The Hyperreality of Home

My father moved around a lot when I was growing up. I lose track when counting all of the homes that we lived in, but there must have been at least 12 that I can remember before the age of 12 when I went to live with my mom; the house in Lake Havasu, the house on Terrace, the house on Brown... Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oregon, Missouri, back to Arizona, back to Missouri, and back to Arizona again. It was all very exhausting and annoying for a pre-teen.

Whenever we found ourselves in Phoenix, my dad would drive by our old house on Terrace. I'm not exactly sure why, maybe because my sisters and I pleaded with him to do so, because it seemed like our home that never was. I don't know what was so special to us about that house. When we moved I must have been just six years old, but I always wanted to drive by it.

This was my first experience with the disemboweling feeling of nostalgia and the useless grasping at a fleeting sense of home.

I inherited both habits from my father, the aimless moving around and the drive-by nostalgic self-torturing. I've lived in fourteen homes since I left my parents house at 18, the average time spent at each place being one year.

It turns out there is one house, my current house, that I moved into accepting its status of infra-home, with the intention of staying just until our lease was up and moving somewhere else. It was a temporary move, a stepping stone. This just so happens to be the house I've lived in the longest (3.5 years) second only to the house I graduated from high school in (6 years).

This is as home as home gets.

But it isn't.

The most authentic, vivid feeling of home that is able to tug at my heartstrings is only present in its residual form. It only really happens once I have left a place.

Yes, I know home should be wherever Luigi and kitty are. In theory it is. But inside I'm in some sort of home-purgatory. It isn't that home is unreal. It's hyperreal. My own misrepresentational memories of it have filtered and recreated an unrealistic expectation in my mind of what home is supposed to feel like.

I'm the idiot tourist described by Baudrillard walking through Disneyland nostalgic for the Main Street America depicted there that was never real to begin with.



Do you know what this means?



It only means that I'm horribly, pathetically ungrateful. Believe me, I realize this. No need to point it out.

I can see myself though, in the future, driving or walking passed my street, and not being able to turn my head away from looking down it, thinking about the people that are occupying the ossuary of my home, sleeping in my room and larcenously taking a shit in my toilet. The nerve.

- Bluestreak

Tea with the Mad Hatter by fd from Flickr.

Welcome to Disneyland and Main Street, USA by andy castro from Flickr

Resolutions of the teeth (and self) improving variety

Well, that’s it. Another year has come and gone.

Happy belated birthday, world (or I should say, Happy Birthday de facto international standard Gregorian calendar).

I’m not about to post my new year's resolutions here and jinx myself, like I’ve done before.

I will tell you that one of these undeclared resolutions concerns quitting a certain disgusting habit in the hopes that my teeth will stop resembling those of some poor chap that was born on the lower end of the feudal scale during the Elizabethan era and that my lungs will be in slightly better condition than those of an unlucky coal miner.

Ahem.

Those Elizabethan serfs had an excuse for the unseemly state their teeth were in; they were busy worrying about more pressing matters such as rotting garbage in the streets and no structured sewage system and oh, you know, stressful things like the bubonic plague. I have no excuse other than wanting to inhale poison for some reason because I guess my life is just too damn easy. My teeth have been unsuspecting casualties.

In light of my rediscovered love of my own teeth (and lungs), I’ve scheduled a visit to the dentist.

The Spanish dentist.

Don’t freak people, this is a first world country. I promise Bluestreak will not end up with gold caps. Although that would kind of rule.

Sometimes I think we Americans might obsess a little too much about our teeth compared to other people. Our teeth do generally kick ass. Well, mine are starting to look as if I’ve been munching ass as opposed to kicking it, but I’m generalizing here.

As an American I know what a dental visit should consist of.

When I go to the dentist I don’t want it to only last ten minutes and to basically just have my mouth rinsed out with a little white hose and then get pat on the back and be told to keep up the good work with the dental hygiene.

No.

I want my teeth to have the living shit scraped off of them and for my bleeding gums to be mercilessly poked at. I want to have to grip the handles on the chair in fear and I want to experience some mild pain. I want the procedure to seemingly go on for eternity. Then I want to be scolded and slightly humiliated for not flossing as much as I should. That would be a normal visit to the dentist.

But this isn’t a normal place, this place I’m in.

This is a place where fucked up things occur, like when a few days after my last dental appointment I went back to the medical center for my gynecologist appointment and the woman that assisted the doctor with my pap smear (i.e. "the nurse") was also the woman that had assisted my dentist with my cleaning days earlier (i.e. previously known as "the dental hygienist").

Um, am I dreaming, is this hell, or am I perpetually living in a Dali painting?



