. After we spent some time talking about the old days, I continued on to my casino destination. It was then that I looked up at Cody’s building and realized that his “hotel” was also a sex club. There were images of Finnish women with whips licking whipped cream off each other. So this was Cody’s line of work? Funny how he hadn’t mentioned it. Maybe because it was so obvious? Or maybe because he was ashamed.
MAPLE LEAF was one of Estonia’s top drummers. His real name was Vahtraleht, which means “maple leaf” in Estonian, but his nickname was Vaht, which means “foam.” He was, by his 39th year, a seasoned and accomplished percussionist, who had once jammed with Tony Allen, Fela Kuti’s drummer, and Damon Albarn, albeit on congas. He had lived in several communes and had even spent a stint in Trenchtown. His hair was long and maple-colored, as was his beard, and his skin a flawless milk white. Because of this, he was nicknamed “Mormon Jesus” by some of his American friends. He played in three or four ensembles. He changed girlfriends like lightbulbs. It’s not easy to go steady with a mercurial character like Estonia’s own Maple Leaf.
But then he died. It was in a terrible car crash in Germany. Every single vehicle in the crash was German made. I think a BMW collided with his little white Volkswagen. Surprisingly, he survived the impact, but then crawled out onto the autobahn, where he writhed in pain for some time, pleading with God. “No,” he cried. “No!” Then, with a final tapping of his fingers, he expired from this life, and attained musical immortality. His was the kind of face that was spraypainted on the facades of old buildings in Tallinn, Tartu, and Viljandi. The Estonians had always yearned for their own Viktor Tsoi and in Maple Leaf, this had at least been achieved.
In honor of Maple Leaf and his dramatic end, I decided to bake a kind of maple sugar cake. I brought it into the temple that had been erected in his honor. This had been constructed in the same pattern of an ancient Indian temple. I found it incredibly sad that Maple Leaf would no longer play drums anymore. And to die in a car crash in Germany, of all godforsaken places. But nobody ate my cake at the Indian temple. I guess they were just too consumed with grief.
A NEW FORM OF TRANSPORT, the Stockholm swing. It functioned as a kind of ski lift, except nobody was there to ski. Rather it glided along a set route through the city, like a funicular or cable car. Each swing could fit three people. Upon arriving to Stockholm, I shared my swing with Rory and Ella. We were lifted over the city, and Ella disembarked somewhere in Norrmalm to hunt for shoes for her collection. Ella owned at least a hundred pairs of shoes.
Rory had set up an interview with a local literary journalist. A young woman who must have been in her first year of university, and whose questions were delivered with a trembling uncertainty. I sat there outside a bakery with a coffee, naturally, answering her questions, as if I even knew the answers to them. The young woman wore simple, dark clothes. She had her brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She was Swedish. I have no idea how Rory knew her.
There must have been something in my drink, because I became incredibly sleepy after that, and was invited back to the journalist’s apartment, where I promptly fell asleep on her wide bed. During my sleep, I was awakened by a bouncing, and opened one eye, only to see Rory rather aggressively making love to her about a foot away from my elbow. She naturally surrendered, letting out light, excited gasps. I closed my eyes and pretended it was a dream.
Later, after Rory and the young Swedish literary journalist had parted ways in a Stockholm street, I confronted him. “She was only eighteen,” I told him. “Just a young woman of eighteen! Consider it, a man of your age. You should be ashamed of yourself!” Rory was impeccably dressed and feigned confusion. “What are you talking about?” he shrugged, his blue eyes smarting, as if he was entirely perplexed, baffled. “It was just a bad dream. You were dreaming,” he said. “She was just eighteen,” I repeated. “A bastard like you had to take advantage of her!”
After that, I suppose you could say Rory Lapp and I had what later would be termed “a disagreement.” He went his way and I went mine. I caught a passing Stockholm swing and rode it all the way to the harbor. The ships to Estonia left from a pier near an old imperial fortress. It had long since been abandoned, but in recent years had been repurposed with cafes and boutiques. Such were the ways of effete Europeans. It occurred to me there, descending the steps toward my ship, that I had once been married, and had walked these same steps with another person. A person whom the world would have called “my partner.” But I was all alone now. Ella had her shoes, Rory had his young Swedish journalist. I just had my old knapsack.
AFTER HIS COMPLETION of the Epstein Ballroom, President Donald J. Trump went to work on a new building to house Scott Bessent’s Treasury Department. The old Federal and Georgian-style Treasury Building, the central and east wings of which were erected in 1835 through 1842, was reduced to rubble and a new castle-like fortress was constructed on its foundation, as tall as the Sagrada Familia. This, strangely, contained elements of New York City’s Trump Tower, and its walls, escalators, and stairwells shined with gold-coated plates.
