My Marvey

BCNSLOW

2005-09-06T18:51:00.000+02:00

birthdaytimes over, nothing much to show, now lets get this wine selling into action, get those bottles in Whole Foods by Thanksgiving/Christmas so all ya´ll can buy em up and enjoy.

I have begun a new apartment cleaning racket, only friends thru friends sort of thing, tomorrow I am cleaning the apartment Lotti Lewis has lived in for 21 years. Yippee, I can´t wait to alphabetize her bookshelves!

Blackberries

2005-08-25T19:58:00.000+02:00

Blackberries in my head alltheday allthenight dream the prickly branches enter thru the windows of my little house on the the other side of the broken bridge buscando moras for 5 morning hours in the curves in the road hold my breath step into onto the brush carefully place vines aside some snap back catch on my jeans and sweatshirthoodback and hair and slow just grab that big mora there and get the hell out gotta fill my bucket or dont go home, Simon says the lessons from blackberries, come on someone must have written a song about this already

we're off, finally!

2005-07-27T09:58:00.000+02:00

Off for august in a 1991 volkswagon golf convertible
for woods and lakes and trains and cities and adventures
Back to the whenever end of the month

D3

2005-07-17T11:27:00.000+02:00

Skin pigmentation changed long ago not only to protect skin from different levels of sun exposure--thats obvious--but also in order to regulate the amount of Vitamin D3 manufactured by the sun just under the skin. This is the theory of Professor Nina Jablonski, a paleoanthropologist with the California Acadamy of Sciences. So when the first swarthy inhabitants of modern Scandinavia confronted a lack of ultraviolet light, their kind quickly selected out for paler children whose skin would manufacture enough vitamin D3 to keep them healthy. Meanwhile, Eskimos arrived in the Arctic dark skinned. The local cuisine of seal and whale is rich in vitamin D3, so the skin was never summoned into action. Evolution has one big rule, if there´s no pressure on the system to change, then it doesn´t bother. So Eskimos remained dark.

When we look at the different races, according to Jablonski´s theory, what we´re actually seeing is not "superiority" or "good people", or "race". All that we are seeing, the only thing we are seeing when we look at skin color, is a meandering trail of vitamin D3 adaptation rates.

Post nit

2005-07-13T22:09:00.000+02:00

Air-conditioned relief at the Mediateca, San Miguels on bikes, new LED night lights, WMFU at all hours time difference 6 hours.
Planning for France, for Asturias, for September no place to live, band for Luthea Salom, October and grape harvest, planning my escape to my double life

Ctrl

2005-07-10T01:33:00.000+02:00

Catalans do beach volleyball, on like the only day of the summer that BCN is not sunny, in a plaça converted into sand, complete with surrounding BBQ'S, watermelon eating contests and pop-radio jams. Sleep for two hours then back to the born for nighttime activities, last night cowgirls this night Californians. Tomorrow I'm gonna swim a couple Km for multiple sclerosis, well that because it's free lap swimming at Sara´s pool.

Brownietimes

2005-07-01T19:06:00.000+02:00

Aaron, my housemate, makes the best chocolate brownie I´ve eaten in over 2 years. When he made it last Monday it got burnt. They all picked out the insides and I ate the carboniferous crunchies. But this time, oh my, moist, buttery, still warm from the oven, this isn´t a pastel de xocolata, this is a true brownie, American style. Could make it from the recipe hanging on the kitchen door but it's in Catalan, and I´ll never learn how to measure in grams. Sure, I can wing it, but it won´t be the same. So I'll just leave it to Aaron, the male housewife.

Abuse, scream!

2005-06-30T13:14:00.000+02:00

Unmonitored gov´t spending on things like Starbucks coffee and long distance phone calls makes me angry, and glad that I am not paying taxes for this kind of frivolous shit. "$514,201 to rent tents that flooded in a rainstorm." Read about the TSA audit here

Yikes, my Hair!

2005-06-28T12:47:00.000+02:00

Going to cambiarlo pronto, 3 euros and what will they do hmmm. . .

