An auspicious beginning.

Today it rained in Ljubljana. A pitiless and pathetic rain. If you can imagine being caned by a 90-year-old, you understand what this rain was like. At first, completely ignorable and perhaps delightful to some, then after 20 minutes time, a quite tiresome affair. For respite, I sat in Bistro Ga-Ni near Železniška Postaja (the train station). I watched men come and go for Laškos, the Slovenian equivalent to Budweiser...a Bud 5-percenter that makes you blind after two bottles. I was reading an essay on the Biosquat outside Austin, TX, and laughing to myself as the author detailled the composting system (a tricycle with a commode for a seat.) The idea of adults self-fertilizing their land made me take stock of those around me; I needed a positive to my nose-holding negative. No one in the cafe would do such a thing, I decided. No one wanted to much do anything this Saturday and the weather pretty much enforced this indolence. Earlier today, I had gone to Nama to get bedding for the kiddie-sized bed that came with my furnished room. To expedite things, I ran around with the salesgirl whose English equalled my Slovene (translation: we may as will have been infants or cavemen for our verbal transactions with one another). She pointed to dimensions in centimeters and shook my head disapprovingly. We opened up packages of bedding. I used my armspan as yardsticks. I drew pictures of necessaries that were not within my line of vision, and she happily trotted away to add more to her sale. With my two bags under my stool and the pack of $2.25 Marlboros next to my elbow, I slogged through a large orange juice and a small macchiato. When the rain abetted, I threw out flares to the countergirl as Slovene service is one-half of the Dutch. You get service very quickly; you get your bill if you're lucky. I walked the 45 minutes from Center to my rented room in south Trnovo. Very south. The paved road leading to the splinter I live off has two more streets and then nothing. Just ghosted images in the offing. I think I saw a train go past once. The paved road leading to mine has a drainage ditch on each side. They reek of still water and hold consumerist fecal matter: plastic bottles, candy wrappers, cigarette butts too fresh to be swallowed by the tug of the muck. The brands that beat these streets are a testiment to the commune turned capital. Beat-up Yugos turn off at the same point as the silver Mercedes. Leather-clad yuppies wait for buses as warm-up-suited teens bicycle off on the next beer run. It's a hodge-podge, a stew that makes itself from cardamom and bone. No one has any idea what this will taste like when complete. Once inside the room, I set about the deliberate task of making the room somewhat my own, and as I surveyed the walls with a curator's vision, I noticed no nail holes, no patches of miscolored paint where taped posters had peeled off, no expressions of former personality. Just white, interrupted with impugnity by the paper and electronic mess on my desk, the intestine laundry on my floor, the Nama bags. I instantly felt ashamed and with completely reflexive behavior, I decided to take a bath. The water filled up steaming hot, so I went into my room to steam the wrinkles out of some shirts. When I returned, the water was tepid. 20 seconds of warmth and comfort was all I could expect from this bathroom. A shower nozzle flaccidly hugged the spigot, a vestige from a former water heater, I postulated. And in my less than lukewarm baptism, I became ostensibly Slovenian. No rushing to my Mobitel to ring my landlord, no rushing to the kitchen to boil water as I have done in my former apartment. I merely sat and scrubbed. As I began to lose feeling in my fingertips, I decided I should get dressed and head into town for food and exercise. I put on a fresh t-shirt and jeans, and old sweater, and then another old sweater on top of that. I hustled under a bleeding gray sky, as I thought of the things that I had done previously in Ljubljana this past week. The drinking, the meeting new people, the late nights, the conversations, learning Tarok (which will definitely get more airtime in the future), playing basketball, pizza eating, the et cetera. And it dawned on me that Ljubljana is a manic-depressive town that parties to undo the mope it's dying to submit to, that thinks and speaks to fill an ever-present void. And it reminded me of NYC. And it fortified why I've chosen to live in both of those places.