through europe

My trip back is stuttered and indirect.  It takes a long coach ride, a short plane trip, a train ride, a flight and another flight to get back to Milan.  Each fragment represents the kind of trip which is most often considered an opportunity for a sleepy interlude to the day, nothing more: good for nothing but dozing in and out of thoughts, usually the rush of a never-ending series of professional ambitions or micro-improvements, ‘have to send that mail when I get in, have to prepare list of objectives for the trip, what am I doing here?  What can we intuit that kids might desire next?  Which mood will style move into within the next 6 months?’

I arrive in New York from San Francisco, on a quick stop for a couple of meetings before going back to Milan.  In my hotel, which is better than the kind in which I usually stay, there is an enormous world map cut out from cast iron attached to the wall behind the reception desk, dimly illuminated from behind.  I’m speaking to the receptionist with that curt knowingness which I enjoy so much abroad, but I’m distracted and really looking up at this map.  The lack of motion it expresses distresses me, the dumb muteness, completely fake, obviously an enormous joke - it’s a shock to my sense of self to have such a thing served up to me on a plate like that.