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It can take the mind a while to relax a bit. Especially since, for days, the heart rate has been zoomed up, and the hydration muddled; the present tense thoughts and the memories all mashed up and jumbled together. When you get back home, there is a day or two for the brain to simply relax a bit. To flow out that mass anxiety from the previous short period.

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Sleeping had been super odd of late and it was all slathered with a sweaty face and no dreams whatsoever. Do you get that also? Where you go through a spate of several nights where there is no dreamland at all. And there are only short, black periods of sleep where you conk out, but wake up again confusedly with sweat all over the skin. And so you missed the dreams. And hope that they would make a comeback. No doubt they would. And that you would be back in dreamland again, naively. Since often in that land you have no clue that you’re dreaming.

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When I was in Lithuania for three days recently, I was looking around the local supermarkets for food. When I go travelling I usually scout for a tub of humous and bread. Simple, easy. I don’t eat meat or dairy products (just a choice) and so I often head for humous. But could not find a single tub of humous in any of the shops. So I picked up roasted peanuts and black bread instead. I’m familiar with peanuts. But not so much black bread. It’s kinda like eating gravel. No offence – I mean I was only unfamiliar with it as a food. Hey, I’m not that fussy about food anyway. I survived on black bread for three nights. And am still alive.

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You were still thinking about that girl who served you in the bar a few days back in another country the other side of Europe and you had never known her aside from a transaction of a couple of beers and yet you remembered the atmosphere of the place and the confident way she carried herself and how her hair was smart and hooked up at the top and you didn’t know her name but perhaps it was that anonymous quality that had set the hook in.

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You went out on a walk in the April night to get the steps tally up. It was warm and the air had a fruity quality to it that came from the trees. The horse chestnuts were growing in youthful healthy quality, their leaves looking rather like fresh vegetables in a market. And it’d been raining of late and vapour enhanced the scents and colours. The pink blossoms were abloom too; and their petals lay in wispy confetti along the roads. Going down to the park there was that tingling sensation of growth all above you. All of these pregnant buds and expanding colours … which was why Spring always had that hopeful burgeoning quality to it. That gave you hope too.

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Kaunas Writings - Part Two

A weird sleep last night in the hotel room. You know when you have those sleeps that

Keep getting mixed up, like a gallery of dreams and semi consciousness?

Sweaty forehead too. And you finally come around to a full conscious state at 7 a.m.

Feeling very glued to the bed. You drink water to hydrate. And your mind rolls over

Memories. Sometimes when you wake up you feel very vulnerable. Especially if you

Spent most of your life in one nation and now you’re in another city where you’ve

Only been for 48 hours. But … let’s try and brave this new city anyway.

Okay so you clumsily head out of your hotel. The sun flares in your face and you’re

Not that sure of your whereabouts but let’s try and work it out anyways. The legs in

The muscles sharpen a bit with cramp. And you really should’ve brought a belt along

Because your jeans keep slipping down. But the shop is up ahead, beyond the underpass.

When you go down the underpass there’s a man there selling flowers in these magical

Pockets that influence the eyes. Especially since there’s always that sense of threat

When you descend into the dinge of the underpass. Tulips. All lain out as gifts to buy.

Up the steps and up to the shop and you go in through the door and there are young

Girls who are serving the counter. They speak in Lithuanian and the words have a

Quickfire soft slushy quality that pleases the ear. You head through the store and

The logos from the Soviet era are novel to you. With unusual word formations.

Such as duona sultys vandnens. Unusual to you, you mean. And you realise how

Important language and words are when you, umm, have never met them before.

Even fumbling about with the Euro coins is slightly difficult and speaking to the

Lithuanian gals at the counter hard. But, you get there and then you’re back out on

The street again.

This part of the town is soporific and there’s the church that has a magnetic warm

Vibe to it, almost like a bakery – the way that bakeries intent to attract you up to

Inspect. And there are coffeeshops too with their shiny windows. You pass the kiosks

Selling clothes and tourist magnets. And, yeah, you fancy one of those, with the

Yellow green and red colours. The satisfying visions of flags. You get to the end of

The street and back to the hotel again.

