Prometheus Slept Here; Kazbegi and Farewell

“Hear the sum of the whole matter in the compass of one brief word — every art possessed by man comes from Prometheus.”

Day the Last. It was the portion of the trip where final decisions have been made, and all that's required is to act them out. You also make peace with the things you can't or didn't do. Like that Kutaisi animal fountain.

Or... the half-hour train ride to the Georgian city of Gori, birthplace of Stalin. Russian history has dominated my reading over the last year or so, and the aftermath of Soviet occupation has dominated my travels for the last five years, so at some point it felt like seeing the Stalin Museum seemed like a kind of punctuation.

But he was, you know, without any doubt or discussion, one of history's greatest murderers, a genocidal maniac without parallel who did much to prove how thin the line is between civilization and slaughter. Famous "conquerors" from history, like Tamerlane who trashed this region back in the day, Attila the Hun, Cortez, etc. were at least honest. Like, they just rode in and killed everyone. There was no gaslighting. It was like, "We have better weapons and give no fucks, so you will be either dead or enslaved now, and it's our choice which one."

The WWII dudes used the tools of civilization to get their own people to kill one another. It was much more...psychological. Work will set you free. This group of your neighbors with slightly different qualities is the bad group keeping us down, let's work together to drive them out, this arbitrary substance is illegal and anyone who touches it is now a criminal, let's imprison them. These are the rules now and you've chosen them; I'm just enforcing your will.

I mean, they learned it all from the US, which pulled all that shit with the First Nations people and beyond. The WWII crowd just did a better job of institutionalizing it. They got better at scaling. In any case, there's a Stalin museum in Gori, and it's about his schoolbooks and his desk and his clothes and not about his crimes, which is a testament to how having a good painter on the payroll can make a ton of people think you're a funny grandpa and not a psychopath.

They've tried to close it a few times, but these fierce old ladies have kept it open. They're like the Brides of Dracula haunting his mansion. And at some point it felt like seeing it would be a good lesson in how history forgets or can be twisted. But... I think most of life provides that lesson.

So, I chose to go instead to Kazbegi, a mountain town where Prometheus is chained up!

This was the second of the Big Greek Myths set here. Medea and Prometheus. It's kind of like hunting down Game of Thrones filming locations but many centuries older.

This one goes like this: That old Prom King made man out of clay, and the other gods thought man was annoying, so landlord Zeus cut the power. But Prometheus sneaked around the back and brought fire back. So, he made man and gave him fire. Cool story, Pro!

But the gods were haters, so they chained him up and made an eagle eat his liver every night. The liver grows back, and the eagle stays hungry. Prometheus suffered for our sins!

In any case, I always remember the "brought fire to man" part and forget the "made man," part, but those things are why Mary Shelley subtitled Frankenstein "The Modern Prometheus" (he made a man - out of parts) and Immanuel Kant called Ben Franklin the "Prometheus of recent times," (he gave us fire - in the form of electricity)

So, you know, though he isn't real, it's cool to see the mountain everyone has decided he isn't chained up in. It's also in the Ossetia region, which was one of the flashpoints in the war Russia waged on Georgia in 2008, so it blended in with my reading.

Sara, sensibly, decided to use the last day to relax and enjoy her coffee. To shop a little and to do some stretches to prepare for the very long series of flights we had in the morning. So it was just me on this one. Played Two-Stick Magician with Max Called Mocks, pocketed some hard boiled eggs, and headed out on that very familiar walk.

There was some stress. I had lost the ticket, since I had been using it as a bookmark and kept pulling the book in and out of my back pocket, but when I got to the bus place, the bus lady was like, "Kazbegi!" She remembered me and I never even had to bring it up.

Stopped by the Dunkin' Donuts, since they had iced coffee without iced cream in it (a serious hazard here in The Caucasus), and we were off. Pretty crowded bus and a loud guide of the "this corner has this much rainfall," variety, but I was able to tune him out and finish Bread and Ashes. Really loved it. Dumped it in a box at a rest stop and switched to A Hero of Our Time by Lermontov. Fucking hilarious and full of pithy quotes; I loved that one too. The good reading on this trip was all at the end.

At this point, I was as hard boiled as the lunch in my pocket. I wasn't interested in making any new friends or waiting for the English translation of the annual grain yield from whichever field we were passing. It was all about reading and seeing that mountain, son. Quick photo op at a very clear little lake but not at a gorgeous, decrepit Soviet bus stop. I was dying, trying to figure out a way to get the tour to stop so we could go back. A charging horse made of half-fallen tiles. Real tears. It will live on in my heart. My heart's bus will stop there.

Trudging on up switchbacks and up into rough patches, we made our slow way there. The hours melted away into the pages of Lermontov's randy, racy crowd of soldiers. Eventually, we got to a low little valley town where it became necessary to transfer to a hardy mini-van. The town was full of them with a gulag-guard-type dude running the show. He hollered at all the drivers and collected all the money. I've seen his type all over Europe, the Bullying Expediter.

A few Americans wouldn't take the van they were assigned because a woman with them insisted on having the front seat. She wanted that window view. So, there was a lot of reshuffling and waiting while she got what she desired. Why was she accommodated, catered to? Were they afraid she would leave a bad Yelp review?

Most of the cars were a hardy Mitsubishi model called a Delica. While I waited for Veruca Salt to get her window seat, I was amused to see a line of three of them next to a non-Mitsubishi with a rude bumper sticker. When viewed in a row, it looked like "Delica, Delica, Delica, Fuck Your Delica." Some local salt.

Insanely bumpy ride over some truly wild terrain, though still smoother than the highways of Northern Azerbaijan. Mudrunning and rockcrushing, spinning out and swerving over. Not a ride for anyone with osteoporosis. Made it to the little church that affords the best view of that spectacular mountain with its shy, foggy peak.

I found it very peaceful up there and felt not unlike Julie Andrews. I appreciated the views and the air and hunted a little dog around while he begged for scraps from a Scando couple who wanted to adopt him. The small church building had a stout charm. A fussy priest in one of those square Orthodox hats flapped around in seeming disapproval that the souls he was supposed to be saving were actually there and not abstract.

It was a nice group of people at their leisure, posing and sunning, making the most of their moment in the mountain's shadow. Somewhere, between sessions of being fed upon, Prometheus smiled.

On the un-Delica-te ride back, a couple of Belgians revealed to me they'd been stalking the same dog I had followed. We exchanged pictures. It was nice. Then a long lunch back in valleytown through which I ate my eggs and read. Then a quick stop over to something called The Russian Georgian Friendship Monument. A pretty cool picnic spot with a large, curving mosaic with colorful scenes from Caucasian and Russian history. It was built in the '80s for some reason.

Very fun spot with para-gliders rising suddenly up from unexpected corners on unexpected breezes. A woman on the bus got the Veruca virus and asked if we could wait for her to go para-gliding. For some reason, the driver said yes, and the entire bus had to wait 90 minutes so one person could take this selfish ride. I'm over it now, but my blood turned to a kind of venom at the time.

Would they have pulled over for three minutes for me to photograph the bus stop from earlier? I doubted it, but I didn't ask. In any case, hating the driver for saying yes kept me warm through the mountain passes and propelled me to the completion of the Lermontov novel. So... I gave them a positive Yelp review after all.

And then... view achieved. mountain climbed, I was back in Tbilisi to meet back up with Sara. She had had a marvelous time, luxuriating in a city she now knew fairly well. Catching khachapuri and slow-sipping her coffee. She bought a fabulous dress that made her look like two million lari and 1.75 manat at current exchange rates.

I went ahead and bought that little painting of the stacked-up town. The artist and I gave one another deep and genuine smiles of true appreciation for one another. Thank you for buying this, thank you for making it. No, thank you. No, thank you. Stocked up on magnets and it was home to Mari for the last time.

I went berserk on some salami and cheese leftover from... somewhere, took a final shower in Mari's closet, and packed up for the epic three-flight journey in our future. This was it. It was all over but the customs.

Nice little sleep and we made our dark escape. Mari and Max made one last little meddle. He barked while we were sneaking out, and she insisted on arranging the cab ride to the airport for us. We had just mastered the taxi app!, but she was forceful, and soon a men's underwear model arrived to take us away. Sara decided the driver was a young man Mari had trained in the arts of love as a teenager and that he's repaid her over the years by driving her boarders to the airport. Perhaps it was true.

Then we were in the Middle Realms. Half alive with half citizenship. Everywhere and nowhere in those strange zones airports represent. It was like, in a way, the quasi-Europe, quasi-Asia designation the Caucasus represent. We were dragged heavily through the skies, watched awful comedies, ate bread with seeds, and somehow wound up back home. Forever changed.