Consider what o´clock it is

2005-06-23T00:37:00.000+02:00

. . .the white queen says.

The Scenery

2005-06-22T00:31:00.000+02:00

Lighted courtyard off a city street under a clouded full moon on a sticky June night.

Free beer and beautiful French people milling about, amateur vegetable video art on a screen above French ladies chopping zucchini and carrots for la Soupe.

4 Cauldrons fills enough styrofoam bowls to feed this whole courtyard, with a dolop of pesto and a slice of bread.

Animadoras

2005-06-18T19:49:00.000+02:00

This morning, over chocolate cupcakes and fresh squeezed orange juice, my flatmates asked me if cheerleaders, as portrayed in Hollywood movies and teen shows etc., really exist. My answer went something like this- "Yes, cheerleading is a popular sport, it is taken very seriously by some people though mostly at big state universities, where there are big Fraternities, where Football is more important than studying, and some girls get boob jobs to be cheerleaders and it all begins at the highschool level really, where dating the the captain of the football team and being on the cheerleading squad are two of the most important things in a teenage girl´s life, and oh yeah cheerleading also exists at the professional level, such as in the NFL and the NBA."

Summerbeginstimes

2005-06-08T14:41:00.000+02:00

Believe it or not Marvey actually tans in two places:
1. ankles
2. that lower-back just above plumbers butt/above underwear spot

Its Bici Week in BCN

2005-06-07T14:31:00.000+02:00

See a kid perched in the plastic high-backed kidseat backwheel of a bicycle pedalled by dad, Dad pedalling and I´m buried in his faintly sweaty-dad smelling purple polo shirt,
imagine the sights from a 3 year old´s perspective, crane rightleft to look out from behind, feels like riding a bike, only my legs are in holsters and I have a seat belt strapped around my waist and I´m notholdingon

Old hat new hat

2005-06-07T00:37:00.000+02:00

Gottanewhat got a new hat to block the middaysun, its red.
Old hat Wes Anderson´s new movie Life Aquatic is the first movie theater film I´ve seen in months. V.O.S.E.

Okay, I liked it, not as laughoutloud funny as Royal Tannenbaums, but I could watch Bill Murray all day, he´s utterly captivating in a next-door neighbor bum sortofway.

new piso

2005-05-29T16:08:00.000+02:00

new piso new barrio new bed new housemates, new food these people make their own yogurt yum, and a terrace, finally, with views of monjuic, so close I went walking there this morning, and close to the superduper mediateca where I´ll spend those hot summer days reading about subculture and popculture and myths and then in August I´ll leave this city and go work on an organic farm in the mountains in Aragon.
Justhoughtsofthefuture.

Back to one

2005-05-17T13:29:00.000+02:00

Timartha left yesterday.
No more buddytimes.
Rearrange room backforone, find the cat who has escaped.

WEBtimes

2005-05-12T11:55:00.000+02:00

I made my first website allbymyself!

Its about wine.

check it

www.soldebrugas.com

LADRON!!!

2005-04-28T14:34:00.000+02:00

Some fuckface stole my bike yesterday in the park, right from under my nose. I was sitting on a bench, and bike was next to me, leaning on the bench, and one minute I am looking at this guy dancing flamenco in the gazebo and the next minute I turn around and my bike is gone. I asked the people around me if they had seen anything, Of course nadie ha visto nunca.
Arrrgghhh, I hate that park, never going there again.
My bici is my life, my key to happiness here and to have that taken from be by some asshole who wants to make 50 euros is so frustrating. I can't explain the anger I felt while trudging home in the hours after this incident. Walking up Pg Sant Joan I was jealous of everyone I saw riding a bicycle. Last night I grieved and drank and vented and thought about going to France to get another bike.

Soy lista!