The women that work at the hotel are very hushed and have white hair and you have

A large respect for them for some reason. And, whilst you’re going in, there happen

To be two delivery men who’re bringing fresh linen over and you hold the door open

For them and they say Acui which means thank you, and ha, you know this one.

You get back to your hotel room and it seems like your Home, even though you’ve

Only lived here a short while. More explorations later on.

/////

On the weather report for Kaunas before you came here it kept telling

You that it would snow today. With that icy symbol. And, instead, today

It has been sixteen degrees for most of the day. The sunlight of a sunny

Day has a kind of prose within itself. As first the sun wakes up and the

Colours that it makes across the city are promising and bring new ideas.

Then the sun matures a bit and we see the sights in a fuller hue. And then

When the late afternoon comes there is a sadness that those strong colours

Are fading … but then when the evening beckons, it brings with it the

Lush excitement of night. And of course, the electricity kicks in. When

You look around and the illumination is replaced by the marvel of neon.

That you see within the bars that have changed to that bustle of night

Time, where they reach their crescendo, or approach the climax, rather,

Of noise and the people coming around, just as, you remember you

See some of the waitresses from earlier – the same Lithuanian gals –

Who are still working there. On the same shift. Poor chaps. But the long

Hours don’t seem to have diminished their energy. They scuttle about

With ping pong skill and good for them because they’ll be on minimum

Wage too and you remember doing similar kinds of shoddy work when

You were of a similar age.

So you hang out around the groups of girls and you overhear their little

Passages of dialogue and you wish you knew what made their teeth

Show when they laughed a joke, what the joke was.

But when you come to different countries like this you often find that

The foreigners can speak up in English better than you can. Whilst this

Is funny it’s also true. And you really wish that you’d taken the patience

And necessity to learn other languages when you were wee. And just

By the by the young people are super beautiful. Pretty faces indeed.

Just going back to recent thoughts: this was one of the countries that

Was obliterated by the War. And obviously World War Two was far

More ingrained than it was in other nations. You get that no continent

Was ‘spared’ the horrors of that conflict. But, just where you’re walking

Now, through the classical courtyards and handsome buildings and the

Welcoming brilliance of the churches, it goes back to that sense of hope.

Hope that people can recover. And after a whole weekend of dark thinking

And intense thoughts, you can admire the bravery of this little city that

Survived the Nazis. Despite all of those horrible deeds that happened

Very close to here, this is a huge achievement. To have created and

Maintained all that you can experience around you. The Nazis lost.

And Kaunas, Lithuania won. You came here to see what a city was like,

Now, where, in the past the Holocaust has happened. And the experience

Of it has taught you whole wonders. This is an achievement. And nothing

The Nazis did was ever positive.

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On the horizon of scape there were dotted around the Soviet flat rises and from here they were marshmallow size or matchbox stick size and whenever you looked at skylines in this East end of Europe the sky rises had that remarkable vibe. Perhaps because they reminded you of the flat rises back at home in Scotland.

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Little packs of people went around in Tour Groups and most of them were lots and it was good to see them exploring the same city as you were.

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The hotel you were staying in was luckily the classic Old Town part of the city. (And you purchased it because it was very cheap so not trying to exaggerate here, or brag.) What I meant was that this part of the city is the photogenic hub. And despite it’s physical beauty, there is a massive construction work in progress across the area. So I was walking by, earlier, and there was one of those classic photogenic images of the entire yard. On a billboard. And all around me my trainers were clad in rubble from the mashed masonry from the courtyard that had been mashed up by trackers. Earlier in the day you had to walk out of people’s way continuously because there was no available pathway. So this beautiful tourist attraction looked like it had been hit by a bomb and that people were clearing it up. It was like a disaster had occurred in the courtyard and that it was this exact location where tourists were not meant to go to. You went to the quintessential tourist holiday in the city and it was like some bomb had recently exploded there.

