As the night reached its apex it also seemed to reach its end. Like a mountain at its peak, there were infinite possibilities but still no firm answer.  We were both unsure of what to do next with one another- this would definitely be the last time we saw each other and like any normal people that spent a night on the streets of Paris together we wanted to extend the night past it’s expiration date. I lost my key to my room, which only complicated matters. So the lady at the front desk of the hostel begrudgingly gave me the key, having done this a million times for a million kids just like me, she basically did the whole routine on autopilot- opened the drawer,  reached her hand in the outdated brochures and all the random shit accrued by the people that had been in and out of this place and scanned a new key card for her most recent guest, a lanky guy that looked like he wanted to have sex- me!.  However, being aware of the fact she knew who I was even before knowing, I still felt the need to explain that I was locked out of my room by my friend.  I didn’t have to convince her that I was this romantic traveler in need of some help, although I attempted to anyways. She just thought I was a dumbass, maybe a tad charming. There were eight other people sleeping in my hostel room and luckily I was always the type of person that sported the” I’ll never see these people again” type of thinking so I didn’t care about making much noise, I wanted this girl I was with to come back to the room but she didn’t want to, I didn’t blame her. But I still wanted to end the night with someone, to fulfill my Parisian aspirations for the trip- it didn’t have to be sex, it could have been, I wouldn’t mind, but a witty goodbye would have done as well, I just didn’t wanna leave things like this- “ yeah I met this guy in Paris, he got Locked out of his hostel, that was the last time I saw him”. 

 As we all are when we are travelling or doing something new.  There is the expectation of what will happen in a different country, trying to conjure up an idea in our heads however always ends up being rendered uselss. And that is precisely why we choose to travel in the first place because the reality of what happens is always different than our expectations. Our expectations however still end up moulding what we want to happen and therefore the situations we find ourselves in.

This night would bring this concept to life. The reality part was her being outside of the bar-  happening to take a smoke at exactly the same time as me, the expectations aspect would be us expecting that we had to have a romantic night out of this chance interaction. All in all this night, would be a night where my expecations of hooking up with a girl in Paris would mould into me actually doing so. Although her personality was far removed from Paris, I just labelled her as a viking once she had told me she carried viking blood.

(Little side note: I met a guy that was a viking yesterday apparently, his friend tried to get me to become a salesman and than I said I’ve read too much Marx for that- half way through the conversation he realized I was a liberal and we stopped liking each other.)

So let’s go back to the start of our story, how did I get to this point of being locked out of my hostel room?. Better question would be- what the fuck was I doing that night? Well it’d definitely be on the southern side of crazy relative to the shit that happens in hostels, in fact it’s pretty normal.  Basically me and this random viking, aspiring songwriter girl spent the night in the streets of Paris, or the streets of our hostel, which would come to be known as a sanctuary for lost souls.

This girl that I had met at the last leg of my trip, outside of the hostel bar where you get a free coupon for a drink. I used this coupon on my last night and then felt the feeling of being drunk and alone so I went outside for a smoke, from someone else of course. I started chatting to these two girls from North America and all of a sudden her friend comes and I don’t know how but we started talking music. And quickly enough we started bonded over our shared love of romantic exploration and of course the expression for romantics when they romanticize- cigarettes. She looked like the lead singer of metric before she was famous, which drew me to her. She was convinced of her art and herself perhaps too much at times. 

We spent most of the night smoking and chatting in a creative banter type of way that felt thematically true to the night. Quickly she was trying to read me, she wanted to make a movie out of the night. But I labelled her as naive, as we painstakingly trodded along the glorious paths  of Paris that I am sure many greats before me had walked. 

I felt kind of profoundly normal. Since there was no need to be profound when there were people that walked these streets Having so many profound thoughts about science, art and life before you were ever there. I was just another to embrace the romance of it all. 

As we were walking, viking girl needed something to match the romance of a last type of experience, she was getting on a plane in four hours. So she hunted for a joint and something to do. We saw a weed store and stopped outside of it.  The store was closed but one employee gave us sympathy and ended up offering us a few hits. 

As we walked, stoned and prepared for uncertainty- behind us appearing in a forbidden path of light was a lonely, rustic half baked parking garage. She asked me if I wanted to go into the parking garage, another scene in her movie I guess, I saw the future and I thought that maybe we could talk about our journeys. I was just looking to reflect, I was more concerned about reality than meeting anybody special and she was too like me to create any real spark. I found more commaradarie in the fact, that we were two aspiring songwriters meeting each other and so we had to follow through on this aesthetic- have a smoke and pretend that music had an explanation. 

She revealed to me siting under the limelight of forbidden parking garage that we soon called some fantastical name, that she was Nordic.  She said “ guess where I am from”. Instantly my mind went to the movie brave because she had a thick accent and reminded me of a viking from the first time I saw her. She was the type of girl that liked the smell of blood and the feeling of heartbreak. Not disappointed by the darkness but not afraid of light either. But me,  despite my travellers stench and my long glare into the meaning of the interaction,  I was still just a north American that consumed Disney from a young age so I thought… brave… what fucking country are they in.