2005-04-23T14:17:00.000+02:00

yes, I am smart, but it doesn´t take much smarts to realize this Benin thing was a una estafa, a scam, like those Nigerian money scams, only the theives have moved into other west african countries. All the the emails were suspicious, they were too urgent sounding, saying we must send 1,950 euros immediately so that the "health authority" can process our "product registration". I wanted to speak to a real person but of course none of the telephone numbers connected, and we I finally did speak to the "lawyer" they refered us to, he made me uneasy. I did some quick research on the web to find out about this scam--they find the name of the company in an internet market, like Greentrade.net and then they prey on you. But I was not to be fooled oh no, all these people work together to steal money from small, honest, unsuspecting, non internet or email savvy businessmen, like Jaume. But not while I´m in the office they won´t.

Downuppers

2005-04-22T16:44:00.000+02:00

My babysitter just got a job in the local women´s prison.
She´s gonna teach Catalan there and bring home stories.

My sugar daddy´s getting frustrated in his efforts to sell wine.
The only offer so far is from a company in the Republic of Bennin,mmm mmm yeah, thats in Africa.

Playing the Box

2005-04-12T13:50:00.000+02:00

I´m gonna buy a wooden box and sit on it and play it with my hands.
It sounds like a kick drum and snare.
Its got a snare thingie inside that give its a nice buzz, and some little bells.
Fishermen in South America invented it.
BluegrassFlamencoRhumbaRock here I come.

Pyrenees

2005-04-05T12:41:00.000+02:00

Back from el campo, where it rained all weekend, but still had an awesome time. Saturday=Allisinsidetoday playing easy music, guitars, keyboard, Marvey banging on her buckets and the wood floors and pots and pans and don´t forget the spoons, and inbetween breakfast and lunch there is yoga and inbetween lunch and dinner there is singing. Ten cowgirls and one lone vaquero who wants to be the horse, or the mangager or just a boyfriend. Upstairs music, downstairs eating. All meals prepared for us with vegetables and grains and lots of mini jars of pate´s, pastes, and sprinkled seeds to choose from. Inbetween eating and discussing and singing and music there are trips thru the mud to visit the outdoor toilet seat with the mountain vista, or the green shed with the peeping window, right middle right, sawdust, separate all for compost.

a bend

2005-03-17T21:57:00.000+01:00

and we´re on the way back to the train station in the furgoneta, jiggling and swerving along as Jaume talks and habla mucho about this rich Saudi who might buy the houses and how he doesn´t care where the money comes from, if its black money, or whatnot, and this or that other plan for his business and I glance for one moment or two out the right side window and see the red half slice of sun (who knew it was over there) below the line of clouds that have been covering the vinyards all day
all flat one piece, and I´m about to say "mira, que bonito" but don´t know how to interject here, in Castellano, and he goes on and I look one more time and then its as if it were never there so forget that, keep on listening and hoping I don't miss my train.

Sports Camp

2005-03-17T01:34:00.000+01:00

Reading Eldridge Cleaver, thoughts of a black man in Folsom Prison
in the 60´s and I can feel his rage and his extremism through his writing.
And curiously my mind jumps to highschool Sports Camp afternoons in August,
in Eastern Maryland, having to be out in the scorching heat
in the fields, of the 2nd session in the afternoon.
Too hot to go for a run, except in the woods, or play soccer
when we should have all been napping, yes, like here in Spain.
Knowing the 2nd session was over around 5:00 and heading home
and to diner and was it swimming night or movie night
and to giggle away in dorm rooms, sneaking out to scurry down the hall
illicitly meeting in the bathroom, after we were sequestered
one toe outside the threshold of your room and punishment
was push-ups, or wall-sits. And the coaches made it into a game,
before lights out and just after they hovered,
how many can we catch.

Cacolat

2005-03-15T01:08:00.000+01:00

Dairy comes and goes in waves for me here, days of yogurt and yogurt
and cheese and cheese and icecream, then days with none.
I´m stuck on chocolate milk now,
hopefully that will be gone soon.

Jaume Lluch is my sugar daddy.
Roser is my babysitter.

