Beaches

At the intersection of Atlantic and 1st, right down near the One Ocean Pavilion and a handful of other beach haunts, there is literally a Starbucks on either side of the road. Of course, this is along the Jacksonville pilgrimage route to the beach; Atlantic Boulevard used to be the only road running out here, which is why the founded-in-1939 historic Beach Road Chicken restaurant is on this road instead of the now-parallel-running Beach Blvd. This is how people used to get from the rivers and the center of commerce, over the Intracoastal Waterway, to the beach, and this is the way I have decided to ride today.

Getting out to the beach via Atlantic is a hard 18 miles of box stores and fighting with cars, even though every mile contains a few of the diamond-shaped yellow signs that show a happy bicycle on the street with the words "SHARE THE ROAD" beneath it. Today, this bicycle is feeling dichotomous: happy to be free and off to exciting places, annoyed as I pass another of these signs and a motorist honks at me in chastisement for taking up three feet on the rightmost of three lanes. Yarg.

Getting to the beach, though, is a sort of haven. Suddenly the environment shifts in a bunch of ways. Obviously the cars can't keep going East--there's an ocean in front of them--so they peel off down A1A to Ponte Vedra or Mayport and I hop two blocks deeper into the beachy pink and yellow color scheme to 1st Street, one block from the water, nestled among beach houses, with plenty of palm-tree roadblocks to stop cars and keep the street open for walkers and cyclists like me. After feeling I had to suck in my stomach to make room for these cars, here I can ride with no handlebars.

The beach also has a change in populous. After seeing relatively few young people in Jacksonville proper, young folks simply walk around at the beach. Couples walking and tanning at the same time (no one bothers to wear a shirt), a beefy terrier on a leach pulling his owner behind on a skateboard, etc. And everyone, everyone is in beach shape.

But back to Starbucks. Why one on either side of the road? Why one stand-alone, ostentatious drive-thru store looking across the divide to a little one in the mini strip-mall, the signs in the window and the words "Starbucks Coffee" overhead the only proclamations of its true purpose from its diminutive, cookie-cutter strip-mall frame?

I am feasting upon words; excuse me. Suffice to say, I've filmed in front of this stand-alone Starbucks before, spent hours here, and had no clue this other one was across the street. It reminded me of an African watering hole: all of these animals migrating across the Serenhgetti when the rains shift elsewhere, all stopping at the few watering holes available between points A and B. This leads not only to dangerous cross-sections of the animal kingdom--with lions and elephants and stuff drinking at the same bar--but also leads to a few packed tourist establishments along the way. I can't believe that the giant oases we see on Planet Earth are the only ones along the way, and can only picture the local lemurs, standing by their own lemur-sized Starbucks with teacups in their hands, looking out at the crowded commotion across the street and tsk-tsking as one of them squeaks; that is to say, as one of them says in the bemused language of their kind: "Tourists".

these animals migrate across the plain when the seasons change, because water dries up in one place and pours down in another. But in order to get there, they have to cross vast spaces, finding whatever water they can along the way, which leads for dangerous combinations of animals in one place. Lions and elephants and such crowd into one Starbucks, while you know the locals, the meerkats, or something, have this tiny waterhole all of their own that nobody seems to notice, and just laugh, in their meerkat way

Dreams

Martin McDonagh, Eavon Boland, and Seamus Heaney are out. The dream is much as it was before in Naples, Florida, driving through star-studded beaches and rich homes: that Steven Spielberg, seeing our car, would beckon us into his home that looks like Jurassic Park, and that we would have a cup of tea; we wouldn't even have to talk about movies, just get to a point where we could meet each other's gaze from across the room and do the somewhat-acknowledging-but-not-being-too-ostentatious chin raise that you see 50 Cent and all the cool rappers do, all to say: "Hey Steve... Whazzup?" To which he says, "Nothin', dawg, I'm straight chillin' like a well-earned glass of lemonade... on a hot day." This is how Steven Spielberg speaks in my mind.

And now Pedro Almódovar has also slipped my grasp. Not that I would recognize Spain's most well-renowned filmmaker by sight, but I'd love to see the man and exclaim, "I loved Hable con Ella as a piece of art even if it totally weirded me out! Do you have space for a Production Assistant who is really enthusiastic and wants to learn Spanish?"

We're in London in two days, and I don't think we'll see Gordon Brown either. Neither Ryan or I have much luck catching heads of state, especially me, because for all of my entreaties in DC, Obama never did come to my Starbucks, and Michelle, in a need for classy burgers that I can understand, visited the Five Guys at the end of my block and, probably sated with deliciousness from that place, did not need any coffee. Yet apparently Pervez Musharraf did come in with all of his aides an hour or so after I got off work, so maybe Tony Blair, W., or Mikhail Gorbachev will take our spot at the fireworks after we've been there, done that.

Woody Allen is preparing a new film in London, though (probably along the lines of Vicky Christina Barcelona), so there is hope. Maybe he'll even wind up in South Lincolnshire and need directions and I can hop out and direct the man whose zeitgeist films have traversed continents, from Manhattan and the feelings of an American generation in the '70s to Match Point and the European present. But the more I muse about this, and the massive James L. Brooks films of life that film in our neighborhoods in DC and don't hire us because they have handpicked staff from New York and California, the more that I remember that life, in its simplest essence, is that of flowers and babies, pied beauty and new life; and this life is everyday renewing... by God it is renewing.

