P u r s u i n g N o t h i n g

If I was a labrador retriever then people would happily give me all the food and water I wanted. With that thought in mind I walk into the classy golf course restaurant near my campsite, carrying an empty water bottle. Normally the staff of such a place will either flatly refuse such a request or comply very unhappily. But not if you do it like this, “Hi, I’ve got a very thirsty dog over there. Could I fill this up for him.”

Indeed, the bartender knows there are constantly people walking dogs on the abandoned horse race track that circles the golf course. He carries the bottle behind the bar, not filling it from the faucet but from a fancy ice-cold drinking water tap that rises above the bar. It takes a long time as the water comes out very intentionally slowly.

The only bar patrons are four well dressed older women drinking wine, probably waiting on their golf-playing husbands. Noticing them looking at me curiously, the bartender says something in French, presumably explaining that the water is for my dog. Everybody laughs and smiles warmly. The woman at the end of the bar says something unintelligible to me.

“Yes, the dog is very thirsty.”, I smile back.

Everybody laughs again between sips of wine. The bartender hands the bottle back, nodding politely. Had I claimed the water was for me then the scene would have likely gone something like this; unhappy bartender, glaring women and warm water from the faucet. Everywhere in the world is the same now, no escape.

Not only is the water ice cold but there’s a hint of lemon, the best drink I’ve possibly ever had considering that I’m still catching up from going the entire weekend with nothing. From Friday to Monday it had rained almost constantly, keeping me captive under the old blue tarp, which is far to disgustingly dirty for use in catching rainwater.

I never felt very thirsty over the weekend, but have felt incredibly thirsty since that first drink on Monday. The perfect water from the bartender is gone by midnight.  The empty water bottle is keeping me awake, its dull-glowing silver aluminum body standing in the leaves next to my head. There’s a always a glow here at  night due to city lights reflected off the ever-present low clouds.

There’s got to be water faucets on the golf course, I think to myself, finding my way there without needing a flashlight. The air is perfect tonight, 60 degrees with a gentle breeze. The huge open area of the golf course is without a soul, without a single light, just the dull glow. I wander around the perfect grass testing hoses and faucets, all apparently shut off at the source. This water might not be drinkable anyway, but it won’t hurt to taste it. Even the faucets on the sides of the buildings are shut off, though.

Something horrifying moves toward me from the driving range. All I can make out in the faint light is a low black whining disk on an intercept course. It’s roughly a foot tall by three feet wide, moving lazily while continuing to make an eerie noise. I’m expecting be shot with some kind of ray or transported somewhere or maybe transformed into golden retriever if I’m lucky, but no, this little UFO is only interested in abducting golf balls. This is the jumbo-sized version of a robotic home vacuum system, moving to and from nearby docking stations.

………

A little Indian girl hisses and growls at me for the whole tram ride to the university library this morning. I’m so bored with sitting that this library but don’t know what I’d do without it. Seems I’m playing the waiting game again. Yesterday I walked back into the agency that had been going to buy me a plane ticket. I requested to talk to that big man in charge and he appeared in the waiting room shortly.

“I just need to know if there are actually tickets or not so I can move on one way or the other.”

We go to his office. He makes a phone call.

“No tickets. Your friends still not help you?”

“No. This agency had me sign paperwork three weeks ago accepting the offer of a ticket. What’s wrong?”

“You still need ticket?”

“Yes. I can get no food here without a Belgium ID. I’m going to starve without the ticket.”

The man gets back on the phone.

“OK, they make new booking. Now we wait.”

Great.

…….

Well it’s actually not true that I’m going to starve because I’ve taken up shoplifting as of Monday, wondering why I had done so on one of those other previous long stretches without food. I’d been a pro 15 years ago, once even walking out of a K-Mart with a $200 VCR. Never did I get caught in any store, but I did stop after getting arrested for something else at 19 years old.

At 34 years old I would feel very greedy taking a VCR, and I would even feel bad about taking food if I had the ability to pay for it, but taking from multinational corporations when I’m hungry and broke……no problem.

Monday’s dinner was two cans of cocktail franks because they fit easily into my vest pockets, not showing any bulges when the vest was unzipped. Last night was a huge marvelous salami washed down with an ice cold Coke. Considering how thirsty I still am, that Coke was……..amazing. Maybe it’s a lack of sugar, because something made me want that Coke so bad. I had actually been planning on going to bed hungry till the idea of a cold Coke came to mind. And while I’m taking a drink I might as well take a salami too.

