A despatch from Madrid at 4:30 AM, when you can look at the city, it with half-lidded eyes and walking with us down Calle Gran Via.  The night is relentless here, pulsing with energy and bonhomie.

Recipe for Spanish Experience Cookie:

• One part getting lost in the center of Old Madrid
• One part getting lost in the Metro
• 1/2 part visiting the Palace
• 1/2 part walking
• 1/4 part gumption

It is not long after I retreat from the City Alive until I return to the streets in search for a Coke and a snack.  The wan hotel guard shrugs when I ask if anything is open around.  He says, “Try down the street,” indicating the street in front of the hotel.

So I do, walking down the street alone, accompanied only by newly withdrawn euros burning a hole in my pocket.  The night presses on me as I walk down, towards nowhere because I know not where I am, but thataway.  I pass by a couple hidden in the shadows around a makeshift bench, slouching, eating something that looks like thin pizza.  After a few quiet blocks, I encounter a white island, lit windows indicating a 24 hour convenience store.

Drawn to it like a moth, I bang up against the glass doors that didn’t open.  Confused, I glance around inside the store and notice a security guard waving at me.  He is holding one hand up, in the universal gesture to *wait*.  He then points at the crowd inside the store.

After a few minutes, two people exit the store after the guard presses a key on a remote to open the doors and I was then able to enter.  This singularly odd experience left an impression on me and I wandered the tiny store aimelessly, feeling the one-minded Spaniards watching me; the security guard with his powerful remote, the crowd of aloof hipsters near the register waiting for something.

The crowd was not together, not a group, they were a loose collection of individuals, waiting, individually, with expectant eyes towards the back of the store–ahh, where they were heating up purchased pizzas, which were laying in tidy stacks in refrigerated shelves.  I thought to myself, “Perhaps I should check that out, pizza sounds good.”

I quickly decided against it after reading the various and disgusting toppings that these people thought were appropriate on pizza.  Note that I am a purist and anything other than cheese, herbs, and perhaps pepperoni gets voted off my pizza island.

After paying for my coke, waters, and potato chips (which took me 10 minutes to choose, as I had to study each bag and make sure I wasn’t buying bacon infused cheese chips) I tried to leave the store by walking up to the glass, forgetting that the security guard held the Power.  He then opened it for me and I was let out on the night.

On the way back to the hotel I passed by many discarded boxes of heated pizza from that convenience store, discarded in dark corners and on quiet benches, refugees from that endless bright place.

The people on the plane are a nice potpourri of various travelers–next to me sits a couple from South Africa, in their 40s.  They carefully sit, carefully eat, and carefully watch the inflight movie; with their gray hair and gray stares.

The young blonde girl two rows down from us is playing with her hair, getting the front of it back into a pinned twist, just so.  She is noticeable mostly because she is blonde, young, and good looking.  The boy with her is a lesser douchebag (as opposed to major) with only a few douchebaggy qualities:  (1) a permanent half scowl, (2) half-turned hat, and (3) a perfectly put-together clothing ensemble, complete with faux street graffiti tee shirt.  He has his training wheels on, soon he will remove them and move on to overly tanned skin, bluetooth earpieces, and white shoes.

A certain numbness, a kind of disbelief pervades me.  Perhaps I’m a jaded traveler now but it doesn’t feel like a vacation yet.  But I can smell it, just like I can smell the perfume of the gorgeous Spanish women on the plane, scattered around like impossible flowers in a meadow.

Me and my mate exchange jokes to melt frozen time, watching it drip away minute by minute.

Smells on the plane always come in cycles.

1. Stale baseline plane smell
2. Whiff of airplane food that always smells the same
3. Unknown bodily function smell (was that from the toilet?)
4. Actual smell of airplane food from cart or from tray
5. (Bonus) Smell of shit as someone changes their infant’s diapers right next to you, or behind you, with an apologetic air (too bad it doesn’t smell better).
6. See #1

At this time, 15 minutes before the flight lands, I am smelling #3, UNKNOWN BODILY FUNCTION SMELL.  When I smell this, I dart my eyes quickly around, almost as if to catch someone squirming in their seat, post-fart, with a guilty expression on their face.  I don’t see anyone.

When we touch down in Madrid, eight hours later and still carrying recycled air and smells from Washington DC, we will all exhale, the plane, the passengers, exhale and open to tumble down the concourse and into the land of bears.

