UNFUCK THE FUCKNESS

This scroll has no ending.

Jan H.

For the grown, the curious, the wounded and the wild - No Filters. No promises. just the truth as it came to me.! Parental guidance advised !

I’m not here to convince anyone of anything.I write about whatever moves me,
whatever burns,
whatever makes me laugh.This is The Scroll.
Some parts will ask more than comfort.

…wasn’t planning to write any of this.
It just started - old noise, rambling memories,
and uncollected thought,
like water through a crack in a stone.
Maybe it’s for no one.
Maybe it’s for that stone on my desk.
I just needed to let it out
before it lost itself
or the world fakes me into comforting silence.

It’s not that I feel lost.
I’m not lost.It’s boredom.
Fucking boredom.It shows up in small ways.
Standing in the kitchen,
waiting for water to boil,
the phone in my hand
without knowing why.
Opening a fridge that’s full
and closing it again.
Scrolling past faces, places, meals
that all feel vaguely familiar,
even when I’ve never been there.Anything new is just another disguise.
Another version of what’s already been made.I’ve lived richly.
Traveled. Learned languages.
Eaten food that felt holy.
Loved deeply.
Raised a son who lights up my soul.I used to feel everything.Now everything is just another day.And still,
the older I get,
the more all of it feels pre-chewed,
already remembered,
distilled into memory
before it’s even over.And this is the world my son is growing up in!If I have thirty, maybe more years left -
what will those years look like?I’d love to see the world through different eyes again.Now and then I see this guy in my village.
Everybody knows him.
He walks the same stretch of road every day,
always at roughly the same hour.We know each other in the simple way villages do.
A nod.
A salute.
Sometimes a brief smile.
Nothing more, nothing less.He moves through his own world.
Hands loose at his sides.
Sometimes talking to himself,
sometimes smiling at something
I can’t hear.Half the time I drive past him,
I think he might be the happiest person I know.And then I catch myself.
Because that thought says more about me
than it does about him.Maybe he isn’t happy at all.
Maybe his days are heavy in ways I don’t see.
Maybe his world is smaller than mine.
Or maybe it’s larger,
just quieter.All I really know is this:
he doesn’t seem burdened
by the things
that keep me awake at night.Luckily.

The two doorsI’m trying to live a healthy life.
I cook everything fresh for my family.
Healthy water.
Good wine.
Some exercise.
Sometimes even organic weed.But this world, this age,
keeps pushing me into two different states.One is meditation.
Fairly new to me.
Eyes closed, sometimes open.
Sunset or sunrise.
Watching. Breathing.
Free of substances.
Free of distractions.In those moments,
even with my clumsy beginner’s practice,
I’ve been to places my mind had never touched before.The other is oblivion.A glass of wine.
A joint.
My wife next to me, or alone,
drifting into that warm, floaty place.It’s beautiful.
I wouldn’t trade those moments away.There’s something honest in that state.
A loosening.
A forgetting of edges.
Time stops asking questions.You don’t go there to improve yourself.
You go there to stop improving for a while.
To drift.
To let the world soften its grip.Anyone who’s been there knows
it’s not about escape.
It’s about relief.Would I recommend that door to my son?
I don’t know.
Probably not.But maybe I should.The other doorsAnd now - fifty, and that one fucking year -
I find myself wondering about the other doors.Not drugs that hollow you out.
Not the ones that make you addicted.The other ones, the ancient ones.
The ones spiritual guides have used for thousands of years
to open minds,
to see beyond the thin veil of this world.I’m not advocating anything.
I’m not saying they’re good for you.But if reality is choking me,
then
where
the fuck
else
am I
supposed to go?

BostonOne night I met a state attorney.
Late, in a bar.
She was drunk - sweet drunk.She asked me about Europe.
Told me what she did.
And then she said,
“Let’s go. Let’s escape. You and me.”She was wild and romantic, maybe a bit too much.
It was our first encounter.
Nothing happened that night.I didn’t see her for months after that.
Then, the second time, we kissed - determined, open-eyed smiling, hungry.
And again she whispered,
“Let’s run away.”We didn’t.Instead, a couple of days later,
I picked her up from her office
for what she considered our “first date.”I took her to Ponkapoag Pond,
an old Indian trail where I used to walk my dog.She laughed.
“This is wild. No one’s ever taken me on a dog walk for a first date.”It wasn’t wild.
It wasn’t even a thing.
But to her, it felt outside the script.On our third date, she came back to my apartment.
She undressed in front of me,
slid under my blanket,
and smiled - somehow proudly.“You can do whatever you want with me.
But I’m going to sleep now.”And she did.
Just like that.I poured myself a glass of wine
and sat there in the quiet,
wondering how we’d all gotten so tangled up
in expectations,
scripts,
and performances.

