It's been a terrible year.....
on top of everything else one of my best friends was found hanging in his back yard after being out there for 2 days....I'm just tired of all of this. everything just keeps getting worse...it's like a crescendo of malignance, but it's not even half way over. I hate my life.....I won't curse God....but I really wish he would just take me.

I just stopped by to spit
-on your grave
For dying too many years
-too young
We were so close for
-so many years
What drove us apart? Well, I think
-you know
The worst isn't that I didn't
-say goodbye
It's that I'll never know if
-you loved me
Maybe that's selfish, but I'm the one
-crying at your grave
But I was passing through
-and spit on your grave
I hope it seeps down to quench
-your sad thirst
Because I feel where you are
-there's no drink
Guess I'll be going
-it's starting to rain
I'm glad we had this time
-to catch up
But I'll be back
-to spit on your grave

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Twenty three lonely hours rotting out my mind.
I want to go home, but I've no choice so I stay.
You leave my life in the hands of this nurse you ingrates!
A lowly, apathetic, torture chamber maid?

Dementia's creeping in....
I'm forgetting friends that I knew....
Where's my family?
Did I not take care of you?

I am broken
I am forgotten
I am....Dad

you stay for an hour,
maybe one day a week or two
my only other company cries "help me"
all night in the next room

my words no longer come easy
my skin is raw, I'm freezing
I........................
I can't remember..............
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Short stories to a brief passerby
Epitaph--a last short goodbye
Sometimes we all get knocked down
But we've got to learn to keep on
You've laid to rest all the love that you knew
My condolence to you

What would I do if I lost you friend?
I'd hope and pray we'd meet again
In another world where all is peace and love
What would I do if I lost you friend?
I'd hope and pray we'd meet again
on a distant shore in that home above.

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Smoke carried by the dark wind
On a cold December night
A brisk walk through the raindrops
the blowing leaves it felt so right

How was I supposed to know?
All those stories that were told
Somehow contained some grains of truth
When I confronted you

Smoke from a half lit cigarette
Blown from her lips across town
Her lying eyes her shaking voice
Affirmed the notions that had me down

I walked for hours in the cold
A voice inside said I should have known
All routes would lead to this end
And to pick it up and start again

There was smoke carried by the dark wind
On a cold December night
That I spent walking away from you

____________________________________________________________________

When I was a young boy,
Heaven could fit in my hand
And it didn’t feel so far away
It was all so easy before I was a man

The times and temptations changed me
Long forgotten -- trust and obey
I would beg for the times to be easy
Curse, plead, rail andrage
Case of circumstantial victim
And Heaven, Heaven was so far away

When the sun has aged me
When my hair is sparse and grey
When the previous doubts have left me
Will I remember how to pray?
Oft’ times I wonder
When it comes down to that day
Will I hit the threshing floor?
Or will the wind come blow me away?

_________________________________________________________

I've been sitting here,
growing old without you for far too long
And I don't intend
to let it go on one second longer
Than it takes me to get to your front porch

I've bode my time,
I've sacrificed
There's only so much one man can endure.
I want to take you by the hand
I think it's time my love took a stand.

I've been sitting here
biting my tongue for so long
And I won't pretend
that it hasn't killed me every second
Every hour, Every day

I bode my time
I sacrificed
There was only so much my mind could endure
I went to take you by the hand
There was only one way to make you understand

When I've been sitting there
Growing old with you for so long
I won't regret
making a fool out of myself
The day you met me at your door

______________________________________________________________________

Dammed my veins and stopped my heart
Should have told her from the start
Before we said our goodbyes
If a smarter man were I
But I can't change it now
So I'm breaking down

Fog rolls in and kudzu creeps
Honeysuckles on the wind will taste sweet
Life will go on
At least it's what I tell myself
and so on.....

I ran into that old girl the other day
and she was planning to take some dude's name
It felt unfair, because, well...she was mine
But you know they say it happens all the time
But I can't change that now
So I'm breaking down

Fog rolls in and kudzu creeps
Honeysuckles on the wind will taste sweet
Life will go on
At least it's what I tell myself
And so on.....
But I can't change things now
so I'm breaking down

_______________________________________________________________________

Girl, where you going?
Girl, where have you been?
I know what you're hiding,
so there's no sense in lying.