It was a very beautiful trip to an amazing part of the world, full of history and full of future. Much will happen here in the coming years, and when it does, we will have what I prize most in the world... a frame of reference.

Thank you for following along, reader. Should your own travels take you to this fertile place of wine and mountains and bread and ashes and oil and sturgeon, I wish you the same peace and knowledge I found.

And down in Tbilisi, just look up a cat named Joe.

Mtskheta, Golden Brandy, and the Hottest Ticket in Town

“What of it? If I die, I die. It will be no great loss to the world, and I am thoroughly bored with life. I am like a man yawning at a ball; the only reason he does not go home to bed is that his carriage has not arrived yet.”

 

Our host was Mari, and she lived in Vake (pronounced "Vocka"), which was a tony Tbilisi neighborhood north of the action. The apartment was just off of a charming circular park surrounded by bakeries and boutiques. Charming as all hell. 

Mari had a long silver braid, a friendly fat retriever named Max (pronounced "Mocks") and a little tabby cat with no name. "Why name him," she said, "He just eats here and sleeps here." We were also just eating and sleeping there, but we took no offense. Tabby had a little cardboard box to curl up in on the porch.

Our equivalent was a sweet little combination of rooms with a perfect compact kitchen and a comfortable bed. We dumped our stuff off, washed our faces and went right back out. The trip was winding down, and this was an opportunity to max (pronounced mocks) out the last few days. Plan was to take a long walk from Vake to the column of St. George and see whether or not we could book a tour to Mtskheta (unpronounceable) for the following day

It also felt like one of the last opportunities to pick up magnets. And, so back down that oyster-shell-paved hill we went. 

Some nice cafes and coffee "to take away." Sara popped into a little clothing store where the shopkeep asked where she was from. When she answered, he said, "There is a fifty percent discount for Seattle residents today." What luck! Finally, some respect!

Further down, we were charmed by a few "basement bakeries," which were store windows at knee level, that you had to bend over to order bread from. A woman in a white apron would get on her tip-toes to take your money, then stretch to raise some lavash up for you to grab by the heel. We loved this innovative, great-smelling street.

The front areas of several homes were covered with grapes and vines. I called these "porchards" and thought myself most clever. I loved my innovative great-smelling self. Fading spiral staircases threatened and beckoned in equal measure. The distinct, thrusting balconies were well represented.

At the base of the hill was familiarbynow Rustaveli Square with its metro and its fountain. We got coffee near where they sell the tiny hats. I fell in love with a little painting that showed the whole city stacked on top of itself. It was tall and skinny and would be annoying to frame, but the heart wants the paintings it wants. I did not buy it....yet.

A nice walk on a street we had both been down separately and together, past the women selling plums and the men selling walnuts. Past the Georgiafied Wendy's and the booksellers and the bookstores, the museums with their wilting bronze eagles, the pomegranates and the underground passages full of music, the toy dogs that yap and leap, the ray guns and salt shakers.

We located the place that would take us to Mtskheta.

And though it would be incredibly fun to say we were taking a marshrutka to Mtskheta, we chose a comfortable bus. But that was for the morning! Tonight's activity was to take the subway to the wrong station on purpose to see if we could find our way back to Vake. That is what we like to do. Judge tenderly, reader.

And thus, we went down into the Liberty Square station and purposefully overshot the station closest to where we lived and got out to behold... an entirely new part of the city. An epic walk, sometimes backtracing past universities and down long arcades and past commerce of all kinds. This was a more "contemporary" part of Tbilisi with large chain stores and markets. Wide avenues. Traffic and families.

The shops ended and the road opened up to an enormous cloverleaf highway, we made our way along the edges of it. It grew dark, but the lanterns from a Chinese restaurant bobbed on wires nearby, and from a park with children's rides laughter rose up like a lavash from a basement bakery.  Then we were under the cloverleaf, pausing only to marvel at a large abstract monument and a glittery real-estate billboard. Further on we pressed into a dark little neighborhood.

It was time to consult the phone-map which swore up and down that a little black ribbon of an alley was definitely where we needed to go, no question. We weren't sure, but the phone said! So, we rolled our shoulders and took the plunge.

It led to a quiet street with a choppy sidewalk. A grocery store promised eggs, so we went to see if it would keep that promise. It did. As well, it sold strange bootleg legos which let you build riot police in a moon lander.

We bought eggs and laughed in the dairy aisle remembering the time in Kyiv when we had eaten a container of sour cream thinking it yogurt. Smetana is the word. We knew it this time and shall forever. Go away, Smetana.

Back home, we put the food in the fridge and crashed the crash of those who overshoot their stations on purpose.

And then it was a Mtskheta morning. Amusingly, though Mtskheta was the name of the village we were going to, it was also the name of the street we were staying on. Fate!

It's pronounced a little like "bruschetta" and a lot like eating a bony piece of fish. People mostly knew what we meant when we said "Mush-Ketta" but I'm sure inwardly it was like hearing someone call Pittsburgh "Pitesbork." There is a fifty-percent discount for Pitesbork residents today.

Max wanted to play fetch, but he didn't want to let go of the stick. I found a second stick, and it was game on. He was like, "But... how can you have the stick in your hand if the stick is in my mouth?!!"

We took the long walk down the hill again, because it was a nice day and we like our legs. Got coffee at an ice cream place that opens at 8am for some reason. Then down down past all the taxi-men and the government buildings and the casino drunks and the closed H + M and the movie theater to the bus place. 

They had two seats, and I went ahead and bought a ticket for a trip to the mountains for the next day. Gotta mocks it out. We sat on a wall to wait for the bus, but a bookseller shooed us away. This public space is my storefront, guys. Then the big red bus hauled us off. There were about thirty people on board. One of them called out to us in English as we boarded. "Hey, Tulane! Hey, Pan-Am!" 

He was reading our t-shirts, you see. I waved to be polite, and he was like, "Hey hey!" I noticed he was sitting alone. 

Just at the Tbilisi outskirts, we saw a Brutalist building Sara had been looking out for. She was very excited to have found it. The locals call it the "Domino Building," but it looked to me like an angry game of Soviet Jenga. 

Mush Kettle isn't really very far out of town, so they lard the trip with a visit to a sack of churches and an "opportunity to learn about Georgian wines." Exit through the gift shop. But the mush was first, so about twenty magical mountain minutes later, there we stood. Very peaceful church set high above a distinctive horseshoeish confluence of rivers and a tender village. It was an easy climb from the parking lot to the holy place, and we greatly enjoyed the view and the cool breeze. It's the easiest of all day trips from Tbilisi and very rewarding. 

I heard the cries of "Tulane! Tulane!" again, but this time it was an elderly couple who were retired professors from that university. You never know who you're going to meet when you travel to the Caucasus in a t-shirt from a school you didn't go to.

Fooled around at a little ring-stand looking for treasure and got back on the bus. Next stop... Svetitskhoveli Cathedral. A really glorious place surrounded by those hilarious droopy crosses they have here, the Georgian cross. Legend has it, St. Nino crawled to Georgia to bring them the miracle of Christianity, and she fashioned a cross out of grape branches and her own hair. That sort of construction doesn't hold its shape very well. It kind of looks like the devil done grabbed it mid-exorcism.

The building was marvelous with a truly wonderful peeling fresco with a Byzantine Jesus straight out of central casting. Outside I met up the bus guy. He was from LA, and I entertained for a few moments that he might be a famous producer! And I could pitch him my idea to make a movie about Munch's Muse! The one who died in Tbilisi! But, he wasn't a producer. He was just a guy who was annoying Sara by continuing to call her "Pan-Am." So we left him to get some merlot-flavored soft-serve ice cream. 

Then it was off to Samtavro Monastery, a place of worship chosen chiefly for its proximity to The Chamber of Wine, which was a clip-joint for thirsty tourists. There were some very cool icons there, long-limbed saints in harlequin outfits. I was charmed, but the ones I liked weren't on any postcards. So, we had no choice but to attend the "wine tasting." 

At the Chamber of Wine (that really is its name), a wineista told us that Georgian wine is made by shoving everything fermentable into a clay jar and burying that jar as deep as The Big Bopper. Then, they dig it up, and it's sip sip, sell sell. 

She repeated this in English and Russian, and if you didn't speak the language she was currently using, you pushed past her to get a free glass of wine. The Not Producer was very engaged with her speech, and when she said, "You can tell the quality of wine from the way it clings to the glass when you swirl it. In Georgia, we call this Angel's Tears. In America, they call it legs," he yelled out, "What do they call it in Germany?! How about Korea!?"

