Why I Enjoy My Job These Days

When you suffer from an extreme fear of heights, riding in a hot air balloon 500 meters above the rolling Tuscan hillside is akin to having a tryst with that tattooed-and-pierced girl at the end of the bar, the one your friends have been poking you in the ribs all night to approach because they’re too frightened to do it themselves: the build-up is terrifying, the actual event leaves you with a cold sweat and shaking knees – but afterwards (stumbling around in the early morning sunlight) you feel curiously alive.

Our insane pilot yelling in Italian over the lion roar of the balloon burners, a grill-like wash of butane-scented hot air crisping the top of my head as I exert a death-grip on a nearby railing. Floating over the villa and the woods beyond, dipping near the highway and the American cemetery…eventually settling, after an hour, on one step of a terraced field, said pilot having negotiated some sort of compromise with a bemused farmer seconds before actual touchdown. More Italians from the balloon company sprang from nowhere to wrestle our chariot back to earth; an SUV rumbled into the field from the road, its sides heavy with workers clinging to the doors, to pick us up. Our pilot, meanwhile, spread a checkered tablecloth on the overturned basket and popped open a bottle of champagne. Thus begins my first morning in Italy.

This coming after a private plane ride from Frankfurt that, after Florence denied us landing due to a short runway and high headwinds, ended up zipping like a $30 million mosquito over half of Italy, eventually settling at Bologna. ‘Story coming late diverted to different airport stop cannot figure out punctuation button on this borrowed blackberry stop must drive 150 km to firenze stop article will be late stop send wine,’ I wrote on the aforementioned device as we waited for the car to pick us up.

A few days later, we ended up at the vineyard of one of the region’s major chianti producers, who offered us lunch after a tour of the winery. Beef-like meat served along with plates of grain and 30-year-old proschutto and bottles of wine that, thanks to their sulfide content, left me sober despite my usual non-tolerance for things alcoholic. Someone at the table inquired about the animal we were eating; our host informed us that it was a deer he had shot in his vineyard the previous week. “They are pests,” he said. “I hunt them at night.” Apparently Tuscany is overrun with them.

Swung by Florence, four years after I’d arrived there the first time. To my own amusement I still remembered where to go for food.

School’s Out

Four years ago to the day, Dean Boyer handed me my degree, whispered ‘good luck’ into my ear, and then all but planted a shoe in my rear to send me off the graduation stage and into the bright light of a new world. Three days after that I visited Italy for the first time, then ended up in DC working for a couple years as part of the War on Terror’s propaganda machine while freelancing for the City Paper and the Post. Wrote a screenplay, which almost sold. Wrote a book, which might sell. Traveled to Halifax, Turks & Caicos, and Tulsa. Then moved to New York.

Shape

Last week, Goddard Space Center. Seventy-foot blast doors open onto a windowless white room big enough to fit King Kong. Buried in the far wall: enormous speakers capable of pulverizing a man to dust with their vibration. “Their frequency mimics that of the launch vehicle on takeoff,” says my guide. “We use this chamber to see if anything will break apart because of the sound waves.” We head out again, weaving past a plastic-draped clean room where workers in static-free bunny suits inject fuel into a satellite, eventually coming to a suspiciously normal-sized door. Beyond: a centrifuge with a hundred-foot diameter, the central node a nest of steel girders capable of spinning a five-ton object at 33 rpm; your tax dollars at jaw-dropping work.

The Line Begins to Blur

June, and here comes The Hard Part, the potential crucible of my annihilation (“Oh God,” Dad said in response that particular phrase, when I briefly swung by the family abode after Goddard. “Child, do not drop your nihilistic bullshit on me.”). Three countries, five different stories whose details need to move at least somewhat in sync if I’m to come out the other end of the month in one piece. I love it, and the fact that I love it depresses me. In some alternate reality I’ve already taken a portion of my ill-gotten gains and moved to Vancouver or some small town in the Carolinas, where I help run a coffee shop while writing novels and short stories on the side. I practice guitar on a porch until my fingers bleed and the dogs howl; spend weeks learning how to craft a perfect latte, or make flapjacks that have the regulars applauding; grow scruff and drive an old jeep and grow my own herbs and tea; watch the night lightning roll over the dark and ancient hills. Freud says such dreams are death wishes; but I have no wish to die. Eventually your bloody race comes to an end, though, one way or the other. Eventually the time comes to speed away from the wonderful chaos, even if your eyes tear up as you glance in the rearview mirror.

Gee, I think I just threw up in my mouth a little!

Shut up. I have a knife.

Tell ‘em what brought on this latest bout of mawkishness, N., aside from stress.

Captain Angry was in town over the weekend. We stopped by this bar at the north end of Chinatown that I frequent when the mood strikes, a dark wooden cube where the beers are cheap and nobody puts on the excessive airs you find in some of those stark-white and ultra-priced establishments downtown. Maybe it was because we were both exhausted (him from driving; me from tending the night previous to an under-the-weather A.), but our dialogue lacked that wiseguy-on-speed energy it had back when we were 22 and doing dirty literary deeds for God and Country. Maybe we just didn’t need to impress one another, or maybe we’ve (gasp) matured. In any case, glancing at my reflection in the ornate mirror behind the bar, I had a moment where my adult life coalesced into definite shape, complete with terminus.