Ok, ok, one of my other resolutions (fuck it, I’m now declaring them) is that I’m gonna try to quit being such an ungrateful bitch and as you can see, that leaves me without a whole helluvalot to blog about. So in that vein, I think I should mention in my most grateful tone that my healthcare is free here and for mere convenience, I’ve felt the need to sign up for private health care at about eighty bucks a month which covers anything that could possibly go wrong with my body or mind, including my beloved grinders and biters. But apparently the nurses under my plan are jack-of-all-trades or jack-of-all-orifices.

Wish me luck on my next visit to the dentist. Oh and on my inadvertently mentioned new years resolutions.

-Bluestreak

"Mouth 4" by ysin from Flickr.

"Bailarina" by Salvador Dali

Warning: Consuming Raw or Undercooked Thoughts May Results in Half-Assed Blogging

Hi.

I've been silent because I'm...percolating. I'm out of a job and I don't quite know how I feel about that just yet.

I'm also "home" now. You know, the home that's not really my home (i.e., my parent's house that has never been my home). I fucking HATE the light switches in this joint, I have no idea where they are and the silverware drawer is in the darndest spot.

So, I'm in my country, sans Luigi. And it's a damn shame that you have to be separated from someone to really realize what they mean to you. Humans are ungrateful fucks like that.

Basically my time at home has consisted of me driving around my city, at times letting my memories spill over me. It can be pathetic.

It's amazing how urban organization can effect how you experience home and homesickness. I've seen the sunset for the first time in ages. The beautiful Arizona winter sunsets where the air is so thin you can see for miles and miles. I've gone from sprawl to density. Open, visible horizons to claustrophobic shaded cobblestone streets. Lonely, buffered, car interaction to get-off-of-me-and-quit-bumping-into-my-ass-human-interaction.

Oh, and car time = music time. And music time = I might cry at any given moment. I never drive in Spain. I walk everywhere, which means even if I have my ipod, I listen to whatever crap I have on it that I thought was cool at one time but has turned into a broken record. But in the car I get little treats (or little torments depending on my mood) here and there of songs I haven't heard in forEVAH. Today I sped down the freeway listening to Snoop Dog and, well, I rocked the eff out, cause I roll like that sometimes, yo.

So there's my little update. I'm silent because I don't know how I feel about job, Home I, Home II, life. I'm a crock pot of emotions and the stuff inside needs to reach at least medium rare so I can make sense of some of it.

Miss your blogs big time.

xoxo
Bluestreak

Some Fellow American I Am

Today I was at Starbucks getting my morning coffee (yes, although I live in Spain where there are thousands of quaint coffee shops, I prefer anything dehumanizing, industrialized and mass-produced).

While I was in line I was eavesdropping on a conversation taking place between two American men about Phoenix, where I’m from. They were obviously both from there, talking about streets and places I knew.

And I didn’t even say hello.

Why?

Because if I have to withstand one more conversation that resembles this, someone´s gonna have to put my ass down:

"Wow, you live in Spain???? Wow, HOW NEAT. You must love it! So what brought you here? Oh, that is a DREAM. That is so AMAAAAZING."

These are the same conversations my mother gets me into when I’m home and we are at the sushi bar or at the supermarket when she starts bragging about her daughter right here that LIVES IN SPAIN, OH MY GOD, I´M GONNA CUM. And then the person says,

"Spain, WOW. You must just LOVE IT! What a life, what a DREAM! Do you__________________(complete the question with any one of the following phrases that make me want to head-butt any hard object within the vicinity):

• go to bull fights?
• go to the running of the bulls?
• speak the language?
• get homesick?
• just love it there?

Why do these conversations bother me so much? I guess because for a few moments my life becomes a caricaturized version of itself, an abstraction of itself, and it implodes in its own simulacrum.

And that’s annoying.

-Bluestreak, sometimes I’m a scarecrow of myself.

Today I had my citizenry questioned (and probably deserved it, but whatever, Dipshit)

I spend a good portion of my life abroad waiting.

Waiting for old ladies that cut me in line.

Waiting for people to unload their sundries from their car on a narrow Spanish cobblestone street while I’m trying to get by on my public bike that I just waited in line to be able to get.

Waiting for my Spanish friends when we’re walking to another bar because they don’t walk at the normal pace that Americans do.

Waiting for wait staff to decide that they might take my order if they are bored and have nothing better to do.

Waiting for people to do things when they are damn good and ready.

Today, in the spirit of biculturalism, I attempted to partake in this very Spanish custom of making random strangers wait. I was getting my groceries from out of Perplexus´s car and got lambasted by a man with his family who couldn’t get by. His exact words (translated) were:

"I guess our concepts of citizenry must be different".

Dude, bite me. He only said that because I’m a foreigner. If I were Spanish, he would have waited like all Spanish people have to do for each other all the damn time.