Sevilla

In Magellan's day––by the way, I'm reading a book on Magellan––Sevilla had twice the population of London, and it appears the city has lost none of its vibrancy. As the families flood the main street, along with Punk-influenced teenagers with creative facial piercings and the innumerable and pram-contained babies, I can imagine the flood of traders that led the world to assume that absolutely anything could and was bought and sold in Sevilla.

I am trying to find a place to write, but while there are some open chairs, it is a Sunday afternoon and every table is filled up with families, food, and babies, babies, and the strollers which carry babies. So I am on a bench outside of a Starbucks, waiting for the line to die down so I can purchase americano-warmth, and I am opposite what at Magellan's time was the third largest cathedral in Europe, after St. Peter's in Rome and St. Paul's in London.

There's not much time for reading, though, what with essays and all. Now is the daunting essay about my body of creative work––the numerous poems in the rough, the plays, the screenplays in process, my journalism and scholarly work, this blog––and I'm hard pressed to articulate it all.

It is probably good that we are in Sevilla. We have a great hostel and wonderful travelers. Our Canadian friends Neal and Bria just left so loved, and I regularly discuss Brazilian and Italian history with Alex & Anna, Mateo & Betty; we love the hostel staff, and Nate gives me the last of his churros. This is a city filled with families, babies, street performers, and babies, all things that fill me with joy. So what if in our times before and after the Camino we have seen all of Sevilla? There is still excitement over seeing the rowers on the river and the unkempt '92 World Expo site, overgrown and cordoned off as if it could house zombies or velociraptors (Neil and Bria suggest I make a zombie/dinosaur film there, and Neil has offered to don a velociraptor costume... I think he'll be in the scene where Merav gets eaten... or where she and the velociraptor meet, become friends, pick olives on a hillside, and eventually travel together).

It is a good spot for me to pour over these applications too, and Ryan and Merav seem to remember, in spite of the regularity, that they are more than sufficiently awesome, greeting these days with excited, new eyes.

Jolted out of my iPod-influenced writing trance, two Moroccan girls greet me in Arabic. They are looking for jobs, see me with my green blog notebook in front of the cathedral, and think that not only do I look like someone on-the-job, I also look like I speak Arabic. I did not know that I looked this way. Nonetheless, I tell them the truth (that I'm an American guy with no job writing to you, dear readers), wish them luck and they fade into the families stepping into the expanse of families and the slow, open tracks of the Sevilla tram that bisects them. I love this culture: how, because of Franco's repression they smoke in front of No Smoking signs; how kids being with their parents is as much a necessity as grease on a car mechanic; how we can drink beer with our lunch and everyone is going to do it respectfully; how they are so friendly that, if an Ice Age suddenly descended, they would pull me in like male penguins and keep me warm, not caring if I stutter through their language. There is some terrible history, like many countries, but it is a marvelous present.

Multinational like home: Stories from the road

Give it grief, Starbucks is a respect-deserving solid cup of coffee. We all have our comforts of home: Merav's is the Hebrew-lettered cigarettes she found stuffed in her bag when she ran out of rolling papers. Ryan's is peanut butter or video games, neither of which we have right now. He is smarter than us when it comes to churros as well, only engaging in churros y chocolate with us once, and watching us stuff custard-filled, chocolate-covered churros rellenos in our faces without even a hint of wistfulness or wanting to take our gastronomical place.

Occasionally, in Ireland and Spain, we go for a McFlurry, which feels a little anathema to me. Yet when an establishment like McDonalds––which I usually avoid completely for its very-bad-for-you nature––when they have free Wifi and we don't know where our hostel is, McDonalds comes in very handy. As does a McFlurry when you need a little something other than bread, sausage, cheese, and carrots.

Starbucks takes it up another notch, though. Whereas Spanish coffee is condensed and strong, fueled by a strong espresso culture full of cafe con leche and cafe cortados, there's nothing quite like the size and, with it, the continuity of a large, American coffee. Needing something to remind me of home, I stroll into a Starbucks in Sevilla and get all the way to the counter before I realize the horror: they only have one coffee brewer, and it's decaf. In DuPont Circle, DC, we have five. Yet I'm already there, so I place an order for a cafe americano, much the same thing, made with espresso and hot water. And it's good, that full flavor, the sixteen ounces that no Spanish coffee can touch. While I'm fine not having a home, I wish I could pack up this coffee and bring it with me, in a French press, like the tortoise its shell.

In other news, Merav finds me out slower than Ryan. While Ryan understands a good bit, I am the only Spanish speaker, which is to say, I am the only one who can ask for complicated directions, then gather Ryan in so he can help me understand what in the world is being said in reply. He figures me out the quickest, but that's also because he knows me better.

Merav, however, is different. So we both tell her, as I did Ryan, if she are ever stuck in a restaurant without knowing what to order, she should say this simple sentence. Same as––and yes, it is rather miraculous that it works in this setting––if she is ever interested in a Spanish guy such as Manuel-the-awesome-Spanish-barman-wearing-a-Big Lebowski-shirt-who-is-30-the-perfect-age-for-a-28-year-old-single-Israeli-woman-who-is-kind-and-introduces-us-to-great-new-music-that-we-like-and-inspired-him-to-play-the-ukelele, if she meets a guy like this, she should simply say, "Quisiera el pulpo." Though she never used it (and I don't think we'd have let her), I would have loved to see Manuel's face should she look at him flirtatiously and subtly say: "I would like the octopus."

Later, after finding this out, Merav tells us that octopi are actually quite smart. During her diving-with-dolphins-and-taking-pictures-of-them job, she learned that someone put food in a wine bottle, dropped it in the ocean, and the octopus actually opened the wine bottle and got the food. For the easily amused (like me), that image is a simple joy of life.