Heisenberg-like, he was both near his friends and a besotted older man who simultaneously looked fit and old(er), a hanger-on that shuffled near him while retaining the imperturbable aloofness that only years gain you, and near us.

“My boy hates me,” he signs, spelling out an ancient love story writ between the flashes of Lady Gaga on the televisions and the condensation on our drink glasses.  ”He’s over at Cobalt, and I’m here.”  We all roll our eyes in shared disdain for the Boy, the Boy who is missing Everything and is Absent.

“You can find someone here,” my friend says, pointing to the many bodies in the bar, bodies that seemed to press upon us with their presence, in only the way that bodies press in gay bars, mostly just there but with a hint of directness and challenge.  Almost as if they say, “Here I am, and here you are, and are you going to do anything about it?”

“My boy hates me,” the eighteen year old repeats, while drinking the rest of the liquid in his cup and looking sideways.  ”Here is my best friend,” white arm encircling a black neck, both handsome and vibrating with youth. Lady Gaga’s cleavage mesmerizes me on ten screens as we awkwardly shuffle around to block the Older Man from being part of our Group.

“I don’t want him,” youth says, glancing at the old.  ”How do I get rid of him?”  Our suggestions, lame as they are, create shared camaraderie that is shattered as they bound off, sliding between bodies and people to their next lily-pad in the pond., where undoubtedly they will repeat their lives until they are too heavy and sink below the water, joining the rest of us solemn swimmers.

We were in Playa Montezuma and the beach was in us, conquering us day by day.  I walked outside to get some fresh air and was disappointed to find the air was the same as inside.  But I saw the sky, and the palm trees.  The sun would be up soon.

I leaned over the railing on the second floor, scanned the empty street below me.  It was not empty, it was just devoid of people.  The street sat there though, full of itself, being a street, a connection from point a to point b.

After sitting down heavily on a chair brought out from the room, I stared at the brightening sky through palm trees.  Their leaves shivered in the early morning, a hat to the wood stem below.  The trees talked to each other, with a shake here and lean there.

Almost delirious, I continued to stare at the gorgeous world.  The sun was to come up soon.  She would want to see it, I thought.  She would be so happy.  So I went inside and woke her up, I saw the sun rise then I took her outside and saw the sun rise.

The dust underneath my fingernails was gritty, slow to the touch. As I rubbed it on the metal stairs, equally sturdy and rickety, the texture reminded me of the slowness of life. Life as friction, as speed bumps rendered microscopic, each particle of dust serving as a reminder that the laws of physics still exist and still hold dominion over my life.

Friction defines our lives and our interactions with people.  The negotiation between two people, three people, a group is constant — a word, a sentence, thrown across the chasm that divides us.  When we are more intimate, we let our skin do the talking, a rub or touch, a push here, a pull there.  Just two membranes rubbing against each other.

On that metal stoop, on those unyielding stairs, I stared unfocused at everything.  The road sign blinked in staccato rhythm, this way. This way. The arrow blinked at me, I blinked back. This way, please, it said. This. This. This way.

But was its advice good?  Was it sensible?  Did I have enough understanding to see its hidden words, its quiet call to gothatway, to go elsewhere than where I was?

The two metal grilles behind me, a door, a portal into a home (I think), was doubled up, making my eyes cross as I tried to decipher its tracings, its path. Did it have a message for me, too?  The pattern of the crosshatchings, the stitchings of metal, weaved in and out with reality and with my senses until I became unfocused, unseeing enough to see what was really there.

Later, when I went thataway, elsewhere, down the street and around the block, the stillness of the night contrasted nicely with the solid activity of the deaf people on the street, on the sidewalk, providing a visual reminder—a visual feast of thoughts that extended into the air, into the quiet night, until the very air shook with their glad words and angsty tidings. As an observer, I sat apart and felt, saw, and smiled at the utter ridiculous sanity of all that I saw. I am simply one of them, but by stopping, by sitting on the stone wall, the cold stone wall that beat in sync with my pulse equally as it constricted it, I was able to see the truth, that we all march inexorably to the same bi-valved drummer.

Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

The wet, gray sidewalk stretched in front of me, seams in between each block of concrete marking the rhythm of my walking.  Step, step, seam, step step, seam, an endless procession tap-tap-tapping the sole of my shoe.  Rivulets of clean dirty rainwater surround each footstep, spreading as I put my weight down.

