A flight home with Dante and Homer — You don’t want to sit next to me on the plane I’m not the worst possible neighbor. I’m quiet. I’m considerate. I won’t steal your space. I hope I don’t smell. But even my not-especially-huge physical frame sits uneasily in the cramped quarters of a budget airline. I stick to the space I pay for, but I Feil every square inch…

And learn to love it anyway — Just yesterday, there was a shark in Barcares Not a big one. Not one of those white-bellied triangle-toothed monsters that’s burned onto the basal layers of my brain, the ones accompanied by deep bass notes of the cello wherever they go. This one was only about two metres long. Bigger than me, though. The tourist town of Barcares…

A national celebration in France’s forgotten South — The days are relentless Like France, like Canada, like America, I was born in the summer. But I wasn’t born here. The sun is downright hostile in the spire of July, the topmost glittering needle of summer. The ecstatic buzz of the cicadas makes it sound like the sidewalks are sizzling. In English, we…

A useless guide to Roma Termini — Devil didn’t make hell Man did it himself and he did it really fucking well. — Rodney DeCroo There’s a buzz to this place The wordless chatter of ten thousand voices. The clouds of cigarette smoke drifting in from the entrances, Northeast and Southwest. …

People die every day for far less than this — If it form the one landscape that we, the inconstant ones, Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly Because it dissolves in water. — WH Auden, In Praise of Limestone Water brought us here Not literally. We flew, like normal people. Packed into an aluminium can full of other people’s farts, shushed by a…

Lorca, Dali, and the spirit of Catalonia — I’ve forgotten how to pack That’s the conclusion I came to as I rummaged in my bag under the Spanish sun. No toothbrush. No deodorant. At least one change of clothes short of the time we intended to spend on vacation. In my defense, it’s been a long time. You can’t count when we moved…

Beware of a simple story — The worst labyrinth is not that intricate form that can trap us forever, but a single and precise straight line. - Jorge Luis Borges The world is full of predators Many of them prefer a hot meal. The sudden snap of vertebra between the jaws; the hot gush of blood. …

Dancing with the demons in Barcelona — “Puta mierda de bicicleta!” The taxi driver swore fluidly, elegantly, en español. The fucking whore cyclist carried on her way without hearing, swerving across three lanes of howling traffic. The same tongue that called his wife mi amor on the phone just a moment before now spat vulgarity at a dirty windshield. …