I thought this was exceptionally funny, but I had already had a glass and my judgment was suspect. It was then further impaired when I asked to try the Georgian Brandy. 

This was a fulfillment of a promise to my father, who told me before I left of this trip that every spy in every spy novel he'd ever read went on and on about Georgian Brandy and how heavenly it was. I was afraid it might be like chacha, but... 

I held my nose, I closed my eyes... I took a drink.  

It was, as they say, fucking delicious, and I bought a bottle of it. In my mind, four complete stage plays and the script to Munch's Muse lay at the bottom. O' t' g'ld'n dreams I had as we floated back to the bus. I napped a little, and then we were back in Mr. Tibbs. 

We walked over to a nearby little Russian restaurant called Keep Calm and Tbilisi On, which was a soooper dumb name, but they had something called "pelmeni in a pot" that was a lot like a chicken pot pie filled with dumplings and was one of the best dumb comfort foods I ever et. Pan Am reminds me that I fell asleep at the table while we waited for it to be served. Twas that golden cordial from an hour before. 

Georgian Brandy was a fine girl, what a good wife she would be. But my life, my love, and my lady was pelmeni. 

Then home to sleep it off and score tickets to the adult puppet show. They have a pretty famous, thriving theater in the Old Town that puts on serious plays with marionettes. I was a little skeptical, but the plots of that evening's shows convinced me it would be interesting. 

But first, more frustrating taxi nonsense. A driver tried to take us back to Mtskheta (!) because the goddamn street we lived on in Vake was called Mtskheta Street (!!). That means when I mentioned it before, it was foreshadowing (!!!)  It's like when I used to live off of Manhattan Ave in Brooklyn, and drivers tried to take me to the Empire State Building instead of my own home!  

By the time we figured it out, we were halfway out of town. We made him pull over and we got another cab. But the new guy was even worse, so we just asked him to drop us off at the Rustaveli statue and we walked. Walked! I had sweated the brandy out by now. 

Max wanted to play one-sided fetch again, and I obliged. The puppet theater wanted you to email for tickets, so we did, and we asked for three because we invited Joe, and he said he would join us! A quick shower, some hard boiled eggs, a quick nap, and it was back down.

That walk again! The basement bakeries were more fragrant than ever at this hour. We saw children with their mothers buying many strange loaves. 

Walking walking walking, past the plums, past the pomegranates, past the political headquarters, past the jewelers, and the vintners, and the cobblers, and the cardigan crows. Back to the old town, through the sidewalk fisheries and over to the theater. Where, we discovered, it had been sold out for weeks. We had been naive to think tickets were available. Fools, almost. The email we sent meant nothing. 

"Hello, I hear you are showing a new musical by name of Hamilton. Two tickets, please. In the loge, if you will. Please respond to this email within the hour." 

Joe rolled up, his beard glistening with oil, his clothes magnificent as he strode across the stone streets he owned. When we told him the show was sold out, he tossed back his head, his obsidian curls dancing merrily, and he roared out a mighty laugh. 

"It was too good to be true," he smiled. "These tickets are impossible, and when you offered me one, I though perhaps a miracle had occurred, and I," and here he paused majestically, "have made my foremost occupation the pursuit of miracles." 

We went to shop for rugs instead, and he made fun of us, (this saddle bag would look beautiful in the home of someone's grandmother) so we went to a tea place instead and had some tremendous tea. 

We shared many tales, for he holds many tales inside him. I had suggested earlier he convert them to Ghost Stories and run a Tbilisi After Midnight Haunted Tour. He considered it, and to encourage him I added "and some say you can still hear the howling on a clear night," to the end of every story he told. He bore it patiently.

He had no sympathy for our taxi troubles. We had offered them up as our own haunted tales, but he was disgusted that we weren't using the app he had suggested over a week ago. Ashamedly, Sara downloaded it right there and then.

We paid and made our final farewell to Joe outside an all-glass police station. Tight hugs. He was a good man, and a wonderful raconteur, and I wish him all the best.

And then we used the app to get home (Joe had to come back and help, but still, we used it).
It worked! There was no trouble at all. The driver was like, "I'll take you right there, fam."

And then I played unfetch with Max, and then I got right in the goddamn bed to make sure I had energy for the mountains tomorrow. Sara took a shower.

And some say you can still hear the howling on a clear night.

Enemies Embrace on the Return to Tbilisi

"We became companions. I am incapable of friendship. Between two friends, one is always the slave of the other, though neither will admit it."

We liked the little coffee kiosk shaped like a coffee cup so much, we were willing to carry all our bags for several blocks just for the chance to have a final latte on the way to the train station. Packed up, sprung ourselves from Sing-Sing, floated in the early-morning cobalt down to The Mug to get our cup.

Very quiet. The bodegas sealed up, and even some the bakeries were closed. There are some unusual homes here with large vines tied to them with long ropes. We never discovered their purpose, but my guess is if we came back in three years, the home will be riotous with ivy and blossoms. Now, at dawntime, they made the houses look like bound stacks of newspapers.

Extra, extra! I had some meat left over from The New Ship and was hyper-vigilant for strays. Fed a friendly mutt and a suspicious cat.  The latter left sweet little paw prints in the dew of the park. Warm paper cups in hand, we summoned a cab by drawing signals in our latte foam.

Rode in relative speed and quiet to the vagsal. It's an old, pleasant building with a nice view of the sea and the larger newer buildings of Batumi in the distance. I liked thinking about generations of families being as familiar with it as Alabama families are with the Disney World parking lot.

We didn't think getting a ticket was going to be difficult at that hour, and it wasn't. But it looked like we got the last ones, because the seats were where the train employees usually sit. We had gotten the equivalent of the "jump seats." Packed train. We reckoned vacation was over for everyone else and it was back to work. We only had two days left ourselves.

There was a giant chunk of compressed folded paper on my arm rest, so I handed it to Sara when she got up to find the restroom. She hucked it in the huckerbin. We didn't take for granted that this train had a restroom. After the Midnight Train from Ganja, we never will again. With a double-decker car of tired, happy families, we moved closer to Tbilisi.

One thing we both noticed on the trip, intensified in the close quarters of the train, was men's reaction to children. Throughout Georgia, otherwise hard-faced men melted at the sight of a child. We saw them kneeling to address kids and do any small thing in their power to assist them, and they always smiled and spoke gently. 

Surviving years of occupation and the threat of war will do that, I think. Every child seems like a miracle and proof of survival and advancement. The train was swarming with kids and the beaming faces of their parents and the train staff. One little girl had apparently been on this route a number of times. She showed everyone how to operate a tricky restroom door. It slides, you see. Pushing it does nothing. 

I had hoped to recapture that writing zone on this ride back, but these jump seats didn't have tables. So, I finished Bread and Ashes instead. A really marvelous book, rambling and sentimental. Thoughtful, literate, observational, funny -- the perfect book to read in that part of the world. Out of the corner of my reading, I saw The Bathroom Door Girl hand one of the train workers a giant stack of papers that had been next to her seat. 

They were, Sara noticed, almost exactly the same kind of thing I had asked her to throw in the trash. It was probably receipts and tickets and... valuable records of this trip. And we had hucked half of them in the huckerbin. We hoped they had a digital backup copy. 

We roared past a city called Kutaisi. It had been on my list as a possible day trip, chiefly on account of a super-nutty fountain with brass animals crawling all over it, but.. you can't do everything. We can't be accused of not trying to, though. Next time, fountain. There's always something. 

I have a list for a trip I call the "Lips and Assholes Tour" where I go back chiefly to see all the little places and things I was close to but didn't quite make it to on previous trips. The trip is named after what someone once told me was the recipe for lunch meat bologna. Kutaisi Fountain, you made the list! 

Train drifted along pleasantly. There was no meal service, but we had loaded up with water and nuts and snacks, and the first four of the six hours was all comfortable reading and idle snacking. At some point, a man sitting across from us asked if he could plug his phone into an outlet behind us. It involved putting his cell phone on my headrest. It was, of course, no problem at all, and I moved aside to let him plug it in. 

He asked where we were from, and when I said "California in the United States," he said "Ah! Enemy territory!" And though he didn't say it in a mean way, it always gives you pause when someone "pretends" they don't like you for a moment. There's a lot of legitimate tension in the world, because it's in the interest of the oligarchs to keep us afraid of one another. 

No industry in the world exists in the form in which it exists because it must exist that way. The forms industries take is based on who is making money from them and the power they wield to keep them as they are. We don't have enemies, but it's hard to sell weapons if you don't. We don't need oil, but it's hard for the people who make money from it to stop. We don't need high fructose corn syrup, but the corn people fight to keep sugar expensive. 

