Budapest 2

October 7, 2016

Ate included breakfast in the breakfast room. The American couple beside me was discussing when they were going to do laundry and how, if you fry it enough, cauliflower can become palatable. As I was breakfasting, just as the food began to settle, my stomach was stricken with extreme pain, such as I had never felt there before. I came upstairs either to vomit or to die. I did neither, but now I’m frightened and wary. I need this to happen 7000 miles from home.

Got Patti Smith’s much-talked-of M Train from the airport bookstore. It pisses me off. I could have written it in three days. Perhaps she did.

Roamed the streets of Budapest in the cold bright light. Tied together my old stomping grounds so they are frozen in memory. Decided that the gut-sickness was my body telling me I had taken enough iron pills. Sat in a park by the river and wrote. Sat in a café with a glass of beer and wrote.

My left leg is too swollen for me to wear the classy pants I bought for tonight’s opening.

The Kiscelli is at the butt end of town, far from any public transportation, and raises in me a perfect storm of anxiety. Will it be late night and me walking ten miles home through a strange city in the winter cold? Have decided there will be no taxis and no one will offer me a ride. Can’t even wear my warmest clothes, because I have to look nice for the opening. My comfort is that most of it, from there, is downhill. I am too old for this.