THE IMAGINARY HOLIDAY TRIP

Over on a friend's page was a photo of a bookstore not far from another bookstore and around the corner from an antiquarian bookstore where I used to shop in Amsterdam, near two comfortable cafes and a square where there is a second hand book market every week. Which you can't have in the United States because the yuppies would take photos of each other standing in front of books and the suburban teenagers would set fire to and overturn everything. Tourists from the Red States would ask "whut iz thayet?" and attempt to ban everything. There would be Christians all over the place praying for your soul.

Whenever someone tells me he's praying for my soul I automatically think "nah man you're just thinking of tits". Because, of course, organized religion is largely a con-job.

Teevee preachers and that mega church in Texas.
Plus miracle pastors in the third world.


I've never understood the urge to take selfies that many yuppies have. No one wants to see a picture of you in front of the Eifel Tower, Parthenon, Golden Gate Bridge, Alexander Platz Berlin, random picturesque building in Moravia, or what the heck have you.
You're in the way. Get out of the damned photo, dingbat.

Here's a picture of me entirely outside the frame in front of Croissant Island in the Hebrides, where the famous Russian intellectual Ivan Sirnaya-Golobosky spent many happy years in exile away from his native Siberia. It's where he wrote the novel 'Deystvitel'no Skuchnyy Musor (Действительно скучный мусор), which was earthshaking and groundbreaking.
I read it in college.

The fact that you cannot see me in it is the best part of the picture.


Current temperature in sundrenched Croissant Island is thirty seven degrees Fahrenheit. Almost tropical. The Hawaii of the outer islands. It's mildly breezy, with gale force winds ripping the flesh off the local sheep. Book a holiday cottage now.
Enjoy the fabulous local cuisine! Mutton dishes!
And wind-dried elk jerky!
Kelp!


I would actually far rather be in Amsterdam, where there are bookstores, cafes, and Indonesian restaurants. Plus herring, mysterious fried foods, and museums.

Every time I was there I took photos of bridges and canals.
A huge number of of them. Enough to fill a book.



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