Everything is advertising. Everything is narrative. Nothing is real but love (and even that is often slave to narrative). Nothing is necessary but communal feeling. And that single, crucial necessity is under constant assault and manipulation. For profit.  

I am a great fan of this bit of Rousseau's: 

"The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, "Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."

His name was Muhammad, and he was from Iran. He was very interested in how people from the US view Iranians. I told him people who read think of Iran as a beautiful place with good people who are struggling under a restrictive government, but that people who watch TV think Iranians are angry, religious people who wake up and go to sleep saying "Death to America." 

I was taking a small risk saying these things, I guess, but from his presentation and from our surroundings, it felt like saying it that way was fair and mostly true. It also just, kind of.. came out that way. 

He looked pained at the second part. Like, that is what he thought most Americans think. I asked him the same question, of course. How is the US viewed in Iran? He said they think we are either ignorant or full of hate. 

And then we had the scripted conversation I have overheard and taken part in a hundred times on my travels: 

It's not the people, of course. It's the governments. 
Yes, the governments! They only care about money. 
Every time I meet a person from (insert country), they are kind and good. 
But the governments make money from keeping us in fear. 
It is how they control us. 
It is good to meet you. 
We are all brothers. 
Can I have my phone back?
Of course. 

When we arrived in Tbilisi, Muhammad helped us orient ourselves "This is it. I am not joking. This is Tbilisi." We actually weren't sure, so it was very helpful. We said goodbye, and he came back to say he would like to help us find a hotel if we needed one or anything we needed. 

He was very nice, and it was hard to tell him we had arranged lodging long ago, but people need something to make themselves feel helpful, so I asked him if he knew where the train station restaurant was, and he said "YES!" and pointed us to where we had gotten hard boiled eggs a few days ago. We smiled and thanked him, and this was the perfect way for everyone to feel like the other was kind and that it was only the accident of our birthplaces that would suggest any enmity between us.  

We WERE legitimately hungry, though, (but not for eggs), so after a quick taxi from the vagsul, we got dumped off back in familiar old Rustaveli Square and hauled our bags into a funny old "fancy" Khinkali house. It had these hilarious remote controls on the table so you could summon the server. We were like rats pushing a lever to trigger more pellets out of the feed-chute. 

Had the usual struggles with a cab. A week earlier, Noble Joe's obsidian beard had parted in an enormous smile to laugh and say we needed a special Taxi app on our phones in order to to have any experience but torment. But I had not done it.

And so we were treated in the usual way, like a couple of anteaters who had climbed in the backseat of a van trying to catch a ride back to the zoo. Where the ants are. The driver we found called over a couple more drivers to crowd-source the best way to our destination. Addresses, screenshots of the apartment, maps, a note from the US embassy, a compass, Sauron's palantir, and a trail of breadcrumbs were all useless. It was either, they know it or they don't. And they never knew it. 

Take me over there.
Where? 
Right there, we're all looking at it. That corner right there. 
I've never been there. 
It's ok. It's just straight ahead.
I'm going to have to consult with my friends.      
It's on the cover of the guide book. It's the most famous place in Tbilisi. 
I'll be right back. I need a coffee and four other drivers. 
We are all brothers. 

                                     

His buddies sat in their own cabs and ate bread wrapped in yellow paper and chewed and sprayed and nodded and eventually one did the hand dance that mapped our route out in the air. The driver got it, and we were off down a narrow alley paved with barnacles.

The sides of the car almost scraped the walls on either side, but a guy in a fishing hat found room to reach through the window and hand our driver a Dixie cup full of clear liquid. I was sure it was chacha.

He paused to drink it, which gave Fishing Hat time to reach through the back window and offer a cup to Sara. She tried to turn it down, but he was willing to have his arm torn off before allowing her to refuse his hospitality.

She accepted it, took a cautious sip, and spat it out. So, you know, I had to try it.

By this time, we had taken off again over the mussel-and-oyster-shell-pavement and the cab was jouncing like an Azerbaijani mashrutka on the road to Yevlak.

The driver hadn't offered us the trunk for our suitcases, so they were piled in the back with us, and I was in the absurd situation of trying not to spill the gift-liquid on my camera or over our clothes.

It eventually smoothed out, and I drank. It was mineral water with an exceptionally high level of carbonation. I understood why she had spit it out, there was an unexpectedly harsh bite. But it wasn't chacha, which meant the driver wasn't drunk...probably.

Having survived all of this put me in a suddenly light mood, and when the radio started playing "Nothin's Gonna Change My Love For You" I started singing along at the top of my voice.

The driver turned it up to an exceptional volume, and I wasn't sure if it was because he knew I was enjoying it or if he was trying to drown me out.

It was still, at this point, unclear if he was taking us to the right place.

Ali and Nino and Ted and Alice

“Of all creatures that can feel and think,

we women are the worst-treated things alive”

                                                   
A cool wet morning, and well-welcomed as such. I had saved the remains of yesterday's lunch, dumped the leftover pelmeni into the center of the khachapuri ring, and fashioned a sort of Frankenpuri breakfast. Offensively salty and greasy. An obscene meal of dough-scrap, and well-welcomed as such! I ate it with my fingers like a starving Argonaut.

The recipe is available for a price. I figured I'd tell the restaurant what I had done after first stopping by the bodega to return the leftover needle and thread. I had no use for twelve needles and 79/80th of a spool, so I decided to bring it back so she could resell them to someone else. We also wanted to stop by and get some walking snacks for our planned assault on the city.

The shower in this place was the best we'd had on the trip, I am compelled to note! Gone are the days of doorless, too-cold, too-hot, and peeping actress photos. Here was paradise! But it was time to get out and get our Batumi on. The schedule called for: Medea statue, seaside, Ali and Nino statue, and free time after lunch. My primary goal was to find a really great magnet.

Got the needle and thread ready, escaped the maximum-security courtyard, and we were back in the street. The sky was a steely grey but promised to clear.

                                               

I hadn't shared my grossfast with Sara, so she stopped by a bakery while I popped into the bodega to return the thread. I walked in and placed it on the counter, and the confusion of the clerk was memorable. I had the wrong place. It was, from her perspective as if a seagull had walked in and let a spatula fall out of its beak. Just some random senseless act by an insensate animal. I sheepishly collected the items and hurried out.

Found the original place and returned the items. It was the same lady as yesterday. When I produced the items she'd sold me, she looked at me like I was going to complain, but I pointed to my pizza patch, and I was like, "Finished! I do! I not use more. I done. Thank!"

She took the stuff back, and I left. Sara was still inside loading up on nuts and pretzels, and she said when I walked out, the lady and her friend cracked up laughing, holding one another and slapping their legs.

I think this whole situation is as funny as they did.

                                                          

We headed Medea-ward passing some unusual casino castles on the way. We'd heard Batumi referred to as Las Vegas by the Sea, but this was the first signs we'd seen of it. Charming old mansions designed to separate you from your money and your senses. But very pretty.

Parks and cafes and sleepy dogs and ladies in headscarves sweeping the streets. We found Medea at the top of an enormously tall column, a dark figure raising the fleece high in the air. She was almost like Perseus with the Gorgon's head, but it was a fluffy textile. A nice centerpiece in a charming little plaza, though something about it made it feel a little like a Macy's ad.

Nearby, I was tracking a little street kitty to photograph her, and she jumped up on my thigh. She was very sweet and I put my camera away and was able to pet her frail little body a little. I stood up slowly, so she could use my leg as a platform to jump down from, but she dug in. I soon saw why. Three street dogs were circling.

These guys were medium-sized mutts, not too rough-seeming but certainly activated by the cat. Street dogs that have enough strength to beg are good with people, and though they were definitely focused on the cat there was no sense they were going to attack me to get her.

It was more like bully kids waiting for an oblivious adult to stop talking to their target, nodding their heads and punching their palms in the background.

I set the cat down next to a car, so she could get under it, and intended to wave the dogs away, but the minute the cat was off me, they swarmed the car.

                                                       

Cats are fast and smart, though, so she led them a merry chase. They weren't very organized as a team, so though our hearts were pounding in fear, we saw the clever baby escape and leave the dogs sniffing around a car she was no longer under.

Quite an adventure. I was genuinely terrified we would see animal violence and that I would have been responsible in some way for the death of that kitten. But, she got away. As ever, I keep with me that quote from Watership Down:

"All the world will be your enemy, Prince of a Thousand enemies. And when they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you; digger, listener, runner, Prince with the swift warning. Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed."

The dramatic pause between "they will kill you" and "but first they must catch you," has the most powerfully universal beauty in all recorded literature.

