Have you ever been in four countries in two days? With the menacing mad-hatter of a sickbay hangover mocking and making light of every dog-tired step you take, all the while screeching a scream in your right ear making the bells of Notre Dam's tower seem envokingly alive in a human head? I was so tired that I couldn't sleep, eyes wouldn't close, mind never ease. Scotland to England to France to Holland. Through a tunnel under sea, passed Nazi bombarded country sides, through concrete jungles I was told were unsafe without the proper football attire, through towns like Newcastle, Durham, Gateshead, York, and Doncaster, from Waverly Station to King's Crossing, from pounds to francs to gilders.
All in the night with Carlsberg tall cans draining and draining an ounce a kilometer as I watched the orange Euro street lamps go by like tracers at one hundred and eighty miles and hour. Bleak cities rolled by with not a soul milling about, all life being huddled in front of hearths, warm from flame, with stockings full of coal dangling and waiting for the Christmas Day looming in the shadows.
Railing, wild eyed and strange-haired from Dickens's hallowed ground to the expatriate's favorite home, then with no time to think, drinking my way passed French villages, all of which were distinguishable by the black church steeples sharpening themselves against the gray sky that say "God be with you" to the weary travelers, riding on to the next monetary exchange. Engaged fully on a mission to Holland through towns named Rotterdam, Brussels, and Antwerp. Passing millions of Dutch windmills that I could not see in the blackness, heading for a Christmas I didn't see coming either.
I woke up and said "Merry Christmas" to the warm little flat. I said "Merry Christmas" to the trams creaking by on the snow covered rails imbedded in the street. I said "Merry Christmas" to my friend there with me. I said "Merry Christmas" to my friends that were not, stretched out thousands of miles from here to there. I spoke "Merry Christmas" to the Holland I had only imagined before.
I waved "Merry Christmas" to the Netherlands candy store closed up and sleeping for a day. I looked up and whispered "Merry Christmas" to the Heineken Brewery sign that leaned out with all the other pre-war buildings that looked like they were all going to land flat on their faces. I sang silently "Merry Christmas" to the colossal stone church that had in its belly a cloaked and hooded concert of mid-evil chanters paying homage to The Birth in their own way.
The Druids had been reborn for a day. A wind ripped and rushed upon me and snow started to fall like in a peaceful moment of a Van Gogh painting and I walked by a remembrance for him and screamed Merry Christmas as loud as possible for him to notice for we all know that he is hard of hearing. I wanted to denounce all of my gifts and trade them away for the one chance to give him his ear back unscathed.
I walked adoringly passed Rembrandt's home and studio and telepathically sent him a Merry Christmas e-mail. Around the corner and up the cobblestone street I wished Merry Christmas to the beautiful black statue remembering little Anne Frank and I wanted to traverse time and do something to help but then the wonderful amazement of her little girl words would have gone unknown through the ages.
I wished Merry Christmas to the Hansel and Gretel Cafe and especially to the old man in Dutch wood shoes sitting inside smoking hash riddled in a cigarette, who resembled Hans Christian Anderson so much that the whole world seemed to be and electric of Amsterdam and begged for one of them to sell me their bike to I could toss it into the canal's dirty waters with the hundreds of thousands already there, lying in a watery grave. And I said Merry Christmas to the canal streets and bridges, paved with hard rock by sweating hands all brought from the windmilled outskirts by horse and buggy one load at a time.
The further I went the more inebriated I became and this was a good thing for the destination was near. I wavered in the doors of The Grasshopper Cafe and said Merry Christmas to the pretty bronze skinned blonde barkeep in pigtails who was breaking up a pound of Northern Lights and I bought twenty gilders worth and sat down in a corner under a spot of sunshine that was creeping through the clouds and continuing through the cafe's windows.
I smoked Merry Christmas to myself to a sweet oblivion. Along with the beers I was having I knew I was prepared for what this Christmas walk was all about. I stumbled eloquently out the Dutch doors and soon mixed back in with the other sad people with nowhere to go on Christmas Day. I could feel night arriving soon and the lights around town were starting to fire up.
A little further along I bellowed Merry Christmas to those sloshing around in the boats which were taking constant beatings from the waves coming from their sterns, bouncing off the canal walls, and making their way back to the thing that created them. I hummed Merry Christmas to the skinny little piss smelling alley ways that lined the area and I tried to read the spray painted graffiti but a language barrier stood its ground. "At a boy" I said to myself knowing my friends back home would be envious of what I was about to witness.
It hit me like a train wreck and it looked something like a scene out of "Bladerunner" with all the debauchery in the world wrapped up in one little present that I was about to unwrap. So I did what all young men and boys do, I dove in headfirst. I then said Merry Christmas to the Red Light District. At least we meet. I said Merry Christmas to the semen stained bridges adorned in strings of red bulb lights.
I told Merry Christmas to the pretty faced fat black woman in leather lingerie, soon hoping to turn a trick. I said Merry Christmas to the blonde model hooker, half-naked and sitting in the window under her "open for business red neon light".
I yelled Merry Christmas to the men coming and coming out of their miniature sex dens zipping up their pants and I blew Merry Christmas kissed to the girls coming back out from the back rooms to turn the open light on again as they applied their makeup and rearranged their hair to give a fresh appearance for they did not want to look like they had just earned fifty gilders for giving a blow job to some Arab soldier on an R and R.
I smiled Merry Christmas to the junkies who had just shot up in broad daylight on a bench in Needle Park like they were just taking aspirin in relief of a vicious hangover. I gave the homeless peoples what money I could spare and said Merry Christmas to them instead of good bye. I said Merry Christmas to the men shadowing me for several blocks and he soon went away. I swear I saw a knife hidden in his pocket.
I said Merry Christmas to the next barkeep who sold me a couple of more cans of beer and walked on out the door into the sleaze filled streets. I said Fuck Off to the frenzied driver of a Volkswagen bus who almost ran me over and smashed an icy slush all over my clothes and then I threw an empty beer can in his wake.
After I had my fill I then said good bye to The District and slowly strolled home to call my family on a nine hour time difference to say Merry Christmas to all. I then said it again to myself for the last time this year and laid my head down falling asleep to the visions of Dutch windmill blades ripping around and around producing a power I needed to shut my eyes with until I got so dizzy that I spun myself to sleep. I said good bye to Christmas and slipped away to visions of prostitutes under neon dancing in my head.