Lying on the floor looking at the door

Holed up here in my little Naples Garden Hotel - today no drinking whatsoever. Felt shivery about 3 hours ago and shaky. But lay on the floor listening to the Armchair Astronaut podcasts. That sorted me out. Ate a big fat juicy ciabatta and thought about womens clothing. It is a funny thing all that allure of the fishnet - sailors and fishermen spend hours repairing their nets - while lots of women go out in torn up tights and burlesque gear. This does seem to be coming in again - you know corsetry and just the thought of it makes me want to reach for my lemon vodka. A very boring day - nothing to report from the televisual scaletric brain of Esten Walker - walker on the arth and bound for god knows where - in search of the oblivion tree - there to climb and see the view - and probably fall off if my luck is anything like what it is at the moment - all my introverted self musing deliberations at Bracciano Lake seem to have come to nothing - I am as switched off as usual - I feel unable to really let go on this holiday and get out and about like I should - gor blimey. The sweat is pouring off my brow and I have a deep pain in my butt. Still should be better tomorrow - I think I might head off before the mafia get me.

Maybe I should cut down my drinking ?

I feel I am starting to get to the heart of things - dredging up stuff from my past and rethinking my ideas. Taking a fresh approach to my life on the road - Naples has shown me my wilder side and also my more vunerable side. I miss mum and dad - and they got cut off too early by that car smash - so I have felt lost for some time - but now, here - amidst a continuing drinking and benson binge I think I am starting to see the wood for the trees. "I can see clearly now the rain has gone, I can see all obstacles in my way" - and one of them is Frank - the type of guy I fall in with (fall is the right word !) - because they are owest common denominator - i.e. we share the booze and the fags - think of little else - pontificate philosophy briefly and then return to the booze at hand - in fact very little hard core philosophising really goes on - it is mostly where you are going to get your next drink. So I have been thinking about this (obviously aided by a sweet white wine and sparkling water - for freshness) and i think I am going to have to cut down - horror of horrors. But the thing is I need a clearer mind to make some better decisions about the people I hang out with on these epic travels around the globe and also I need to straighten out and move on from the death of my parents. So all in all I think I am taking one small step for mankind - one giant leap for Esten. I will start by restricting myself to two bottles only of this Leibfraumuck. Good start - and I mean to go on as I have started so this should be interesting. Anyone still out there ? yawn ? yawn ? time for bed. (by the way please do read the poem I wrote yesterday that I posted on this ace poetry site, I think it sums me up pretty wellat the moment - by the way whoever Fester Bryan is, what a great name and what a top poet he is, I am a big fan of that geek - he seems to talk some weird shit but it sometimes makes a very vivid sense to me - is it only me ?)

Feeling Simple in Naples

I am feeling simple today in my delightful small and nicely named Hotel Garden Napoli. It has a big plus for me, being a city centre kind of guy it is just so well-located in Naples city centre, only 200 strides from the mayhem and canage of Naples central station. another thing that pleases me is that the room is air conditioned and light and modern, so I can Star Trek about without getting too hung up on the ancient history surrounding me, the family feuds that have gone on for centuries and the Roman thing, you know Up Pompeii can get a bit waring, even for a culture buff like me. There are cool (cold maybe) ceramic floors and swedish style pine-wood furnishing. There is a balcony. I can even watch cable television all day - cartoons and the news in Italian. I I get stuck in to a breakfast in the restaurant if I can be bothered to get up and not feeling too sick and hungover - which has not really been the case actualy this last couple of days. I have even knocked back a couple of large Scotch and Cokes (with lemon and ice) in the lobby bar in the early evening (late afternoon - i.e. the dead hours). So all in all it does me fine. I feel fine.

So watched TV today and drank vodka. Smoked 40 Benson. Played poker with myself and looking forward to Petra and April turning up. Frank gave me a wide berth but I did not know what to do with it - no I was glad - the guy got heavy yesterday, I prefer drinking on my own at the moment. Perhaps tomorrow will bring more adventure.

Frank, Drink, Naples

I like Naples - there is a good vibe here - except of course when I got my wallet nicked this morning by pickpockets who bumped me and before I knew what was happening I'd lost it. But - you will be pleased to here that all I had in it was scrap paper because I am not stupid enough to keep anything valuable in a wallet - what do you think I am ? a complete idiot ?. So, I spent a couple of hours talking to the great Irishman guru, Frank, in a little square - with quite a bit of warm winter sunshine beating on our backs and nothing to do but discuss the meaning of life. That in fact was quite a short discussion - about 3 minutes, because we both agreed that we were not qualified, especially sober. So we discussed the frthcoming Republic of Irelan v San Marino game and expected a trouncing in the six nil area (but I hear that it was a flukey 2-1 - so bad luck little plucky San Marino I know you will win one day soon - 38 losses must come to and end in the end like we must all die and the sun will come up in the morning for the next eight billion years or so and the turn nto a giant white dwarf called Getoff and so on and so on - Plucky little San Marino the underdog. The dog that is under the table feeding off the giants scraps. Frank now trails around with me and of course I tested his drinking capabilities to the full this evening and moved gently on to the red wine at nine - ahhhh wine at nine - feels fine - who wants to dine when there is red wine at nine eh ? do you ? I cannot imagine who you are and whether you drink red wine - please comment back with our favorite wine and I will try to get hold of it and taste it.

