DAY FOURTEEN

I settle into my two square feet of space on the aircraft Lisbon to London. Seven a.m. I've already eaten my pear, piece o' fish from the Lisbon take-out, and banana. I search hopefully in the elasticized seat back compartment and find only magazines on business and shopping – the two areas that couldn't bore me more. New products, you say? Or new ways to make someone else rich???? We don't get fooled again....

So I turn to the Italian book I got at the hostel. It's a little existential angstish sort of author's subconscious, but it's his angst, not mine, and reading helps with my comprehension and practice of the language, besides being an improvement on vapid models strung with bling.

One of the flight attendants has huge bags under her eyes, albeit a lovely smile. Was she up all night with a baby? A lover? A sick parent? Up all night – that reminds me of the boys in the hostel last night, - partying on and on, the bass of their 'music' reverberating through the floor under my bed. Couldn't sleep. Maybe dozed for about a half hour when they finally stopped, until my room mate came in. Shoes clump; door slams; water runs; toilet flushes; zippers zip. Finally she's in bed and asleep and snoring in two minutes. I toss and turn and project my evil thoughts through the night until five a.m. when I have to get up.

On the road for two weeks; - “on tour”, as it were, as an incognito musician, traveling 'below the radar', and indulging in the pleasure of being unrecognized, not to mention unpaid. I could write a book....and so become an unpaid author too....With that thought, light begins to dawn outside the plane, illuminating the folly of that idea.

I see an aircraft seeming to head straight for us, but I'm too tired to care. And then it passes over us, and we're finally cleared for take-off. (that's right, we haven't left the ground all this time). We climb the pink and orange air of the rising sun, an orb I may not see again for a while, since Toronto currently has only drizzle and cold.

The flight from London to Toronto is long, but British Airways has all these great movies.... I got through the eight hours watching three of them.

And then, at 3:30 local time, I'm back on the TTC. There was no one at the airport to greet me. I didn't run across the waiting area and throw myself into someone's arms; have that long, ecstatic airport reunion kiss and big smile plastered on my face. But I wasn't expecting that, honest; I wasn't disappointed at all. No, I thought, it's better to just continue the solo journey, jump on the express bus, and get home, - by myself. And surprisingly, I was fairly energetic for having traveled and carried bags for twelve hours (minus the eight watching movies).

And thus it ends, - rolling eastward to the ugliness of Victoria Park and Danforth – in-your-face contrast to the magnificence of London, Barcelona, Italy, and Lisbon, where even the poor areas are pretty. I'm going to work very hard at not becoming bummed out.“lotsa fun, eh?”  

tried to get the moustache on my face, but missed (leaving the hostel)

looks like snow on the tundra; it's the cloud cover we're flying over

Home again; waaaah, it's over