I know all about him.
How much better he is than me.
But I won't just roll over
But please stop your lying

You broke my heart now
And you want me to forgive
Forgiveness I can't afford you
Because I don't believe in lying

Well tip my hat and bid farewell
Seems this didn't go so well
But looking back with no regrets
I see my shadow has not left
So? The Sun still shines and spreads its rays
Proving that I've got more days to roam
Yeah to roam

Cause something out there calls my name
Beckons me to play it's game alone
Yeah alone

So, girl you gotta go and never come back
and just know it's no skin off my back
If you ever get to thinking things aren't the same
you'd best forget you ever knew my name

**Quick addendum**
While at Buckingham palace my friends and I were hanging out on the ramp atop the fountain. Suddenly we heard some yelling in a foreign language and we turned to see some Middle Eastern men running directly towards us. Jason and I both kind of looked at each other with our minds in sync wondering “so is this it? Are we going to have to take these guys down before they blow up the Queen?” Luckily, they ran past us and were pointing at their jackets that had fallen into the aforementioned fountain. So I, ashamed of my immediate prejudiced thoughts, decided I would help them. I didn’t want to get wet and their jackets were too far out to reach, so I being the MacGuyver that I am I busted out a package of dental floss and weighted it down with the spare change that was in my pocket. After about 15 minutes of failed attempts to fish out their jackets with my minty-fresh grappling hook a guard politely asked me to stop……..I don’t know if they ever got their jackets out, but I’m pretty sure I’m in a lot of people’s vacation pictures and YouTube videos labeled as “stupid American”. I only hope that the Queen saw it and was amused….I wonder if I can be knighted for comedic relief?

Anywho….
Part IV—We’ll always have Paris….
As we got off the Chunnel train we stepped onto continental Europe for the first time. It was probably close to 3 o’clock in the morning and we absolutely had to find somewhere to sleep. After navigating the labyrinth that is Gare D’Nord train station we found our way out to be greeted by flocks of homeless people laying adjacent to the station and the warm glow of neon signs that simply stated “SEX -”. We were yet again in a red-light district in a country we knew little about other than the general distaste that the locals had for us and our kind.
I being the outgoing personality of the group took it upon myself to find someone that spoke English rather than attempting hand gestures or broken French. Eventually I found someone who spoke English well enough to direct me to a hotel. (Hotels are harder to spot in larger cities…they blend in because they weren’t built with the intention of being hotels unlike they are here in Alabama) After arriving at this 1 star (given out of sympathy I’m sure) Best Western I realized that that Parisian hated me.

We went in the hotel and asked how much it cost and the clerk told us something that sounded outrageous so far as we could see, so we told him we were going to check the place next door. Before we could turn to leave, the clerk in a thick Parisian accent said while motioning “BED, TOILET”….we pieced together that he meant that at the other hotel the bed was right next to the toilet, so we said we’d take the room, but we wanted to look at it first.

He said that he could only take one person to the room at a time. We all thought this was kind of sketchy so we sent my friend Jason, who is a 3rd degree black-belt just in case he had something waiting for him upstairs. They returned shortly thereafter and it turns out that the elevator is only able to lift 2 people at a time. I being the size of 2 people opted to use the stairs for the remainder of the stay. After paying for the room, the clerk looked around his desk, went out the door and motioned to someone down the street. After a moment, a man/pimp with two…um….”escorts” came in and we just shook our heads and waved “NO!” I’m pretty sure the clerk was mad that we stayed a whole night and I’m pretty sure we accidentally slept in a whorehouse.

The journey up the stairs was a seemingly long winding journey through the void since there were no lights in the staircase or the hallway. I’m not sure if this is because of the French belief in man-made global warming or if they just let the nocturnal creatures have their way at night, but it definitely is a good way to get a fat man back down the stairs in a flurry or baggage and pain! We eventually found our door somehow and opened it up to find a bed, a TV, and a view of a neighboring room that didn’t utilize the curtains……

After having slept 3 deep, fully clothed on top of the covers on a well worn mattress, we headed out for our big day in Paris. As we made our way to the bus station, the daylight offered the chance to avoid the human excrement that littered the streets (and some walls….) with relative ease. We hopped onto the bus and immediately went to the back where I met the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. I started talking to her as she was putting on her makeup and she fairly promptly got off the bus before her stop. Admittedly I probably looked pretty skuzzy from lack of sleep and shower combined with the odor of whorehouse.