Ireland, I said

“ No” She looked at me as her mouth creased revealing her dimples in the shitty light of the parking garage

This went on with different variations of countries for a while.

After I had guessed wrong every time and in fact I had even guessed her favourite Color wrong and what language she spoke wrong as well every single time… I felt a certain romantic apathy, I  knew intuitively that I was not amazed like one is in love.  This saying was fresh in my brain at the time- Amazed and afraid as my catholic studies professor said, he was talking about god, but is god not love? We are amazed by that which we are afraid of. Afraid of the mystery but willing to venture into the depths of the sea. I had my mind on a different girl which took space in my imagination. It was still a great night in Paris, and there was a part of my brain that knew we both felt there was something to be learned from one another and the most common characteristic we had was that we were both pretty horny. Staying in a hostel will do that- firstly the expectation of meeting people is one that you come into a hostel with the knowledge of.  That added to the fact that it was late at night and we were in the city of romance we both kind of figured that even if we didn’t know anything about each other we could pretend for a night. And we did. 

It’s crazy that it all started because I was tired from going out in Paris and maybe was a little quiet on the boat and at dinner and then when Graydon saw me get that drink and talk to people he kind of was like “ oh he’s up to his antics again”. 

This was best shown in this British guy I met who I picked up a little slang from. We shared complete pathos. He was so open and spiritual that I felt I could open up so when you share that with someone it has a tendency of rubbing off. He was being knighted and like I explained to Graydon earlier I don’t know if him being knighted was real. The guy that he was with who he claimed to be the UN representative of the country of Patagonia could of been just some old Spanish dude he was hanging around with. But I said to Graydon that it could not have been fakes because the way his whole story made sense. 

He had this sense of magic from a young age being gypsy, going around and using the energy people terms- manifesting and creating, visualizing what he wanted and then going out and getting it. And it seemed to have worked out for him, he was a beekeeper, a hells angel- in which he told me was a rough lifestyle and then now he was writing a book in line with spirituality and magic. He became sort of the guru of the hostel and we later joked that the hostel was actually a temple. The temple of Christopher I guess. I said later to the girl- whose name was Carly although we tried to do that whole not tell each other our names thing, as we both saw it as edgy. We joked later that it more like hostel for lost souls. Where lost souls lie, rest and sleep. So me and this lad we talked about spirituality over three and quickly turning into four as he called “ fags” which caught me off guard. I explained that I am a songwriter and that sometimes it doesn’t always work when you go and write a song. He was like yeah but you only tell yourself that. And I was like yeah but like a field grows crops there are fallow seasons. Which I thought was pretty true but he had a point. I learned so much about songwriting without learning anything about songs. Which goes to show the magic in the persuit and the art. When it is a spiritual entity it has the capacity to store the thoughts and the feeling of multiple spirits. So I took that into account and then earlier with Oliver who is actually a musician telling me to be honest. Then this girl carlee, who sported a leather jacket, leggings and kept talking about killing heralded and such, in which I said “ is that the message that you wanna send when you die?”. She didn’t seem to agree at first but after I found out she was 18 I got that it would sit eventually. Carlee was insightful and authentically powerful, with an attitude that was overdone but also courageous at the same time. Her mom apparently tells her to have tough skin and she said that she wanted to have SOFT SKIN because that way she could let all the feelings in and her songs would be better if she let everything in. I agreed but I said that you have to know when to have both. I think I was being realistic and I did not wanna overshadow her idealistic vulnerability but to me part of being vulnerable is being honest. And honestly you have to have tough skin to move on to the next song. To not care why people think and to know the darkness of the odd coupling of a spiritual commodity such as music and a material thing like money. Going back to Keneth tho as we call him-  he met his wife twelve years ago and they were separated but she decided to knight him and rightfully so not only was he all these things but he also had a environmental organization and was staying in a hostel which is so cool considering his apparent class. Because he learned more this way he said and because a hotel is not who is. Oh isn’t that true wealth to know one self and the limits of their own ego. Very powerful both these people and all the people we met, don’t even get me started on Marine but I wrote a song about it and I have a feeling I’ll be writing a lot more about it. Things that I will remember for the rest of my life. I don’t know how but graydon is into ideas, which makes him special and highly regarded in my mind- someone they can look at ideas as Grey and life to pick it apart and dissect it to come to the most optimal conclusion. Yet at the same time by being interested in people you are interested in ideas. But less so because people are full of emotions, baggage and mystery which I believe to be magical and graydon sees that as well, there isn’t much he doesn’t see yet at the same time it’s the morality of it. I think to wanna be kind I’d to have a good moral code I think that sometimes he thinks logic triumphs his soul and morality.