I was one of the first journalists allowed into the new Treasury Building, escorted inside with a North Korea-style sightseeing group. We were led up the stairs, which were gleaming with gold, to the second floor, which had the décor of an ancient Scottish castle, with moist, dripping stone walls and antique tapestries. Trump was there himself, bedecked in a Highland Tartan, and several other Scotsmen and women sat around an open fire. Trump seemed preoccupied with something and stared intensely into the air. He was whispering to himself and his blue eyes reminded one of a beached fish running out of oxygen. The Scottish guests only stoked the fire and talked loudly about how they felt comfortable in the new Treasury. “Aye, it’s not too opulent,” a bald man in a sweater said. “Only parts are covered in gold! What’s the fuss about?”
Downstairs, I discovered that a food court had opened. There were people sitting all around on wooden benches, the kinds that you might find at an ice skating rink. Here I encountered some Trump supporters in winter coats who were boasting loudly about how decisive their leader was. “Biden could never make up his mind,” one jeered. I intervened and said that, in reality, their president changed his mind almost every day if not minute. “Yes, I will give the Ukrainians Tomahawk missiles. No, I won’t. Yes, well, actually I will. Let’s see what Putin says.” For daring to bring this to their attention, I was cursed out, but I didn’t care. “The only thing Trump’s consistent about,” I shouted at his supporters as they dispersed, “is his love of tariffs!”
Down the gold escalator rode my old friend Eamon O’Toole next, with his loving Irish grin. He was dressed in a white sweater and gold chain, as if he had just got back from a wild house party with Kid and Play. The first thing Eamon O’Toole did upon meeting me in the new Treasury Building was laugh and say, “Well, well, well. Fancy meeting you here!” He had sprouted a slight red beard in the meantime, and there was a crazy gleam in his eyes. I told him about the Trump supporters and the tariff comment. Eamon O’Toole only laughed more. “All of these people suck,” was all Eamon said with an irrepressible delight. “I hate them all.”
We were then interrupted by Rory Lapp, an Estonian writer and poet and coffeehouse ghost who said, “Excuse me, but do you know where a bestselling author might get a decent espresso?” We went over to the coffee machine, but the first cup was full of a strange, milky liquid, and we realized the machine was cleaning itself, so we pushed the button again. Rory stood there in his black button-down shirt, waiting patiently to taste his first Treasury coffee. Funny that I would rendezvous with some of my best friends in such a gilded, tasteless place.
I noticed then a small gray mailbox by the coffee machine and opened it. Inside, I found a single letter, addressed to me, which I opened as well. It was a postcard with a picture of Ronja Rippsild, a prominent Estonian photographer. She was standing there, in her red shirt and green coat, a winter’s hat on her head. She was as pale as ever — I don’t think Ronja was capable of getting tan — and her dark hair hung around her shoulders. The note read, “Goodbye Justin,” and I scanned it intently, hoping that Trump’s demolition of the Treasury Building hadn’t caused my Estonian friend to commit suicide. Instead she said that she had had enough of the world’s problems and was going on a pilgrimage of sorts, which she intended to wrap up by the year 2049. “By that time, I’m sure we can live happy lives again,” Ronja had written. In the meantime, she planned to embark on a global Camino de Santiago.
“Well, that’s one way of coping,” I said to myself. I was going to miss Ronja while she was away. I sighed and returned to the coffee machine, where some loud Trump bashing was underway.
SOMETIMES HELSINKI looks a lot like Long Island. I was heading to Kamppi, the impressive gray and gleaming shopping center in the middle of the Finnish capital, but I missed my tram and had to hitchhike. I scored a ride with an older gentleman who wore one of those sugarloaf pilgrim’s hats that were so fashionable in the 17th century, with the proud gold buckle, and shoulder-length greasy hair. During the entire ride, I never saw his face. Not one time. An adolescent boy or girl sat in the passenger’s side seat up front. I never saw his or her face either. It could have been a boy, because the blonde hair was cut so short, but there was something so sleight about the frame that suggested the passenger was a girl with short hair.
Like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby.
“Where can I take you?” the pilgrim man said in a Finnish accent. I told him I was trying to get to Kamppi. “Fair enough.” We drove along a rural road, making a turn that looked too much like the intersection of North Country Road, 25A, and Bennetts Road, near the Bagel Express and CVS Pharmacy (there used to be a Merrill Lynch on this corner, in an old house, but it was bulldozed long ago in the name of progress). The sky was a swirling, glowing psychedelic pink.