Fuck the metaphor. Be the earth.
I’ve noticed people love comparing themselves to dead geniuses, icons, prophets.
Or to animals they’ve never truly understood.
Hawks. Lionesses. Wolves.
Maybe it’s a western reflex, I don’t know.
But what if our imagination wasn’t so painfully small?
What if we allowed ourselves to be part of everything -
instead of borrowing identities that never fit?Imagine being a forest.
No geography. No measurements.
Just an endless body of trees, moss, soil, warmth on leaves, fog in your branches, the soft drum of animal feet, the wind moving through you.
Roots spreading forever.
And a peace older than memory.Or imagine not being one wild mustang, but the entire herd -
every muscle, every mane, every restless ear.
The warmth of bodies running together, sleeping together.
The ground humming beneath a hundred hooves.
A unity too large for a single mind.And my favorite - imagine being water.
A drop. A cloud. A stream. A wave.
See the world from your own liquid eye.
How you hit a rock, curl around a fish, you never grasp, never hold -
you only move.
You are nothing but freedom.And still, tomorrow morning, some part of you will wake up and try to be a lion.Why?
When you could be anything.
When you could feel everything.

BOSTONRitzy PoetsAnother woman - an attorney too, older than me.
We became good friends, real friends almost instantly.No games.
No bullshit.
Long talks about life that stretched
until the chairs were stacked on the tables.And yes, we ended up in bed once.
I kind of regret it.
Not because we didn’t enjoy each other,
but because it wasn’t meant for us.The moment I remember isn’t the physical intimacy.It’s the night we left her favorite bar
and walked toward the old Ritz-Carlton.I had a book of Russian poetry with me -
I don’t remember why.
There was a poem I loved,
about a woman and her dog.We stopped in a doorway next to the hotel
and read it together aloud,
our voices low into the night.A cop car slowed at the sidewalk, stopped, the officer listened, nodded at me, smiled,
and drove on.We just kept reading, lost in the moment.It was one of the most brilliant, romantic moments of my life.
The song "I Try" by Macy Gray will always be hers.

Call it a reflectionI don’t even know why I’m telling you all this.Maybe because I’m choking
on all the layers of glossy nothing
we’ve built our lives around.Maybe because I want my son to grow up
in a world that remembers what connection felt like
before Tinder,
before swipe culture,
before thirty-second reels.Maybe because I need to remind myself.This isn’t a memoir.
It’s not advice.
It’s just a man
dumping a bucket of honesty
into oceans of meaningless clicks
and credit card swipes.And even now,
I’m not sure I’ll ever feel satisfied
about telling you all of this.

PARISI was in my late twenties and deeply, deeply in love with the city.
I lived in Saint-Germain, felt welcomed even by the cobblestones.
Wherever I went, whatever I did, I was received with such care and openness -
it felt like an old bond, family, like I’d always belonged.The weirdest things happened to me and I just absorbed it all -
autumn, small diners, jazz, the streetlights and fog.
Paris - a guiding parent, my best friend.After I was done with my writing, early in the evening,
I’d grab a table in some neighborhood café,
order red wine and just sit with whatever was going to happen.Sometimes a skinny woman in a thick black turtleneck
would walk past the cafés selling - I don’t know -
maybe magnets and lighters from a belly tray.
I never showed any interest, but after a while
we greeted each other with a friendly nod.One evening she stopped at my table.
“I know something about you,” she said in that heavy French accent,
“and you won’t believe me, but it’s true.”I offered her a chair, a glass of wine and a cigarette.
Her eyes sparkled with conviction, joy.
“Our birthdays are on the same day,” she said,
“the third of May.”I smiled, pulled out my driver’s license. May 3.“I knew it,” she said.
“The moment I first noticed you.”She was radiant, a queen of Paris for this small moment,
and I was lucky enough to be there for her coronation.

