Originally written July 6, 2005
"A man tells so many stories, that he becomes the stories. They live on after him, and in that way he becomes immortal."
Sometimes you fall down. You look around and check if anyone saw you fall. Some people pick themselves back up, laugh it off, dust themselves off, and carry on to their destination of choice. Some people hit the ground and decide "hey this isn't so bad". Look back up at the sky and wonder what that cloud looks like. Or why are those horns honking. Or why am I in the middle of the street. Rough night Saturday I'm told.
Its early March 2002 in The Netherlands. I'm leaving Amsterdam on a public bus to my hotel somewhere outside the city. I don't know where my hotel actually is. I don't know if this was the right bus. It may have been a scooter, or a cab. Probably a bus. So I do what any other American would do after the Heineken brewery tour and singing "American Pie" on a bar stool somewhere in red light. I passed out. An hour later, the bus driver pokes me and says "the end of the line" in some broken english. I get out of the bus. Its 4am, 20 degrees, and I'm standing in the middle of a snow covered farm. No lights in the distance, no sunrise for hours. So I do what anyone else would do in that situation.
I sing the chorus to Freebird.
Get up, stare down the cars, keep walking into traffic. They'll stop for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment