It's about three p.m. and I'm in a small town midway home, drinking half of white coffee (I forgot these people don't know me and don't know I disdain the foam on my drink, as once you've taken it off, the cup is about two thirds empty. That's not pessimism, that's a physical fact.) and eating basil ice-cream. The owner of the cafe is ruining it for me, I hate that ugly cunt, she treated me like shit when I was working for her, but she won't remember me and I am doing my best to ignore bad things lately. 

We had an extended family reunion lunch on the Sunday and although it was lovely, I kept getting more and more depressed and I couldn't understand why. There was no reason, I just kept feeling bad. Only later did the General admit that the cook who's been preparing our food had a death in the family - her mother died right that day - and fuck me but that theory how emotions translate into food is super true. I am not a hocus pocus yoga guru bullshit kind of a person, but seriously - it took me two days to get out of that melancholy daze.

Anyways. I made some money yesterday and wanted to treat myself to diabetes. It's not that it's been a long day, it's just that I enjoy living this life to the max. I sure hope that the parking spot isn't on a meter. It didn't used to be and I didn't check. That would kind of ruin the basil ice-cream's otherwise sublime taste.

An hour ago I was shooting softcore promos for a massage studio in the industrial zone where Tinka also has her shop. The madam of the salon kept ogling us when we shot the pastry until finally we gained the courage - me to ask for an interview and she for a photographer. I thought the interview was going to be different, so I didn't charge her anything at all. Didn't think it was going to be a graphic shoot, either. Regarding the first, I have read way too much Marquez and think all ladies of the sensual trade are interesting and cool, and regarding the latter... I tend to think I am good at my job and understand photography, but apparently, I have a lot to learn. To portray an invitation to sensuality, a lure, a mystique, a promise of pleasure ... is obviously not as important as photographing a groin. You really have to be a special kind of a nerd not to get turned on in a house of pleasure. 

Thing is, the madam also offered me a session - the use of a 'Paradise room', where you can enjoy a lush yakuzzi, cool champagne, a large bed and if added to the experience, a young woman to assist with ... the massage. To get the General to come to such a place is a no no. To get me to pretend I haven't met these girls... Is difficult. Don't get me wrong, I am all for threesomes and girl on girl action, but I have to like the girl. There are several women I would love to bed, even in a threesome, even in a yakuzzi... Not these. Nice girls and all, cute and all, just ... I like to keep my brain on while I have fun. Turned on. 

This is the first time that anyone has ever asked me to shoot more like another photographer whose work I've always considered degrading and gruesome - and I had to use all of my considerable imagination to see what a witless horny man would find inviting. Yesterday, during the interview, a customer walked in and asked for a girl with large fake breasts, young and slender and blonde and if her lips are real or not. They were not, so that was a good thing. Considering that this form of massage requires the lady to use her whole body on the man, how do you really enjoy such a contact with someone with big fake boobs? I've no idea. Like I said. I am ever grateful for my imagination the size of a big fake boob or even bigger. 

Grab the lot, stuff 'em in a pocket, bring 'em home and pretend you aren't seeing or hearing anything, until he forgets we don't have six kittens :D It's bound to work :D

Before I left, I uploaded some music on the iPod, in case I got to a stretch of a road where there will be nothing but sun and pain and the beaty backsound will cheer me on. I only listened to a few songs while on the walk, but after I got on the train and it was very late and I was too tired to do anything but watch the world though the window and think no thoughts, I heard this piece for the first time (though I love Mumford and Sons.) ... The day knew exactly how to end itself :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rId6PKlDXeU

The second time around

I woke up this morning with mosquito bites on my hands – and not much else. As oppose to the previous time, when I didn’t wake up at all or moving, alongside of blinking and breathing, posed such a strain, I nigh wept for most of the Monday.

Here’s what I did different.

-          Left the dog behind. I met with at least 6 off-leash farm dogs which came to sniff me or just to bark at me and that was that. If I had Lyra with me, that would have been either nothing, or a rape attempt or a fight. That said, I don’t think walking 28 km in a scorching sun would have her appreciate me. She spent the time at my parents, a.k.a. heaven.

-          Had with me only a plushie beagle substitute, a notebook and reading book I never opened once, small map, extra socks, tiny first aid kit, Kleenex’, the camera and the phone. Along with water it wasn’t more than 5 kg.

-          I studied the map really intensely. Not only did I have the printed-out topography pages, but I also took photos of the GoogleMaps aerial footage of the route, so that really saw which route leads where and what size it is. It STILL puzzled me from time to time, especially crossing that mount, but I didn’t get lost a single time. Didn’t lose morale once.

-          The General was a lot more supportive this time. I mean, he was TOO supportive the last time and I caved in, crying. This time he just encouraged me and gave me instructions. I thought about quitting pretty much most of the second half, but I didn’t. Haha, he also failed to meet me at the station and I think he was embarrassed by it. Bought me refrigerated dessert, though. Yay.

-          I ate a little in the morning and snatched a piece of pie during the walk and bought a yoghurt at the end, other than that I carried no food at all. And just one flack of water, which I kept refilling at the local farms.  (Which were plentiful all the way.)

-          At some point, blisters notwithstanding, I realized that I am perfectly fine with everything about the walk, except the excruciating pain in my feet, especially the soles. Walking on grass and graves as much as possible helped, but there is a LOT of asphalt in the world. So, around 2pm, which seems to be my crisis hour, and where I quit the other time and now could barely move, I did what any sensible person who’s been reading too much Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas would do, and downed two horse-sized painkillers, then marched on. I daresay that was the only reason I succeeded. In fact I literally jogged the 5 km off the mountain and back to the asphalt valley road. I was full of adrenaline, endorphins, my muscles were warm and stretchy, I wasn’t tired in a regular sense, and I made it thus far.