before after and whileWhen I cook, I feel somehow whole.
Softly required by my own creativity,
comforted by routine,
sparked by a glass of wine.But when I paint,
I feel challenged by myself -
which is so fucking exciting
and brutally tiring.The discourse between me and the canvas,
the choice of colors, the means to bring the colors into action,
the fight to use my own imagination
without remembering the works of others -
it’s a few hours of total freedom.
Wild freedom.
The moment so present
it cleans out all the wants
and the unwanted.No one will ever understand
the process, the fight and joy you experience - they don't have to.But they’re not looking at the painting.
They are thinking:“Does he have a classical education?”
“Does he have a gallery?”
“Is there money in it?”Nobody looks anymore.
Nobody sees.
They scan.
They price.
They move on.
Just as empty as they were before.But that’s okay.
I don’t paint for you.

Tired of Patience I

Tired of Patience II

I'd just moved to Madrid.
still finding my rhythm.One night I met a girl from Kentucky,
taking Spanish classes for a month.We had a good run - three, maybe four days of pure chaos:
partying, wandering, tasting the city at night.
We put confidence and trust into a four-day bender.The first night she crawled under my blanket after coming out of the shower.
She looked at me and said,
“I’m Jewish.”I grinned, immune to religion.
“Hey, nobody’s perfect.”She laughed.
“Do you mind?” she asked.
“I mean, fucking me… you being German. Me being Jewish.”I shook my head.
“No,” and thought that moment was already unforgettable.And then, her next words...Those next words in that thick southern drawl:“Darlin’, ya can use any hole ya want.”Brilliant - just pure gold for the ages.But the following nights weren’t about all her holes.
It was this passionate intimacy we were able to create
without really knowing each other.God, I hope my son reads this someday.

If you want to know when new pages open, press below.
No platforms. No tracking. Just me.

• Join the quiet circle

PlanetsWe were staying on Koh Samui, Thailand.
It was a weekday - Sam asleep, worn out from school and Muay Thai,
his mother reading beside him, the world folded and quiet.And I - for no reason at all - decided to shoot myself into another orbit.
Headphones on. Cheap wine.
A little weed that wasn’t really mine to handle.
Tiny whiffs, guarding what was left of my sanity.I danced around the living room,
the one across the lawn from our bedroom -
and when the bottle ran dry,
I thought, well, the universe probably wants me to go get more.So I floated to the Mini Mart.
Head full of Malva Vela’s “Chavela.”
No plan, no hurry.Inside, there was
this woman at the counter,
beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with desire.I didn’t even hear my own footsteps.
Just the music.
I moved toward her,
six-pack in hand,
and she began to sway too.For a moment our eyes met -
and it wasn’t flirtation.
It was clean energy,
like two tiny planets passing each other
in the infinity of our lives.
Almost holy.I paid.
Bowed with both hands pressed to my chest.
And danced back out into the night.Might have been one of the sexiest moments of my life.

HOW TO EAT PUSSY AND THEN MAYBE SOME GRILLED EGGPLANTMost men have no idea how similar we all are under the surface. And here’s something that should calm half the male population: the female organ is basically the inward version of your own equipment. Same embryological beginning, same biological origin story - just tucked in, refined, and designed with more mystery and better engineering. The clit, the little man in the boat? Think of it as the “external tip” of something much larger that you never get to see. A hidden universe with its own gravitational field.And here’s the part men always overcomplicate:
the basic principles of pleasure aren’t alien between genders.
What you like - pressure, rhythm, attention, warmth, consistency - guess what?
She likes those too.
Not in the same way, not at the same intensity, not at the same angle - but the philosophy is familiar. It’s not rocket science and it’s not some grand performance art. It’s biology wrapped in emotion.Where men always screw up is assuming speed equals enthusiasm, or force equals passion. Meanwhile the female body is sitting there waiting for something much simpler:
time, awareness, softness, and someone who actually pays attention instead of performing confidence like a badly rehearsed monologue.Slow doesn’t mean weak.
Low pressure doesn’t mean timid.
It means you understand that intimacy is more like jazz than techno - it needs space between the notes.Anyway, let’s talk eggplant.Lay the finger-thick slices out on a towel.
Hit them with salt flakes.
Then walk away for half an hour.Don’t rush it.
The salt pulls the water out - a small act of patience that keeps the eggplant from turning into a wet sponge later.When the slices have given up their tears, wipe them clean.
Peel the skin if you feel like it.
No rules here.
Some people like the char, some don’t.Heat the grill until it’s properly hot - that steady, confident hiss when oil hits metal.Dust the slices lightly with flour; it gives them a little armor.
Drizzle some olive oil on the plancha and the garlic, dry tarragon, Cubebe-pepper mix on the slices.Lay them down.
Listen to the first hiss.
Don’t touch them.After a few minutes, brush the tops again and flip.
Five minutes later you should have slices that are tender, marked, and a little smoky.
They should smell like summer and woodsmoke and a kitchen that’s been used by someone who truly likes you.Serve them as they are -
as you are.