Riding the bus we saw some of the sites that we wanted to visit, so we just marked them mentally and tried to get our bearings straight. The first stop on our list was of course the Eiffel Tower. When we got there my two friends saw a sign that led them to the STAIRCASE….I however paid my 15 Euros and gently glid up the side of the Eiffel Tower in ease. As I effortlessly breezed up the ascent I took notice of those bright-eyed folk taking the stairs. You could tell by the way they looked at us in our cube of ease that they looked at us with disdain. I could hear them in my head in their snotty, condescending tones “The only way to see the Tower is to climb it!” I noticed a trend, however that about halfway up their demeanor started to change and by the last part of the climb they were broken in spirit. To add insult to injury, it is my joy to inform the reader that the stairs don’t reach the summit and they had to go down and purchase a ticket and use the elevator anyway.

After much “ooo”ing and “ahhh”ing over the sights of the city from its highest point I started to look for my friends. I assumed they would make their way to the top so I sort of meandered about for a while. Not having a phone, I couldn’t call them. So, I eventually descended to look for them in the area below.

At the time we were there, there was an influx of supposed East European immigrants that played to the tender hearts of the Americans and the British. All of their little signs said something to the effect of “I am Bosnian…my father died…I am destitute…give me money…et cetera” and not a lick of it was in a language other than English. Evidently this Bosnian progenitor got around or they were lying…my bet is on the latter. Eventually I figured it would be fiscally advantageous to buy them some food rather than giving them all money. So, I bought them something at the little crepe stand nearby which is where I had the absolute best ham, egg and cheese crepe!

After enjoying my much deserved breakfast by the Seine river, I waited for my friends a while longer before deciding that we were all grown men and they’d have to make it in Paris without me and vice versa.

So I busted out my map of Paris, which I’m almost certain was drawn by a monkey…a lazy monkey…with Parkinson’s disease…and a hunger for practical jokes that could only be satiated by toying with tourists. Eventually I gave up on the map and meandered and navigated by word of mouth.

After a while a pretty face started becoming very familiar. There was this girl that I had been seeing off and on on various street corners throughout my journey through the streets. She was petite and sandy blonde and as beautiful as the day was long. Before I knew it my mouth was talking without my permission and I heard myself say “You look ‘bout as lost as I am”. Which, to my surprise she understood English and turned and smiled at me while fighting with her map. We started talking and struck up an impromptu friendship. She was looking for a particular train station and we weren’t in the nicest of neighborhoods so I suggested that I walk her wherever she needed to go. We walked together for a couple of hours through the streets and along the river talking about our cultures and how she thought English was an ugly language unlike her native Spanish tongue (she was from Madrid, Spain) but she liked my accent. But as all good things do, our trip came to an end at some nameless train station. We said our goodbyes and she told me to look her up if I was ever in Madrid. Not wanting to ruin this perfect rendezvous I didn’t ask for her information. She stood on her tippy-toes and hugged my neck and gave me a kiss on the cheek. She then leaned back and looked me in the eyes and said “but it’s 2 kisses goodbye in Madrid!” She repeated her previous motion with more emphasis and kissed me again. I stood there in a daze as she climbed the stairs to the platform and off to who knows where. We both knew we’d never see each other again. But she’ll always have her ugly American and I’ll always have my beautiful Lola from Madrid. (I sometimes wonder if she thinks about me).

The rest of my journey through Paris the Sun seemed to shine a little bit brighter and my feet didn’t ache seeing as how I was on cloud nine.

I spent the rest of the day sightseeing and sampling the local pastries and eateries. As I sat eating my French onion soup in sight of the Arc De Triumph, I couldn’t help but wonder how thousands of people aren’t killed every year in that multiple lane atrocity they call a roundabout. Later I enjoyed a good drink at one of the many outside cafes at which I noticed an interesting trend. Many of their cafes seat you facing outward toward the sidewalks and streets so you can laxidasically watch the passersby in their hurries….it was a dichotomy of their society that even I could appreciate.

I eventually saw my friends while wandering the streets and we had a bite of supper and then it was off to the whorehouse for a night’s rest before our journey back home.

