this time, hopefully
today is what i'm calling my spanish birthday. that is, it's exactly a year since we arrived in barcelona, with crappy castellano, zero euskera and a frío de la hostia [cold as fuck]. i told my favourite flatmate alberto, and he started asking me silly questions like, so what do you like most about spain. what do you like least?
perhaps, at risk of being branded sentimental when i get to my flat i will post a quotation quoted in the poetics of space. though perhaps i will deem it too sentimental. we'll see.
[later, at home] ok, here it is:
'that people could come into the world in a place they could not at first even name and had never known before; and that out of that nameless and unknown place they could grow and move around in it until its name they knew and called with love, and call it HOME, and put roots there and love others there; so that whenever they left this place they would sing homesick songs about it and write poems of yearning for it, like a lover...'
(goyen, quoted by bachelard, p. 58)
it's not home, maybe, but something like it.
welcome to europe. hope you like it here.
j. xx.
you know you can't hide from me for another six months. you admitted that you had to give it back. you're just not going to get away with it. so you may as well just give me a call to organise the exchange. all right?
sincerely,
j.
also, recently bought myself a dvd copy of mar adentro (the sea inside), which won last year's best foreign fim oscar (which has to be the most fantastic category, they should call it best ethnick film or something). it's good. completely compelling. and also taught me that the provincial gallego accent in spanish (that is, from galicia, in the north, near portugal) is fantastic. best illustrated by rosa 'the girl from boiro'. gorgeous.
about a week ago, when luis (flatmate, dentist, younger than one would assume, but you wouldn't know to look at him) came back from valencia, he brought back a perfectly functioning pc, a few years old. this at first seemed cool. another computer. always handy, no? wrong. this computer, as i mentioned earlier, is 'only a few years old'. it has 6 gigs of ram. when you ty to use the internet it's like having to use the internet by instructing every keystroke to your grandparents. no grandma, forwardslash. the line that goes- for fuck's sake. the worst thing about all of this is that now, when you want to use one of the useful computers, you have to sit it in front of the drawers underneath the desk. there is no leg-space. you have to push your legs aside, organising one of many possible awkward arrangements, all of which, after a few mintues, become painful.
for this reason, i am now secretly plotting to kill luis. i'm aware that secret assassination plots shouldn't be declared over the net. but fuck it, nobody over here speaks english, yeah?
so i turned up to my wine exam. i thought, hey, you never know, maybe i'll be able to do it. i got the sheet, read the questions, and sit there for probably one minute. read them again, think for another twenty seconds and take the paper to the profesora. you know what, i say. i don't know any of this stuff. if i write stuff down, i'm just going to waste your time. i don't want to waste your time. sorry. thank you. goodbye.
an aside: isn't it great when people smell nice.
safari 'unexpectedly quit' on me earlier as i was just about to finish a post. what is it, a fucking disgruntled employee in hospitality?
now i don't have the heart to write it again.
point form.
-there were lyrics from the clash, the ramones and public enemy translated into basque from the local newspaper
-figures on prostitution and immigration
-a mention of pronunciations of the title 'brokeback mountain'
-a note that women are coming to power.
sorry, blame safari.
so at 12am 1st january spain's new anti-tabacco law came into effect. it was all people were talking about the week preceeding it. the basic sentiment of the discussions were something along the lines of: itstheendofthefuckingworld! ohmygod! whatthefuckarewegoingtodo?
the funny thing is, the law is basically still about ten years behind those of every other country in, for example, the eu. the way it works in cafés and bars is that if they have more than, say 100m2 or something, then they have to provide a non-smoking area. of course, in spain, the majority of bars fit about 20 people when packed. so basically no one is obliged to have non-smoking spaces. all the rest of the bars, cafés etc, get to choose whether they want to permit smoking or not. so something like 97% have decided that they'll permit it. for the first time in my life i've seen 'smoking permitted' signs. a green circle around a happily smouldering cigarette. no line through the middle.
all this has made me realise that the whole discourse in defence of smoking is almost completely non-existent in australia. that is, there exists no discursive framework to empower statements in defence of smoking. smoking, though everyone fucking does it, is unmentionable.
anyway, gotta go have a bokata in a smoking permitting bar.
alba
another skinny white boy
antipopper
asti
english lessons
hon
no se puede
somnambulist
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