it still hurts

this time, hopefully

the image dislodged

the other week i was watching some spanish news, something i rarely do, because it's just so dificult, and you end up just being confused or bored. i prefer to read newspapers, because at least i can take my time. i was really just watching whilst waiting to change it to something else. and then there came a story about that factory that collapsed in bangladesh. i didn't know it was bangladesh, i actualy guessed india from the footage, but later on when i read little newspaper reports, i found out that it was actually bangladesh. i just sat there watching the carnage with all these words swirling around the room, i heard fábrica, so i knew it was a factory, and that really didn't surprise me. there were women screaming with loss, slumped loose, lost. there was rubble, and still more words from the announcer, hardly any of which i caught. i knew there were dead people, workers, but the images and the words that were to back them up, to decode them, had become dislocated. and in this confusion, the camera showed a small opening in the rubble, with an upturned human foot, slightly dusty protruding towards the surface. and then a stick approached the foot, to prod it, like kids to a rotting animal. maybe to see if it's really dead, but then maybe just to poke it. but when this stick prodded this foot, to the backingof half-understood words, the foot jolted violently. the person wasn't dead. i jolted in my seat. i wanted to run away like the kids would if the animal moved. then the report ended, and i still had no idea of what was happening. and the picture replayed itself over and over in my mind. every time the foot moved i felt cold and half-dead.

now this image in itself was shocking. but what amplified its effect (though possibly i want to say affect, in a more cultural studies way, but i don't remember what that really means) was that it was half-dislodged with its link with verbal language. it as like a plant uprooted with clumps of soil hanging from its roots. i needed the words to read this image, but i only half had a grasp of them, and every time that foot jolted with shock in my mind, another pieceof dirt fell and i was left with the image replaying again and again, twice as disturbing as it ever would have been with or without the announcer's words.

i had this same experience when we watched a pirated version of hotel rwanda [who would have thought that it wouldn't have the subtitles like it said it would on the photocopied cover?]. at least it was in spanish, so i kind of half-understood it. well at least, that's whati thought when it started. but now i think that it was infinitely more terrifying precisely because it was in spanish and i half-understood the dialogue. i sat there watching people screaming and cowering, i saw a road littered with corpses, but all the while, not completely understanding what was going on. [of course compounded by my general ignorance of the history of rwanda] there are all sorts of terrors that you find between languages. and it makes me think how terrifying the process of migrating must be for people who never get the chance to really learn the language. watching things happen and half-knowing. half-fearing. what sort of anxiety does that cause? and how does one articulate that sort of terror in a language that forever has the potential to break away from its links with the image and leave you lost in a world where images mean half of what they mean, the other half opening up, threatening to swallow you whole.

posted by: joelistix at 13:18 | link | comments (1) |

my spanish flatmate's latest

[translation, of course]:

sergio, flatmate: hey joel, check this out. this is the best  thing in the world.

[sergio takes his tub of nutella (differently pronounced) and half empties it onto two slices of bread. this is the makings of a sandwich. sergio then produces, perhaps from his armpit like a cartoon character without pockets, his shrivelly, phallic chorizo. sergio begins to cut the chorizo into small slices, perhaps in some sort of spanish-catholic/freudian act of transferred flagellation, and covers the nutella with little slices of chorizo]

joel: _____________________________

trans. scott, j. at the time of reception, other day.

_{^{have you noticed that i enjoy doing fake referencing? it's funny, because it's the only way i like to reference. if i could just refernce as a joke in all my essays, i'd probably actually do it.}} 

 +++

ange came to visit me this last weekend. which was great. we went to trashy basque bars with dogs wandering around and beers that were all head. ange developed a fetish for the basque boys' dreadlock mullets, which are, i have to say, cool. we plotted secret methods of making friends with locals, and decided to speak only in spanish to make ourselves less exclusive [it lasted about five minutes] and we sang out loud to every english song just because we could. yeah, jet! yeah! even though none of us really like jet. go figure...

and then, with hangovers, we headed to the one cute cafe that i've found here that serves nice interesting coffee and tea and stuff. we went early to take advantage of the breakfast, largely because it included a boiled egg. boiled egg, toast, orange juice, tea/coffee. it just seemed such a fantastic novelty, thata fancy cafe would try to get away with serving you a boiled egg. and then, they fucked up the egg! it was raw, i.e. transparent egg-white pooring out like water. so we had to go buy some potato to fill our seedy stomachs.

posted by: joelistix at 12:48 | link | comments |

¡exciting new interactive opportunity!

so i'm thinking about piercing my lip or something. but i don't know whether to get the stud thing in the centre, or the ring thing on the side. i suppose i could also put a ring in the centre or the stud thingy on the side, but i just usually think of it the other way around.

my first ever girlfriend had a lip ring. the ring on the side kind, with a little ball in the centre of the ring, so maybe this desire is some sort of transferred will to mend my heart that she broke when i was sixteen.

but i'm opening the floor up to people for suggestions, one or the other, or you may even suggest something completely different. it's up to you!!