But this was two days in a row from the same store, and exiting there without a purchase requires walking through the self-checkout area where an employee is stationed at a desk. There is an electronic checkpoint gate just past the employee. The checkpoint often beeps in error but I thought it could look very suspicious if it beeped when I walked through after not making a purchase. So I stopped and asked the employee if there was any hot food for sale in the store. She didn’t understand and asked a customer standing nearby to translate. The customer translated her answer back to me, “No, you have to take this food home and cook it”.

I don’t know what sets off the electronic gate beeper, but it’s not Cokes or salamis. I suspect it’s something in the labels of fresh meat products so I won’t be eating any of those. As for getting caught at this, the most likely outcome would be a couple weeks in jail followed by deportation, which would mean free meals then a  free ticket to a place where I can get more food, free or otherwise.

Finally, a public library where the laptop can both be plugged in and access wifi, but the building is only open for a few limited odd hours just 4 days per week. It’s small but new and the bathroom smells like roses. There’s near serenity until a squad of French-shrieking children begins stampeding through the rooms. Suddenly the chatter switches to a simultaneous chant, over and over again, “WHO LET THE DOGS OUT….WHO….WHO WHO WHO?”. The only employee on duty continues staring at a computer screen as if the disturbance was invisible. So far seems nearly impossible to find large libraries in Europe that accommodate laptop computers. It’s mostly just very small buildings also serving as unattended child care facilities.

A pouring thunderstorm left me arriving at the campsite soaked last night, continuing for at least 8 hours as a steady rain. Not wanting to put wet clothes back on this morning, I instead opt to rewear dirty dry clothes. The overnight water created a slug slumber party under my tarp, with an entire pile of the long slimy creatures appearing on the uneaten stub of a carrot. I reach into my breadsack for the last slice, wiping my arm across one of the slimeballs inside. What a culinary surprise that could have been had the creature made it all the way to the bread and I didn’t notice. There’s a snail shell crushed underneath my sleeping bag and a maze of new slime trails on top of it. There’s a slug inside my sleeping bag! There’s a slug inside my backpack! I envision a children’s book about slugs at a campsite, Dr. Seuss style, with a delicious slug pie at the end.

…….

Thanks to this week’s generous donations I feel comfortable with a little couchsurfing dot com. Many times over the past weeks have I considered using that website, but didn’t want to show up on strangers’ doorsteps without the ability to at least feed myself.

A young Brussels filmmaker named Jozef responds almost immediately to a request, whom I had chosen because of his profile statement, “I want to walk around the world again”. We meet outside a big hip corner cafe at Flagey Place, an open plaza popular with university students and the surrounding upscale neighborhoods. This is the first time Jozef has ever used Couchsurfing, and the first time I’ve used it in years. We get to know each other with cold beers on a bench. He supports himself by editing commercials while spending the majority of his time completing a six-year documentary project on the history of Belgian music.

His big project is almost ready to be handed over to a friend who handles the marketing side, presenting the film to festivals and all the other right places. After that Jozef wants to get back on his feet, literally, walking long distances and finding video projects that interest him along the way. He’s already done the El Camino Santiago trail in Spain 3 times on different routes, finding in those journeys an inner tranquility that he longs to reproduce.

We walk two blocks to a historic apartment building where Jozef is renting a top-floor apartment from a bio-engineer friend who is working long-term in France. The friend has the rooms heavily populated with a wide variety of plants. Most of the entire rooftop patio is full of potted oddities with a respectable view. Vines grow across the living room ceiling.“Be careful, they are carnivores”, Josef jokes of the fly traps and other many insect-eaters hungrily dripping inside an aquarium. A humidifier constantly pumps heavy steam into the box, creating a very creepy little world.

We walk together to the aikido class Jozef has been attending for years inside a former ice warehouse that’s now populated with various bars and studios. The businesses are connected to the central floorspace, creating a sort of very unique mall. Just next to one of the big original freezer doors is the aikido den, styled and furnished in classic Japanese style.