understood

Farewell to Who Might Have Been My Best Friend EverJan G.
I don’t write his full name.
Out of respect for his family.
Though some days I still want to say it out loud, just to hear it again.He was beautiful.
And unfinished.We were friends for three years at school, part of a small group that believed, without irony, that we would move through life together. We didn’t doubt it. We just assumed it. Fate, as it turns out, had other ideas.He went to London.
I went to Boston.We spoke across time zones, usually at the rare moment when the other one wasn’t drunk. Two different continents, two lives unfolding in parallel. Still, I always felt him nearby. Like a window left open somewhere between us, letting air move back and forth.One October he came to visit, together with Daniel, another friend from those years. I told them to bring dark suits and white shirts. It sounded absurd to us all. We’d only ever known each other in hoodies.At the time, I was organizing private parties. The kind where the invitation was the secret. My Haitian business partner and I moved through Boston nightlife with a freedom that felt infinite back then. Carte blanche. Doors opening before we touched them.That week felt endless, in the best way.
Rooftop breakfasts.
Long walks on the Ponkapoag Trail with my dog.
Dinners in jazz bars and cheap diners.
Nights that forgot to end and drifted gently into morning.After-hours at my place, we had the old kind of weed that makes your soul smile for no reason. Some blow. A few beers. Mostly stories. Endless stories. The kind you only tell when you think there’s still plenty of time.Jan always had a beautiful woman on his lap. He made sure we noticed. He was radiant, proud, full of light. What he didn’t know was how borrowed much of that brightness was in that world. How behind the shine there was often loneliness.We fought it the only way we knew how.
By staying close.
Sleeping in each other’s arms.
Sometimes too close.
Holding on through the blur.He never saw the effect he had on people. The open smile. The way his eyes widened when he spoke. Intelligent, slightly clumsy, deeply allergic to being alone. A puppy of a man, wanting everything at once. Maybe because some part of him already knew there wouldn’t be much time.Two weeks after they left, Daniel called.“I have bad news,” he said.I knew before he finished the sentence.Jan died in a motorcycle accident in Seville.Shock passes.
What remains are ambushes.Moments when a memory cuts through your chest and you realize that life, right now, would simply be better if he were still here.That first evening, I couldn’t stay in my apartment. I went to my favorite bar instead. Word had spread. One by one, people who had met him during that single week came in, looking for me, offering their condolences.It felt like a funeral built out of strangers.Even now, no week passes without me thinking of him.
The beautiful, unfinished man.
The one who still opens that window somewhere inside me, letting the air move.

