Cologne Revisited

Maybe I didn't give Cologne enough credit.

COLOGNE, GERMANY.

After I've reached my destination via train track--- I meet this Canadian fellow... we check in at the same hotel.  My phone's gone all haywire.  We promise to reunite for an evening of expedition.  That's what it is.  When I first get there, it's fresh and new.  There's a gothic cathedral, big as fuck, land-marked in the center of town.  I never enter it...go figures...but, I watch it from far away, never up close--- which seems odd at this very moment.  Peculiar!  Why didn't I enter (or, at the very least, walk  to the base and touch the gravel stone?).......

But.... alas! I never approached the gothic thing... just peered from afar, gasping at its darkness.

So, I book a room in this somewhat ritzy town,,, lots of chain-stores and accordions and this eery cathedral... GIANT.  The size is shocking.

So, I book a room.  I purchase a cute little bottle of wine.  First, I walk 2 miles, searching for a grocery store.  I find one inside of a German mall, with chocolate shops and shoe stores.  I buy a small red wine... a screw top.  I return to my room: a bed, a mini fridge, a marble bathroom.  I roll a joint.  I light up a joint (weed supplied from good old Amsterdam) and drink my petite bottle.

Canadian knocks on my hotel door.  I answer....buzzed from a mini-bottle and a small joint.  We walk.  There's a concert.  We eat kabab.  We meet four German blonde girls.  We all go dancing at a club.  Lots of techno.  Lots of beer.  We dance like robots (my specialty).  I'm a hit.

I walk back alone.  I stop at McDonalds.  I eat a fish fillet.  I look for the giant cathedral.  I get hassled by two tacky German guys with frosted hair.  I find my hotel (right next to the giant cathedral).  I pee my pants.  I pass out.  I wake up.  I've lost my wallet.  I freak out.  The Canadian knocks on my hotel door... gives me 20 euros.  I search for my wallet.  I retrace my steps... back to the concert... back to McDonalds.  No such luck...free CocaCola.  A car is turned over.  I give up.  I buy a night at a shitty hostel.  I smoke another joint in a parking lot...it's raining.  I cry.  A guy drops a gun.  I cry some more.  I hate Cologne.

Live Shrimp

"I saw it! It's little pink legs and it's little black eyes."  She's talking about shrimp...the live ones...in the tank... and she's cringing.  Like hell, she's cringing.  This sushi joint serves live shrimp...a daily special etched in blue on their dry-erase board.

Poor little things.  Snatched from its watery box, a scaled-to-fit ship anchored in the pebbles, a mermaid, a sunken treasure trunk, a couple of lobsters clawing at the glass, and the shrimp...just bobbing in the tide-less tank.

Little black eyes... soulless little insects.  Except, they must have some sort of purpose.  Like that one-eyed photographer.  I don't know his name, but he wore a black patch over his left eye...a snarling pirate...and he snapped photos.  He wore prescription eye-wear, lop-sided because of his patch *(and you'd think, any Lenscrafters salesman with an ounce of integrity, would give him half-off)... and his purpose... to snap photos...like the Beethoven of photography.

And maybe, I'll carry Louis Vuittons and wear stilettos.  Maybe, I'll drive a Mercedes convertible and it'll smell new, like polished cow skin.  Maybe I'll get my hair done, all pomped up and pretty.  I'll eat carpaccio and super greens and caviar.  I'll marry an older man, and he'll die 20 years later than expected.  I'll be his nurse and when I'm a widow with our three adult children, I'll live alone in a big house.  I'll wear St. John's pantsuits and be a member of a country club.  I'll get older and I'll move into a highrise on Wilshire.  I'll get older.  I'll hire a "girl" to cook me breakfast and take me to the movies.  We'll go to the theater and talk about the weather. 

And those damn shrimp, crawling on your white plate.  Writhing every which way and that.  Their little pink bodies and their blinking black eyes.  Can shrimp blink?