The teacher and two students have already begun in an adjacent room with a foam matted floor. The class occasionally bows to a small traditional shrine behind the teacher, all wearing traditional attire. Josef hurries into another room to dress. “Just follow me and follow my lead”, he says upon return.

Shoes are left at the edge of the matted floor. My huge dirty boots with their detached souls stand in stark contrast to little cotton houseshoes. My clothes are dirty and smelly, a polar opposite to the sharp clean white uniforms. The teacher looks up from one of his moves and points to my feet then his. Everybody else is barefoot. I put my filthy socks into the pathetic boots.

The class begins similar to yoga except for a series of self-thumping exercises in which the back of the fists are used to rapidly beat yourself from head to toe, getting the circulation flowing. With no warning the class occasionally jumps and shouts. The teacher approaches twice to correct my moves. He finds a 20-cent coin on the mat and holds it up, which I’m too embarrassed to claim.

The teacher next demonstrates a series of self-defense moves, each time picking one or more of the students to assist. The class bows in unison after each demonstration, then individual students all choose a partner and bow to them. Trying in vein to repeat the teachers moves brings to mind the infamous video of marching soldiers who have been dosed with acid in a secret US government experiment. It looks so easy but I find myself a bumbling retard when attempting to repeat. Every time.

Jozef and one of the other 3 students are eventually able to help me get the moves at least partially right when we partner up. The third student appears high school age and just about as lost as I am. We end up mostly staring at each other when paired up, confused, expecting the other to do it right.

The exercises progress to more complicated scenarios involving fake knives and swords. Students bow to the shrine each time they take or replace the wooden swords from a rack on the wall. With or without a weapon, the goal is always to use your opponent’s forward energy against them, and to always protect your back. The final exercise involves throwing a forward opponent into a rear opponent sword-first, having somebody else do your dirty work “accidentally”.

The whole class except for the younger kid sits at a bar in the main room long after the lesson is over. The teacher’s Italian girlfriend arrives, an EU lawyer-lobbyist. He’s from Madagascar and the other student is from Spain, a hard-working married man. Signs above the bar list various prices for sodas and beers. It’s self service with the money going into a heavy little unlocked steel box. Each person opens the box to make change for themselves. The teacher offers to buy me a traditional Belgian beer that’s 9.5% alcohol and absolutely delicious.

The house master is an old white-bearded man who just left to visit Japan. He has schools like this all over the world and travels between them, keeping a residence in a town near Brussels. “He’ll never give a straight answer to anything”, the others joke, reminding me of Mr. Miyagi from the movie Karate Kid.

“I ask him about the past and he always says the same thing, ‘I just wanted to travel and see the world’”.

“Some new guy walked in the door one day and asked him how long it would take to get a black belt, so he just handed the guy a black belt and said ‘there you go’”.

It’s starting to feel like the daily routine, a sudden rain shower violently ripping me out of bed at 4:30AM. And the word “bed” is an overstatement, more like a sleeping bag in the weeds covered with giant slugs. The nearby abandoned racetrack grandstands taunt me each time early rain falls, behind fencing that would be impossible to climb. There’s also an old wagon sitting underneath an overgrown carport, but somebody else has already taken up residence there. At least the streetcar stop is covered, but the first service doesn’t arrive till after 5:30AM.

The only place on the streetcar line open that hour is the Starbucks at Central Station, which is fine if you have $3 for a small coffee and can tolerate the elevator version of Madonna’s ‘You’ve got to prove your love’ complete with a cheesy vocal rendition.

The university library has let me down, just as I was walking up to the building thinking ‘I’m glad this building is here’. A sign on the door reads “Ferde blah blah 6 Juillet“, closed for two weeks.

I’ve been to two places that not only serve free hot meals, but they also do it at tables as if it were a “real” restaurant. The first time was just for a single meal at what appears to be some sort of economy social service restaurant on the ground floor of an apartment building. Old ladies bring out soup, sandwiches and bread while a young man impeccably dressed in a suit goes around shaking hands.  I don’t trust people that dress up especially fancy to serve the needy, but thanks for the food.

The other place serving free meals restaurant-style is on Bosnie Street, where I’m getting lunch for at least a week. It’s in a basement where the tables have been nicely laid out with flower arrangements. Most of the clientele are local senior citizens that pay a couple euros each per meal. The “waiter” handles a full room full of customers usually all by himself, even taking away the dishes.