We moved on like black rabbits and found nearby a statue of Neptune with porny mermaids writhing around it, clutching their breasts and spreading their thighs. It may as well have been a fountain of jizz. We looked in vain for the "Donated by the estate of Larry Flynt" plaque but found it not.

Closer to the shore, we fell in love with some colorful public housing.

                                                    

Dodged the traffic at a busy roundabout, and I got a cute picture of a cyclist smoking a cigarette while he taxied two old ladies in matching pink ponchos. I loved the progression of color and the whole cute scene of them motoring along the red bike path.

We made our way to a charming boardwalk tastefully lined with souvenir kiosks (not too many!) and ice cream carts (not enough!) and a rocky little path to the dark, dark, sea. It was chilly, but men and women wore their bathing suits and splashed around or basked on flat stones.

It felt like a Caucasian Coney Island.

There was a cute pair of enormous bronze Turkish slippers you could put your feet in for photo-ops and... there there were: Ali and Nino! They held one another nearby, slotted together like beans and cornbread, like corned beef and cabbage, like liver and onions. They weren't moving, and we thought they were supposed to. Maybe it was a once-a-day thing? No sign. We decided to look it up later.

I poked around on the magnet side of the world. The boardwalk was buzzing by now, and we were running around soaking it in and trying to capture some of it. A tugboat was moving slowly in the blue, and I waited patiently for it to come into frame. I wanted to snap it between a post and a weird painted cement structure. The moment it passed the post, a random dude walked into the shot and fucked it up.

I cussed out loud about it just as Sara was walking up, and it justifiably bothered her. Nice day, kind people walking around enjoying themselves, and here was some creep filling the air with frightful oaths and betraying the presence of a kind of internal privilege-based rage. It's something I need to get a hold on, this random vocalization of minor disappointments. There's a line of three people at the coffee shop, fuck! Some asshole got in my shot, injustice!

It's something my father does. At convenience stores or whatever. Walking in with him as a kid, if someone looked funny to him, he'd say stuff out loud like, "Looks like this guy's face was on fire and his mom put it out with a rake." It was mortifying.

It comes out when I feel like I've been "cheated."

We shared a tense kind of lunch and agreed to spend the next couple of hours doing our own thing.   

                                             

I used mine to feed stray cats. I had taken half of my lunch with me for just this purpose. In my search, I fed a few in pretty bad shape. Skin problems, blind. Beyond the scraps, all I could do was bear witness to their suffering. There wasn't enough leftover bbq in the world to help even a segment of them.

A man with swastikas tattooed on his shoulders struggled to hang an enormous plush bee on a hook at the shooting gallery.

Fairy statues and row upon row of retired old men playing backgammon and card games fountainside. A gorgeous blue path led to yet another beach where you could rent umbrellas and rafts. A postcard town. There was an interesting ferry that buzzes between Sochi and Batumi, but it's only for people with Russian or Georgian passports. I thought that was fascinating.

Back home I did some reading but no more sewing. Sara came home, and we were ok. We made plans for dinner. She had researched a place called The Old Ship, which seemed like an hilarious and perfect place for a final, cheesy dinner in a funny old fish-town.

We napped, and when we awoke, it was time to go back out. Our google search for "When do Ali and Nino move?" was met with zero results. There was the suggestion that they are always moving and that asking that question was the same as "How many games are in the Super Bowl?" A blog from a few years ago said 7pm, so we made that time our target.

                                                         

We broke out of Alcatraz and made our way boardwalkward as the sun set on a cool evening. No ponchos necessary. We walked along the beach noticing the street lights were topped with little Argo-shaped designs. Cute. A stubby little stadium housed beach volleyball, and we watched some women play. A father and son sat on motorbikes and watched as well, frozen in appreciation, a tableau vivant from a heteronormative passion play.

We got gelato. I ordered the fig flavor and the gelista made a face like, "maybe not the fig tonight," so I pivoted to the pistachio. It was nutty and good. We were happy and activated watching the city transform into a salt-aired twilight, families from all over the world maxing out their vacations. Men threw glowing propellers in the air, and we watched them drift down to be thrown again.

A man in an enormous bear costume held children aloft in his tremendous paws, easily ten feet tall was this costume. A drunken couple took turns letting it embrace them. A Ferris wheel blinked. Ali and Nino, when we reached them, were motionless.

Out of order. For a moment, we thought they may have been slowly moving, maybe... but it was St. Nino's Fire, an illusion summoned by hope. They was just busted. To make up for it, we stood apart from one another at either end of the fence surrounding them and approached one another slowly. When we reached one another, we pressed our bodies together like them.

We were like Ali and Nino, apart this morning from our fight but together now. Like liver and onions. They may have been out of order, but not us!

I bought a magnet of the statues standing in a suitcase.



Next to the Old Ship was a restaurant called The New Ship. For whatever whimsical reason, we changed tack and went to the new one. Open-air seating with a waitstaff dressed like someone drawing Popeye from memory. An old lounge singer belted out Georgian ballads on a too-loud PA system. He made angry faces when I applauded. "I am not singing for YOU!"

We ate a selection of high-sodium cheeses and shared a plate of grilled pork and a Caesar salad while he sang. Across the park at the Old Ship, a rival singer turned up his volume, and it was ON. The two of them fought for the crown of Unintelligible Shout-Singing supremacy. They were like the Anti-matter Ali and Nino.

The Old Ship/New Ship lounge-singer battle has to become a subplot in something someday soon.

We walked home in the beachlight dark. The moon made a ghost-road on the sea, but we took the path we knew. One day we'll be tempted by the other.

In the morning, we would fly Medea's golden dragon back to Tbilisi.

Golden Fleece on The Black Sea

"Most of the people buying the Soviet paraphernalia were Americans and West Europeans. The lesson could not have been clearer: while the symbol of one mass murder fills us with horror, the symbol of another mass murder makes us laugh."



A dawnlight farewell to Sophia Loren (and the mysterious photo of Peter O' Toole near the air-conditioning unit) and a planned detour; our bags were packed for the seaside town of Batumi. The plan was to take an early taxi to the vagsal, snag a vag, and ride in style to the inky shores of The Black Sea.

Despite the constant struggles with taxis otherwise, we had at last mastered how to get to train stations. Sara noted that the "chugga chugga" sound was key. I had been focused on the "choo choo," but I was coming off like a "quittin' time!" whistle or an asthmatic. Preceding the choo choo with a chugga chugga worked 100% of the time. And, thus, our early-morning ride was drama-free. And familiar. We had previously been in the Tbilisi vagsal, having arrived there on the midnight train from Ganja. 

We had intended to take the ten-fifteen, but we happened to be there on time for the earlier train, so Sara ran upstairs for hard-boiled eggs, I got us the tickets, and moments later we were off. It could not have been less like that hilariously grim Ganja train. Quiet, smooth ride during which I napped, enjoyed more of Bread and Ashes and, crucially, again reached that place of productive peace while writing.

It was almost like that morning in Sheki. It felt so good, like I was fulfilling my purpose, completely non-physical. Six hours melted away like mountain mist.

The first glimpses of the sea as we pulled into Batumi were very beautiful. We had completed one fantasy goal, to travel from the shores of the Caspian to the shores of the Black. From sea to shining sea.



Batumi, if it's known, is known in popular culture for several things, chief of which is the statue of Ali and Nino, a pair of slotted metal figures who start apart but slowly approach one another on a moving platform and "embrace" as their slots merge. It's a beautiful concept and well executed. We were keen to see it, having enjoyed several videos months before the trip.

As well, Batumi claims to be geographically close to the place in classical mythology the Greeks called Colchis, which is where Jason went to get the Golden Fleece. I mentioned this to Joe back in Tbilisi, and he was dismissive. "It is not true!" he said, "It is not the place!" And it probably isn't, BUT, it's the narrative Batumi pushes: Jason and the Argonauts slept here.

It's an affordable seaside resort for folks from Georgia, Russia, Iran, etc. Poland, of course. Our cab (tourist town, so no problem!) took us along a nice little coastal road past weird, weird buildings and into the busy little urban area where our apartment was waiting. Bakeries and boutiques lined the avenue.

Our host met us at the gate and took us past some crazy-high security (gate! another gate! electronic lock! auto-locking door! motion detectors!) into a skinny elevator and up to our little room. It had a marvelous balcony with a cute view of the charmingly sloppy lived-in looking Spring Break town. The air was rain-gravid, heavy and cool.

There was a clothesline, which promised laundry. Sara found the bouncer who ran the place and he showed us they indeed had a washing machine! Glory! Tbilisi does all of its washing in the Mt'k'vari River, and three days there had bestank my shirts. Into the laundry chute, flyboy.

While our shirts and socks were serviced, we poked around on a map and discovered we were quite near a statue of Medea.