I admit it; I shouldn’t have made him wait, as it always bugs me when Spanish people make me wait. BUT FUCKING HELL, "our concepts of citizenry must be different"???. Yeah, dude, I was right about to start chucking random pieces of trash in your direction, and then pull my pants down and take a piss on your shoes, because you know, that’s what we do where I’m from.

-Bluestreak, the damn foreigner.

Tomorrow I promise more rice cakes

My blog is on a diet.

I’m only allowing my blog to indulge in homesickness posts every once in awhile. But lately, the filler posts are the equivalent of a rice cake where prose is concerned.

But today I’m feasting on a cornucopia of longing. Esto es lo que hay, bitches. Because the pendulum of homesickness swings back around to me again, this time with the weather. The fucking weather. I know I’m not the only one that feels nostalgia when the weather changes, but in me it brings out steady, corkscrew-to-the-brain homesickness.



It’s only when trips are near that I allow for this sort of pandering. When I know I’m not going to be relieved of this place for another six months I go about my business in a robotic sort of way. The phantom limb of home moves with me fittingly and the gaping hole in my persona the size of the Grand Canyon where my roots used to be is ignored. But as a trip home approaches I experience a homesickness coup that lobotomizes my brain and effectively wreaks cognitive havoc on my life. I might seem normal, but inside I’m curled up in a foetal ball.

The truth is, I hate the trips home. I need them, but I hate them. I build so many expectations and so much anxiety around these trips, that they could never possibly fulfil all that I’ve built them up to be in my mind. With just two weeks to spend at home, and with everyone I know pulling me in different directions, I leave feeling like I´ve been to 17th century England where I´ve been tried, drawn and quartered for high treason.

I never experience home like I used to.

Oh, yeah, and there’s the guilt. The guilt of not spending enough time with everyone. But harsher yet, the guilt of not actually even enjoying the trip that so much angst went into planning and anticipating.

I know what you´re thinking. Chill, Bluey. Well, I´ve never claimed not to be high strung.

I’m buying my flights home today. That’s what this is really all about.

Oh, and I´m cold. And cold = October = pumpkin carving contests I won’t be in = Halloween parties I won’t be going to = nephews dressed up like pumpkins I won’t be kissing. And yes, I´m bitter.

So today I get to be sad.

And I ain´t apologizing for it, RTL.

-Bluestreak.

"Homesick" by silviadinatelle:: from Flickr.

Hyperbolic Sentiment

One of the things that I discuss a lot with my friend Perplexus, a fellow expat, is how living abroad seems to intensify feelings because your usual frame of reference vanishes. Suddenly, the diluting familiarity of surroundings is gone and you exist as if in a lonely contextual vacuum where sensitivities become exaggerated.

The black bile of sadness seems more steadfast;

Fear more hysterical;

Loss more penetrating;

Indecision more weighted;

Dissatisfaction more frustrating;

A falling out with a friend more dispiriting;

A fight with a spouse more turbulent;

An argument with a sibling or parent more significant.

You can have a bad day, or a bad couple of weeks, and...fuck...all you can think about is being on a flight back through the looking glass where the strata of context fit together like the most perfectly matching puzzle pieces. You want to be anywhere but in this wonderland where everything feels slightly off and the layers of environment that surround you do not comfort you or anchor you.





But you also recall that you´ve felt here more than you´ve felt anywhere.

More alive.

More humbled.

More ignited.

More open.

The spectrum of human emotion more extensive.

The repertoire of human experience more complete.

The panopticon of your mind less foggy. Maybe.

Or maybe all of this added junk of another universe has just bifurcated your mind into two incomplete parts.

Sometimes I envy people who have never left home.

Ok, maybe a lot.

-Bluestreak

"The Uncertain Stability of Two Subjects in a Catastrophe" and "The Modern Goddess of Satirical Mutilations" from Flickr by DerrikT

Cardilicious escapism

"And you may find yourself

living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself

in another part of the world
And you may find yourself

behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself

in a beautiful house, with a beautiful Wife
And you may ask yourself-

well...how did I get here?"

This is a question I ask myself constantly, but especially when I find myself, like this last weekend, in a village with population 324 in the middle of Don Quixoteland eating, I kid you not, brain, tripe, and pig ears for dinner.

I´ve always thought the fact that I can easily tune Spanish out and shut off all the shit-talking noise around me was a plus, but I´m realizing this might be a disadvantage when your organ-indulging, culinarily derranged in-laws, are ordering your dinner for you.

"And you may ask yourself

What is that beautiful house?

And you may ask yourself

Where does that highway go?

And you may ask yourself

Am I right? ...am I wrong?