Recovery Period

Lost a day yesterday, so I have lived one less day this year than all of you. I recovered slightly from my spiking at the Trevi and managed to swap back to my favorite haunt, the hotel Aberdeen on the Via Firenze. Luckily I had nothing to do yesterday - but then do I ever ? So I slept the worst of the hallucegenic madness off and woke up sup at 7am this morning - still seeing things in vivid colours and everything ourple was pink and vice versa. Blackness overcame me at 8am but that was OK because again there was nought to do except thank my luck stars I had not been arrested by the cops, or mugged by a knife gang. So I thanked my lucky stars of which I have none. The day dragged on slowly in my room of drawn curtains and smelly socks. I tried to do some pressups at 13.00 and at 14.00 and managed about 13 both times. Could I live through my apocalypse now and become fit at the same time. I certainly was paranoid about setting foot outside the door. Faint worries of tuba playing angels haunted me and any vaguely tuba like sound disturbed me, fortunately there were not many of these, except the hotel plumbing sometimes sounded off.

My day became cut like a slow motion centrepiece set to the music of dripping taps and tuba plumbing with the Gregorian Monks chanting in my head. I kept sweating and gritting my teeth and thinking I had to do some huge mission somewhere. Then Bob called my new V3 Motorola (nice phone camera) and We had a chat that I think I understood much better than he did, although when he suggested coming out and getting me back I told him to behave and that Sharon would not appreciate leaving her in her state. He sounded like a boring shrew and I was repulsed by him, I could not understand why I had liked him ever, and realised that it was just because we had worked together, and that he ws not my type, the snivelling bore. So in the spirit of honesty I felt duty bound to adhere to I told him and that was the end of that little conversation.

So now to sleep in the midst of uneasy dreams and revalations - thankgod we do not live in facist times and I am free to roam - well at least lie around my room in a state. Tomorrow I head for Naples and some long promised fish.

Coffee, Coffee and More Coffee (and lots of eggs)

No alcohol today (except 3 beers at lunchtime) - but lots of coffee at the Bracciano cafes. Also quite a few eggs - so good job no-one is too close to me today. I have delayed Naples and the fish supper (me playing Jesus with Petra and April as the disciples and maybe a stray cat as Judas, but then the location would be wrong, so perhaps it will just be a straightforward fish meal at a restaurant of our choosing at the time of our choosing in Naples - Naples style. But anyway, I am still here into my Grey Period, out of the black and into the Grey. That is like the men in suits, I scurry around doing my thing occasionally worrying that there ought to be more to life or travelling than just this, but not being THAT bothered by it.

So the Grey Period eh ? what does that all mean - I am in a non colourful segment of the journey - everything does seem the colour of the third way, grey and in between Black and White. But, Still, I am eating eggs and lots of coffee to keep me at it. What it is I do not yet pretend to fathom, but I do know that although I have made no connections with Italians in this fine town (and the last Italian I did hook up with was Francesco, and he seemed keen in the end to put a line betweeen us, maybe we did overstay our welcome, but I think he will look back at those days with a fond memory, if he can still remember after all that whisky) I am getting happier here now and the slope is upwards but I am climbing it gently without a rope.

So, when do I leave - when do I wrench myself away from this pretty town ?, host to both my Black and my Grey periods - well I think may be tomorrow. That is if I can get some sleep after all this coffee !! Good Night and sweet dreams.

We will be heading for Naples to eat fish I think

I have certainly entered my black period - or even my dark blue period. I have told Petra and April to go away to somewhere else for a while while I contemplate here in Bracciano and then maybe we can all catch a train to Naples to eat fish, when I am feeling better. The wind feels like it is going right through my bones and I am now holed up in a small hotel on the outskirts with a sketch pad and my feelings spewing out of me into this small room. I hated to think what might have happened if P and A had stayed around so they have agreed to go back to Rome on a coach and try and gatecrash some decent parties. I sit here in the half light and look at the stars. The cream and strawberries have gone from my life and all I am left with is rancid butter. But hey, it could be worse, I could be in Iraq. I need to talk myself round to a better frame of mind and so need to encapsulate the problem. The problem is I am travelling around very ill equipped to mangae on ny own in Europe, so I fall prey to whoever I hook up with which is very few people indeed - really only Petra and I suppose April although the amount of sensible conversations I have had with her are very few. I did discuss with her the religious state of Italy and wondered if she beleived in the almighty big god but she said no. I agreed with her but said you could not rule anything out including that we were all the result of an experiment by Simon Manicure - a creature 100,000 light years tall, made of compressed hydrogen and carbon flakes who walked on several universes at once bouncing like on a trampoline. April went off to brush a tooth or two and we didnt speak on the subject again.

So, anyway, here in my room - I eat some bread and mope. Then a bright spark appears - and then I fall asleep. Then I wake up around 7am and go for a long walk by the lake and things get clerer. I decide that I will go to Naples. But first to run a bit, then do some sit ups, hen I do some Tai Chi, then do some pressups. Then I go to a bar for soe very strong coffee and a brandy (half past eight in the morning - tastes great). Then I do more press ups and then call Petra on her new mobile but cannot get through. I do not tink she has activated it yet, the fool. So anyway - Naples here we come - but first more sleep.

Onwards and upwards to the south.