Pleasant insomnia

Sometimes, late at night when the house is quiet and I can’t sleep, memories of Europe float into my mind. I close my eyes and relax, allowing myself to be carried away by sounds, visions and feelings. Even though it’s 3:00 a.m. and I need to get some rest, I stay awake remembering, because I know that these memories won’t stay fresh forever and I want to make them last. So I live them out in my sleepy mind over and over again, like scenes from a drive-in movie theater playing on the back of my eyelids.


I remember sitting next to Carol, my Brazilian friend, on a ledge bordering a canal that spilled out into the Mediterranean Sea. We were on an island named Burano, just outside of Venice, known for its vibrant, colorful houses. The sun soothed our arms like a warm washcloth as a cool breeze picked up our hair and tangled it in our faces. My iPod lay on the ledge between us with one bud in my right ear and the other in her left. We listened to Sea Jorge, the only Portuguese music I own, as Carol smiled and hummed along. “Yes, more please,” she said as each song came to a close. The island was busy, bustling with tourists and locals, but we’d found an empty part off by the sea, and watched while two men unloaded boats and smoked cigarettes that they flicked into the swirling green water.


I remember climbing up hundreds of steep, stone stairs in La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. I was all by myself that day as I made my way to the top of the tightly coiled staircase. Dark and bumpy grey like dinosaur skin, the walls surrounded me on all sides. I stared at the graffiti that had accumulated over the years. There were windows every ten steps or so that lit the way as I huffed and puffed and they made the writing on the stone look like one long, sprawling, Sharpie mural. Stopping for a break, I paused to read a bit of the doodles that were undoubtedly the work of travelers like myself, and my eye caught a little illuminated section. Next to garish block letters proclaiming “Pedro was here” and crude drawings of arrow-studded hearts and custom signature tags were four simple, carefully printed words: “I love your skin.”


I remember walking gingerly down uneven stone steps to a pebble beach along the side of a mountain in Cinque Terre. It was 1:00 a.m. and I had to use the light from my cell phone to guide my way. There were no handrails and the path was only a few feet wide so any loss of balance would’ve resulted in a bloody mess on the rocks down below. We arrived at the beach and sat down, picking up smooth pebbles and rubbing them between our fingers before throwing them in the crashing waves, wondering if they skipped along the dark surface of the Mediterranean. Off in the distance a searchlight bounced across the rumpled water. I leaned back on my elbows and stared at the speckled black sky, soothed by the constant rush and hiss of the sea. The air felt cool and clean in my lungs and I ruined it by smoking a cigarette that I’d rolled for myself back at the bar. Suddenly someone spoke: “Hey you guys, look!” We turned around and gazed up at the mountain. Hundreds of fireflies twinkled in the trees, swirling around, glittering like shattered minerals. They flew in frantic circles and mazes, tiny white jumping beans bouncing in the air. It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen and I haven’t been able to write about it until now, two months later in my bed in Minnesota.