THE TWO PRINCESThere is an image.It keeps coming back.
The same picture, so simple it hurts.
The Little Prince, standing on his small planet, facing away from me, staring at the horizon.
And next to him, on another planet, stands his mirror.
Another prince. Same small planet. Same silence. Same sadness.
They hold hands across the space between them,
like two halves of a single thought trying to remember itself.It only ever shows up when I’m quiet.
When the noise stops.
When the pretending - “like the fuck I know what I’m doing” - finally gives up.
Then it’s there again, hovering between worlds,
an old truth trying to find its way home.One of them is me before the world started counting.
That’s the eternal child - the one who still builds worlds out of thin air,
who believes the impossible isn’t a category, just an excuse.
He’s wild, curious, inconveniently honest.
He doesn’t rehearse his wonder.
He’s the part of me adulthood keeps mistaking for weakness.The other one - the older me -
he’s the one who built walls to keep the wind out.
He’s the one who loves his family,
fixes stuff, pays the bills, responds to everyone
and sometimes catches himself staring at the floor instead of the stars.
He carries everyone else so well
- he sometimes forgets to carry the boy inside him.They’re both right.
They’re both wrong.
And maybe the whole damn point is to learn
how to hold your own hand across the worlds
you’ve built - between who you were and who you’ve become.Then there’s the other thing. It will guide me forever!It wasn’t a dream.
I was alone, a few years ago - don’t remember where or what the hell I was doing.
I just heard it.
My own voice, from somewhere deeper than thought.
It said:
“Hey, I want to tell you something.”That was it.
No thunder. Just stillness.
Everything stopped. I stopped.
My reality seemed to take a breath and wait.There was nothing to answer.
Myself called upon myself.
And I realized what I meant.
There’s a part of me that’s been waiting to speak - probably for years - because finally, I was so exhausted from the noise around me that I was able to shut up long enough to hear it. I can't get enough of this image: my mind talking to me! "Hey, I want to tell you something."
If it is honest and true, what ever else could you demand from another soul?Now, whenever that image returns -
the two princes, hand in hand across their tiny planets -
I think maybe that’s what they’re saying to each other too.
“Hey, I want to tell you something.”Who knows, maybe the universe, my universe goes quiet,
listening.

"Hey, I want to tell you something."

The Mid-Americana JazzIf you’re reading this, you’re basically walking beside me now. I left Italy for a few months and moved with my family to a small house in Uvita, Costa Rica. That’s the geography. The truth is simpler: I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.
My son goes to school, my wife builds her own rhythm, and I’m left with the part of myself that only wakes up in new worlds. The part that wanders through humidity and noise, trying to understand a place without pretending to belong. I’m here to taste the food, listen to strangers, make mistakes and figure out why this place is hitting me harder than I expected.
Anyway, tag along if you want…

"the nice place phenomenon"The weird thing about arriving in places like Uvita is almost always the same - the first people you meet are never the ones you came for.
They’re the ones who ran away from somewhere else, still dragging their old lives behind them like worn-out luggage.
Everyone here has a story about why they left the States, Austria, Spain… and none of those stories end with freedom.
They talk endlessly about the old days back home, mostly the few bright spots and there’s a kind of quiet boredom behind their eyes.
And somehow they still try to sell you the dream of Costa Rica while ignoring the fact that they themselves haven’t fully arrived. It’s a global phenomenon - people living in places where their souls never touched ground.And how do I travel, you might ask?
No idea, certainly without a mission - I’m here and that’s enough -
let’s see what happens.

"Sand Dude" on Uvita beach

And speaking of people trying to locate themselves,
or locate each other - there’s this thing I’ve never understood about women.Picture this: you’re about to fall asleep, drifting, soft and suddenly your wife decides tonight is the night for a surprise good-night blowy..Beautiful idea.
Wrong timing - for you.So you tell her, gently, that she can save herself the effort because about an hour ago, somewhere in the garage, basement, shower - you already handled it.And then it happens.
That spark in her eyes.
That wide, delighted smile.
And without missing a beat, the first question:
“Where?”Not why.
Not when.
Not how.
Just where.As if the location itself reveals something essential about you.You answer with the safe, generic version:
“the shower,”
“while you were reading,”
whatever gets you out of the situation.
Because the real jerk-off places are secret.
Every man has them.
The tiny unofficial sanctuaries where he becomes invisible for two minutes.She doesn’t need a map of those.
Nobody does.So why are they obsessed with the where?It feels sometimes like they’re trying to locate the one place in the house where your mind slipped beyond their reach for a moment,
the tiny gap where you briefly drifted out of orbit.But the best part isn’t the question.It’s what happens next.You tell her you’re already “set,”
already “balanced,”
already “relaxed,”
and instead of backing off,
she becomes possessed by this mysterious female urge to do it anyway.
Knowing the timing is terrible
and the physiology is against her,
she decides to do it anyway.
With even more intention.Maybe it’s her reclaiming intimacy from the anonymous, the unknown version of you that slipped away earlier.These creatures who insist on reclaiming you from your own hand,
who treat your recent orgasm like a challenge,
not a barrier.They are absolutely mysterious.And it's better that way,
because if men ever fully understood women,
we’d lose half the magic instantly.