The rain continues to fall headlong, following gravity’s mad rush downward, inward, striving in vain to reach the center of everything.  The water and cold air are in cahoots, working together to build me a cold rain hat as the rain fills my hair.  Tap tap tap, plit plit, step, seam step the world moves by slowly, cars drive by quickly, and a small gust of wind reminds me to breathe.

I want to keep on walking forever, straight, left, and right down the street, towards no destination (but having one anyway).  I close my eyes and walk for a while, blind, seeing only the dim light filtered through the cracks of my eyelids.  Balancing on my legs, I feel the world embrace me for a moment, wind, rain, earth and the fire in my belly.  For a second, I open my eyes to reassure myself that I am still alive.

I am, and I keep walking, eyes closed, with a smile on my face and streams of water trickling down my cheeks.  After a minute, I open my eyes; the depth of what I saw was starting to overwhelm me and reality needed its due.  Seam, step step, seam squish the endless concrete gave away to a patch of grass.

There, I stopped under a tree not to escape the falling rain but to meet a new species of quiet, still air; the kind of air only you can get beneath a tree, filtered fragrant and full of life.  After that pause, the walk continued, I continued walking, the walking continued me.  I walked.  And kept on walking.

In the line for the dance club, we writhed with serpentine energy around the corners, slowly, quickly, until at last we were in.  There was sweat everywhere; the cold water bottle in my hands, the neck of a tattooed man, the brow of a friend–the very air dripped.

We were in Town, and the town was in us.

It was not until I paused briefly in a closed room on the second floor that I realized that the manic energy of the dance floor had gripped me with full force.  In that cool windowed room, staffed with couches and languorous bodies pausing for an eternal moment, the world stopped in between beats of music.

Exiting the room required conscious decision, the opening of doors, and goals—be it to enter the music again or go to the restroom.  Enter the music I did, looking for my compatriots, my friends, familiar faces in a clean sewer of flowing bodies.

Found, lost, and found again I allowed myself to drown in the beat, heat, and beat of the music.  It pressed against me and danced away, both flirting and repelling, forked tongue and angel’s touch to my whirling senses.  Stepped-on toes and brushes with backs, breasts, hinds, and arms were the currency of the floor, lubricated with sweat and sound, fortified with alcohol and drugs, the dance economy was in full swing.

Shuffles and swings were bid upon and partnerships made and lost in the blink of an eye.  The flickering of the television screens throbbed while we were robbed senseless of our sanity only to be returned to earth in the next moment with a crash of bass.

The restroom was another brief respite from movement, the only remnant was my foot unconsciously tapping as I stood at the stall.  In that small space, in the middle of a large building, in its heart, I was drunk and sober, hungry and full, poised on the precipice between alive and dead.  A choice had to be made, and unmade; I chose to die and through that, live.

They swayed with the music, as we (me and my friend) continued to talk at the table.  To and fro, drama quickly begun and as quickly ended, the dancers remained always faithful to the music.  They followed the beat, one-two’ing and grinding into each other with plastic amused smiles.  One-two, three-four-five, one-two.

The drunk Indian girl sat there without saying anything for a few minutes, looking at turns bashful and quizzically at us.  When she continued not to say anything, my friend said hello.  I waved.  She looked at us quickly and then looked down.  She was not shy, though, and seemed to have only stumbled into our quiet harbor out of chance, out of a need to sit down.

She finally asked my friend something, something that we could not understand.  Oh, yes, we are deaf — yes.  Deaf.  She tried to whisper in my ear, and also prompted me to repeat what my friend was saying in her ear.  In a swirl of dark presence, she left the table; only to be seen shortly after slowly dancing with an tony automaton with douche hair.

During those surreal moments where she joined our space, our table, for a time; we were connected however tenuously to the electric field of bodies around us.  Not long after that, purses were deposited at our table for safekeeping, with a slurred apology/request.  This was from a group of girls newly inserted into the scene, ready to dance.

In the corner stood a short man, of short stature, of short patience and short chances of getting some that night.  For he was an average frustrated chump, pecking at the fringes of the dancing bodies, hoping to catch a stray connection or glance, so he could be pulled in.  Pulled in the weaving mass, to be woven, touched, and wanted.

