Submitted by  Sneaky aka Habibi Mike aka Wejumpka the Red aka Willie Nelson’s Bastard Grandson

Wow! I’m in a good place. No I’m not talking about Beirut, Rome, New
York City, or even Pittsburgh (well probably, if anywhere and or when
Pittsburgh and now). Traveling with love of all humanity heavy, in my
heart I embark over seas the first time, in my several decades. But
I’m finally ready to take-on these roads less traveled. Deciding to
take the #Muppets‘ advice and journey via map; it’s quicker, saves
energy, burns way less carbon-based fuel.

I can’t say I didn’t hit a few snags on the way but; made it to my
first leg, New York, NY, none-the-same. I kinda kicked #Megabus’s ass;
smuggled three #Iron City tall boys in my bag of otherwise healthy
snacks. Being a red-eye, lights went out quick and I sipped on one of
those bad boys unabated #grownmanbusiness. Having scored my own seat
(#clutch), I even managed to piece together a few hours of shut-eye in
between the Penn State and service station stops.

Back in the moment-I’m on the LIRR (Long Island Rail Road) heading to
the Jamaica stop. Best way to JFK airport: 6 bucks! #Fuckacab

Just before this I ditched my remaining No-no rations in the men’s
room at Penn Station and got my wits about me. I realized I still had
two Irons, so I lovingly set them on the steel trash can with a sign,
“FREE to GOOD home”. Cheers lucky soul who finds my jettisoned bounty
of Pittsburgh’s time-honored beverage. I hope you’re thirsty. You do
know that the entire Steel Curtain defensive line slurped down a few
of these brewskis, almost every halftime and crushed the cans on their
helmetless foreheads. Right? Here is yet another solid reason why,
you, I or all of NY for that matter, simply cannot hold an iron man or
woman down. And now, the only thought I can let myself think is: get
through customs, get through customs.

Continued…

“Sure beats a cab, huh?” I strike up small talk with an aging
stewardess who still had trace amounts of #Darieth Chisolm via #Jackie
Brown swag left in the bag. She politely wished me a pleasant trip.

I,11 months educated-style, wet-behind-the-ears, guess you have to
keep moving and make clear-headed decisions in this city: when to
stick, when to move or to paddle like the dickens to catch that
cresting breaker and ride that sucker all the way into shore. NYC is
fast and any surfer dude or dudette worth their board wax should get
stoked upon reading my metaphorical summoning of their passion to lay
down a solid truthism or two or three even. I lived there most of last
year and that’s about all I’m confident enough to share. Gee, thanks
Captain Obvious, at risk at being redundant, thank you for pointing
out the obvious.

Did I ever mention my working theory on time travel? I really should
but I don’t believe that I have the time for details now…(for godsake
I’m planning on tweeting this and technically I’m time traveling as I
write these very words). I recently read that #William Burroughs had
very similar thoughts and of course, vertigo-inducing moments of both
#Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey which hit the nail
dab-nab on la cabesa, serendipity-style.

So this is the second major time my future self, hid something from
present moment $neaky or if you’re scoring at home and maybe met me
through yoga you might even know me as Michael. I know, right? What
kind of weirdo calls himself, Michael?

I’m not sure how confessional I’m going to make this yarn so let’s
keep our focus on this particular incident. On Wednesday night I
taught, the first of what will hopefully become a regular happening,
yoga at #the Rocking Horse Artspace which wrapped an hour before I had
to catch the Megabus. I set the class to music, “Yoga 5” playlist to
be exact, necessitating my Mac Powerbook. In the fuss and muss
following the class I forgot to put the infernal / beloved thing back
in my backpack. Doh!

Believe it or not, people have led happy, healthy, even productive
lives before the advent of the internet. Yes, even before each and
most of us Americans began to lean, like i-crutches on a machine in
our pockets, obvious knock-off #Gucci purses, and dress or play fanny
packs (#mo’1st World Problems). Developing the nasty habit of
dependence on these binary micro-chip wafer houses for everything;
communication, navigation, an alarm clock, doorbells, conducting our
social lives, a little black book, defining our personalities, a
projected best friend, and of course the ever popular – our
other-selves. With these radiation generators on our person at most
times we can start to write library shelves of meaningless sci-fi
paperbacks, mostly dribble mind you, and not a lick of it will make
sense until we’re not around to claim the royalty check(s).

It seems downright shocking I know but soon to be now, in a foreign
land, which according to google maps is geographically enveloped by
Syria and according to the US State Department website under a travel
advisory; without my go-to, for everything: music, writing,
entertainment and figuring out how to make my way in the world today.
It sure would help a lot. I’ll survive but how the heck will I
thrive? How indeed? You tell me. I’m listening, in fact, I’m all ears,
nose, throat, face, feet, spine, leg, leg, arm, head, look at the
brain on Sneaky.

