I board my coach to Milan. Having left Paris proper, we are funnelled into a holding area staffed by gendarmerie on the outskirts of the city. They bring a police-dog onboard. Beginning at the back of the bus, it is only when they reach the people behind me that I see the dog leap onto the laps of each individual and sniff maniacally, the handler looking on in eager admiration. The dog reaches me, duly mounts, and begins a protracted inspection of my genitalia. Having neared the front of the bus, and with no prospective brutalisation afoot, the handler appears to have lost interest at the precise point at which I’d rather he be entirely present. I know not what it has detected, only that it is without a doubt the most intensely fearful twenty-seconds of my life. Inspection complete, blood pressure rebalancing, dog and man move on. The Italian family seated in front of me excitedly coo ‘cane!’, the father giggling as the German Shepherd leaps onto his young son’s lap and sets about huffing the child’s scent.

Italy 

I arrive in Milan. In trying to find the toilet, I roam the main station. Vast, taut, the travertine glints. I find the toilets after ten minutes of searching. Upon entry, I pass a man who appears to be leaving. He stares at me intently and promptly swivels, saddling up to the urinal along from me. He begins jacking himself off, pretending that this is unrelated to me until he gains the confidence required to stare at my cock. I feel his gaze, guileless, pure intensity. There is no sense of this having been thought through. The potency of it all is enhanced by the presence of others, hemmed in oblivion while we dance to the tune of the id. This happens in a flurry - I walk to a cubicle and he is left undelivered. I exit the toilets and await my connection to Florence.

I am in Italy to volunteer at a monastery administrated by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), which is located just outside of Florence. I have arrived a day before my due date to explore the city. Lo and behold, the Italians are similarly disposed as the French to electing random days to close their galleries, so I must settle for the Medici museum. Their patronage of the arts essential to the bloom of the Renaissance, and yet, perhaps unsurprisingly, the remnants of their assorted lives are far too dry for me on this bright afternoon. The single highlight is a codpiece comprised of wire and clad in cloth - ostensibly designed to house an erect penis - angled at a remarkably proud forty-five-degrees. I am both appalled and impressed by its bravado. Parenthetically, my mother has a theory which, to my mind, confidently tackles the question as to why men are so often cross. The answer is twofold: a) due to the inherent design flaw of the manhood being placed outside the body, thus encouraging the perpetual fear of emasculation, and b) the mute horror that codpieces have fallen quite resolutely out of fashion. Unbelievably, and in a cheerful ode to continuity, the male attendant glances at my crotch as I leave the museum. 

I begin to make my way to the monastery. After four hours of waiting in the sun, the tarmac thrumming in the heat, my bus finally arrives. I board, travel some distance, and then alight in a place the bus driver does not like. I am on the bottom of the valley and I must snake my way to the top. The sun remains high as I begin to walk, leaping onto the verge each time a vehicle rounds the corner. My nervousness increases
as I find myself flanked by dogs behind fences, barking with sincerity. I turn off the main road at last. It is at this point that a van rounds the corner, slams its brakes, and the driver asks me if I am going
to Villa Vrindavana.

Having arrived at the monastery, I am introduced to a man in his early twenties, friendly enough but with an air of preoccupation. He takes me to the shared room in which I will be staying and vanishes after saying the obligatory ‘Hare Krishna’, my own lips remaining pursed. I unpack and then head down to the gardens. Another man of a similar age speaks to me. He is charming and undoubtedly a member of this particular sect’s PR department for which ISKCON is known the world over; that brigade of sexual and spiritual warlocks responsible for the enticement
of wide-eyed schmucks. Their suggestive twists and twirls preceding the line heard upon entry into the fold… ‘no intimate relations’. Such is this man’s sway that I find myself bidding him farewell with the words ‘Hare Krishna’. At this rate, perhaps in as little as an hour, ‘may Lord Krishna grant you his most eternal blessings’ will slip from my lips. Where on earth is my conviction? 

I plonk myself on a bench that overlooks the grounds. It appears that I have already met all those chosen to smile demonstratively, for the rest are cold and distant. Their hands clasped behind their backs as they walk with intention, face fixed forwards, ankle length garb brushing against their Nikes. Their severity, which I suspect they think presents as serenity, appears to have erected an environment which is prohibitive to anything other than devotion. Given that they have forged a space specifically to that end, this is a little unsurprising. I wonder if such devotion travels from person to person without diminishment, that by simply being here I will adopt an ability to live and breathe with intention. I think about suicide, not so much consider it as think about it - some say that it is death’s only antidote. This warms my innards as I watch a trail of ants march at another’s pace. There is a Latin expression, abusus non tollit usum, which suggests that the improper use of something does not banish the possibility of its correct use. I think of faith in these terms. This is potentially a fairly hideous rebuttal of faith’s ‘keep on keeping on’ shtick, and probably too remorseless a view of a concept so feathered and necessary. However, it is said that the renunciation of a faith, once sturdy enough to provide a reason to be, leaves behind a space so vast that it is difficult to pledge anything other than the remotest feeling and fervour to any subsequent cause. As a fully fledged member of the godless, I rather like this prospect. For at least then I will have tasted the oh so hallowed nectar that is faith. I say this as a means to prop up the devout cynicism and vague jealousy with which this
text is laced.