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You looked down a new alleyway

and it was lime green in colour and

marked in small pockets of painted

scribbles of anonymous folks who

must’ve done all of their scrawling

at night. Because you didn’t see the

graffiti artist. You only saw the inscriptions.

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Whenever you heard words in another language there was a childish curiosity at what they were speaking about. You wished they knew the words. Or, if they were smiling, what they were brazing their teeth at.

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You passed that M McDonald’s sign in the street at night and it seemed like a snarly smile of a crook. Whenever you saw that McDonald’s sign it gave off cartoonish pantomime villain vibes.

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A group of starlings blushed in the sky above the rooftops of the city and they astonished the street without sound and vanished and they were a clip that would never be seen again.

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You walked through the underpass under the subway and it was covered with graffiti in multicoloured slogans of different languages. And it was amazing and scary both at once. And some people dislike graffiti but others, like yourself, often find it sublime. (When it’s intended as artwork and not as offensive content.) This little underpass by a river in the city centre was only 30 yards long but it was so smothered up with pictures it was like a Jackson Pollock painting. And that’s what you appreciate about artwork. That there are so many artists across the planet that aren’t called Jackson Pollock. And the images just stand alone in themselves and are marked there. Like stamps on a passport; or handwritten diaries; or any other form of information that is keen to be observed and left there as a mark of a signal of creation.

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A group of young ladies passed by you on the street and their eyes were exquisitely shaped and you only saw their faces for a few seconds. But there was that longing for physical beauty again. Just as we see anything that looks sublime. All that happened in this real-life story was that they walked passed you without taking any notice of you at all and they vanished up into the street and that was it. And when you saw your own reflection in a mirror these days it was rather grim and you certainly weren’t young anymore and it was as if youth kinda ‘lost’ you, or left you, some time in the past. And you wouldn’t get it back.

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My father came around to the house yesterday. We’re trying to dismantle the shed. Outside in the garden, and, inside the shed there is a whole heap of junk and clutter. This is quite hard to describe unless you can see the task and the amount of detritus there to clear away.

For instance, there was this old chest of drawers that was so dilapidated with rot that I had to break it up so that it could be sent to the dump. The chest had not been touched in over a decade. And it had been in locked up in this shed this entire time. So I approached the chest to ‘tackle’ the issue so that it could be put into the car in smaller bits.

And as soon as I did so, this Shelob size spider jumped out of the timber.

I have arachnophobia. And I just cannot handle spiders whatsoever. Irrational fears … I cannot explain why they occur, as I’m sure many psychologists cannot. But, to somebody who has this fear, this thing was blooming huge. So I yelped away from it.

“What’s wrong with you?” my Dad said.

“Spider! Spider, there’s a huge spider on it. Can you put it somewhere else please?”

My father does not have a phobia of spiders. So he didn’t get why I physically couldn’t go near this creature. After I asked him to clear it, he didn’t take the request seriously, and when I went back to the chest, the spider hadn’t budged and it resided there clung to the wood. [I’ve never understood how spiders can survive in places like a shed that hasn’t been occupied for 10 years. How do they maintain sustenance in order to keep living? I don’t get it.]

Anyway. I persisted in asking my father for help with the spider, and he said to me,

“Well, my phobia is for rats. And I’m currently cleaning out a shed that is infested with them. You don’t see me complaining.”

That was another thing wrong with the shed. A group of rats had eaten into the shed and had been living there for years. And rodents have a tendency to eat just about anything – so they had gobbled up parts of the detritus, and left a lot of it in tatters.

And, yes, my father has a 1984-esque phobia of rats. Which developed from his one time, long ago, in Norfolk, when he was a young man: when he worked as a farmhand for a summer. And the farmers gave him the job of clearing up the bodies of the dead rats that they had lain poison out for. Dad said that there were over 200 rats that he picked up and had to dispose of. His phobia is far more understandable than my thing with spiders.

I laughed a lot. When he said those lines. Because the situation was so ludicrous. And he had a point. He was tackling the rat phobia way more than me squirming away from a big spider.

You know when something makes you chuckle and you can’t quit convulsing with laughter? Well, it was like that. And it made this awful job bearable.