And you may tell yourself:

This is the precise moment when you close your eyes and suddenly your brothers in-law convert into Lollypop Guild members and Glenda, the good witch appears in her pink bubble and hooks you up with some rockin ruby slippers that you click together and say:

"There´s no place like home, there´s no place like home"

And then you open your eyes and you find yourself here instead (I´ll be the blonde):

And all this Don Quixoteland, organ-eating madness was just part of a really long dream that was sometimes an adventure, sometimes erotic, but sometimes a tooth-spitting, naked-in-public nightmare.

And someone hands you a margarita on the rocks and a salty tear drips into it, but it´s okay, cause you like your margaritas with lots of salt.

And someone is roasting hot dogs. Yummmm.

But then you realize what hot dogs are made of.

"Same as it ever was...
same as it ever was...
same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...
same as it ever was...
same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...
same as it ever was..."

And then you open your eyes and you snap back to surreality and say, fuck it, "Please pass the ears".

-Bluestreak

Modern Outdoor Dining by Spacepotatoe from Flickr.

Italicized are lyrics from Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads.

Dude, do you not realize you're all up in ma face??? Get back in line.

I've been thinking lately.

Neil's recent post plus all of the constant touching, bumping, and close-talking of the Spanish populace as a whole have me thinking about personal space issues in foreign contexts. And here are my thoughts:

Get. The. Fuck. Off. Of. Me.

There are some people that can get away with unreasonable proximity due to their obvious standards of beauty as defined by me and standards of hygiene as defined by 21st century Western culture (the vast majority anyway). In all honesty, there are certain people I don't mind rubbing against me on the bus, ok?

But, as a general rule, most humans fall into the category of People I'd Rather Not Have Skin-On-Skin Contact With At The Fucking Panaderia.

Maybe this isn't a cultural thing. Maybe it has to do with different types of urban cities. Maybe if I had spent my youth hopping in and out of subway cars in New York City, or avoiding accidents in the 'bicycle kingdom' in a bustling Chinese metropolis, maybe I'd feel differently. Maybe it's the fact that I grew up in a place where there is always a parking space available and if the Quiznos you just walked into is too crowded, there's another one just down the road to get your lunch from.

Whatever it is, I find myself screaming internally, "MOVE IT DUDE" on way too many occasions.

This feeling is intensified when waiting in line for anything when you realize that if lines were formed with seats all in a column, most people joining the line would just come sit on your lap.

Just for the record, I am a fervent supporter of the social norm of queue-forming with every ounce my being and believe it to be an essential component of harmonious social interaction and/or me not losin' my shit while I'm buying bread.

Unfortunately though, queue-forming is a fuzzy phenomenon in Spain, and, well, let's just say they cross the line in this regard. Constantly.

Disrespecting the queue-forming social norm + some idiot breathing down my neck and bumping shoulders with me when it is clearly not necessary = me wanting to give Spain the most gigantic kick in the cojones I've ever given it.

And this makes me realize that there are certain things I'll never get used to here. I'm not one of those foreigners that likes to point out to Spanish people how everything in my country is better, or wave my flag around, for obvious reasons.

But I feel like the older I get, the more stubborn I'm becoming with the line-cutting, close-talking violators of personal space and sometimes I just want to say:

We do it better over there. Now GET OFF ME and mind the queue.

-Bluestreak

15 years in 10 bullet points

I´m not one for memes but this one I like, cause I get to obsess over my past. Found it on Fned´s site, read hers here.

Supposedly, I should sum up the last fifteen years of my life in 10 bullet points, so here goes.

1). 1993 - 1994= sophomore/junior in High School/ Hell. This time in my life completely sucked. I had braces (didn´t fix anything). I had zits (still do). I had no boobs (still don´t). So what´s the difference between then and now? Now I don´t give a shit.

Finally got asked to one of the stupid school dances that are designed to make fragile teens feel even more awkwardly pathetically inadequate than they already are. Got asked to the dance by super hot basketball star. Then he dumped my ass for some chick at our church. Jerk. Quit going to church.

2). 1995= Graduated High School/Hell. Discovered mind altering substances of many kinds. Hung around crowd that was so calculatingly un-hip that if you weren´t as un-hip as them, you were a total sell-out. Everyone was in a band and we would all stand around like idiots listening to the shitty music at underage shows (ok, some of it was good, but not half as good as we pretended it was).

3). 1996 - 1997= Happiness starts. Met my handful. Happiness short-lived because then, had my heart ripped out, chewed up, crapped out, stomped on, and finally hit by lightning by one of these guys (you'll never guess who. Watch long enough and you'll see him). He broke up with me probably because of my emotional, sexual, intellectual, social and musical retardation. But he never said it in so many words, cause he was too nice and was also one piss poor communicator.

