youtube rarely gives you glimpses into its old
1940s / 1950s glory days of
the a.i. jukebox...
but it still happens...

darkness old friend - julian winding -
powder room -

i still remember that old dream of mine...
one summer in Ibiza...
that one went out of the window pretty
fast... as did... go to London's Pacha...
smoke some marijuana
drink like a fish...

and spend the night akin to
kevin 'n' perry: big fish, little fish... cardboard
box...
i guess the dream originated
in Paris circa 2004...
the best weekend trips to foreign cities...
on your own...
we ended up finishing our
wine our cheese and baguettes
beneath the eiffel tower watching
the sun go down,
opening the night with
that summer hit from that year:
bob sinclair - love generation,
someone always had a guitar
back then...
and then onto a club...
laughing drunk at a guy high
on ecstasy pretending to play ping-pong
to the rhythm of some house
song...

managing to find a great
hostel... and then... mingling with
strangers...
3 ducks boutique hostel in Paris...
venice?
San Polo, 2812 | Calle del Traghetto,
a Venice Museum...
22 reviews give it 2.5*...
em... a grand eating area...
maybe my luck...
i was staying there when around
15 females crashed...

now perched on a windowsill...
8 empty bottles of stella artois with me...
if a good enough song will come
on... i'll think of something...

ah! beer bottle chess!
so stella artois can be the pawns...
budwesier is the "king"...
no, but yeah, that'll work...
no, it won't...
the king can be Corona...
the bishops can be (Notre-Dame) de Leffe...
the rooks can be...
the queen is Guinness...
the knights can be Becks...
the rooks can be Żywiec...
so that's... two belgian brews...
a mexican brew, an irish and a german -
and the polish brew...

hell... talk about reinvented chess...
what Paris was... what it was when
i first walked from Porte Maillot
to the 3 Ducks Boutique Hostel
with only the Eiffel tower guiding me...
armed with a map that
depicted a sq. mile of my journey's "end"...

on the first night...
a bunch of crazy kids running
to see the Eiffel tower drunk...

honestly... some places are better suited
as memory theatres...
coming back to them...
is like robbing them of the ghost
of your cameo that was once there...
well... 2 times is a maximum...
for Paris... a 3 time is a jinx...
oddly enough? Amsterdam doesn't
have that aura about it...
Edinburgh? well... more like 3 years
rather than a weekend...

so much for everyone despairing
some over-arching existential
angst... here's to beerbottle chess!
and memories... of the places and
of the cameo ghosts we left behind!