She was, of course, the wizard who helped Jason steal the fleece from her dad, chopped up her own brother and wrapped Jason's fiance up in a flaming poncho, et-vengeance-cetera. Sweet butter. Hung the laundry on the line, like people!, and went out for a bite and to poke around a little bit. Maybe we would find the statue.

Over the last few years, there's been a lot of investment in Batumi, and it's not far from Sochi (where the Winter Olympics were in 2014), so its profile has picked up, so there are a lot of bizarre buildings under construction. One looked like a nutty gumball machine, one was a skyscraper with a ferris wheel built into it. All manner of karaoke bars clustered around their bases like remora.

We ended up at a kind of Russian comfort-food place, almost a milk bar, where we loaded up on pelmeni and khachapuri. Sara drank an Argo beer! More myth marketing. They had a cute little anchor logo on the label.

Afterward, it started to rain, but we liked it, because it had been so hot in Baku and so warm in Tbilisi, but then we stopped liking it, so Sara bought a poncho. But not one of Medea's flaming ones. We passed a park advertising some sort of big-deal international chess tournament. It all gave the sense of an active little town with plenty of leisure and art and activity. Kind of like a culture-rich Daytona Beach.

We found a little coffee place but not the statue. We figured out where the action was, but I was getting pretty soaked so I headed back. There was a project I wanted to work on.



For some time, I've been carrying around a patch with an image of a slice of pizza being stabbed with a switchblade. What does it mean? Why do I have it? Why did I want to sew it onto my day-bag? I just did. A rainy day in a seaside resort seemed like the ideal time to try it out.

So, Sara and I walked into a sort of Georgian bodega and I asked to buy needle and thread. The well-meaning lady had no idea what I was saying, so I kind of pinched my thumb and forefinger together and made my hand move like a drunken goldfish.

She got it! Pushed aside some onions and gummi colas and tape measures to reveal a little envelope with about twelve sewing needles. I made encouraging noises, and she handed it over. I only needed one, but it was too complicated to explain.

She went back to the register, but I still had to have thread, so I was like, "Thread?" but she didn't get it. So, I made a Chef Boy-R-Dee gesture and mimed a long string of thread being pulled through the air.

She got it! Pushed aside some leeks and gardening gloves and snack cakes to reveal a huge plastic clutch with spools of thread in a dozen colors. It was too difficult to explain that I only needed one, but I tried pointing at just the black spool.

She rolled her eyes and broke up the set. The twelve needles and the industrial supply of dark thread came to about forty-one cents.

Dodged the drops, made it home, and sat by the window sewing. I made every mistake possible, had to relearn the basic mechanics of sewing, and did everything wrong but sew the messenger bag to my shorts.

Got the job done, though. It's sloppy and ridiculous, but so is the patch.

                                                 

Our clothes were dry on the line by now and the rain had stopped. Sara had gone out exploring and poncho-testing while I was being a punk-domestic, and when she came back I showed her my handiwork, she was very encouraging, told me what she had seen, and we cleaned up for dinner.

She had researched a cute little art-diner set up in an old house. Eclectic mismatched furniture and shabby-chic benches. We were served salmon by a dancer and wine by a Spaniard. It was a good night to recline, eat a slow meal and talk about our hopes for when we got back home. I made the mistake of letting work-thoughts enter the conversation. Gauche!

This may have caused the dancer to "read" me as a corporate creep and not a fellow artist, because he got kind of.. mean. I sensed a kind of.. oppositional energy. He was like, "How do you like Georgian cuisine?" and I was like, "Haha, we sure love khinkali," and he threw shade. "God," he said, "not khinkali." We left under a cloud of His Disdain. I think he felt sorry for Sara and not at all impressed by my pizza patch. If only he'd known I was a cool DIY tailor.



Wet walk home, the rain had started again. Red lights lit the foggy window of a bakery. A sidewalk panel came loose like in a cartoon graveyard and water poured into my shoe. Soaked sock! The stormy clouds chased, everyone from the place, and my fingers slipped on the keypad as I tried to get through the retina-scan required to get us into this over-secure apartment.

Upstairs we dried off, did some reading and planned our assault on Medea in the morning. I wasn't going to miss her. Those fleece seemed pretty warm.

City of Inspiration, Cape of Rifles

“I love enemies, though not in the Christian way. They amuse me, excite my blood. Being always on one’s guard, catching every glance, the significance of every word, guessing at intentions, frustrating their plots, pretending to be tricked, and suddenly, with a shove, upturning the whole enormous and arduously built edifice of their cunning and schemes—that’s what I call life.”
                                                   
                                                        

Another early morning, too early for the cafes, which meant we had to "drink" that powdered "coffee" men call Nescafe. It seemed a good way to celebrate the end of  my jock itch. The night previous, I lay on my back with my legs up, Sara powdered me like a baby insect, and that was the end of it. Cheers!

I had, however, a new complaint. My head still hurt from the chacha. It was what the Georgians call a "nabakhusevi," which sounds like the name of a Babylonian king, but means "hangover."

The photograph of Sofia Loren watched me shower, we dressed quickly, then made our way breakfastward. The cheesy pizzas they call khachapuri was going to complete the cycle of recovery.

It's a marvelous thing, this khachapuri. Dough with cheese in the middle, often a baked egg, frequently a pat of butter on top of that. Medieval and delicious. Perfect nabakhusevi food.

There's a general, magical sense that the economy here is opening up and that everything is possible, that empires can be built by the first people to figure out some "basic" things. There's the sense that a teenager from California could become a highly compensated business consultant by making some privileged "Western" observations.

Of course, I'm speaking strictly of ways to cater to obnoxious tourists. For example, the only reason we chose the breakfast place we were going to was it was the single restaurant in the entire city that used "brunch" as a keyword on their social media. 

                                          

Nice, long walk across that Dry Bridge again and through that marvelous market. Vendors were just then laying out their bolts on their blankets.

Note! The Dry Bridge is so-called on account if it being over a road and not a river. Noted!

Fun little ramble through quiet neighborhoods with those distinctive Georgian balconies, fascinating buttressed outcroppings that jut colorfully out of buildings. A women dropped ground beef from one to feed hungry kittens. It fell with an appetizing splat in the road and they came up mewing, forgetting their private battles.

A lively, lived-in seeming park featured some miraculously strange sculptures. One in particular captivated us, a Soviet-era statue of a bare-breasted woman dropping rifles and swords out of her cast-off cape. It was, of course, next to the children's climbing structures. Here, children, Mother Rifle is here to nurse and protect you.

The weapon-filled cape formed a kind of canopy you could shelter under from the rain. There was no plaque or explanation. She was absolutely fascinating with a marvelous profile. The pictures did not do it justice. It may have been the powdered coffee, but I found myself feeling like it was one of the most significantly beautiful pieces of martial art I've seen.

Different from the abstract emotions of the Vigeland Park sculptures in Oslo, I had a deep response to it. The picture doesn't do it justice.

                                                         

Past the museum and down Rustaveli Street, past grand buildings and busy plazas. Past women selling seeds and men offering their taxis as tour buses. Past fountains and malls. Down to a subterranean walkway emerging at a soaring column of St. George clad in gold slaying a golden worm with a golden lance.

Another turn and there we were at the only hashtag-brunch place in Tbilisi. They served the khachapuri up hot, and we tore it apart, washing it down with a lavender tea. Thus fortified, we explored anew, winding our way to Prospero's Books, a delightful bookseller with a courtyard and a cafe. An excellent section on "regional interest" seemed made just for me. There was even a display of Bread and Ashes, the book I was currently reading!

I bought a tiny history of Georgia and a novel by Lermantov.

I fell in love with a tiny painting in a streetside flea market but I married an iced coffee at a chain place I trusted. We drank up and hauled our bread and ashes to the metro. Sara and I repeated the conversation Joe and I had the previous day.  It's deep but not as deep as Kyiv! I know! I would have thought it deep otherwise, had I not been to Kyiv! Me too!

                                                           

At the Marjanishvili station, we detrained and cobblestoned our way through a commercial district lined with shops and malls, a heavily billboarded and advertisement encrusted Anyeurope which soon melted into the more distinct jutting-balcony Tbilisi and soon further led to quiet avenues with large worn-seeming apartment buildings with gorgeous deco facades and curly concrete details.

Our destination was Fabrika, a hostel and art center put together by someone with vision and money. It was the most Berlin-like area we'd seen. A block-sized compound with rooms in the front and cafes and yoga spaces in the back. I have to imagine it's the place you would make an immediate beeline for if you were a young artist or adventurer come to check the city out.

