Travel report 1: quick & cryptic version
Dec. 2nd, 2010 05:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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maribou, gipsieee, and other readers of Homme Marque that I'm too tired to remember right now:
I got up at 5a.m. on Tuesday in Seattle. I am going to bed at 7:35pm on Wednesday in Rome.
By the clock, I have been awake for 38.5 hours. By the body, that's reduced to only 29.5 hours.
Those who have read my work will be amused. In the last 30 hours, I have not slept. I have eaten and drunk whenever food was offered to me, as much and fast as I could get, though I sometimes rationed my water. I have been inappropriately touched by official strangers. I have staggered through a bewildering situation I was too ill to understand, which only started improving when I almost fell down.
This was all a grand adventure among friends and standard international air travel, you understand, and deserves a longer report in its own right. But then there's the room.
I just walked into my hotel room in Rome, which looks like a double monks' cell. My mind, in its current condition, says it should be a single, that there should not be a window, and that the wardrobe, which is six inches too wide and should not have drawers, should be by the head of the bed instead of at the foot where the washbasin belongs.
The stone-tile floor is right, though. So is the fact that the hot bath I was secretly hoping for turned out to be a cool shower, though I did figure out the taps well enough to reduce it from burning cold. Stripping down was a ritual. The presence of another kind person, and the phone by the head of the bed, were non sequitor to the point of jarring.
Gerard is quiet in my head, and watching me. I asked him if he'd like to step away. I try to be kind to the meta awareness of my characters, even when I've been brutal to their canon selves. He just quietly said he'd show me around, and sat under my skin as I slowly undressed and felt my bare feet on stone.
Somehow this makes the whole 30 hour lead-up brilliant.
December 1, 2010, 11:20 AM Seattle time so 8:20 PM Rome time because I can't make myself sleep.
Addendum, 5:30 AM Rome, 2 Dec 2010: I finally snapped myself out of it at 9 enough to understand that "shivering" was not correct conditions for trying to sleep after jet lag. Two extra wool blankets and pajamas later, I was out like a light. Good morning, world. Welcome to Italy.
maribou, gipsieee, and other readers of Homme Marque that I'm too tired to remember right now:I got up at 5a.m. on Tuesday in Seattle. I am going to bed at 7:35pm on Wednesday in Rome.
By the clock, I have been awake for 38.5 hours. By the body, that's reduced to only 29.5 hours.
Those who have read my work will be amused. In the last 30 hours, I have not slept. I have eaten and drunk whenever food was offered to me, as much and fast as I could get, though I sometimes rationed my water. I have been inappropriately touched by official strangers. I have staggered through a bewildering situation I was too ill to understand, which only started improving when I almost fell down.
This was all a grand adventure among friends and standard international air travel, you understand, and deserves a longer report in its own right. But then there's the room.
I just walked into my hotel room in Rome, which looks like a double monks' cell. My mind, in its current condition, says it should be a single, that there should not be a window, and that the wardrobe, which is six inches too wide and should not have drawers, should be by the head of the bed instead of at the foot where the washbasin belongs.
The stone-tile floor is right, though. So is the fact that the hot bath I was secretly hoping for turned out to be a cool shower, though I did figure out the taps well enough to reduce it from burning cold. Stripping down was a ritual. The presence of another kind person, and the phone by the head of the bed, were non sequitor to the point of jarring.
Gerard is quiet in my head, and watching me. I asked him if he'd like to step away. I try to be kind to the meta awareness of my characters, even when I've been brutal to their canon selves. He just quietly said he'd show me around, and sat under my skin as I slowly undressed and felt my bare feet on stone.
Somehow this makes the whole 30 hour lead-up brilliant.
December 1, 2010, 11:20 AM Seattle time so 8:20 PM Rome time because I can't make myself sleep.
Addendum, 5:30 AM Rome, 2 Dec 2010: I finally snapped myself out of it at 9 enough to understand that "shivering" was not correct conditions for trying to sleep after jet lag. Two extra wool blankets and pajamas later, I was out like a light. Good morning, world. Welcome to Italy.
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no subject
Date: 2010-12-02 07:15 pm (UTC)It actually was a double monks' cell. I found out in the morning that the hotel was formerly the residential wing of the adjoining church.
I'd just like to say here that the sheer bloody accuracy of my writing brain's grasp on historical architecture unnerves me.