Happiness sort of continues anyway vis-a-vis the consumption of way too many drugs and alcohol. Roommates had traveled through Europe. Europe? What? That sounds like fun. Ok, I´ll go. But before I leave, I think I'll have a brief love affair with my best friend. This helps get over nice bass player man.

4). 1998= Enter Spain. Wow, this feels like Disneyland. Seville is the caricaturized version of Europe, the replica of the Spain I had in my head, only better. Dropped out of school and started teaching English. Met my husband at La Carbonería. He was wearing a Pearl Jam t-shirt and his hair was long and curly enough and he was completely wonderful in his insanity. We were both sad and lonely and clung to each other like flies on shit.

5). 1999 - 2000= came to my senses and decided I needed to get the eff out of Spain and finish my degree. Moved back to Arizona. Lived alone. Loved living alone. No one took out the trash? My own damn fault. House clean? Yup, thanks to me. Had lots of phone sex with my boyfriend that was a million miles away.

Worked at an Irish Pub where the owner verbally abused all of the waitstaff but loved me and would beg me to go gambling with him, until he finally pissed his pub away. Like a loyal employee, I would go.

Managed to graduate with a degree in Religious Studies, a Certificate in Latin American Studies and a Minor in I-Don´t-Know-Why-the-Hell-I-Went-To-College-Cause-I´m-Never-Gonna-Get-A-Job-With-This-Shit.

6). 2001 - 2002= Moved back to Spain as an illegal immigrant and moved in with my (now) husband. Fought like assholes, mainly over him not doing jack shit around the house and me being a miserable bitchy girlfriend. Besides that, lived VERY well, on VERY little money. God, Spain was the shit in 2001.

7). 2003= Got married. I was only 25. Applied to grad school, got in and moved my Spanish husband back to the states. He hated it because no one understood his jokes, but, hey, we were happy spending 24-7 together and I would piss myself laughing at his jokes, cause they were damn funny even though nobody else got it.

8). 2004= Felt like the biggest fucking moron on the face of the planet in grad school. Had my ass reamed with feelings of total inadequacy on a daily basis. Questioned every single day why I was putting myself through the torture of the self-realization of cerebral ineptitude. But for some damn reason, I loved it. Felt happiness being surrounded by people with mild intellectual curiosity. Had my hand held by my husband while I shat myself from fear of scholarly leprosy.

9). 2005= Passed my Thesis defense with no revisions. Then put said thesis (i.e. my heart and soul) on bookshelf along with my masters degree in Sociology to collect dust and haven´t looked at them since. Moved back to Spain and joined the ranks of people in the real world that need to actually work and earn a living and leave fantasy-credit-card-land behind.

10). 2006 - 2008. Turned thirty. Began to feel the dull persistent pain of homesickness. Put my husband high up on my list of People I Blame For All The Shit That´s My Own Damn Fault. Beginning to discover that everything I ever thought I knew about myself needs to be scratched out and re-drafted in its entirety. Kinda too soon to write about this stuff. Wanna know what happened? This, this and this, oh, and this. I'm not liking this bullet point much.

So that's the last 15 years of my life in 10 bullet points. Ok, I need a nap. Hope you don´t need one after reading this.

-Bluestreak

Piecing together my Habitus

It is strange how my experience here in Spain changes over time. Initially the challenge of language trumped every other cultural challenge and kept my mind so occupied and entertained that I was completely blind to the cultural inconsistencies between myself and Spanish people that I would come to realize later.

I may be grossly overestimating myself here, but I think that at this point, I probably understand 95% of spoken Spanish. The problem is that within that 5% that is lost to me, it seems like 60% of Spanish humor and potential cultural connectedness is contained.

This can make it difficult to not be a total vacant, absent bitch at a party with Spanish people.

So, I go to a party, like Friday night. I do the normal thing I do when I´m in the company of all Spanish people. I sit in a chair smoking, being the quiet weird wife of my Spanish husband. And I think about how far that is from who I am, from what anyone who has ever known me well knows. I´m the furthest thing from quiet. I´ll talk to you until your ears feel like I´ve chewed them up and passed them through my digestive track. And I´ll listen to you if you have an ounce of humor in you.

That´s the normal me.

But here, among them I watch the people around me with bored indifference and feel such a disconnect with them on the deepest human level, that it pains me to try to make conversation. I see them laughing. I understand what they are saying. I smile to be polite, but in every moment I know how out of place I am and how brutally laborious it is to have a genuine connection with them. I know how goddamn difficult it is to say anything of interest to them and how difficult it is to find anything they have to say a diversion from the prototype that I have in my mind of them.

And I come across as a bitch. And I know it. And I can´t do anything to stop it. And I probably am one.

