Day 116 (Buon Natale)

Heaven is where you serve yourself rice casserole, steamed vegetables, french fries, mashed potatoes, fried chicken wings, turkey, cranberry sauce, and rolls, times four.

A lofty earth is where you are served free wine and beer, at least until eleven o’clock.

An earth as we know it is where you sit on a wooden patio talking, soothing your achingly filled stomach, and gazing at the pleasantly lighted bridge nearby until its lights are shut off.

A squat earth is where you drift unclearly from person to person as the night winds down, and in the end mount your bike to make the long scramble down the sidewalks to your apartment.

Hell is where you can’t think and so collapse on your bed of clothes and climbing gear, sans reflection, sans the signs of a day’s finish, to wake up in nine hours with a sense of having not done.

Day 114 (If You Want to Understand a Country Send a Package from Its Post Office)

He squats a few feet from the entrance to the post office, jamming items from a translucent plastic shopping bag into a green and white box with a bird on it. He’s picked the correct box out of some miracle of guesstimation, and everything seems to fit. He folds the top down and pulls out his festive tape once again. He has used the red and black cow-spotted Happy Life! tape for the bottom, so he uses the yellow bear and ladybug ready action! tape for the top. He severs each long strand of tape with his sharpest key, mangling each strand’s end. He goes through nearly the entire roll.

The sidewalk is dirty and rough, but when it comes time to write the addresses, he sits on it. The cashed tape rolls, the shopping bag, two smaller yellow bags, his backpack and his journal lay strewn about a column that holds up the streetside veranda. He figures he’s a sight to see, jury-rigged colorful box next to him, the casualties of his gifts scattered nearby, plonked on the sidewalk on the side of the street. He figures this a lot.