In the morning we awoke and gathered our things. Jason walked with us to the station, but he had more adventures yet to come. (He had fewer obligations than Stephen and I and very enviably made his way to Rome before heading home). And as we boarded our various planes, trains, and automobiles on our way home I swore to myself that I would one day return triumphantly to the land of my ancestors. And if the Lord wills, I fully intend to do so.

When we got to London I was simply amazed at how many people were there! But like the Londoners we had to get off the train, put our heads down and go! Very busy seeming place…very much the NYC of Europe. This was one of the few places that we had a clue where we were going to stay…we actually looked up hostels on the internet, but we didn’t reserve any….bad idea. As our pattern was for the entirety of the trip we carried our bags for what seemed like days on end because the hostels we looked up were right next to the station and unsurprisingly all booked. Eventually we found a handy map and found our way to a district that they call Soho. Unbeknownst to us this was London, England’s red light district. We found a hostel and it was at this hostel that I realized that hostels are a crap shoot. Some are cheap and nice and some are expensive and filthy….this one resembled the latter. They only had a couple of rooms left so we took them and my two companions roomed together while I roomed with a sleep-farting stranger. Of course before we went to sleep we had to see some sights, so we hit the town. We walked about seeing various colleges, monasteries and London’s version of Chinatown and Broadway (which are very interesting)….also there were the advances of the “ladies” of the red light district. The special thing that happened for us that first night in London was that when we were at Westminster Abbey taking pictures we ran into a girl that I immediately flirted with named Olya (Olga). She was from Russia and was doing some sort of law school work and we asked her to take our picture. As fate would have it when we were taking pictures of ourselves with her a guy came up and told us that parliament was having a special session. Somehow we got invited into the Parliament building (the one Guy Fawkes tried to blow up) at like 11-12 o’clock at night. We came into the first little chamber and it is where many people have laid in-state…i.e.-Winston Churchill…among various historically relevant others. The next chamber which I found to be the coolest, we weren’t allowed to take pictures of. The entrance of which was a room with four looming statues of famous monarchs (some of which I believe were from legends…but don’t quote me on that) which surrounded you that led through a corridor of a painted history/timeline of England. When we got to our seats we were looking down on the opposing sides through what I can only assume was bullet-proof glass. Picture it…politicians, businessmen, random rich people and three guys from Alabama who hadn’t bathed in probably 2 days with a Russian girl in tow. Needless to say we were out of place, but we enjoyed it…at least I did. If you’ve never seen Parliament in action, I suggest you watch C-SPAN at the appropriate time and you will get a kick out of it. It consists of a few people in wigs, a liberal party, a conservative party and a lot of arguing and pounding of a podium. For some reason they always have a book that they put down on the podium and pick it back up when they sit down. It would make more sense to just leave it, but they’re quirky like that I suppose. Now their arguing isn’t what we would think of it as….they’re much more “cheeky” and polite while they verbally lambast you….