We made the left and the pilgrim Finn asked where he should leave me. None of the terrain looked anything like Helsinki. On one side, there were old farms, on the other side, a thick and tangled forest. I got out by the forest, thanked the driver, and began to search for my entry into the Kamppi shopping center. I came upon a series of white Scandinavian-style wooden houses here, and I went into one, thinking that Kamppi must just be on the other side of these houses. The house turned out to be some kind of preschool that wasn’t in session. It was tidy and all of the furniture had been fashioned out of wood. Hearts and horses had been carved into the cabinets and doors, and there were blankets draped across chairs that had been knitted in the traditional Swedish way. A strange place, and though there were multiple levels of the house, none of the doors led to Kamppi and, as I discovered, there was no way out.
I heard a rustling downstairs, then a whistling. One of the preschool teachers had apparently entered. Maybe this was one of those Swedish preschools in Helsinki. A daghemmet. But what would they do with a strange American if they found him snooping around a preschool for the Finlandsvenska? Surely, I would be publicly shamed or lugged off to prison. The cover of Iltalehti. “Hobo arrested.” I decided to hide myself in one of the cabinets. Before I did, I noticed there was a bowl full of shiny yellow delicious apples, ripe and ready. I took one of the golden apples, bit into it, and hid myself away, all while listening to the footsteps as they came closer.
PIE IN THE SKY, gauzy cotton carpets, glides the plane toward Riga, the sun shining on its golden wing tip. In some places the clouds pile up like sand, mountains, valleys, crevasses, river deltas, a whole air world stacked on top of the land world. The self is a similar sort of shell game. Now you see it, poof! The Gulf of Riga, container ships slowly chugging somewhere with their cargo.
A poster for a play in Kranj, Slovenia. It’s only two hours by plane from Riga, Latvia, to Slovenia.
Upon arrival …
Kranj, Slovenia. #47 on this street or ulica is colored squash yellow, pumpkin orange, old chain-linked fences, weathered stones and concrete, pedestrian murmurings, grape vines, ivy vines, alpine balconies, a trumpet playing somewhere, a bicycle cycling something, whirrish whir displacing air. #16 on another ulica is painted hope-pink. Lekarna is a pharmacy and jaune santiarije is a public toilet, and ne must mean no, because that’s what a woman keeps saying to her dog.
Outside the bookstore, the sellers are smoking and sipping wine and saying something like koushka and Naked Lunch costs 16 euros inside, and outside a building under construction and covered in scaffolding a worker is yelling out “Matjas!” Later, the receptionist at the hotel informs me that the word I heard was kučki, which means two small dogs in Slovene, and prosim is please, of course, of course, a kuža is just a doggie, like the Estonian kutsu.
The next morning…
Each morning in Ljubljana is cool and foggy, until the sun burns off the mountain valley moisture.
I DON’T KNOW what to say about Ljubljana, I have trouble spelling and saying the name. Slovenia has Mediterranean elements, Alpine elements, South Slavic elements. I like the way the language looks on signs and billboards and theater posters. In a funny way, it reminds me of Lithuanian, only because of the length and special characters (these languages are far removed). (Vzgojiteljica is ‘kindergarten teacher’).
Reading some genetic studies of the Slovenes, conveniently featured on their Wikipedia page, I learned that they are closer to Czechs than to “real” South Slavs, like Bulgarians and Macedonians. The language? I know nothing. Prosim (please, thank you) gets you everywhere in Slavic land, and “Cheers” is the familiar na zdravje… I forget at times what a vast hunk of Europe is populated by Slavs of all flavors, the Poles, the Slovenes, the Croatians, the Slovaks, the Bosnians, the Serbs, the Ukrainians, and then those more niche groups, like the Ruthenians. Or were the Ruthenians the Ukrainians? Try the Rum Raisin Slavs, the Butterscotch Pecan Slavs, while you’re at it. They’re out there somewhere, inhabiting some valley …
Bear in mind, at times people are just as at a loss when it comes to the Estonians, so they can be forgiven when it comes to distinguishing all of these cultures and subcultures. It takes time to study up on Slovenia.
During breaks from workshops, your intrepid writer wandered aimlessly around, writing more nonsense.
ANYWAY, this is a lively city. People are outside in the evening, riding bikes, strolling, talking loudly. It’s by population smaller than Tallinn, but even on its finest summer days, Tallinn just isn’t as lively. People just seem to pour into restaurants and out of supermarkets. A lot of Slovenians are tall, even taller than me, and there is a subset of the guys with really frizzy, nappy hair, which they grow out, so that they look like Thulsa Doom’s henchmen from Conan the Barbarian. Some of them cut it short and ride around on electric scooters wearing puffy black vests or jackets. The Slovenian girls are ranging in packs and talking loudly. Their jackets are also puffy.