So, this is what it feels like to be early for the first time in my
life of late blooms; sometimes beautiful, sometimes rotting from the
bud, the larva stage, the instant of inception. The Nuevo-hipsters to
my left taunt me with their powerbooks… those bastards! Steady…steady
now $neaky, take it easy. You are in control you are, in control. Act
natural. Inhale [inhale] fill up the upper, middle, lower lungs.
Exhale [exhale] slow, smooth mirroring the inhalation like the tide,
by the waning/waxing moon; full, new, chesire cat grin-style.

What’s this? FUTURE SELF left me a note a few pages back: “Hey
past-self, look alive. Keep a pen in hand and your eyes off of TVs,
okay? The question mark, per-usual was emphasized. You are smarter
than your smart phone, you have more personality than your PC. The
universe provides, dude, so abide and try to use the force. It has
untold power, let me tell you. Thanks, future me, I promise I will try
to heed these wise words.

Ahh! A beer sure took the edge off. It’s noon-thirty here finally, and
I’m sorry to announce that my trail of fallen soldiers ended in that
bathroom near the Amtrak, and now I’m starting into my second Blue
Moon with an orange slice. And it might be as refreshing as the long
extinct glass of ice-water in hell, maybe more-so, in these
circumstances. But this little beauty’s not duty free; by no means or
ends. This may be the only time you’ll ever catch me paying this
obscenely astronomical amount ($10.31 – with some sort of evil mutated
strain of the #Dan Onorato Tax!), especially after all the recent
success I experienced with my “beer purse” at #SxSW2012. I’m writing
this sentence in my Wonderland Passport, kind of a bedazzled #moleskin
pushed through the looking glass, on top of an article in #Electronic
Musician magazine, that I yoinked from #Mr. Small’s Studio, last
summer while #The Hood Gang cut some basic tracks for what will
someday become the smash-hit song “Hotter Than #Beyonce”. Yes #Girl
Talk is on the cover and I’ll admit, I’ve been a huge fan (of Greg’s
way, way, WAY more of a fan than I am of Ms. Fierce) since the first
time I heard Night Ripper and the sentence I just read before starting
to scribble again said; “There’s no question that he is an artist of
the highest order.” And I further consider Facebooking him, asking if
I can be a warm-up act at #Stage AE on June 9th (One day before my
birthday). I would be perfect. I fucking want this. Can you blame me?

A good yogi knows that only practice makes perfect and that the word
perfect like all words in any vocabulary is only an approximation of a
feeling, a vain attempt, thru a combination of sounds to evoke a
pictogram to somehow communicate a shared experience. A good yogi
slowly, surely works on letting go of all expectations; of all laments
and judgments of the past, of any forecasts of possible futures until
there is only this moment, this moment, this moment-a dedicated
presence in the present. There is a reason I am mentioning this, and
lapsing into my yoga teaching spiel (what is it? ah yes.) That
whatever comes to pass with such an aforementioned possibility of
opening for Girl Talk, performing for by-far the largest crowd I ever
have, and giving my music career a long needed ass-fire-light; I will
accept without any sort of negative emotion, never lamenting or
manufacturing any sort of ill will. Sneaky Mike of just a year ago,
let’s say, would have probably let a rejection, bring him down,
possibly depress him to the point where maybe he stayed in bed for far
too long and wasted an entire sun-rise-sun-set-sun-rise. No matter
what happens with this, I will be thankful that there was even any
sort of possibility and that I’m alive another day, that I have to
legs to jump around on stage with, a voice to sing, a brain housing a
creative mind that has the propensity for writing songs, I could go
on…

Possible #Seal sighting at a martini bar in JFK’s international
airport-wing (the singer not the barking sea-dog), while STILL waiting
to leave North America for the first time. When they say GMT, they
being #cheaptickets.com, really mean EST. Go figure, I won’t. I’m
pushing math far away to aid the repression of how much scratch this
particular snafu cost me. So yeah, should I go over and introduce
myself? Ask if this well-dressed gentleman is the same man who helped
15 year old proto-Sneaky, get my slow dance on at my junior-prom and
impregnated Heidi Klume (him not me)? Would the same man that
conquered a herculean physical appearance-divide presumably on the
strength of his crooning and perhaps charm, so cavalierly be sipping
on a can of Sprite? Could Sneaky Mike be at the same bar so expertly
downing a Spatan (which BTW the German dude next to me said is crap
next to most German beers)…??? I mean, I do para-consciously recall
seeing some Klume-age, passerby-style on a cover of a Star or Time or
Life or People (one of those raggedy tabloids), highlighting the
heroic struggle of a multi-millionaire single mother, a new reality
show in the making, which I no doubt assume her agent is angling for,
as we speak. I promise I’ll never watch it, or any other bull shit of
the like. You should make a similar vow. But before I had the chance
to confirm or deny this, the probable Seal’s flight began boarding and
the debonair chap rushed off, attaché case in hand, to claim his cushy
first class seat.