Sol De Brugas

2005-03-03T23:20:00.000+01:00

He left me alone in the office, the little side room of the off-season bodega, the place where when its warm people stop in to taste and buy wines. But now its freezing, like being in a damp basement, and the orange gas container thing is all lit up and breathing fire heat onto my right side. I´m emailing some French and Swiss distributers, and translating introductions about Sol De brugas, and reading about organic wine standards and how can I get people in the US to buy this man´s wines so that I can be rich, well no, not that so much really, but there is this wonderful feeling of ambition that I suddenly have with this job, I don´t know what´s to happen, how does this business work, is he a good viticulturist, is he smart enough to carry out all his grand plans, is this wine even any good (by international wine know-it-all standards), what will happen in the season, can I help with the harvesting, will I get to ride the Yamaha 250 thats been sitting in his garage?. Hace mucho Viento and the gate keeps flapping and the pines are blowing but at least its sunny today and he went to check on the workers in the fields and he´ll be back soon, now its 6 and then he´ll take me back to the train station, back to Barcelona.

SSStarts

2005-02-23T23:45:00.000+01:00

Todayistoocoldtothink. I am reading the Black Cat with one of my English
Classes, it is in very simple English but I had forgotten how good that
story is, had forgotten about Edgar Allen.

Looking for Thursday, getting thru wednesday,
planning Friday and Semana Santa, Alice or no Alice.

Mini Ponytail is back

2005-02-21T11:52:00.000+01:00

Sickness finally over, was it that yogurt,we´ll never know, sniffles still around with the second ola de frio but soon I´ll be jacketless and gloveless again eating ice cream cones everyday. Now I´m stuffed with Veritas croissants, can´t help taking the whole bag to fuel my 2-3 everyday warmed in the sandwichmaker habit. Roser and I home from the play eat silent dinners joined by Laia and Luna crying in heat, esta embarazado, no sabemos, creo que si but we won´t know until we see it eh.
What I watched Roser eat for dinner:
one tiny bowl of macaroni noddles warmed in the microwave in Caldo de Pollo, wheat cracker crumbles with variety pack sliced cheese, olive spread on one slice of Bimbo bread (the Wonder bread of Spain), more cheese bits on bimbo slice and more macaronis and for dessert a stawberry yogurt which claims to offer soya and fiber in miniscule amounts. She cooks pasta, burns it to the bottom of the pot half of the time, keeps it in the fridge for a week, then throws it away and makes more, plain or with broth, never seen her eat it with tomato sauce even, oh sometimes she fries some butifarra or beef slab up, hmmm has she ever heard of vegetables, occasionally I´ve seen a packaged salad mix in the fridge.

Remembersthings

2005-02-03T17:59:00.000+01:00

Eating burritos at little place on 10th and Spring Garden with Laura and Rose and I had just come back from a bike ride out in Roxborough, Rose and I split a burrito outside then it was too cold and windy so we moved inside, this was in end of October as philly began to turn colder sunny but brisk fat burritos with lots of rice, talking big discussing our plans to start a business together, to work together raking leaves in the suburbs, clean peoples basements, organize their home offices, integrate ourselves into the daily operations of a rich family so we would become indespensible.

Fashion vocab
blood blisters
cardboard casas (with tiled floor)
free music
tortilla contests
Design a village on four letter sized pieces of paper
and I´ll label everything in red pen English.

Ayer

2005-02-01T16:40:00.000+01:00

Yesturday I checked email at the library in the evening and found out about Axi.
Then I rode home and made dinner with all this perfectly good Seiten and tofu I found in the Veritas trashbin. I drank a bottle of wine and before I knew it I was crying. Then I walked for a while in the cold.

maybe Maybe=The Future

2005-01-21T15:49:00.000+01:00

Maybe six hours of teaching job soon with a company in Madrid, yeah then I can go out again and buy things for my room, like a rug, and a lamp, and fancy yogurt.
Maybe cleaning boats, painting houses, maybe Alexander the Great was not as bad as it could have been, maybe it was a shitty movie but I wanted to revel in it anyway and laugh at the elephants and horses in slow motion and Angelina Jolie talking with a persian accent and squirming around with snakes.
The president of the United States just got inaugurated in a city under seige, where citizens who are are supposedly soooo free, can´t even walk near their Capitol where barricades of bushes line the lawns, or walk by their Supreme Court anymore or walk on the mall without a security pass, who have off work because streets are blocked off and potholes are being guarded. "One paradegoer was relieved of some oranges, deemed "a throwable device" by the police."
I feel better because I´m not there and I don´t have to witness this.