We were there to meet with Joe, who had offered to give us a tour of the Old City and share with us some secret hallways and passages. He arrived shortly, along with another outlander. Australian, of course. Aren't they all?

Unlike Khinalug John from the previous week who delighted in showing off cellphone pics of bilbies and quokkas, Tom was super chill after having spent the previous six months in Portugal and Spain. Affable and stoned, he proved a fine companion for our tour.

Joe's eyes flashed and his bright smile shone through his deep black beard. His thick ebony curls bounced merrily as he threw his head back in raucous laughter, and we were off.



Corkscrewing canyons of merchant's mansions, charming courtyards and "Italian gardens" showed the real Tbilisi. Children played while their nursemaids knit, men tore at walls with crowbars and painted walls with rollers dripping white. Men smoothed stone with grinding machines. Women hurried to market.

Joe wove tales as we wandered. Here, he said, was once a single home, built by a powerful merchant to show off his wealth. Here, he said, was once a park where lovers met in licentious liaison. How the leaves did rustle. How the branches did shake. Torn collars and greased lips. And here, here (here here here) was a muse of Edvard Munch murdered by her lover. Her grave lies not many yards distant!

I took great inspiration from this particular story. Her name was Dagny Juel, and she was an artist's model and Bohemian who married as she liked and posed for artists as she liked and slept with who she liked. A glamorous, independent spirit who swung with the wrong swinger. He got jealous and did her in.

You can't get any more Merchant and Ivory than that. It feels like "Munch's Muse" would get greenlit as a period biopic in any respectable Hollywood production house. I'm dying to write it. The tale seemed to fall out of Joe's cape like a rainstorm of rifles and into my mind.



We ducked into a construction site and marveled at a dark little hallway decorated with the ancient canvas of a clipper ship on a tormented sea. A spiraling staircase led up, up (up). At a little shop, we tried churchkela, a Georgian treat that looks exactly like a wax candle but tastes only mostly like a wax candle.

I hummed "Tequila" to myself but replaced the title with churchkela. A private laugh for a public gentleman. Tom stepped on a pop top and busted his flip flop, so we rested while he bought himself some new shoes. When he returned, well-shod and half-shy, Joe's coal black eyes shone like onyx from an ancient mine. His thick ebony curls bounced merrily as he threw his head back in raucous laughter, and we were off. 

Off, off off to the Old City with its twisting streets and comfortable rugs. A pair of gypsy boys danced in the street, the oldest couldn't have been five, the youngest barely three, but they charmed and roared to the crowd's great delight. The baby danced with the ecstatic intensity of Anthony Quinn on some faraway beach. I offered him coins, and he expertly held them and grabbed for more with a practiced pinching gesture that frightened me.



Ancient places of worship and wine fermented in clay pots deep beneath the earth, down where the dwarven lords live in halls of stone. Brass pheasants wept over hot springs, blue-tiled bathhouses rose above them, and above the blue-tiled bathhouses rose a fortress. There's always a higher point in Tbilisi, each view offers an elevated glimpse of the last. You can climb and climb forever, quite naturally, almost unknowingly, and find yourself dazzled by the miniature nature of what, moments ago, seemed enormous.

Joe encouraged us to try "lemonade," a sweet, crisp refreshment made of grapes (and not lemons). I also tried some fresh-squeezed pomegranate. Tart and cleansing.

At a waterfall, not three yards from where a gypsy held a peacock captive by its ivory feet, we made our farewells. Joe and Tom had a castle to storm, but our hearts counseled rest. Embraces and pledges. Oaths and swearing. We headed back down. Climbing higher, yet higher, Joe's thick ebony curls bounced merrily as he threw his head back in raucous laughter, and disappeared.

We wrestled mightily with a cab driver, fought with him like renegade angels until understanding could be reached, and we were home.




At home, we rested, read, and wrote. We uploaded our pictures and cheered for the Storm. They had won another game! Out once more now, down the strange street of touts and models. We landed at a Pakistani place. A light rain began to fall, and they put a tent around us. Like we mattered. Like we were princelings. Sara opined that had it been hot, we would have been fanned with fronds of palm.

It was a strange night. Large groups of Persians pinched and bullied the restaurant hosts. A man in a pointy beard put his hands around the neck of a smaller man holding a menu. He, the vampire, did not wish to be asked what he wanted. It was not pleasant to see.

We paid (it was almost nothing) and retired. Under the string lights, we could have been anyone. At home, we slept. The Persian vampires hunted and howled until late.

In the morning, we would take a train to the sea.

Thunder in Tbilisi, Lightning in Signagi

"Here is a bad Svan joke: A man from the lowlands asks a Svan if the road to Mestia is good. The Svan replies that there are two roads, good and bad. The one from which your car plunges into the Inguri never to be found is the bad one; the one from which your car plunges into the Inguri but your body is recovered is the good one."

                                     

Our room in Tbilisi was in, we soon discovered, an anomalous neighborhood. It was all dolled up with string lights and hookah bars and mini-skirted hostesses popping up out of wicker chairs to say "Hello, Georgian food!" Two party-blocks like nowhere else in the city, zoned to appeal to stag-dos and hen parties. It's the sort of strip usually found in Polish towns which have otherwise given up. A strange start for us, but Tbilisi is such that it breaks the rule about not getting a second chance at a first impression.

Our room was enormous and in a quirky old art-deco building with real charm. There was a strange 60s-Icons-of-Italian-Cinema theme to the decor, cute pictures of  Sophia Loren and one of Peter O'Toole for some reason. Dumped our bags off, and though very sleepy, we were energized by being in a new place and went out for a bite.

A few steps past the Eurotrash district, I was in terrible pain. Earlier this summer, I suffered from a fungal infection on my inner thigh. Red, fleshy, swollen fire in the joint crease. The doctor called it "jock itch," so that what it is, I reckon. Heat and sweat inflame it, and I reckon it came back. I'm glad it hadn't flared up in front of Sophia Loren.

So, there was the amusing situation of limping around in an ancient European city, grimacing on the cobblestones and trying to find a pharmacy. I hadn't packed my "crease cream" since it hasn't been a problem for a long time, and I thought it wouldn't come back. We headed for a storefront with a big green cross in front of it. At home that means a pot dispensary, but here it just meant medicine.

The pharmacist didn't speak English, and I didn't want to mime a crotch-fire, so I drew a foot instead with an arrow pointing between two of the toes. The ingredients in athlete's foot cream serve just as well. The picture worked. She laughed and got a tube of what I needed. Outside, Sara bargained with an old book seller and bought some weird old Soviet magazines.

                                                           

We stopped to eat at a touristy place at the entrance to The Dry Bridge, and we ordered way too many khinkali, which are those marvelous dumplings with the little button-handle on them. Super delicious, AND I got my adjika at last. Tasting it once more had been one of the prime incentives of the trip. And here it was. The smoky, spicy, savory taste defies easy description. I was very happy.

I used the restaurant's two-wallet to apply my crease cream, and that problem went away, and then I was even happier. We made our way to the Dry Bridge Market and were immediately (and pleasantly) overwhelmed by the magnificently organized chaos of the whole thing. It was like the flea markets of my youth, men and women with blankets with the contents of their kitchen drawers dumped out in a pile.

Tweezers, juice glasses, Donny Osmond records, brass shrimp, doilies, broken hammers, spy cameras, reel-to-reel tape players, hairless dolls, soviet kitsch. Total sensory overwhelm. We stumbled back to the room and crashed, fully intending to go back out for dinner, but... well the marshrutkas and the market, and the mountain of khinkali meant it was all zees.

At some point, around 2am, the sound of thunder woke us, a low roar of bass stumbling down from the surrounding hills.

                                                             

In the morning, I was scheduled to meet with Joe, a local boy who Meg had met on her previous trips. She e-troduced us, and he invited us to join he and his girlfriend on a trip to Signagi, a quiet little town in Eastern Georgia's wine country. Sara politely decided to try to spend at least one day without piling into a van and racing to yet another red-roofed UNESCO site, but I took the opportunity.

Sara and I agreed to meet again for dinner, and she went back to sleep.

Did some writing, packed my bag, and headed out to Rustaveli Square. Gorgeous, quiet little walk along the bank of the Mtkvari River, the city not quite ready to come to life. It was all so different from the perceived sterility of Baku. Here, the new and the old (and the once-new) seem to integrate in a much more natural way.

There was a kind of "Asiatic" wildness in Baku, but it seemed state-sponsored. Tbilisi, even in the friscalating dawnlight, had a low pulse of opportunity and potential. Like, anyone who wanted to could rise up and do as they liked. Make some money, or eat some figs and go back to sleep. No giant towers to tell you you're small. There was ONE goofy glass structure that stood out like a cocaine fingernail but it neither intimidated nor inspired. It looked like something that fell out from between a Capitalist giant's teeth.