How funny that for them, Ljubljana is the world, and they are having modern day street romances by the dozen, and breaking up, and someone is dating someone in Kranj, or someone moved to … where do Slovenes even move to? Probably Vienna. Yes. They split up, and she moved to Vienna for work. Broke his heart in two. All of this drama taking place in this foggy basin, people made born and lived, day by day in Slovenia, and the world shuffles by, barely taking notice.
The hotels (I’ve been spoiled) have retained some continental grace. Very Grand Budapest Hotel, the concierge is overly eager to help. In Estonia, they are too busy texting their friends, or just don’t want to make eye contact at all. There’s no, “Yes, sir,” “Anything else. sir?” Estonia could use a little more Monsieur Gustave H, I think. But who am I to judge?
***
Who was I when I was here 23 years ago? Am I still him at all? What has become of all that? Well, there’s no need to dwell on it. Yesterday went into yesterday, like krill into the belly of a baleen whale, and I don’t recall it all, nor should I.
***
The long way up the castle hill. This photo snapped accidentally while talking to my daughter on the phone.
THE LAST TIME I was in Slovenia, it was ’02. A lot of time has elapsed since then, but it doesn’t feel so far away. It hasn’t yet taken on the glow of nostalgia. I didn’t have a phone then, and nobody really knew where I was, although my father said he could track my movements according to the bank statements that were mailed home. It wasn’t a big issue.
I did have a journal with me, so somewhere in my closet, buried underneath all of my other journals*, I can find out more or less what happened, but since I have not retrieved these memories since about that time, I only have some recollections of the bus station, the hotel, some cool-looking teenagers sitting in a park, the church, the river, and not making it up the hill to the castle (which repeated again this time, as I did not hike all the way up. Maybe it will take 23 more years to get there?) And of course the trip to the caves, which are called jama in Slovenian, which means crap or bullshit in Estonian. But that’s about it. Maybe some more will resurface. I was only 23 years old the first time.
Enough about that. In Slovenia, when you walk into a shop, the shopkeepers will often greet you with “dan,” which means, “day,” as in “good day,” dober dan. I was thinking that if your name happened to be Dan, this would be a good city to live in, because every time you went to the supermarket or popped into the bookstore, the sellers would address you personally. “Dan!” Or imagine the unsuspecting Dan who ventured into Slovenia, only to hear strangers saying his name to each other. He walks into the bookstore, but all the girls keep saying his name, or maybe he thinks he’s hearing things. Onset schizophrenia.
“Dan,” they all whisper. “Dan, dan, dan!”
The city at night, more restless wandering awaits.
ON A SATURDAY NIGHT, Ljubljana was fairly lively into the late hours, though most boutiques and stores closed their doors by 9 pm. I wonder about these pretty faces through the windows, the Slovenian yuppie set, who do they work for, where do they get their nice sweaters? Some clubs remained open, and I heard all kinds of fun music from the speakers, including Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s “Deep Cover,” followed by some vintage Michael Jackson (pre-Off the Wall, maybe Jackson 5?) and then Tom Jones’ rendition of “Burning Down the House,” followed by Lipps Inc.’s 1980 hit “Funky Town.” A guitar player was singing “Creep” by Radiohead but he couldn’t hit those Thom Yorke high notes.
There were also decent restaurants open late, serving fried seafood, Indian curries, and kebab, which is what you need if you want to get some deep sleep. In the earlier part of the evening, I attended a traveling Flemish production of Medea’s Children with Slovenian subtitles. I think I understood a few phrases in Flemish (their expression for “please,” alsjeblieft, is the same as it is in Dutch) but Slovenian was impenetrable. It looked like a cat had run across the keyboard. (Where are you from is od kod prihajaš? and thank you is hvala!) I was reminded of the fake “Eastern European” language from Ingmar Bergman’s 1963 film The Silence (where the Estonian word for hand, käsi is taught by the concierge to the little Swedish boy in the hotel).
Ingmar Bergman employed a fake “Eastern European language in his 1963 film Tystnaden or The Silence.
And then he writes…
Oh, the melancholy sorrow of the pretty youths and sorrow over missing my own pretty youth, long gone and burned away, but can it be resurrected, just like the actress cries on demand for the camera, her cheeks wet and so sincere, the tenderness of lovely youth, and afterwards an after party of salami, prosciutto, Slovenian theatre life, as if I ever knew what I was doing ever.
The next day
Across from here we had a good lunch of fried fish, potatoes, drenched in a yummy creamy garlic sauce.