unload unpack

2005-01-12T13:39:00.000+01:00

new room for sleeping and spending, things are dry here
Iamsmelly, shirtsaresmelly
Revelation One in parts: life is about training yourself to do things and then repeating them over and over again, training yourself to do as many activities as you can and we seem to have an unlimited capacity for this, and then practicing those patterns. Examples-- languages, musical instruments, editing, climbing, running, swimming, biking, carpentry, painting, etc.,--> all these tasks, motions, repeating them over and over so as not to loose them, to perfect them.
So, as many things as you can learn to do earlier on, then the longer you have to repeat them over and over again, some things you lose time for, but really we should have enough time to do many things over and over.

Okay so this is our daily routine, then we need changes every once in a while, so we travel somewhere else, or do some new activity we don´t get to do as often, or take drugs, or sleep or maybe we sit and repeat nothing for a few days.

I lay here and think of allthethings I am not learning, allthetings I am not practicing, allthethings I am not repeating over and over again.

Saturday

2005-01-09T19:57:00.000+01:00

Help Sara move early to her new piso that is full of light and fake wood floors, and dirty windows which I will clean as soon as I can get my hands on them. Four people assembly-line up the five flights, lifting and climbing and passing on, excited for dinner parties and card parties and terrace times.
Bicyle to Pizza Party in the Park for the helpers, rocquefort and cebolla and champignones cheese more cheese, sun more sun, cards more cards, nicotine spinning times lay down on the blanket before my next turn.

Trouble Steering Dolls

2005-01-01T17:05:00.000+01:00

January first.
Blood on the sidewalk Puke on the sidewalk
young dads buy ice creams for their daughters
Mini people push fake babies in mini strollers on the sidewalk.
Trouble steering dolls

Family Times Are Over

2004-12-28T13:29:00.000+01:00

There. Now, its done, we are out of the apartment, on the 11th floor by the sea. Parents are on the road to Madrid, Jeanne and Elissa are wandering around the city for the afternoon,
and I am free. No, more struggling with meeting times, arrangements, other peoples needs,wants, hungers, tiredness, Americaness, lateness, slowness.
Life is back to whatever normal was before they came, only now I have a bed to sleep in, a cat, and a sweet little studio in Poble Sec that I´´m sharing with Gorka for two weeks. Don´t keep asking me what I´m doing for New Years, and where I´m moving and how long I´m staying.

Libraries in BCN

2004-12-16T19:31:00.000+01:00

Bike a little ways and find the rich neighborhood library
up on via Augusta that has good DVD´s and fast computers
and good English novels, not just Terry Gillian "waiting to exhale"
and John Grisham novels.
Yea free internet in the library too.
My goal--go to all the libraries in BCN.
I have this little pocket map that tells me where they are.
4 down, 22 more to go.
Carried away.

Disturbances

2004-12-14T15:39:00.000+01:00

Dream: coming back from the underwater disco, but it wasn´t early in the morning, it was around closing time in the evening, around 8:00 pm, I stopped by this one store, I thought it was a shoe store but there was an orthopedic (is this the word for foot doctor person) doctor/designer lady wearing a lab coat thing like the ladies in the Farmacias and she sat me down in the back room which had hospital lighting and was sort of dim and greenish. She asked me what sports shoe i needed, I said basketball (huhh?), i said i played basketball and she got excited and started saying stuff about designing me a special shoe based on how i move when i play, she had an accent when she spoke english, presumeably we were in Spain, she then preceded to show me this plasic mold diagram thing but then I disappointed her when i said, all i realy wanted was a pair of Nikes that I thought I had seen in the window. She was like ¨oh, this isn´t a retail store, you´re mistaken, we make custom sport shoes¨ and then she began encouraging me to leave, sort of ushering me out, and closing up shop. I walked back to Sara´s apartment.