After we left there it was goodbye to Olya and back to the hostel with the aforementioned sleep-farter. The next day we found a much better, cheaper hostel and hit the museum circuit and it was probably one of my favorite museum experiences. My personal favorite was the Rosetta stone….All we know about Egyptian hieroglyphs is because of that red piece of stone in 3 languages…amazing discovery! Additionally we saw all sorts of Middle Eastern artifacts as well as armor from the Roman gladiatorial events. Afterwards we sought out the London Eye, which if you’re unfamiliar with it, it is an enormous ferris wheel across the river from Big Ben that sticks out like a sore thumb, but offers a great view of the city…..some way or another Jason got separated from the group (most likely due to text messaging his fiance) and Stephen and I had to find our way back using the “tube”, which is what they call the subway over there. (Mind the gap). Well Stephen and I leave the station and start walking back and somehow get into a circular park with no exit that went on for seemingly six miles. Eventually after being snubbed by about 50 cabs I was able to force one to stop by getting in the road and putting my life on the line (worth it). Jason was supposed to show us more of the city since he’d actually been there before, but we never could get back in touch with him. The next day he tells us how much fun he had watching a rugby match with one of his friends from London….you may want to ask him about that as I cannot shed much light on it. The next day we hit the train station to make our way to Salisbury, which would be our base from which we went to…Stonehenge….
Salisbury was quite possibly my favorite town on the whole trip. It was the quaintest little English village I had ever seen. The town square was beautiful…just a square of shops and whatnot surrounding a courtyard rather than a court house, overlooked by an abbey that was straight out of the middle ages. We walked the streets and ate dinner at a place called the Haunched Venison. This place had been in existence in various forms since the 14th century. It had narrow wooden creaky stairs that led up to where we ate, sitting at a rustic table with chairs that had to be just as old. The great thing about this place was that they offered wild game. I had the rabbit with root veggies and it was delicious!
The next day we finally made our way out to Stonehenge via the local bus system and it just comes out of nowhere! If you were driving through the English countryside you very well could be like “was that just Stonehenge that I passed?”. The thing that struck me the most about the place was that it was an abandoned ancient monument when Moses was leading the children of Israel out of Egypt…that’s how old this place is. It really makes the mind get creative when you try to figure out how they constructed this monument. No one really knows so everyone lets their imagination run wild “well maybe they were Atlantians or maybe aliens helped them” and so forth. It was a perfect day to visit as far as I was concerned. It was cold and very very windy…it made it feel a bit more epic. Eventually we made it to the capitalist part of the monument—the souvenir shop! I got a ring made of Blue Stone which is what the henge is made of. It turns a blue color when it gets wet. Jason broke this once in a lifetime souvenir later in a Parisian pizza parlor…..
When we got back to the hostel I went to the common room in which I met the two most boring people on the face of the planet. There were two girls from New Zealand who had undoubtedly spent thousands of dollars traveling to this place only to sit in the common room of a hostel and watch crappy Australian TV for days on end. I bottled my pity for them and exited before their apathy began to attach itself to me.
When we left we went back to London ever so briefly before we hopped onto the “Chunnel” (the train that goes under the English Channel from London to Paris at 300 mph). However, before we got on the train we hit up one last museum, at which I can now proudly say I have seen the original paper that Paul McCartney wrote the song “Yesterday” and a copy of the Gutenberg Bible.
We left London (and Britain all together) on a train going 300 mph… at night….when you can’t seen the French countryside…because it was cheaper …by like $150. Sitting across the way from a man who was later ejected due to his body odor (which I said nothing about because I honestly thought it was Jason) we rode that bullet of a train to the city of Gallic history, the city of culture, the city of romance, the city of ….human excrement?
More to come