A whirlwind of a man calling himself Wayne stopped me on the street as I was leaving lunch, also looking for the same place. I said about a dozen words while he streamed out a thousand. Here is the speech as best as I can recall, spoken in a heavy Irish accent.

Wayne: something in French
Me: Do you speak English?
Wayne: Yeah where is the place to get lunch?
Me: It’s just back around the corner here. I’ll show you.
Wayne: Your American? What’r you doin’ here?
Me: I came to Berlin 3 months ago to work on an Occupy Project

Wayne: We’ll let me tell you! You greedy bastards are the 1 percent! You’ve got to be more spontaneous, less organized. I travel too, but not with a backpack. I was behind a Roman Catholic Church in Antwerp last week and there were these gypsies practicing black magic back there. They had a baby and asked me to masturbate in its mouth. I told the cops and the cops told me to never tell that story again. Then the number 8 started appearing everywhere. I even had 88 Facebook friends, then I saw some other gypsies in the south of France that asked me what my favorite number was. I said ‘8‘ and they said ‘Come with us, we’ve been waiting for you.’ So they took me down into the subway and asked me to pick something out of the vending machine. I picked the orange juice and they said ‘Thank you very much’ and walked away. I walked outside the station and there were all these sirens everywhere and I thought ‘What the fuck’. Just like all these sirens right now, what the fuck. You’ve got that mark on your head, that’s good. You’re Garth and I’m Wayne, that’s good. You know I was sleeping outside at some abandoned factory last night and there was this pool of oil there and there was this green leafy stuff growing in the pool. That stuff will be here long after we are gone, even where there’s radiation. I used to write for one of the biggest science magazines in the world. Do you know the Gospel of Thomas? You know why people used to sleep under dream catchers? To protect them from what’s on the other side. They knew! When they are asleep you are awake. You are their dreams, their plaything. You are a shelf on their wall and it’s a long way out of the house. They love rituals like that Occupy. You’ve got to be more spontaneous. Can I have a piece of that bread? OK, good day Garth. Sleep outside. Outside….

…….
Eating with the few dollars sometimes available in my bank account is a cat-and-mouse game of finding stores that will accept small Visa debit transactions. There is never usually enough in the account to use an ATM, which would require at least 30 dollars to cover the 20 Euro minimum withdrawal plus transaction fees. There are Carrefour Express convenience stores all over the city that will usually not put up a fight, but the female cashier at one of these stores grabbed the debit card out of my hand as I was in mid-swipe.

Even one of the big supermarkets turned down the Visa for a small purchase, on a day when food kept getting so close yet remained so far away. All day it was one thing or the other keeping food from me, then finally in the evening just as I was about to give up…..a Quick fastfood restaurant accepted the card for a 3.50 Euro meal.

But I’ve never been as bad off as the woman who had her head smashed into the pavement near the Grand Palace. It was a bloody spectacle of a mess observed by no shortage of tourists and their cameras. A little black car containing two black women ran down a middle-aged woman crossing the street. I couldn’t tell much about the victim due to a huge neckbrace that medics had applied. There was nobody with her that seemed upset, just the driver kneeled down by her side. Her body was lifeless except for the hands, which occasionally rose. The pool of head blood expanded across the white crosswalk paint, also containing fluids not the color of normal blood. Her headphones lay on the pavement beside her.

That scene has probably also been caused a time or two by the incessant diplomatic motorcades speeding through the city. Sometimes they pass every few minutes, followed by helicopters. Military police are the main guardians, with the front-line officers racing through the streets on white motorcycles. Cops block off an intersection to let the motorcade pass, then accelerate at maximum to block the next intersection before the motorcade arrives. The time is nearing for an end to the wasteful inconveniences of diplomats, representatives etc.

It’s finally getting warm and there seems to be no air conditioning in all of Brussels, or at least all of real Brussels, not even the trains.

Even little basement bathrooms in the middle of nowhere have little old ladies sitting there in the shadows waiting to take 50 cents. Even McDonalds.

