After being forcibly ejected from the group project several days ago for being an incorrigible ass I found myself with an evening to waste. So I went across the street to the corner store to get a couple of liters of beer to add to the modest collection of alcohol I'd already accrued in my bloodstream from the restaurant and the group project wine bottle. I don't remember much of that evening, but I woke up just before dawn in a sweat because of a terrifying vision of the future: living in a McMansion at the end of a cul-de-sac with a bitchy wife and two little kids. This got me thinking about what I want out of life in the space between when I woke up and when I was able to bludgeon myself back to sleep.

I want to have enough money to travel someplace foreign and exotic at least once a year for the rest of my life

I want to live in a house in Seattle that built with my own hands

I want to garden, grow fruits and vegetables, achieve a measure of self-sufficiency, even as if I'm living in the city

I want to learn several foreign languages

I want to be well-educated (which I suppose means going to grad school at this point)

I want to get out into nature, at least a couple of times a year

I want to fix up that goddamn Mercury

Probably there are more. Can't say I can think of them right now.

Muggy Humid Hot Feelings of Despair

So I've been in Europe two months. What sort of impression has this made on me? Absolutely none! Bring on the hedonism!

I was looking at my blog for the first time in two months (more or less) and discovered (shocking!) there was a comment! Who the fuck comments on my blog? James, evidently. Better be Pflager. Where have you been all my life?

I seem to remember coming here back in March, getting off the plane collecting my luggage next to a couple of Americans who were as old as they were Jewish and smirking because they had six man-sized suitcases and all I had was one backpack being hassled by some man in customs who wanted to know "where I'd come from" as if that question had any meaning buying a 26 Kč bus ticket and riding through Slavic Mexico to the Dejvická metro station apologizing to some woman on the subway because I felt like I was carrying around a corpse on my back getting off the train and realizing I wasn't just in some Eastern European shit hole then walking through the streets with golden afternoon light and long dark shadows from Baroque buildings and hearing American voices standing outside 8 Cimburkova and knowing I was here for real.

That was how I came to be.