But then I go home to the states. I sit in a room full of Americans and I am completely and utterly entertained by how my language flows out of their mouths and they say things like "ass monkey", or "give me a pound, dog" and I tear up with laughter at expressions, poise and behavior that I had forgotten about. It just feels so effortless. And everyone amuses me greatly.

And I realize that those measly two weeks of happy, effortless understanding and cultural connection isn´t enough for me. So I try to find the pieces of my habitus here somewhere. Here in Spain. Here online.

But the pieces are lost.

I have my fellow expats who understand me better than anyone here or there possibly could. But I hate sometimes that their habitus are as altered as mine and I long to be in the company of people that are just American, the unaltered ones. Without this addiction called Spain in them.

And this is probably what I´m doing in the blogosphere. Looking for those pieces of my habitus and looking for the people whose dispositions I envy and miss.



Going home again this week. Back and forth never ceases to fuck with my head. Grandpa´s 100th birthday and reunion of cousins and brothers and sisters and all the people that can say things like "it´s hotter than crotch" and make me stare at them with glee and amusement at their effortlessness without all the nonsense and confusion in their brain that I have.

-Bluestreak

American Cultural Soup by MotherPie from Flickr

Ministry of Home Absorption by excauboi from Flickr

Keep it in your pants old man

You may recall how I told you about how everyone around this place does everything at the same damn time? It´s like Spain has one collective herd mentality mind and they get together each morning and vote on whether they should scratch their balls first or put their slippers on before getting out of bed.

So it´s August, and if you live in this city, that means "NOT EVEN GOD" IS WALKING THE STREETS, as the Spaniards say. This city is a ghost town.


Ghost town= chances of some dirty old man with plaid shorts and sandals whipping out his dick at you manifold exponentially.

So I walk these lonesome streets, you know, because I have to fucking work in August like a schmuck (and yes, I´m bitter), unlike every other person that lives in this place, who is currently at the beach right now eating an ice cream cone (I swear they are all eating an ice cream cone right now, it´s clockwork around here). This means that if you are unfortunate enough to have to walk the streets in August, everyone that passes you is a potential pervert prepared to whip out his chorizo surprise for your benefit.

It hasn´t happened yet (maybe I´m not as old-man-dick-whip-outable as I´d like to think). Although I did see a man peeing in a bush and when he saw that I could see his exposed genitalia, he didn´t seem to mind a bit. But admittedly he didn´t whip it out for my sake, so he doesn´t count. He´s just an asshole that pisses in the street (the street pissing epidemic in Spain is deserving of it´s own post so I´ll save it). But the potential for whip-outage is always there and I see it in their perverted eyes.

It´s like they are pissed cause they aren´t at the beach either and so whoever they pass is going to either see their dick or fear they might.

-Bluestreak, avoiding old man wiener for a few more days.


p.s. if you didn´t vote for Ghost of Keywork yesterday as Hottest Blogger, do so now here. He has reconsidered his hot-awareness strategy by posting a military picture of himself, which might not be for you, but it´s better than old man dick, so vote. But it´s still the house-arrest-anklets that get me.

"La sombra quebrada de una farola" by González-Alba from flickr
"Barrio Sta Cruz" by Jose OHM from flickr

Bullshitting

Today I opened my closet and put on one of those Halloween costumes. One of the many that I have that are nicely pressed that scream "I´m responsible! I´m avoiding fuck-upery today!" Then I glared at myself in the mirror. Bullshitter. I didn´t even pretend to consider to wash my hair because I couldn´t think of any compelling reason to do so. One last glance in the mirror before leaving. Yup, that´s what I usually look like. Yup, you´re just your same old self. Can someone smack me in the head, I mean...pat me on the back, cause that took a lot of work?

Almost my entire adult life has consisted of me waiting to be summoned to a meeting by my bosses/grad committee/ family/ whoever, where they sit me down and say "Uh...we´ve been reviewing your file...and...our data indicates that....you´re full of shit".

Today when I get off work, I´ll go home, and put my big girl panties on (or are they my fat panties?) and I´ll roast a goddamn chicken, cause that´s what I´m supposed to do. This is who I am. Then I´ll go to the gym that I´ve been paying for for god-knows-how-many-months-without-going because I´m supposed to fucking go and I´ll take my frustration out on the treadmill and if I´m lucky, I´ll zone out and not think about how much it sucks. Then I´ll go home and go to bed really early and hope that gets my mind anywhere but where it is now, with the weight of bullshit responsibility.





But don´t ask me not to smoke today or I´ll smack your ass down.


-Bluestreak

"12 Thanatos" by rent-a-moose from Flickr.

Heated Quest for Home

I hate fighting.