Rustaveli Square was a fun little Metro roundabout presided over by a statue of the country's favorite poet. He was depicted in a jaunty, feathered cap and holding a book. Both here and in Baku, to this point, every statue showed a poet, author, or kindly landscaper. I had not seen a single dude on a horse or dude with a sword. It gave every impression the arts were, you know, appreciated here.

                                                            

I sat on a bench and people-watched. Slow beginnings at this hour. Old men in knit caps and immaculate white beards begged on the stairs. Old women sold hazelnuts and figs. A bookseller transformed the wall around a fountain into his storefront. Marvelous and inscrutable (to me) old books with magnificent covers. Oh, the possibilities within. A purple deer floating in a Cyrillic sea. A mountain with one blazing Georgian letter on a door in its side.

I read about Rustaveli on my phone. He was like Sir Francis Drake, but with poems instead of battleships. Hung out with Queen Tamar and wrote a courtly love epic called The Knight in the Tiger's Skin. As I was reading a debate over whether or not the title should be panther's skin or tiger's skin, Joe appeared.

Kind eyes and immediate warmth. We'd never met but felt like old friends. No pressure to be or do anything but relax and enjoy the day ahead. I asked him where a guy could get coffee in this city, and he helped me find a place. His girlfriend and cousin were on their way, so it worked out ok that the coffee place's opening hours were more suggestive than actual. This proved a theme throughout. The time a place "opens" meant the time one of the employees got there to set up for the morning.

Coffee in hand, we met up with the girls, an affable pair of Russian cousins who spoke little English. Onto the subway, where Joe and I bonded over this conversation.

Me: This subway sure is deep.
Joe: Yes, though it is nothing compared to the metro in Kyiv.
Me: I know! It's so deep!
Joe: The deepest in the world! I was amazed!
Me: No, I was amazed!
Joe: I enjoyed Kyiv.
Me: Me too! 

We got to a little marshrutka holding pen and Joe took advantage of his native language skills to find one with space for four. It was a bit of a mess, and there was zero chance I would have successfully navigated it by myself. Additionally, there was a complication that would have only revealed itself later. As will soon be told, this marshrutka ride had a sting in its tail!

                                                     

Off we went. I read from Bread and Ashes, an absolutely marvelous travelogue about a British dude exploring the Caucasian mountains. It was the first thing I had brought to read on this trip that I loved unreservedly. Poetic and informative, loose, historical, and often very funny. Highly recommended. Joe nuzzled with Dacia, Yakira rated photos on her phone. It was about two hours to Signagi with little to report along the way. Low land, fertile-seeming. Orchards and sheep. A smooth (by comparison) ride.

Upon arrival, a woman who reminded me of the nyet-slinging train guide got out and entered a little woman-sized booth. Joe asked us to wait for a moment while he went over to it. I used a public restroom. It was 50 cents, I paid with a 5, and got an absurd handful of change in return.

The money here is called the Lari, which made me laugh on account of the rampant vowel switching 'round these parts. Ten other countries have the lira, but the a and i showed up in different order on Georgian Money Naming Day. I suppose it could have been "liar." In any case, five lari got me fifteen pounds of coins. When we were all assembled again, I spent them on the first magnet I could find.

Wonderful little cobblestone-lined town with charming elevations and shady parks. We made our way to a museum right away, since it featured the works of Pirosmani. He's the most famous and beloved Georgian "primitivist" whose bio reads like a mash-up of every suffering Belle-Epoque Frenchman you've ever heard of. The classic, unappreciated in life, died under the stairs, celebrated as a national hero after death scenario.

I enjoyed it, and there were some cool, weirdo weapons and skulls in there as well. The four of us explored at our own pace and responded to different works. The museum had a beautiful balcony commanding a view of a gorgeous mossy ruin of a church tower.

                                          

From a little observation deck/cafe, Joe took an hundred photos of Dacia for her Instagram. Yakira made comments on the poses, and I snapped the church tower. A pretty sad-seeming dude with a pair of binoculars came up to see if we wanted to give him money to use them. It was pretty heartbreaking. Joe and I were obviously using high-powered zoom lenses on our cameras, and it felt like someone trying to sell a windbreaker to someone in a greatcoat. You never know, you might want LESS protection from the cold.

I couldn't get the guy out of my mind. Like, he had a kind of wall-eyed dignity about him, and when we (kindly) turned him down he went off to pull weeds from a corner of the cafe. That particular gesture is what got me. Like.. "I have value, despite your not needing my binoculars." It was very moving to me that he still had that spark in him; it fired up all my empathy neurons.

We moved on to take a long walk along the still-existing wall fortifications surrounding the city. Marvelously preserved stone guard towers and defenses with views of the valley. Very fun to imagine Tamerlane's hordes approaching and our running to light a fire to warn the rest of the city. Exciting to think about firing and dodging arrows, heating and pouring hot oil onto armored heathens.

Nobody got hurt, and we retired to a natural spring to refill our water bottles.

                                           

Onward to lunch, back down the stony paths and past the women selling honey and the women selling walnut syrup, and the women selling watermelon rind syrup, and the women selling handmade socks. I bought a tiny plush donkey for Amber's daughter back home. It was made of mountain wool by a sweet old lady.  We tried to get into a famous place called The Pheasant's Tears, but they said they wouldn't have food for another day or so and wouldn't we prefer to eat somewhere else anyway?

So, we got mushrooms and cheese in a little courtyard and Joe took an hundred photos of Dacia on a swing and under a pear tree. We returned then to Pheasant's Tears for wine. That showed them! It was good, rich and earthy, fermented in a clay pot in the very earth! Loamy and deep red!

I also tried chacha, which is kind of like the bologna or head cheese of the wine world, a monstrous squeezing of grape stems and peels and seeds that gives you an icepick hangover without the luxury of making you drunk first. It's like something made in secret in a gulag toilet. The label should read: "All of the penalty with none of the reward!" 

But I kind of liked it in the way one salutes one's attempted assassin.

                                              
And then it was time to head back home. A long, pleasant afternoon in the extreme warmth of wine country was nearing its end. Culture and Cuisine! Photos and Pheasants! A wild scene awaited us back at marshutkastan. The booth woman had, several hours ago, been selling tickets in advance for the last rides out of town. As you know, reader, these things normally load on a first-come/first-serve basis, but the rules are different in Signagi. Joe had been tipped off, which is why he had gone a'boothin' several hours ago. So, we had a ticket.  Or did we?

The woman had TRIPLE-SOLD the last ride, and there was a huge crowd of people trying to force their way into an already packed mini-van. It probably held 15 people, and there were at least forty waiting to get in. And that was just the ones who had tickets. A Russian couple did not, and they were losing their got-danged minds. Joe translated in my ear while the woman in the couple unloaded on the driver.

"What the FUCK is this? You never said you had to buy tickets in advance! I have never heard of this shit ANYWHERE. We came to this piece of shit, backward country on a DARE, and boy did we get FUCKED. You're basically cavemen! You will never amount to SHIT if you continue to run things this way. It was a FUCKING MISTAKE to come to this stupid, stupid place!"

As you might imagine, the locals took offense. Georgian randos in the crowd were yelling back at her. There's a lot of tension, of course. Russia dominated this place for over seventy years (and with the exception of a two-year window after WWI, another seventy before that). They, Russians, kind of walk around the place like Americans used to everywhere else. A kind of haughty, "well isn't this cute. You know we could have it again if we wanted it. My grandfather owned your grandfather." kind of attitude.

It was tense. They were eventually encouraged to take a(n expensive) taxi back to Sochi or wherever.

                                       
                                              

The ticket lady did a funny thing and asked the driver to see if he could find any more seats in the van, "because you are long and can see better around corners." There were, of course, no more seats. The van drove off leaving us there.

But word soon circulated that two local vans had been convinced to make the trip, so not very long after the "last" one left, two more rolled up, and we were on our way.

It was a nice place, if you don't drink the chacha.

Back in Tbilisi, we made our good-buys with pledges of eternal friendship and the promise to meet again soon. I took the metro back and emerged to find the city a bustling wild place with all manner of kissing and commerce in the bright streets. It's kind of like a cold Spain, this place. Slow start to the days made up with wild action deep into the night!

I met up with Sara, who had had a wonderful day of  exploration and discovery. She seemed quite content, and we had an hilarious dinner at a Spongebob Squarepants-themed restaurant run by an Iranian family. We ate our krabby patties while the owners son, Faroud, showed us how his Minecraft world was progressing.

Some things are the same all over the world.