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No pressure. No rewards. Just a small thank you, if it feels right.

a fish soup never madeA few years ago we escaped to the island of Menorca for a short family break,
an hour from home but somehow a different world.
Our son was taken care of for the evening,
so my wife and I slipped out for one of those rare, quiet dinners.Somewhere in the old streets of Mahon we found a little restaurant.
One of those places where the waiter tells his life story without permission.
But in his river of unnecessary details he mentioned something that stuck:
a fish soup from Bermuda
made with dark rum.Rum.
In a national dish.
He swore it was unmistakable - the depth, the heat, the sweetness,
all lifted by the ocean.And damn, he was right.I’d never been a rum person,
but back home I bought a bottle.
Then another.
And another.
On ice, with a slice of lime.
Simple.
Dangerously good.The recipe for the soup is almost nothing -
fresh fish (easy where we live),
some tomatoes,
stock,
onions,
garlic,
spices,
and that hit of dark rum that turns it into memory.For years I’ve had everything I need to make it.
The ocean.
The ingredients.
The time, even.But somehow the bottles keep disappearing into glasses,
never into the pot.And maybe that’s the story -
that sometimes a dish stays better as a possibility,
a promise,
a future we never actually cook
because the present steals the rum first.

A CONFESSIONI have to admit something.When I started writing this,
I liked to imagine the audience was a stone.
Literally a stone.
Silent, steady, unreactive.
A listener without opinions,
without feedback,
without the ability to misunderstand a single word.It worked beautifully
right until someone actually found the scroll.The moment a pair of eyes hit these words
the writing shifts.
Not by choice.
By nature.I can’t exclude people from this anymore.
First, because I’m human,
and I’m writing about the most human parts of being alive.
Second, because once you write about humans,
you inevitably start imagining their reactions -
their nods, their discomfort, their laughter, their judgment.And that’s fine.
That’s part of the deal.But here’s the part that bothers me
and probably always will:To get anyone to read these pages,
I had to use social media.
Which means a person needs to hold a device in their hand -
the same device that’s eating their attention,
their presence,
their sleep,
their soul.It’s ironic.
It’s embarrassing.
It’s the exact quintessence of the fuckness.I wrote these lines hoping someone, somewhere,
would sit with them quietly -
the old way (that line is already so fuck up)
the human way,
the book-in-your-hands way.Instead, I’m sending whispers
into the same digital machinery
that is ruining everyone’s ability
to listen to anything longer than a breath.This scroll is alive.
I add pieces whenever I want.
It’s meant to breathe, not perform.But for now -
it lives on a screen.That’s the fuckup.
Not the writing.
Not the sharing.
Not even the confession.Just the medium.I hope someday this exists as a real book again -
something you can spill a glass on,
fold,
carry,
forget in a backpack,
and find years later with a new heart.For now,
it lives here.A scroll trapped in the very machine
I’m trying to unfuck.

Lips on LipsIt was one of those whatever nights out in Boston.
My Haitian confidant of those days and I were touring the town with a group of women who were far more serious than the crowd we usually gravitated toward. They had real incomes and real plans for the future, while we called ourselves players, chasing fun, running a nightclub, pretending that was enough.We ended up at the West Street Grill. This is decades ago.
We were ordering drinks when a loud scream cut straight through the music.
Jan, just what I need.
And before I even processed the words, she was already on me.
Arms around my neck, legs around my waist, lips locked onto mine.We’d met a few weeks earlier, two lonely creatures trying to make it through another shiny Saturday evening.
We spent the whole night in my apartment, talking with almost no secrets left, lights dimmed, then drifted into each other’s arms the way tired people do when trying to silence the mind with comforting intimacy.
We slept, entangled, two loose ends trying to calm the noise in our heads.But that night, when she jumped me in front of everyone, I walked her backward to the wall, pressed her against it, spread her arms high like some improvised crucifixion.
It must have looked passionate or even impressive to the high income girls watching us.
The truth was simpler.
I was a lightweight back then and needed the wall to keep the moment alive without dropping her or breaking my back.We slipped out the back door and crossed Boston Common.
We kissed and grabbed and held whatever part of the night tried to make sense.
The five minute walk to my apartment stretched into a small eternity and still didn’t last long enough.A few days later, somewhere in Back Bay, I ran into my friend again.
He asked me to come meet Jessica or Monica, someone he insisted I knew.
We walked into her barbershop and only then did I realize I had never caught her actual name.
But there she was, no more dimmed lights.
And I couldn’t believe how gorgeous she was.She saw me, crossed the room, and kissed me.
Controlled.
Friendly.
Light, but somehow intensely precise.To me, it was the most balanced, thoughtful, well played interaction between two sets of lips in the entire history of the universe.
It carried all the trust, after sharing many secrets.
All the confidence, after shared intimacy.
And a charming playfulness, knowing we were both happy in our individual setups.And I was just the grateful receiver, having done nothing to deserve a moment that perfect.The question is, where have all those kisses gone?At fifty-fucking-one, somehow nobody’s doing much kissing anymore, me included. Somewhere at the top of this scroll I said something like “I used to feel everything” and that’s all gone.
Anywhere between puberty and the late twenties I could have survived weeks on kissing and some kind of release, but the kissing was the main player. The guide to pure joy. The gateway to that unique connection with some Gisela or Rachel you met over a stupid joke at a deli.Now it’s all bacchi, besos, schmatzer, bussies, and of course the priceless kisses from your kids.
I can’t be alone in this. It feels global.
You never see elderly people passionately kissing in the park.
Where is all the playfulness?Fuck, when you’re young, life offers so many promises...

