injured.

Yesterday (Tuesday?) at about 7am outside a German gas station, I said, "This is the most tired I have ever been in my entire life," and not only was I not exaggerating in the least, but that feeling was immediately seconded and very probably thirded, which I probably dozed off during.

Should it take 30 sleepless hours to get from Nickelsdorf, Austria, to Amsterdam, The Netherlands? The easy answer is: it should not take 30 sleepless hours to get anywhere, a formula whose potency is increased exponentially by the number of preceding days (4) that were very nearly sleepless as well. It doesn't matter how wonderful the people you are trapped in a large yellow van with are (How's my English?), 30 hours is about twice too long.

All I really have to add at this point is... no matter how much you love and trust the driver, not only as a driver but as a human in general, no matter what his reputation for indestructibility, no matter how many times he has managed to put diesel gas in his diesel gas tank (rather than non-diesel petrol, which apparently makes the van stop working after awhile) with the correct amount of sleeplessness, he too can fail.

Quit your crying, O'neill would say. He's right. It was an excellent (4-, no, 5-day) weekend that was so exhaustingly bittersweet that the whole thing literally seems like an dream, emotionally vivid, visually hazy, and resonantly powerful in ways that somehow real life is usually amazingly not.

Really? Maybe that's a bit much. But the reality is so little less true than the above that it's not worth the effort to re-write it. Good eating (a post on wiener schnitzel and goulash is forthcoming), good wine, and of course, no sleep. And good people, 100% Jumbo-Style All Night Long People, the best. Is there a point to all this? Yes. I won't be posting until I've recovered somewhat. See you in a bit.

+++