I snap awake, window seated, economy class-style, my bird’s eye
detects some snow-capped mountains the likes of which I’d never
witnessed from this perspective. An hour until we land in Rome where
I’ll have roughly ten hours to get my affairs in order, do some yoga,
and get into a bit of trouble of the fun-like variety sans pesky
consequences. So far I speak two words of Italian; arrivadercci and
a….grazi [voiced with an Adam Sandler impression from a
long-remembered skit on #SNL in the mid 90’s where all the waiters in
an Italian restaurant begin to progressively grope Victoria Jackson,
much to Kevin Nilan’s chagrin). I wonder how far this and my finely
tuned Dada derive will get me. Is #hashish, hash in Italian? I think
so but if that fails the international sign for I want to get high ie:
forefinger and thumb pressed to parsed lips, aka “the smokey-smokey
signal, is still very much in play. I will not be trying any sort of
this funny business in Lebanon where I’m led to believe that
possession is punishable by a mandatory minimum of two extremities
lopped off or if you have what is known as “Wasta” (friends in high
places) and a good lawyer and enough bribe money maybe you’ll get off
easy with only a severe beating and 6 months, hard time in a death
camp. I feel that the Geneva Convention holds more sway here in
Italia, even though my American dollars got bitched at the currency
exchange. Good luck dragons, on your procurement efforts, future-self.

I accidently sight-saw the Vatican by getting lost; and reached my
destination just in time to take a class at #Bikram Yoga Roma.

The hot yoga and the subsequent shower was just what the doctor
ordered and I sit at a pub, thoughtfully sipping a Guinness, maybe my
last one until I return to the States. Intel reports that it can no
longer be found anywhere in Lebanon. The television above the bar
tells me that MTV UK has its own version of Jersey Shore called Guido
Shore (or some-such fine-Italian-cut suiting descriptor, I have no
internet now and so…let it be told). Actually, for a hot-minute I
thought that Italy had its very own version of this tele-abomination
and my mind exploded out of sheer irony, into a million tiny little
pieces. It took the better part of my pint and seeing the commercial a
second time for all-the-king’s-horses-all-the-king’s-men to allow my
quasi-organic matter to reform back together again T1000-style. Thank
God and/or Dyson for small miracles, nanobots, in fact,
#bio-tech-swag. I love technology, but not as much as I love you. But
I still love technology; always and forever.

You would indubitably find it hilarious, witnessing me trying to
communicate to these fine Italianos who do not speak a slurp of
English. For whatever reason, I think it helpful to try to feign a bad
Italian accent. It is not, in practice, helpful. Fortunately, most
people do speak enough mut-English to give me bum-directions. Despite
my best efforts to run around perma-lost, chicken with its head cut
off-style, I find myself sitting on a train, brandy-new Nike Hurriache
trainers kicked off, sipping on a 22 of Peroni. I checked, and
double-checked and yes indeed you or I or even apparently some
vacationing Mexicans who were double-fisting Coronas smack-dab outside
Stazione Centrale Roma Termini, can drink wherevs/whenevs your pretty
little heart desires in Rome. Not in my country, I tell the conductor
and I have the open container citation and one whale of another story
to prove it. Guided by force of habit, I reach in, where my smart
phone usually is, and there’s still some Euros jingle-jangling around
in my pocket. I would have went harder going for broke, Brewster’s
Millions starring #Richard Prior, caveat attached, but I did not want
to tempt those fates that would roll those fuzzy dice over my ass,
metaphorically speaking, and make me miss my connecting flight.

And now, sitting in an airport food court, drinking one last higher
grade kind of Peroni, watching Walker, Texas Ranger overdubbed in
Italian (I swear to Chuck Norris, if I ever move to Austin, no
diggity, I shall buy and wear at every opportunity a cowboy hat, and
maybe claim to be #Willie Nelson’s bastard grandson) barring complete
disaster, I will be on an aero-plane, at long, long last mere hours
away from once again seeing my baby. Since September she has been at
the American University of Beirut teaching poetry. Staying true, I’ve
been celibate this whole time (it’s fricking March!) Yeah it has been
hard, literally and figuratively, as usual, puns intended.

I made it! Hooray! Let me say yoga helped tremendously. But when I
look into her eyes, virtue intact, open-mouth kiss her, and probably
cry (I don’t mind weeping if it proves how much you mean to me). It
will (all of this) be worth it. So my dear friends, mi amores, all
that’s left to say at this juncture is, ciao-ciao…a grazi and of
course, Namaste.

EPILOUGE
Yep, $neaky writes his boney-little-ass off ideally, kinda/sorta like
when the moon hits your eye like the world’s largest pizza pie that
causes the tides. That is amore. WARNING: actual facts may have been
snacked on and chewed and spit back out with varying amounts of
hyperbole. So take it easy, as it comes, with a grain of salt or a
dash of cilantro. You, my lovely reader, may get trace amounts of
fiction stuck in between your teeth, so remember to floss.

The Neo-Gonzo Diaries, PART 2: Beirut – to be continued in photo-doc.
form with witty hash-tagged captions