a personal rewardTo me one of the best rewards after writing, while having a glass of wine or three, is when I stop, read what I’ve come up with and put on my headphones full blast.

• One of the songs...

This song takes me by the hand, on the way to the fridge for another glass, and let’s me move - very slowly, as if trying to protect all the energy. The blend of writing from my soul, the wine hitting every corner it shouldn’t touch and these slow beats - I should never tell my son about it - while hoping he will find his own blend to such moments.

The Mid-Americna . . .whateverWhat I wanted to call the ”Mid-americana Jazz” chapters seems to be turning into ”My Costa Rican Reset”Guess I just let it flow…Back home, I grill an expensive piece of fish
on a very expensive stainless-steel man-dream of a gas-lit outdoor kitchen.Here, somewhere between the Pacific and the jungle,
I throw a chunk of fresh fish with some garlic
on a griddle welded onto an old car rim,
two hands full of glowing carbon underneath.Same fish (almost).
Same fire.
Completely different truth.My result - full resetOne of those quiet, violent
what-the-fuck-am-I-doing moments.How did I allow the world to tell me, who I’m trying to be?And who-the-fuck am I, trying to educate a child?All of this because of a simple piece of fish.Maybe that’s what traveling is all about?

here is another thing that refuses to settleI made it by throwing different kinds of paint at a surface and then tracing whatever insisted on appearing.
I named some of the forms when they started to resemble things.
Nothing ever stays the same.

210 x 140cm

Heartbreaks - Wednesdays & SaturdaysOf course we visit the farmers market twice a week. We buy local, organic produce, some coconut butter, drink incredible coffee from the mountains and start to mingle with other locals, the fish vendor, the magic mushroom dude. That was always the plan. It’s a very alternative scene, but that was expected.Some figures stick immediately. There are five, maybe six women who enter the market differently. The whole thing is set under a giant metal roof with no walls, surrounded by parking lots.Suddenly you see these tall figures – yes, all of them tall – enter slightly more energetic than the others. They stop, kiss, and laugh out loud at every second stand. Hands move through long, wavy hair. One shoulder exposed, a magnificent tattoo. Long, tanned legs in loose shoes. They stride as if marking their territory.Magnificent to watch. Fantasy awakening. Confidence howling goddesses.Of course I’m as much in awe as a husband standing next to his wife can be, only to wake up to my wife’s own expression of awe, following every divine movement.You kind of want to get to know them. Hear where they hang out, where they dine, which beach they hit. But something’s off.I didn’t get it the first two or three market days.
But then it hit me.Sitting in my own sweat, cold brew volcano-grown coffee in hand, close to the entrance, I watched three of them arrive. Always alone. Always the same energy. Earrings swinging, tattoos on display, wild hair, wide smiles. They moved straight to their favorite vendors, neighbors, spiritual acquaintances.Loud greetings. Big gestures. Hands in the air. Bows of disbelief. Laughter filling the space before anyone had even said anything.And suddenly I understood.What I had taken for beauty, for deity, for fantasy, wasn’t that at all. It was repetition. A practiced entrance. A performance that looked powerful until you’d seen it often enough to recognize the choreography.A colorful bandana woven into the hair. More bracelets clinking. More paint on tanned skin. Not adding depth, only volume.What stayed with me wasn’t desire anymore. It was a quiet sadness.So much beauty.
So much presence.
So much effort invested in being seen.And yet, every time, they walked in alone.No one beside them.
No one arriving with them.
No one staying.And that’s what breaks my heart, every time.