We saw him shortly after, shuffling away down the street, alone.  He didn’t have that air of quiet desperation around him; worse, he had that sense of eager, alert optimism—the kind of optimism and weird confidence that imbues every creepy person out there.

Our thoughts often turned to the curves on every beautiful woman dancing and the admiring smiles on the mens’ faces, connecting the dots, following the trigonometry of desire to its natural conclusion—a dream made manifest in reality.

In the last six weeks, I have visited:

• Seattle, WA
• Olympia, WA
• San Diego, CA
• Los Angeles, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Taipei, Taiwan
• Chia-Yi, Taiwan

In each of these places, planes of existence, there exists an particular song of life.  Each has its own melodies, and people shuffle, walk, dance, and sing differently.

When I arrived at my comfortable one-bedroom apartment at home in DC, smelling the musty air and feeling the dust, I felt the ineffable feeling of missing travel, missing being on the road and elsewhere.

In particular, the Taiwanese song was unmistakably Asian, a rich squalid contradiction of street and hotel room, skyscraper and slum.  Each meal struck a note, be it an frogs’ egg drink or the spicy chicken meal at McDonalds (which helpfully delivered to our hotel).  Each week in Taiwan had its own sonata, it’s own sequence of events and impact on the putative listener.

Like a seductive bolero, Taiwan danced with me, danced until the wee hours of the morning.  Its charms were on display, from Deaflympic to brothel—courteously, slowly, with a bow, the country opened its door and allowed us in for a space, perhaps until the end of the song or the next.

Musical metaphors may fall on deaf ears, but there is much to be said for the pounding of one against another—be it on a drum or during sex.  For everything has its rhythm and cannot be ignored, and rewards those who listen with their heart.

Click.  Sometimes a moment in life crystallizes in a gravid moment.  Where the hidden force lines of fate align, where human prediction becomes accurate and real.  You just know that shit is going to happen. It was unavoidable.  Like gravity and taxes.

He, on the scooter was coming towards us.  We, in the taxi, were talking of Michaelangelo.

Click. The twain did meet, head-on, a juicy T-bone in the middle of an intersection, in the middle of Taipei, in the Middle Country.

He hit us, dead-on, still alive, whisper-quiet, the jolt that passed through the taxi tame in comparison to the shock of seeing a prophecy come true.  Of seeing physics proven, F=ma, Newton smiling benevolently over us.  The brain making calculations; if the scooter keeps going and the taxi is here and then the scooter and the taxi will be in the same place, there.

The inevitable, as it is wont to do, happened.

Sluggishly the Taxi Driver (reduced to his pure Platonian form, for his wits had momentarily departed him) sat still for a heartbeat then logically backed up the taxi a foot or two, naturally pinning the scooter and its rider under the car.  The Taxi Driver had become a caricature of himself, wrapped in an egg roll of strangeness.  He seemed to recede in himself, a lost piece of meat in a boiling bowl of soup.

After the crash, as the strands of physics and fate loosened, the chaos of possibility, that comfortable dark uncertain future, became ascendant again.  No longer had we the certainty of an accident.  More mundane forces reasserted themselves, like cowardice.  Clicking away, I snapped photos while thinking:

Should I help move him, but I’m deaf and can’t communicate with the people helping him so I’d probably just cause more damage for all I know I would move him and his head would fall off because I didn’t help support his neck like I was told to in perfect Mandarin Chinese but I don’t know Mandarin and can’t hear besides but of course they know that because I’m white and white right now means white and deaf and besides I’m fulfilling the photojournalistic duty of someone with a Big Camera so I am taking pictures of this tragic event so that pictures exist he is moving now and seems to be alright but look at his scooter he is lucky to be alive wow those cars are passing by us pretty fast we’d better get out of the street before someone hits us too last thing we need is Two Deaflympians Killed in Car Accident headlines

Pinned under the taxi, the rider (click) was frozen in a rictus of twisted pain, left arm held tight by the tire, legs under the scooter, body heaving from shock.  Volunteers moved the scooter, while the rider struggled up, and walked away.  Force, mass, and acceleration do not care if you live or die—only that you obey its laws.

And obey we did in that timeless space, in that instant of collision where our masses and our bodies all occupied the same space, potential energy to the kinetic.  We all walked away from that changed—some bloodier, some bloodless.