So, I spent nearly an hour typing up the second part of “The Journey” and it mysteriously vanished….

Leaving Edinburgh was pretty hard for me since I had worked so long and so hard to get there and our time there seemed to fly by, but there was much more of the world that I was intend on seeing so my faithful companions and myself hopped a train to Inverness. The train ride over there was interesting since I forced myself to be extroverted and talk to people. One of the more interesting people I met on the train was a Scot named Ross. Over many (many) rounds of rummy we talked at length about our mutual wanderlust and he told me how he was going home from his latest adventures being a free lance snowboard instructor in the French Alps and went from lodge to lodge (I was jealous). Once we arrived in Inverness it was about midnight and we decided we needed a little extra cash just to see us through the next couple of days. Unfortunately the ATM wasn’t feeling very generous at that point and we had to make due with what we had. But hey, where’s the adventure in having money and knowing you have somewhere to sleep in a strange town when the temperature is below freezing? Now, Inverness, unlike the other cities we had been to thus far, did not have maps and whatnot as far as the eye could see so I had to employ the “word on the street” method of finding places. Luckily one of the girls I had talked to on the long ride was actually from Inverness and I asked her where the hostel was. Now, if you know me, you know that I have a really bad habit of asking a question and not really listening to the answer. All I really wanted was verification that there was in fact a hostel and what general direction I could find it in. So, I smiled and nodded at the information as most of it went in one ear and out the other. I did appreciate her advice though. Her name was Cassie…she was a gem. My friends and I walked through the silent streets of this town hearing only the echoes of our own voices and in amazement that almost everything was closed. To my knowledge this town has about 40,000 people and it’s fairly compact so I expected to see people on the streets at night and whatnot. Eventually we found the hostel and we got situated before we hit the streets again. Upon further investigation we found that Inverness too had fallen victim to the invasion of Indian and Chinese food, but at that point we didn’t care…Stephen even actually learned to like Indian food, which in itself is amazing seeing as how Stephen’s preferred flavor is bland. I really liked the look of this city because it has a river bisecting the town into a north and a south side connected only by 2 bridges probably 300 yards apart….it gave it a really old time feel coupled with the stone streets (in certain parts). After dinner we stopped off in a pub to hear a little jazz band play and that’s where I met a girl with the most beautiful blue eyes. They were of the deepest blue I have ever seen. It was as if someone had carefully placed sapphires in small orbs of the whitest marble. We talked for a little while and it turned out that she worked in the theatre in Edinburgh. We continued to talk until she and her friend said they were going upstairs to dance. At first I took this as a letdown, but in retrospect I think she was actually asking me to go too due to her hesitation to go…..but my density knows no bounds.
The next morning we asked our hostel hostess however unhostile (alliteration! Huzzah!) how to get to Loch Ness. She said we could go one of 2 ways and the first option was to take about a 10 mile hike with her and the rest of the backpackers…..or we could find our own way. Not being one to miss out on instant gratification I chose the latter. After hitting the ATM (which then worked thankfully), we saw (in the daylight) a hostel right next to where we got off the train. Oh well…our way was more fun.
We flagged down a taxi and immediately regretted it. I’m pretty sure this guy had recently escaped from the local sanitarium and had hijacked some poor taxi driver. His body language was sketchy, his eyebrow hair was about an inch and a half long, he seemed to have no soul when I looked into his eyes and I just really didn’t like the way he said “Drumnadrochit?.....Yeeeeeesssss” while cocking his head back and forth as if he had some sort of twitch. Fifteen minutes later we were dropped of at a post office which looked to me to be in the middle of nowhere, but we gladly said goodbye to the driver. Personally I said a prayer for the real driver who I’m sure was locked in the trunk and awaiting certain demise. We asked for directions and started off to the next hostel where we found a little Scottish woman running the place. She was happy to hear that we were American because “Americans clean up after themselves unlike those Muslims who can’t touch the same toilet seat as ‘infidels’ (I’m sure this makes cleaning the bathrooms fun) and who (lesser known fact) leave pasta sauce all over the stove”. We asked her what there was to do and she said we could go to Castle Urquhart or go to Crag Monie, but if we waited till night time we could sneak into the castle for free. So, we took her advice and climbed to the top of Crag Monie, which was supposedly the site where a famous Viking raider was hung by the villagers. At the top there was a nice view of the lake and a good knoll for sitting. We made our way back to the hostel where other backpackers had arrived and I’m pretty sure they were from the United Nations of Beautiful Women. There were girls from Belgium, Spain, and Germany. I was particularly fond of the Belgian though I couldn’t for the life of me begin to spell her name. When the Sun went down we started making our way to the ruins of castle Urquhart and evidently it was a national monument of some sort. Well we snuck in to the castle and started climbing on everything and taking pictures when all of a sudden I was headlights coming down the parking lot. Of course my first instinct was “Crap, the last thing I need is to get arrested for trespassing on a foreign national monument”. So, my friends and I began what is probably the only storming out of the castle. We snuck down to the water’s edge on the back side of the castle where we felt anyone who may be looking couldn’t see us and began to army crawl around the ridge and down through the moat and eventually escaping though tunnels made in the brush by sheep. I’m not sure if there was any sort of law enforcement up there, but I feel thoroughly justified in our escape tactics. When we got back to the hostel we were sitting around the hearth with the girls and I was playing guitar and we were all having a great conversation. Being the man of the world that I am and having a sincere interest in other cultures I had a great question, however being around the beautiful women must have given me a speech impediment because my question came out something like “So, how’s your racism?” asked as if their’s could not top ours. This drew much playful scrutiny, but what I meant to say was “Is racism in your respective countries as big of a problem as it is in ours?” Miss Germany had a lot to say unsurprisingly…..Shortly thereafter it was time to go to bed and evidently the Midwestern girl in my room snores as loud as I do…
The next morning when we were about to leave the lady that ran the place actually offered me a job playing guitar every night during the summer. I had to refuse for the time being, but it was nice to know that I could and that maybe I will one day.
We headed back to Inverness to catch a train to Edinburgh and then down to London. I was leaving my beloved Scotland, but only in the name of adventure.

More to come