Underneath a bridge...

"Do you see that guy under the bridge?" "Where?" "Under the bridge, he's drinking and eating a sandwich." "Oh yeah...I saw him in the store, I didn't think he was a bum." I'm under a bridge like a troll drinking beer and making salami and cheese sandwiches. The passengers on the cruise ship are 100 yards away and we can make each other out clear enough. They're on the deck drinking from the adjacent bar. They're wearing collared shits. I drink my cheap Tuborg pilsner and make sandwiches as cars pass overhead; a nice umbrella for a traveler who won't pay the 500 kroner to have a meal indoors ($50). I savor the beer, exchanging glances with the men 50 feet up the boat decks. Not quite making eye contact, but there ain't much to look at in this fjord. The beautiful scenery is enough to drive a man under a bridge. It’s legal to drink outside but the rain pushes you to shelter. I likely make as much money as any of them, but a Fanny Trekker travels light, and lives meagerly. Not that it would matter to them. I'm under a bridge, they're on a cruise ship. The mistake of coming here is huge, another tourist trap town, so much so that they barely have a bar. I had felt good about avoiding Stavanger, Norway's 4th largest city, and a tourist town in its own right. At least they may have had something real. My second beer goes down well, a nice dressing for the carton of wine finished on the train. Totally at a loss for why anyone would visit Northern California -- the fools. I find reality at the bottom of a bottle, but not all the time, normally I only find a hangover. Weeks into a drunk, it’s normally just a dull sense of touch though. Like someone took a knife and ground it against the curb until it looks the part, but can’t cut it. Cracking another beer, thinking about time; it isn't linear, or circular, or directionless, or polar. What then? I think time is nothing. We sit under a bridge alone, around a Christmas tree with family, in a lecture hall with fellow students, in a court room being judged. Always the same mistreatment of reality, disregard for freedom, ignorance of slavery. Not loneliness from being alone, more from insignificance in a world of war, wealth, fighting, fucking. Simply taking pleasure in being alive and enjoying nothing, being nothing, having nothing, doing whatever it takes to do nothing. It isn’t easy. Men have died working toward it; persecuted to the end of their days for rejecting the 2.5 kids and the home on the hill. Why not just drink, have ample sexual partners available – even if not used. We never adjust fully to the slavery within this Brave New World. We can medicate with our drugs, checking out with the prescribed pop-culture. The rain will still come down, the snow will block the roads, and beer will light the way into fellowship. Believing in nothing, and taking advantage of the beauty of nothing, we push on. As I devour my sandwich like a ferocious lion, I consider the impacts of nothing, thinking of the deliciousness of not caring about anything but good and honest awesome. I pound a beer. My hand goes "ting".