Allisoutsidetoday

2004-12-11T03:15:00.000+01:00

Many things today.
No doubt now that I have a bicycle.

Wake up early to swim,in the lockeroom senyora tells me about her morning.
Old ladies old men doing water aerobics make waves in my lane carrer rapid but then a flopper joins me and gotta get to class anyway.
Fancy shampoo is fair game when its left in the shower stall

Class is bull, no students no one teaches but Fritz gives me the last bite of his chocolate peanut butter "Zone" bar which makes it worth the trip.

Off on my bike again its find a new library time, read british mens style magazines and an Ian McEwan novel. A hot air balloon in trouble trying to land in a park where a couple is having a picnic. I am in the parc de la Cituidad on a bench watching a big fat greenish-blue goose-waterfowelesque thing strut the bank of a man-made duck pond,
but its spring warm and the school kids are on an art field trip, drawing waterfowl, and now I've got to go meet my stupid class for lunch.

Bike Times !!!

2004-12-10T11:15:00.000+01:00

I got a bike, waahhooo! yippppeeee!
thiscityismine
ridedownthehillinthemorningupthehillintheevening
nevergohome

its speckled black and purple but who cares!
its got good parts, new brake cables, rack, I bought a kit to change the quick releases on the front, back and seat to an allen key

Chocolate and dominos

2004-12-04T14:30:00.000+01:00

Eat chocolate and play dominos, some nights.
Empanadas and beer some nights.
The disco? Not yet, maybe tonight.

I had a chocolate tasting with myself yesterday, I bought three dark chocolate bars, one with almonds, one with coffee, one plain, and tasted one square of each, going from lightest to darkest of course.

I love the supermarkets here, though I can't seem to buy normal items, I can only buy strangly packaged things, and items I have never seen before that intrigue me, canned sea items for instance. I had a mussel/crab/sardine tasting with myself the other day.

I'm currently looking for a suitable toothbrush for smaller mouths, not 40 medium, 35 soft.

DIR

2004-12-01T21:03:00.000+01:00

I just joined the hip sports club in town. Its like the PSC, or NYSC of Barcelona. Yeah, well, I joined not becuase it has beautiful people inside, it really does have the best facilities, except for the pool, which I found out is very dark and my googles are tinted blue so I was mis-estimating the wall every couple of turns, also, as I leaned once again, the "carrer rapid" is never very fast at all, I lap everyone over and over again. As soon as my class ends, I can go earlier in the day, when it is less crowded. So yeah, I joined because the saleslady was really nice, even though we couldn't communicate very well, she showed me around and it was really the best deal, the cheapest for the month, no strings attached, you don't need a bank account, or a doctors report, so I can swim and run and do free weights and pilates, and they even have a self massage machine thing, and free water, which is a big deal here because everyone has to buy drinking water, and DIR is near where i live and will be living.
Now, I still have to get a bike, which is proving very difficult, so I don't keep walking everywhere and wearing out all my shoes.

Cadillacs, Corvettes and Skotas

2004-11-29T20:26:00.000+01:00

Laughing so much I almost peed in my pants riding downhill on Avenue Princep D'Asturies side saddle on the back of Sara's cadillac bike.
Christopher dodges scooters on his corvette.
Going to pick up the Skoda (Mira's bike that she lets me borrow alot).

Hodges and the Eggman

2004-11-28T22:12:00.002+01:00

No Thanksgiving with the Americans. Who wants turkey, not me.
Sara made a pumpkin pie from scratch last night, with a real European pumpkin, which are tinier I think, and I O'D ed on pumpkim puree, both sweet and savory.
While she baked, I did a puzzle of two kittens in the bathroom, perched on the edge of two small wooden buckets, bathed in soft yellow light, admidst folded towels, soap squares, and a scrubby sponge. It took me about 3 hours.
This morning, we ate pumpkin pie for breakfast and then went on a sunday bike ride to an area of the city known as "Clot". Rode around the tiny streets for a while, found the cool bike shop, and looked at some squats and then we went to the park and race-climbed to the top of this roped-jungle gym thing and hung upside down. We watched the first half of a middle-school girls basketball game.
Tapas, beers and spanish almonds.
Thick hot chocolate, chocolate mouse, tiger puzzle and checkers.
Do you play you have to jump or not?
Sara left to go meet Hodges.

