Ryan Frawley
Bio
Towers, Temples, Palaces: Essays From Europe out now!
Novelist, entomologist and cat owner. Ryan Frawley is the author of many articles and stories and one novel, Scar, available from online bookstores everywhere.
Stories (52/0)
The Albanian Maneuver
“Too much.” “Too much?” The gas station attendant thumbed through the crumpled bills stuffed into an envelope he held and shrugged. More lek. The last thing we needed was more Albanian currency. We were leaving the country in an hour. The car didn’t need much gas, but the rental agreement demanded it be returned with a full tank. The €50 note I had given him glowed red in the midst of the pale blue Albanian money.
By Ryan Frawley4 years ago in Wander
You Can Never Go Home
Sparrows live here. It stays warm all year, of course, and the crumbs of overpriced food dropped by passing travelers who eat from boredom more than hunger are enough to raise a family on. I know that the birds live here, raising chicks in the steel rafters and shitting on the polished floor, rather than it being a case of a few unlucky individuals getting trapped and lost inside the cavernous space of the airport. Because I’ve seen them before. I’ve been here before. I almost live here myself.
By Ryan Frawley4 years ago in Wander
Monaco: All the Money in the World
Even the toilet has a beautiful view. The window is open, and the smell of the bright sea drifts in to mingle with the faint tang of ancient piss. Down below, the Rock, the old citadel of the Grimaldi family, juts out into the Mediterranean. Red roofs glow above the white walls. The sun shines on the sheer cliff face on which the old city of Monaco sits, turning the bare rock a blinding white. I finish and zip up and step out with dripping hands, back into the sun.
By Ryan Frawley4 years ago in Wander
Fascinada
His father built this boat. With tools worn by time and help from his uncle, he bent the planks around the frame and hammered them into place and sealed the joints with hot pitch, while the summer light bent and warped in the haze of heat that rose from the metal can. Every year afterwards, in July heat, he rowed the boat from the village to the island to heave rocks into the bay and keep the church afloat.
By Ryan Frawley4 years ago in Wander
Prague: Fear and Beauty
We came late to Prague. By the time we made our way to the red-roofed city, the path to the east had already been well beaten by hordes of budget travelers and lairy British stag parties. An influx of foreign tourists has pushed Prague close to the top of the list of Europe's most visited cities, with all the opportunities and problems that kind of popularity creates for the local residents.
By Ryan Frawley4 years ago in Wander
Anastylosis
It’s not that I didn’t want to go to Warsaw. It’s just that I’d heard Krakow was better. But we go where the budget airlines will take us. We go where we can afford to go. And any new place has its appeal. I generally find something to like about every European city I’ve visited. So we went to Warsaw anyhow.
By Ryan Frawley4 years ago in Wander
Quillan: Evening in the Garden
Quillan: Evening in the Garden "There is no geographical solution to an emotional problem." Tony Soprano said that. But he’s not the only one. There is no shortage of shark-hearted platitude peddlers ready to tell you that you can’t escape your problems by leaving them, even as they offer you another pill. And like all truisms, it’s sometimes true. A schizophrenic will still hallucinate in Helsinki or Helena. The malignant narcissist will poison Yonkers and Yekaterinburg equally.
By Ryan Frawley4 years ago in Wander
Lyon
The train from Antibes to Marseilles takes less than half the time the bus needs, but it costs twice as much. During the time we spent in Juan les Pins, summer playground of the staggeringly wealthy, we were at our poorest. It was the bus for us. Two buses, in fact, from Juan to Cannes and then from Cannes to Marseilles. From there, a train carried us up from the coast, flakes of snow streaking like falling stars past the windows as we rode to Lyon.
By Ryan Frawley4 years ago in Wander
The Miracle of the Everyday
I’m not superstitious. I don’t believe in signs and omens. As though the future can be seen somehow in steaming entrails or the filth at the bottom of a cup. Nonsense. The universe is not a novelist, and it doesn’t foreshadow. Making stories is a human concern, not a cosmic one.
By Ryan Frawley4 years ago in Wander
First Night in Formia
It was our first night in Formia, the Italian coastal town that became our first home in Europe. After another in a long line of sleepless nights and eye-stingingly early mornings, A’s afternoon nap went into overtime. The cat slept too, curled up in the crook of A’s knees, shielding her eyes with her asymmetrical feet.
By Ryan Frawley4 years ago in Wander
Never Home
Blame it on Brexit. I never thought the vote would go the way it did, and that the country I was born in would decide to tear itself away from the rest of Europe. I thought I’d always be an EU citizen, with the right to live and work anywhere I chose in twenty-eight different countries. And because I always had the right, I never used it. It was only the thought I might lose a life I had always dreamed of, but never pursued, that made us take the leap we did.
By Ryan Frawley4 years ago in Wander
The Warsaw Dichotomy
Is the pianist good? I wouldn’t know. Every driver seems skilled to someone who’s never been behind the wheel. I love music, but there’s not one atom of musical talent in my body. I can only look with awe at those who know how to make an instrument sing.
By Ryan Frawley6 years ago in Wander