A good portion of the population here is Islamic. It seems that half of the people I talk to are from Morocco. And I have to talk to alot of people since I don’t have a working GPS. It makes me wonder how many babies are never born because people don’t stop to ask a stranger for directions. The machine tells them to drive right past their potential soul mate. And it also makes me wonder how many babies died because their parents pulled over in the wrong place to ask for directions. It’s all the same in the end. The world turns one way or the other and the destination is always the same, another turn.

The other place that I stayed recently was a men’s group home right in the very center of the city. They agreed to take me for a week but then saw my foreign ID and said 3 days. The building has been what it is since 1886, and the non-profit running it has existed since the 1700‘s. But the government provides the funding so they are not allowed to take people like me. Getting the three days was under-the-table, just an unofficial favor.

Less than 100 people live there on three dormitory floors, each sectioned off into semi-private cubicles with cabinets and a curtain that can be pulled closed. The building is clean and extremely old, even containing an antique elevator.The dormitories are closed during the day and a staff member comes by at 7AM to rip the curtains open and turn on the lights. Considering this place is not just a shelter, but where some  poor appear to be retiring, this waking practice is extreme. Nobody should have such treatment in a permanent living environment.

The doors are locked during the night. Leaving would be impossible without waking up a staff member. The kitchen and lounge areas on the ground floor are open all day, so at least the people are not forced out onto the street as they are with most shelters. A couple dozen people are always sitting around here, mostly congregated in the smoking courtyard. A majority have some senses while a few just sit around staring at walls or mumbling to themselves.

One guy drinks coffee from a bowl and another looks at the same book all day, never turning the page. In general, people like to sit across from me at tables giggling, and this place is no exception. A man in a wrinkled suit paces with a bible all day. Somebody sits in a chair slamming feet against the wall every few minutes. Old men methodically stack candy in plastic tubs to store under their beds. One guy, probably the oldest here, only speaks in mumbles but everyone speaks back as if they are having perfectly understood conversations. Alot of ping pong gets played, adding to the mental institution atmosphere.

Lunch is the biggest meal, sometimes with heaps of meat. Just about every meal has some kind of bean soup, but in all of Belgium this seems to be the case. The kitchen serving windows open at the exact same times every day and the same old men are always waiting first in line 15 minutes beforehand. The same staff who work in the office also help serve meals, although an actual chef is present for lunch and dinner. Breakfast is always ham served by the one person who happens to be first on duty in the morning. Every two hours between meals the window opens for some stiff coffee.

Every time a new worker comes on duty they seem to think I have infiltrated the place, that I don’t belong. The first time this happened I though this big woman was about to kick me out, but everybody got used to me after the first 24 hours. And yes it would be easy for anyone to just walk in the door and join the crazy party except for at night when the building is locked.

Other than a couple lonely old men and some sleazy young drug dealers, the only person who speaks with me at length is a young Iranian man named Cyrus. It turns out that we have much in common. He is here because he’s given up the life he knew to start over and study international relations. He says that people like us are crazy for fighting against the system, because it will never matter. I tell him that nobody will ever know who we were but it does matter, that it is the difference between revolution and evolution. We both agree that it’s impossible for us to live a pretend life anymore, no matter what the consequences. Worried that the police will throw me in jail 30 days for riding the metro system without paying, Cyrus gives me a 10-ride ticket.

The tail end of my tuna sickness has left me coughing violently and sweating overnight. It’s impossible to lay outside of the sleeping bag because then insects will bite and giant slugs will slime me. I went to the airport thinking that would be a better place to live but there is no wifi and nowhere to camp, just an industrial neighborhood. I did camp in some bushes near an airport sign and found some green cherries on the ground to eat. Only one tiny branch on the tree was still alive and there were no cherries there. It was too old to hold the last fruit it ever bore, and I ate it.

One of the old subway trains tried to eat an old lady. The doors have big metal handles and slam violently when both opening and closing. The handle slid around her wrist, right up her arm, throwing her against the train wall. She was pinned there and it took a whole crowd of people hitting emergency buttons and prying on the doors to get her loose. No employees came and the train continued on immediately.

Some guys grabbing their crotches in the park started following me around, getting closer and closer while trying to talk with me. I had given up conversation after the initial crotch grabbing, ignoring them and moving. A quarter mile later they were still following me, talking French while staring at my backpack, close enough to grab it now, so I pulled out a knife and started cleaning my nails. They walked away.

I hate cities.