Pointy boots on scooters

2004-11-25T16:23:00.000+01:00

today I taught Ricardo a grammar lesson, he was the only student, so much for all that xeroxing I did at the metro this morning. In my kitchen I have some milk, some cheese, and a lot of fruit, like the fruity risotto I just made for lunch. I don't drink much coffee. A lot/Many/Much---with dots, with pictures, fill in the blanks and role playing in the shop. My lesson sped by today, K*** says I looked more comfortable, well thanks K***, "you didn't look like a deer in headlights today."
{ . . but i know everything anyway because I'm a big tall man who behaves like a child in class and with my girlfriend.}
This dude has been steadily annoying me since the first day of class. He's a passive agressive obnoxious Catholic American who is so immature I want to knock some sense into him. He shifts around in his chair and jiggles his kneed when not engaged, or impatient, like a 5 year old, how does his girlfriend, who is also in the class, put up with him. [ . . .I'm mister awesome teacher and I can instruct everyone in how to be awesome like me. Hey, I'm the fun-loving, sociable, likeable guy who's everybody's friend, look at me! . . .] He makes pissy faces like a four year-old, he pouts when his girlfriend doesn't do what he wants, he demands, he needs to seriously get a hold of his A.D.D and his temper. His lesson today was typical of his style--it was on Bush, reading a text he made up about Bush and answering questions about it. Now I do agree he is certainly a much better teacher than me at this point. He has more experience and he is lively and energetic and engaging, so maybe he this is his chosen field and he is good at it. I take his advice in the critiques and I think he has some useful things to say. But if there's one characteristic I hate in a person, it's thinking you are overly amiable, that you are the most likable, friendliest person in the room, its kind of like hubris, not neccessarily that you think you are better, or more god-like than anyone else in the room (although I'm sure K*** does), it's that you presume you are liked every where you go. Its the quality of humility, that I think we all need a little bit of, and most people have, especially in a new setting, a new country.

Ahhhhh, venting into the interweb . . .

Nap Time. Alarm Set.

2004-11-25T16:06:00.000+01:00

Hobble a few feet for a sip of water.
One drop, barely there.
Water isn't free here.
On the way back, in the dark of midafternoon, in a foreign room, I miss the bed, jab my throat into the dresser, lay down and just dosing off again when "Ivan" calls. Who is this Ivan?

He thinks I am Emily, a 19 year old Californian who speaks Spanish well. Apparently I gave him my number on Saturday night in a bar in Madrid. I have a tall brown-haired friend?

UnconvincedUnthwarted,
he will call me on Friday, no?

Music for making lines to for with.

2004-11-22T10:20:00.000+01:00

Contrabass overtones

Double bass sleeping in a double bed next to a man with a bow,
tucked in

Place. Home. Hometown. Native tongue.

2004-11-22T10:15:00.000+01:00

Don´t speak Ingles to me for me.

Lunch with Miguel and Rosa in their sunny apartment in Terrassa.
Converse Catalan and coffee, my first in Spain.
Drive to Montserrat, kiss the black Virgin, stare at Jesus.

Arches and Clouds.
Candles and Coves.

Sara and I visit un piso with a large troublesome beast of a cat.
Keep your doors closed at all times.
Excellent terrace.
Ambient sculptor.
Carry home a free drawing table for Christopher.

Operaman strolls outside.

2004-11-18T13:40:00.000+01:00

For the writing of those words make letters on papers is more pleasing than typing.

Barcelona Again

2004-11-16T20:14:00.000+01:00

Spain doesn´t even know I am here, I am an invisible alien.
My class actually exists, at 8:00 am in the morning no less, and the students are not half bad, some are over zealous but no one is unbearable. I don´t think I´m gonna hang out with them much, as I am trying to get away from all that America. What´s great here is you can have as little or has much America as you want.