SLOVENIA HAS MIXED/uncomfortable feelings about its southern neighbors, let’s call them that. Someone asked a friend something in Serbo-Croatian, which was taught to all Yugoslav school children prior to 1991 as a common state language. Old-school nationalism, everyone in a single geographic box, speaking the same language, believing in common myths that link their heritage with a mystery genetic component (it’s in our blood) while rooting for certain football teams, praying for Olympic glory, and engaging in armed border conflicts in cultural gray zones, seems antiquated and kind of silly. Yet this was the solution to the imperial collapses of 1914. Come feel the nationalism!
The same Ottoman Empire that once ruled over much of the southern Balkans also ruled over what is now called Israel and Palestine. But up here, this was all Austro-Hungary, Ljubljana is thus a provincial capital of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire. It’s odd, I think, that nobody is trying to resuscitate this particular empire these days. The Russians are still crying about theirs and “their ancient land” but the Austrians are, well, I am not sure what they are up to. Maybe bodybuilding. Or skiing. Maybe their beer is just better and so they have fewer complaints.
And just like that, it’s over …
Back in the north woods of Estonia, where the land is green indeed.
AFTER LEAVING the mountains around Slovenia and Austria, ‘Europe’ is one big dusty plain of farms, roads, and shiny grain silos, and the occasional large settlement.
This rolls straight up into southern Latvia where things get woodsier north of the Daugava river, and Estonia is even more swampy and green. Also the road, farms, town pattern is less observable, in Estonia it looks like some giant sneezed and the houses went all over. A very dispersed settlement.
That river is the Jägala, I think. Do you know that in the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the Russians also tried to conquer this region? But that they lost and badly? And that even then the Swedes and Poles supported the governments in Estonia and Livonia because they didn’t want Ivan as a neighbor?
Some things never change.
A compilation of journal entries (in italics) and Facebook-Instagram posts from a recent trip to Slovenia.
Later, I uncovered my journal from ’02, only to discover I was mostly focused on creative projects and my relationship when I was in Slovenia, and barely wrote about the trip at all.
MY DAUGHTER CALLED ME. She said that Uncle Agostino was sick and that he had decided that, for whatever reason, he would soon board a flight to London, where he intended to die. Why he had selected England as his place of moving on to the underworld was unknown to me, but Uncle Agostino was a history buff, and it’s possible he just wanted to see some of its museums before leaving.
At once, I began my sojourn to Uncle Agostino’s house, down by the port. When I arrived, the old man was seated in a chair, dressed up in a Apulian folk costume. The wisps of his white hair poked out from beneath his cap and his arms were crossed. His legs were up on the counter and he seemed quite peaceful, or molto tranquilo, as they say. “Uncle Agostino,” I said, “is it true that you are going to die?” Agostino said nothing, but briefly glanced at me, as if he registered what I was saying. “And why do you want to die in England of all godforsaken places?” Again, there came no answer from caro Uncle Agostino.
My cousin Gabriele was at my side a second later. In fact, the whole house was full of various relatives. His dark hair had grown longer, his skin was tanned from all of the sun. He was in a fine mood despite the somber backdrop. The countertop was submerged in local cuisine. Panzarotti. Orecchiette con cime di rapa. Spaghetti e polpo. “Don’t mind Uncle Agostino,” Gabriele said. “He’s just preparing his soul for his journey to the underworld.” “I can see that.” “But those clothes won’t do for the funeral later,” Gabriele said to me. “You need to get some new Italian clothes. We Italians like to look sharp at funerals.”
Out into the street I went, searching for my wardrobe upgrade. Gabriele was correct. My shoes were worn so thin, they were coming apart. My pants were baggy and covered with stains. Mysteriously, my belt was too long, though there was no evidence that I had lost any weight. My shirt had been bought in India. Indeed, I was the very picture of a beggar. Again I came down by the port, where a ship carrying refugees from Africa had just docked. I stepped over them in my search for new Italian clothes. The sky was a strange, otherworldly pink, and it swirled high above the sleepy Adriatic, full of pulsating yellow-white blobs. It was a kind of Mediterranean aurora borealis.
“This is not Puglia,” I said, observing the sky. “This is somewhere else.” I turned up a street by the port and walked into a restaurant, where another family was celebrating some event, birth, death, marriage, what have you. But I was escorted out on account of my shit attire. Up the street, I found a shop that sold belts, shoes, pants, and for decent prices. There I was, rummaging through the discount bins, trying to look something like a presentable Italian. Again my phone rang. It was my daughter. “Are you coming?” she said. “Uncle Agostino is ready to go to England now. Agostino says he wants you to come with him.”
north! 