All in all I walked 28 km, made it to the train station red in the face, soaked, smelly, looking like something a large animal might chew and regurgitate … But no tears this time, no feeling of despair. And a lot wiser. I have one more test, I think, and then I should be ready to do the route…

I talked to some people on the way and I got that 'what a cool older person' feeling from some. Like I am the cool old hussie now. Minus the slutty bit. Really. Nothing at all slutty about the way I looked. 

The weather was hazy, so most of the photos looked watered down - I made the BWs instead and continued the trend of patching together individual shots in an accentuated fashion :) 

... I wonder if the next time, I should try walking in sneakers? Or is it simply that my feet are too soft thing? Ah. We'll see. Practice, practice. It's only been the second day, out of sixty. 

God is everywhere ... No, but seriously. You can't pass a crossroads without that poor person, what's his name,
being crucified on it. This certainly is a very devout country. Best part is, the churches are heavy and old
and very cool to sit in the shade of and it is easy to navigate by them. I would see the belfry in the distance
and know I'm going the right way.

Through some of the updates on the news sites, I noticed two things that made me want to kill myself early on.  Not literally, but certainly intellectually and… Fuck it, something has to be done about this. I TRY to be sympathetic and regard the bigger picture, I really do. I just …

The retard who wrote 50-shades-of-you-must-be-fucking- joking  is now writing another book of the same subject, told from the perspective of that sick rich guy. Normally I would think, hm, a bestseller is a tough act to follow – looking at contemporary rock star authors who managed to write themselves into a corner and got stuck, like Martin, but mostly about legends of American literature, who felt like towards the end they wrote all the good they can write and were being depressed and disarmed – like Truman Capote, Hunter Thompson, Hemingway, even Scott Fitzgerald and Kerouac … These people really worked hard – and a lot more than just these – and it broke their heart when people said they were pass their creative prime. But the retard of 50 shades? She couldn’t possibly write worse, it is just not universally doable unless she ties her face with a wet dishrag and randomly smacks her head at the keyboard – and still her work will be a bestseller. Nobody will ever be able to say her last book is not as good as her previous four or whatever many there already are. That’s just fucking genius.

The other thing that hammered a nail in my coffin was seeing that Kim Kardashian published an expensive looking book of her selfies. It’s bad enough they put her transgender stepfather on the cover of Vanity Fair as if those morons of South Beach need any more publicity and as if he is the prime representative of the transgender population – it seems it would be impossible to sell the magazine if they put on the cover someone who can spell .. But to create a coffee table book of some retard’s selfies, trout-pouting and shoving her fake tits into her camera phone …

I am not kidding. This shit just kills me. I don’t stand a fucking chance. The harder I try to write a really good book that an intellectual society and other authors of contemporary fiction would be proud of, the further away I am at a chance of ever seeing it sold.

I will never admire good writers or otherwise authors more than seeing them insist in the struggle against the dumb fucking popular demand. It is an impossibly unhappy task. Futile, too. But if intelligent men and women of the arts cease to try and keep the dam from overflowing with stupidity, the game is over. And society is lost. It seems to be on the brink of going back to completely stupid for most of the time as it is. I am only just now starting to be able to broaden the picture of obvious subjects. And see how men who were great because they were charismatic sometimes did impossible terrible things in the long run. I gotsta try and learn more, but for what and for whom? Whom would I tell, who would want to listen or read the things that’s taken me 40 years to figure out? We are so many. And we are so incredibly easily entertained.

.. I would write more about this, but I have to use the lavatories.

Okaaaaay. That was interesting. And extremely unpleasant.

No wonder I only lasted a day. And got nowhere. You wouldn’t either :P

So, the nice and good stuff about this first (bit unsuccessful, though not entirely) hike attempt:

-          I got to see some of the road and the road is beautiful.

-          I got to test the gear and myself and one is too small and the other too heavy. Or, kind of, we are both too heavy.

And the stuff that arrested my advance? The list be a bit longer:

-          I still can’t read maps, so I got lost a few times. Which isn’t as fun as it is in the city.

-          The pain gets you eventually. The blisters, the hips, my hands, my shoulders … still hurt.

-          The backpack’s main wrap cracked, so I couldn’t really place the load on my body properly, resulting in A LOT of discomfort.

-          The dog wouldn’t carry her saddlebags, so I had to do it for her, adding another two pounds on my already too heavy setting. All in all, it was just too heavy.

-          I was making good mileage, I did almost half of what I wanted to do for the first day by noon, when the rain caught me and I got lost, got my shoes wet and had to climb out of a ravine, which took for ever, because the dog’s leash and my own gear kept getting tangled in the growth.

-          When I tried to rest, the mutt was too stressed out and still wouldn’t stop making noise. Some was scared noise, some unhappy and some plain old telling me to quit fucking around in this wet dirt and get us home!

-          The reason why I ultimately caved in and allowed General to kidnap me, stuff me in the car and drive me back to civilisation, was not what you think, though. It was the dog. And not that she wasn’t adorable or good company or anything. It was that there is an number of unleashed dogs in the farms we passed and more often than not no owners around and being faced with two large barking and growling dogs on THEIR land while you’re soaking wet and holding a scared beagle in your arms is not as fun as it sounds. That simply proved too stressful. We got away unscarred this time, though by a lot more dumb luck than wit. I may be overly paranoid in this department, but finding yourself in the middle of nowhere in the forest and suddenly there’s a large dog behind you and a large dog in front of you and you start calling for the owner and there’s no response, the dogs are simply getting closer …

I got two ideas for a story. This extreme pain in the rain is good for me :)) I want to do it again, but I gotsta get my gear in order and leave the mutt at home. Sadly. Or… I dunno. Or stick to less remote locations and get lost less? Hm.