this time, hopefully
i wrote a short story yesterday in about two hours. i let myself watch los hombres de paco while i thought of all the elements that would go in it. i am almost positive that i put 'raymond carver' in it more than in any other short story ever written.
i went to monte san cristóbal and rummaged through the ruins of an old fort that was later used as a prison for republican prisoners. my chest was heavy with all of it. there was a fairly well maintained slightly blasphemously graffitied church! i was there with a girl who is an operatically trained singer. she sang within it and it was huge. it reminded me of shine. i got to discuss english grammar for like, an hour. we discussed the existence or non-existence of the subjunctive. i used spanish to back up my presumptions. they used german. i always knew i would have to finnd germans to discuss english grammar. one of them said: you guys don't have any declensions! like it was the craziest thing in the fucking world. when i was losing i could always pull out the i-speak-a-living-english-upon-which-grammar-is-a-silly-constricting-force-i-love-grammar-talk-to-
me-more-about-grammar.
i watched australian draw which was a win i was ecstatic and hated all those fuckers supporting them who think 'soccer' is a girls sport and wouldn't have been caught dead watching the thing a year ago.
i went out and that was a whole nother story.
the separation of a and nother is the absolute climax of the english language probably the most ungrammatical thing in it it shits all over splitting the infinitive for a stylistic gauchery/marvel.
going camping with randoms from going out and getting trashy. it's my consolation prize for not getting to see dj shadow tonight at the sonar festival in barcelona. no one wanted to take me. oh well, at least there'll be water to swim in. going to el pantano (reservoir, damn, etc). see you all on sunday night. i have a feeling i may miss the brazil game.
3:1
i watched the game with a couple of foreigner friends. one other australian. supporting australian football (soccer) is probably my one concession to australian nationalism. but really my loyalty to football functions largely against australian nationalism, as most football support in australia always has. i used to watch the socceroos with my dad when they played matches against sutherland (yes, as in shire), the local state league team, to which maybe one hundred people would turn up, probably including the players.
needless to say, in the sutherland shire soccer never quite provided the hyperactive machismo that the shaya demanded. like, you use your feet, aren't even allowed to really push anyone (which makes punching people in the face doubly difficult), and of course, most fatally, wogs like it. now if you played within the shire, you could almost stay ignorant to that fact, given that sometimes we can be a little hostile to outsiders. problem is that once you left the shire, every team was fucking greek or croat or italian or serb, macedonian, or, like, cyprian or assyrian. and you knew it was only so long before you'd end up having to play with some of them.
i was kind of glad to be able to watch australia play - and fucking win, with some fantastic goals, including one from aloisi, pamplona's old champion - without having to be a part of the whole improvised nationalist parade that i've heard is going on down there*. and having to listen to people put the disclaimer of 'but i still think it's a girl's game' on their 'enthusiasm'.
so yeah, it was nice. i'm also pretty happy that the kids get to play against brazil in the world cup. i don't give a shit if we get whipped.
+++++++++++
* i was suprised to find that i was a nervous fucking wreck while they were losing, and genuinely elated when they started putting in the goals.
another funny thing is reading the match coverage on smh.com.au, who clearly find themselves strapped for journalists with any sort of knowledge of the game, trying and failing to figure out what you call that, and copying performance assessments from commentators.
there, that's as close as you're gonna get to sentimental, nationalistic joelistix. unless of course we keep winning.
you should be careful listening to medulla. if you're feeling queasy especially. the gruff throat sounds towards the end of pleasure is all mine can be kind of unsettling. and the emotional force of some of the vocals can be rough on the heart.
the photo came unexpected. blue and red diagonal stripes, light for the flying. i broke off the blu-tack and stuck it up immediately. but then it sat there staring at me, wedding worlds that for now are broken apart. like i needed to be reminded of what i don't have here. i took the photo down, pulled of the remains of the blu-tack with the larger mass. put it away.
(hopefully)
love poetry, a collaborative, translative, poetic project with ramon hervas, judo master/poet.
another project that people need to hold me to is the replacement of the zine i never got round to that will be called fifty foreign fragments, and will be made up of snippets from the blog and other previously unpublished fragments, some of which are as yet still unwritten. if i don't give an update soon pester me to get working on them.
on a show that if i understand correctly, consists in the host reading facts or phrases about one's partner, and they have to say whether they are true or not.
'my sexual fantasy is a threesome with a black man and my husband' the husband responds jovially, correctly, 'that's my girl...'
sometimes things that happen on tv here just make me want to squeeze my head with both hands until it breaks.
here are some little things i've been forgetting to post for some time.
1) a kind of diss, talk-yourself-up line for my next life as an mc on erudition:
i'm more well-read than the da vinci code.
2) a moment of divine appropriateness:
listen to music copied from steph's computer, copied from vertigo's old computers, and going, oh! that anti-piracy ad track is a propellerheads song!*
*you know the ad they put on in cinemas - you wouldn't steal a car.... downloading. music. is. stealing. (or something to that effect)
it's their doomed attempt at trying to convince youth that not-downloading is, like, so hip right now. personally i like pat's semantic re-write of the campaign: you wouldn't make an exact copy of a car.... uh, you know, i probably would hey.
just a quick report.
started the weekend early, on thursday night. ran into mostof our favourites from out and about and handed out invites for the friday and people asked us to write little messages of love on them. we were there until it shut, recruited a fantastic little posse for the best ever club dagny, which rolled easily into friday, a beer in the sun, over to my house then another beer in some different sun then some errands and it was party time. we got there at the official start time and of course no one came for ages, and it took us a couple of hours to realise that we didn't care how many people turned up. eventually just the right number came. péru bought us a cake that said agur joel y dagny. un beso de ´la pulga' [goodbye (basque) joel and dagny. a kiss from 'la pulga']. we didn't know how to react so just thanked him and ate the cake which was fucking fantastic. i went to bed wasted and slept most of the next day, got dragged to a strange house with people who were out of my league regarding trashiness. in short, the weekend was good, the weekend is over.
now i'm in a strange wake, with six weeks left. probably time enough to do a few quick trips to see a few last towns and cities. then it's over. everyone asks: so when are you coming back? you are coming back, yeah?
alba
another skinny white boy
antipopper
asti
english lessons
hon
no se puede
somnambulist
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