Shit, fuck, pissed out of my life…It must have been winter. I was wearing my long black wool overcoat, very existentialistic. I called my younger self a writer back then. A simple Parisian bar in Saint-Germain. Heating lamps outside, more chairs on the pavement than inside. Cigarettes, red wine, voices drifting into the cold.A colorful group of fairly drunk Parisians sat down next to me.At some point one of the girls spilled her glass halfway over my coat. Red wine on black fabric. No big deal. She apologized a thousand times, disappeared to the bar, came back with another glass of wine for me. I thanked her and repeated my indifference. Somewhere in that moment I realized she had forgotten her friends at the next table. She sat down beside me and started an actual conversation.She talked. Said she was slightly drunk, newly divorced, used to live on the Île Saint-Louis. Asked about my life in Paris. At one point she yelled to her friends, laughing: hey, he writes — il écrit. That probably made me feel more like an author than any line I ever wrote.I can barely remember her face. But I remember her smell. Seductive. And every movement toward me felt like a small feast.Not long after, her friends wanted to leave. She refused to end the night and convinced me and one of them, a man my age, to come to her apartment for more wine.We walked to her tiny car. She hopped behind the wheel and drove straight into a one-way street, yelling that we would save so much time this way. It wasn’t my kind of adventure. Even her friend mentioned being drunk and la police. She was already at the next intersection, waved it off with a simple Voilà, and parked the car literally next to her building.Her apartment was one small room. I don’t remember a kitchen, just a fridge. One couch where we all sat. A bathroom that felt like shower, toilet, and sink thrown on top of each other.Her friend tried to convince me he was a gynecologist. We drank wine. Paris wasn’t easy, he said, but she had always been good to him.At some point the drink-spilling, divorced host sat on my lap, facing me, and calmly told her friend to leave. He smiled at me and said, you are in the cave of a lioness, and disappeared.She pulled her sweater over her head, took off her bra, and the talking ended.We made some arrangements with the couch, pulled out a futon on the floor. The rest I barely remember.What stayed with me was waking up the next morning. She jumped off the futon and started yelling: shit, fuck, piss, I overslept. Again and again.She bounced through the room brushing her teeth, searching for clothes, putting on makeup. All naked. The apartment was so small she kept stepping over my head like it was the most natural thing in the world. Telling me I could stay and leave later. Shit, fuck, piss, where is my key. Shit, fuck, piss, I can’t believe this. Stepping over my head again in full nudity while I lay on my back, enjoying the scenery and every French accent spilling out of her mouth.When she left, I slept again.
Walking home later, I realized I was in awe of her, not the night.Astrid.Life never allowed more.

If you read this far, some kind of image of me has probably formed in your head.
I’d like to add to it by confessing something simple: I have an almost stupid relationship with money.Whenever things are good and my pockets feel heavier than usual, I book three flights to Paris, Barcelona, or Lisbon, add a very decent hotel, and off we go. Three or four nights wandering, watching, tasting, meeting, exchanging, smelling anything capable of mesmerizing our minds.We come back with emptier pockets.
But the experiences keep surfacing. In smiles. In quiet moments. In the way I sometimes catch a gaze in my son’s stories about the Portuguese coastline.In recent years, our travels have grown bigger and bolder. Months in Thailand, Bali, and Vietnam. Now a quarter of a year in Costa Rica. We don’t arrive with a plan. We stay long enough to stop being interesting. Long enough to be slightly missed when we leave.On sleepless nights, I convince myself in laughable ways not to worry about returning home more or less broke, holding on to the quiet certainty that pockets can be filled again somehow.Luckily, the cycle of earning to provide for future travels doesn’t weigh as heavy as the cycle of enjoying new neighbors in places we never expected to call familiar.

…the next piece will follow. Soon.