It makes me feel like an asshole. Whoever said fighting was good for a relationship? Horseshit. Some things are best left un-communicated, for example "why the fuck am I the only one to ever do a goddamn thing around here?" while chucking an empty chocolate box that has been there since, yeah, Christmas onto the floor in disgust. See? I´m following the rule of using "I" instead of "you" in the explanation of my feelings (i.e. accusations). Isn´t that one of the golden rules in marriage counseling? I´m trying, people.

So I bitch about an empty chocolate box (one among many useless items that should have been tossed away months ago that still linger around my house, because, you know, if I throw anything out that means I actually care and still have some dignity left in regard to my current place of habitation). But what I meant to say was "why the fuck am I the only one who has spent the last two years looking for a new house for us without so much as a "meh" from you?" (a horribly unfair and inaccurate statement, just for the record). That kicker has come out way too many times lately and the chocolate box incident was added in to cure the boredom of endlessly repetitive "dialogue" regarding the house quest. It was added in for variety.

It´s hard to feel at home here. Damn hard. This isn´t my country. This isn´t my culture. My home is a 24 hour and $2000 journey away from here, in a country where $2000 means a hell of a lot more than it does in the U.S. The house is fucking symbolic. Yeah, I know it´s the worst possible time in history to buy a house here, or nearly anywhere. I don´t want to buy a house; that illusion was done away with ages ago. And it has, of late, become the last thing that I want, which I´m now recognizing is a problem of it´s own. But if I don´t find a place that feels like home soon....I´m gonna....fuck...no... I´m not gonna do a damn thing. I´m just gonna really start wondering what I´m doing here and why the hell I left my country, and my feeling of home. It´s been 3 years since we moved back to Spain. I don´t want to go back to America and I don´t want to want to go back. I want to find home, if it exists for us. Preferably here. But I haven´t yet.



And I don´t want to fight about it anymore. And I´m sorry about the chocolate box.

-Bluestreak, bitch.

"Cristina´s World" by Andrew Wyeth

I think I'm back from holidays

Wow. I thought that two weeks of combining Spanish in-laws with my own family would have meant loads of inspiration for writing. WRONG.

Combining two parallel universes that have never been combined has made me question if I haven't disappeared into some existential void, the two worlds canceling eachother out. Can someone confirm this?



Really, the lack of inspiration is because every seed of a thought was brutally filibustered by the mental rape that is my parents constant gibbering. My mother does not seem to understand that people who live in a harmonious society have conversations in their head all the time. These conversations are called thoughts. When and if said thoughts are deemed valid, they pass through a vocal phenomenon and are manifested in what is called speech. My mother, however, has confused thoughts and speech and all thoughts pass through the vocalization process, rendering me helplessly incapable of dealing with life and wanting to head-butt the nearest saguaro. Maybe I spend too much time alone and am not used to other people talking to me for hours on end. My stepdad on the other hand, is slightly more tolerable to listen to at length, only because his endless monologues tend to have a thesis, albeit a fuzzy one loaded with contradictions (for example: "everyone on welfare is lazy" can inspire in him an hour long rant until he finally comes up for air, to fill his coffee mug as if more stimulant were required).

I'm probably exaggerating a little, and being horribly unfair to my sweet family that just hosted my non-English-speaking-in-laws for two weeks. But everything felt magnified when suddenly all of this gibberish I normally half-listen to, half-pray I didn't just hear, had to be processed into Spanish in my brain and then spewed back onto my unsuspecting in-laws in their tongue, which meant I had to listen to the shit three goddamn times (once in all its original craze, next inside my throbbing head, and thirdly out of my own noncompliant mouth after a weed-out-the-most-crazy-element selection process was made).

If it hadn't been for the paradisiacal island of Kauai to balance out the verbal anarchy taking place around me, I don't know if I would have made it back in one piece.

So, I'm back (I think).

-Bluestreak

Photo: "Rhizom-E-ros ≥ Mimesis.Catharsis ²" from Flickr by jef safi

trip home in numbers

Number of people currently drunk and posting under "bluestreak": 1

Number of days home: 2

Number of siblings still willing to get drunk with me: 2

Age difference between me and one of said siblings, which explains why they will still get drunk with me: 9 years.

Number of family members that tonight I discovered have been arrested and spent at least a night in jail: 2 (WTF????!!!!)

