2:45 a.m.

It’s 2:45 in the morning and I’m putting myself on warning because I’m waking up in an unknown place, with a pretty thought that I just can’t erase.

Went to bed at eleven, woke up at two. Second night in a row. Maybe third in the last five days of this sleep schedule.

Normally I read. Tonight I’m going for a walk. I get dressed, put on the ugly $100 sweater that doesn’t quite fit, and I’m moving.

My hair looks good.

Today is the most Norwegian I’ve looked. Tech pants that are waterproof and stretchy, the Arc’teryx vest, Norwegian wool.

I’m on a floating dock and I can see the city lights and the bridge lights reflecting onto the water.

Everything is so clean. What a nice, trusting, six million person society. Smaller than Israel. There’s no sticker culture here. I keep looking for a place to put stickers and they just don’t do it. Some graffiti.

Everything here is handicap accessible, which honestly makes it easier for regular people too. For visually impaired people they have lines that create walking paths to many of the most important places, like the metro or the bathroom. Who doesn’t need a line on the floor showing them where the bathroom is. It’s useful for idiots like me.

Norwegian people are really proud to be Norwegian. They’re left wing patriots, which I don’t think I’ve seen before. There’s a lot of pride but they’re still accessible and accommodating.

A lot of Scandinavia is gray wood and glass. Not glass and steel. Or the architecture is one strong color plus concrete gray. An orange or a green or a blue, and then gray. Like they know they have color but haven’t gotten comfortable with it like the Caribbean has.

They recycle everything. You can’t even throw something away here. Which makes me think about Anna crying when she saw the trash after Mardi Gras. All those forgotten throws, and the beads that landed on the floor getting swept into mounds headed for landfills. And they do that once a day for two weeks.

She was just standing there going, wow, what the fuck am I even trying to do.

I’m sneaking into a gated construction site by the lake right now. There’s a huge gravel mound. It looks like they’ve excavated but nothing is being built. It’s a beautiful spot and if they don’t make this a park they are really fucking up. This does not need to be a building.

I think about the time I got jumped in that park in Italy. A kid reached for my chain and broke it. He wanted to see whether there was a Star of David on it, or a Chai, and when there wasn’t he stopped bothering me. It was a hate crime that came up empty. I don’t wear a Star of David because I don’t believe in branding.

I wonder if it was better to run or to put my big heavy bag down and get ready to kick his ass. His older brother was there. But I don’t think his brother thought what he did was right, so I don’t think his brother would have done anything. But if I’d kicked his ass, then his brother would have had to step in. So, lose lose.

And then I go home. I waste time before eventually falling asleep.