Yesterday I slept, today I walked, and walked, down to the grand boulevards, up the slight hill to Sara´s flat--four bachelors and a maid who comes every two weeks. 13 more days until she cleans again, the sink is full and there are no dishes.

Class gets out around 2:00, then the whole city eats lunch for two hours, the scooters and mopeds pull out off the sidewalk and race home. MOTOS everywhere, all remind me of my beloved which I sold before I left, Suzuki 250´s, Honda 250´s abound, I will soon find one of my own.

Piscina Saint Jordi is an olymipic size pool that needs better lane lines, it was like swimming in a lake, or a river. Carrer rapid but I still ran over the Spainards in my lane. I am learning swimming vocabulary so I can talk to the other swimmers. I have never wanted to learn a language so bad as right now, I want to take an intensive Spanish course as soon as my TEFL course is over. It´s easy to fit in here, but I need to be able to communicate on a basic level better.

No coffee yet, but coffee yogurt which was mmmmmm, the best I´ve ever had, I always knew I loved Euro food, tiny sandwiches, pastries all day, wine, wine, wine.

Barcelona Begins

2004-11-16T20:10:00.000+01:00

I was easy, it was supposed to be easy, things fell into place

My Journey into Market Research

2004-10-20T00:09:00.000+02:00

Title: American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) 60th Annual conference
Location: Philadelphia convention Center
Date: October 18-19th, 2004

Aramark
Supports
Remedial
Mayhem

All
Souls
Reduced to
Marketing

Ask
Sigh
Retreat
Move on

Apply
Sand
Rub
Methodically

Assholes
Scurry
Round
Market st

Anticipating
Sweet
Rewards
Momentarily . . . .

Please, no more candy cookies donuts biscotti latte.
Profiles of healthy sperm.

CanIcanIwillI

2004-08-30T16:55:00.000+02:00

I am having a surprise birthday party for myself Sat night September 4th-5th.
The Plan: My plane gets in to Philadelphia international Airport at 10:40pm, however because it is Delta and because of domestic security issues, we wait on the runway for an hour and I arrive after 11:30pm. I de-plane, make my way out of all the corridors of people who have bags to claim, cross over to the Septa platform to catch the R1 which I will have inevitably just missed. Since this runs every 25 minutes, lets assume I catch that at 12 ish. Twenty minutes later I arrive at Market East station, hop on my bike, which is locked at the police station, and ride to 703 N.3rd Street. It is now the 25th anniversary of my birth and look, I've surprised myself.

trying this

2004-08-13T16:19:00.001+02:00

Want to see some Emil pictures from my road trip journey?

Lifethings progressing dailywise

2004-08-10T23:10:00.000+02:00

August is arriving
August is middle
August is over

Bruises bitten

2004-08-04T04:20:00.000+02:00

my boss asks me about the bruise on my left arm, the one with spots like someone grabbed me, but that one is yellow now and two weeks old already, but then there are the ones on my legs , of course, always around the knees, but one cherry tomato sized one on each thigh, bicycle grease on the inside of my calves, dirt rings around my ankles. I am fair skinned, is this why external injuries are so obvious? Do I look dirty, do i look like the victim of domestic abuse? It's hot and I'm wearing less so they are more visible than in the winter, so there's that too. After each round fades, somehow, another week of summer parties ensues and I'm covered in bruises again, but I sort of don't mind really, because they take a while to progess and they are fun to watch, they change colors everyday and the big grapefruit sized ones are so mysterious, how did this get here, hmmmm, what will it look like three days from now

CRIPPLE

2004-07-13T23:19:00.000+02:00

Tragedy:
Me--a swimmer without an arm.

I'm sore and jaundiced and crippled.

I have to bend over and hang my arms over my head
to put my shirt on.

Wrestling:
I won the battle but lost the war.
She said her kidney's hurt
for days afterward.

welcome to arsenide pie!

2004-07-02T03:41:00.000+02:00

dear reader,
each and everyone! please welcome emil to the Arsenide Blog Collective! hip hip hooray! hip hip hooray! hip hip hooray!
signed,
karen