^{if i'm lucky, this might even spark the same amount of interest as the win a date with joel competition. (see Rolfe, A. issue one, vertigo 2004)}

posted by: joelistix at 10:11 | link | comments (10) |

a few bits and pieces

i woke up this morning with that refreshing feeling of wastedness. the one where you were clever enough the night before to drink plenty of water, so you're not actually hungover, you're just fucked. your body is sort of spiteful because it knows its been fucked over. lots of alcohol, late night, smoke, little sleep, and you think that a few glasses of water before bed will make things better.

so you just feel sort of drained and grey. half of your inside has been cleaned out, so you eat some substantial food and that feels real good, you're half solid again now. yeah.

you have a shower and the hot water just soaks in everywhere. and you're so clean. you want to stay this clean forever, with your skin pink and tender.

but that feeling doesn't last. and you just   feel     so         slow . so you go sleep for a bit more. most of the day gets eaten up without you really knowing or caring. got to watch a spanish dubbed version of the pelican brief, and then twister.

been reading discipline and punish lately, quite enjoying it, and almost feeling like i'm starting to get my head around it a little bit. i almost feel like i'm starting to get foucault's whole power thing, the way it's inscribed in everything, and has to be managed in every situation in different ways.

i sort of feel like i can almost speak spanish. almost. only problem is, all spanish people just want to speak english to me. they're all desperate to practise. in fact, a lot of them will pay you, just to talk to them, for an hour or so a week in english.

an observation: all spanish people should be sent to the uk to learn english. though not for too long. their english should be slightly faulted, uneasy, the accent obviously spanish but with just a hint of the old empire on some of the vowels.

i want to use deleuze in my research project about spain's policy of regularising undocumented migrants by offering a conditional amnesty for some with steady jobs. how it isn't necessarily just about giving rights to exploited migrants, but also about absorbing worlds within spain that are currently out of control; that is, they are virtually invisible, and therefore unable to be monitored constantly, as is required in a society of control. anyway, it may be a little ambitious seeming i've read almost zero deleuze before, and the idea may turn out to be completely useless, but it's keeping me going for the moment on an assignment that is so thorough and formal (proposals, methodologies, primary research) that it's been threatening to swallow me, or bore me, or swallow my bored effort.

that'll do for now.

_{afterthought. i'm using my french flatmate's laptop for this, and the word for font is police.}

^{and also; his computer is rancidly infected with porn pop-ups. which means that every time you connect to the net you've got to frantically close down window after window, some with really fucked up ethnic fetishes, some old or young, amateur, or just your regular net porn. we all have our suspicions as to how it got there...}

posted by: joelistix at 20:59 | link | comments (2) |

roots manuva in my ears

motion 5000. that's what's playing at the moment asti. in the one sunday computer room at my uni. 11:30 am. this is your public birthday card. put grace on for me, and tell aden to fuck off when he makes some gibe about high school nostalgia.

xxx

posted by: joelistix at 10:32 | link | comments (1) |

i'm not usually like this

i'm not usually like this, this hasn't happened to me before

<liar>

normally i'm well behaved . it's just you, i don't know -

<you know that it is not just you, that he is normally like this. we are all normally like this, he just doesn't know when to stop>

you have a nice voice, he said earlier. it must be because you've been sleeping...

<right then you more than half knew. you have a nice voice? come on>

i suppose i shouldn't give compliments, right? that could be dangerous. right? and he loosened his head a little from his shoulders and moved it slightly closer to you, one neck vertebrae at a time, to get a better look. right? he repeats another time , scrutinising you intensely. trying to figure you out.

i don't know what you mean, you lie. <you know what he means>

:::

ok, but before i leave, he says later, come closer.

<you go closer>

closer,

<you go closer still>

closer, he is whispering now, with hurt in his eyes, like he is hurt in a coy way by your coyness.

<you are taking fake steps now, lifting one foot, then the other, before placing them back down again.>

closer, for the final time, flicking his head back the tiniest bit with mock-teen attitude.

<he is too bizarrely serious to pull that off, you think to yourself>

with the last closer he tugs at your jumper slightly <his response to your fake steps> and then he slides his great big hands under your jumper, fumbling, without purpose.

<the fumbling is a false fumbling, a simulation. it masks a specific and known purpose. it imitates chance when it finds its target. you have done this before. it is the fumbling of, oh, is that your hand? maybe i'll hold it gently>

:::

later still:

he leans in so slowly, as if he has all the time in the world and all the distance in the world to travel <which he does, from all the way up there>

when he finally arrived it wasn't so much kisses that he delivered as a nibbling. first around one cheek, and then slowly towards your neck. like a giraffe, gently, with his huge lips, leathery, to protect against the thorns of the acacia tree, or the rough skin of cheeks or necks.

posted by: joelistix at 10:25 | link | comments |