Dinner is served, which I sit and eat alone at the bottom of the garden. There is a woman over to my left, hunched over a ha-ha, appearing almost depleted - a spent Wanderer Above - facing out towards the Tuscan hills. I raise my voice and ask if she is English. She is in fact Ukrainian, and appears shocked when I say that I have heard of Lviv, her place of birth. War is a fine excavator of place-names; do-or-die battles encase nondescript villages, cities, such as Lviv, become emblems of aid and relative safety - this is why I am confused by her shock. We speak for a while, namely about her spirituality and my lack thereof. I I gradually come to the conclusion that, as far as I can tell, she does not know that her country has been invaded. Such colossal isolation proves too much for me. In this moment, the idea of trading what is beyond these grounds for a chance to glimpse phantasma within them is in no way comparable. The will-o’-the-wisp can wait. I make my excuse to the Ukrainian, and tremblingly ask a large group of people how easy it is to get back to Florence. An American man (smilingly!) arranges
a taxi for me.

Having frantically packed, a snake sweeps across the ground in front of me as I rush down the steps. Four hours is not enough to settle, shake a hangover, and commit. In true ouroboros fashion, I am consuming myself; fear reigns supreme. I run down the driveway, terrified by the prospect of missing the taxi. To my great relief, it arrives as I near the gate. On entering the car, I see that the driver is moving his body, from head to toe, in time with the Hare-Krishna mantra that is faintly playing on the stereo. He turns it up, loud, as we pull away. It is accompanied by a four-by-four kick-drum and a heavy bass-line that writhes between utterances of:

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna

Krishna Krishna Hare Hare

Hare Rama Hare Rama

Rama Rama Hare Hare

He chants along triumphantly, periodically beaming at me as we careen down the hill, sheathed in the purple of the setting sun. I understand snatches of his monologue - he speaks of equilibrium, belief, and movement - forwards, ever forwards. My Italian is so very poor that I may well be attaching meaning where there is none. I am reminded that it is not possible to fall off a mountain so long as you keep running (case in translation-related point). We arrive in a small town from which I can catch a bus back to Florence. He bundles me out and thrusts literature into my hands as he turns the stereo up louder, so loud, now, that his features take on a Ghibli-like quality as the air around him zips and zaps. He raises his hands and, in a final, farewell gesture, jiggles his entire body and takes off back to the hills. 

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna

Krishna Krishna Hare Hare

Hare Rama Ha…

Germany 

Raised voices rouse me somewhere near Karlsruhe, the once large space now contains five other bodies, all oddly polite in the command of their personal space. An American voice asks if we are each committed to wearing face-masks, citing that they only work if everybody does so. Naturally, the room murmurs. This is consensus decision making at its most night-train-through-Germany. A Pole, three Germans, an American and an Englishman, tackling an issue they face in the immediate. A beautiful, tender dialectic that plays out as the light beyond the train briefly spits its lantern upon our faces. This process lasts all of ten seconds: no one is bothered. The German sitting opposite me, bespectacled with straggly hair and an evident good nature, is a physicist. He also happens to be a pilot. The American man is delighted by this, as he turns out to be an artist that specialises in photographing pollution. This he does primarily from the air, and depends on the pilots of light aircraft to provide view enough to catch his image. They exchange numbers, and continue to talk on a variety of subjects. The last thing I hear before drifting off is the very same man asking the German
‘Yes, but what is an ‘idea’?’

I stand on Museum Island and stare in bemusement at the Humboldt Forum. They have spent an awful lot of money on trying to recall the past with a building far too pristine for the present. A two-piece are busking in the centre of the Lustgarten, they are confident and striking and absolutely nobody appears to be listening to them. I perch under the colonnade of the Altes Museum, facing south. The mottle of the Berliner Dom scorns the virginal Forum; I can just distinguish a chimera poking out its tongue. Women trammel the lines between relaxing tourists, hands outstretched, half-smiles affixed to their faces. I hear the sound of bagpipes. It is vying for superiority - a null point, if only in amplification. The player remains unseen until I walk to the U-Bahn and a man in a camouflaged kilt is revealed, his physical sternness entwined with his music. He bears his rigidity forwards, undeviating eyes and a hopeful cap placed just beneath his vision.

I reach Tempelhof Feld and stand along its northern edge as the weather picks up and the birds beckon Rorschach. The sound of the wind is immense, a great garbled howl that curries no favour with my silence. I look on as a crow repeatedly drops and fetches something from ever ascending heights. A flock of skylarks arrive en masse, their chirrup attenuated by the shriek of the wind and the ever-appearing crows that strike at their formation like ink spears. There is a line in Rabelais: ‘If the skies fall, one may hope to catch larks’ - well here I am, waiting patiently with my hands outstretched.