Number of beers needed to be able to begin to handle a meal with Spanish parents-in-law who have accompanied us on this trip to the states: 2 (clash of civilizations post in workings)

Number of times I've felt like banging my head against the wall during a meal: >10

Number of cigarettes smoked that I was made to feel like a crack addict for smoking: 10 (yeah, I'm an asshole, I know I said I was quitting)

Number of cigarettes my instincts have told me to smoke: 1000+

Number of times people have asked me when I'm going to have a kid: 28

Number of times I've wanted to smack someone for asking me a stupid question: 28

Number of times I've wanted to throw up because one of the people asking the question was younger brother who attempted to discuss my sex life at the dinner table: 1

Percentage decrease in size of functional ovaries each time I'm asked the question: 3.5%

Projected weight gain during next two week period due to a mix of nervous eating and gorging on food I miss: 10 lbs.

Number of people that need to get their ass to bed and sleep it off: 1

-Bluestreak

Who am I and why do you care?

who am i?

I am culture clash incarnate.

I am Bluestreak, thirty-something, American desert rat that ended up in Southern Spain by a series of random events (crushing fist of fate). Living in Spain used to seem like a big deal, but now it is just la vida. Besides the fact that everyone can tell I´m a guiri (i.e. gringo), I mix well and this feels like home. But a big part of me is never at home here (or anywhere, I´m discovering). I started this blog because my mind is usually in a million places and none of them are in the present moment that is this sad, smelly, dark, lifeless, messy, shit hole of a cave I sometimes refer to as "my office", where I usually write from.

One of the main reasons why I live here in Spain is because my husband Luigi is Spanish. We met while I was a study abroad student in 1997. He is wonderful and clumsy and kind and beautiful and sweet and messy and everything he touches turns to gold and wherever my home is, it´s with him. We speak a weird sort of Spanglish and his accent in English makes me purrrr like a kitten.

what do i write about?
Spain sometimes deserves a big kick in the cojones that I am honored to deliver when provoked. But this blog is not about Spain itself, but rather how I deal with the accumulation/rejection of a foreign culture. But there are no hard fast rules here, so sometimes this blog is about whatever life brings my way. It is, however, almost always about me, as if I were the most important human to grace the face of the planet, and as if you cared. What else am I gonna write about?

why do i cuss so much?
When I write, I curse as if my afterlife had been decided when I stole that piece of candy from 7-11. Why? Because I find it fucking funny, and when I need an adjective, noun, or verb, I find them very easily from my list of favorite swear words, and they are the words that are always on the tip of my tongue. I guess you can say it is because of laziness as a writer. Whatever. If you think I curse too much, I´ll have you know that before each post I publish I have to go back through and edit at least half of the swearing out, so I am already making an effort to please the puritan a-holes (edited) that might mistakenly end up here.

readers that know me
If you are related to me via kinship or marital ties I must have given you my blog address during a severe lapse of judgement that probably involved alcohol. Either that or someone else in our family opened their big-ass mouth. In either case, I suggest you re-think your visit here or get ready to be disappointed in me.

If you know me in real life, please have mercy and never mention my blog at any gathering (not like you would), but if you do, I might poison you while you´re in the bathroom to protect my shame.



So that´s me.



-Bluestreak



p.s. if you´ve read this far and you don´t hate me yet, leave a comment, lest I disappear into the vast graveyard of abandoned blogs.

Lice, Flamenquines....camp.

I have been a little distracted lately and have not been able to post. Ok, very distracted. VERY.

Somehow, someone thought it was a good idea to put me in charge of 53 pre-teens for a two week, lice-filled summer camp. So I have been a tad busy. By some miracle I escaped unscathed and lice-free, but much more addicted to cigarettes.

Camp has made me realize that I need to be around people more, even if they are dwarf-shaped and completely insane (i.e. children). It is good to be out of my cave.

Camp also made me realize that I have a limit to the number of flamenquines I can consume in one lifetime, despite my uncanny ability to eat almost anything that is put in front of me. If you do not know what flamenquines are, imagine a corn-dog without the stick. I know that does not sound good, but now, imagine you are eating the corn-dog and everyone around you is trying to convince you it is some kind of fucking delicacy. Believe me, I am all for fried phallic food, that is, if I am at the Idaho State Fair talking to some dude with a mullet and missing teeth. Flamenquines are stickless, glorified corn-dogs, whose only missing element is the fair ride that allows you to vomit the thing up afterwards with ease.

Yesterday was the last day of summer camp. Once all the kiddies were with their respective parents, we headed to in-law land to pay a visit. Requests to eat out at a restaurant that was mildly non-cateto were ignored as usual. I whispered to my husband upon entering the restaurant of choice, "If they serve us one of those fucking corn-dogs I´m outta here" (empty threats, of course).

Luckily, by the time the famous flamenquines had arrived I had downed the precise number of beers which allow me to surpass the bitch threshold and no longer cared what dish I was about to eat nor which health codes had been violated in its preparation.

I ate the flamenquin.

Then I sat silent while everyone talked about how fucking great flamenquines are and how in Cordoba they are the size of a kids arm and are sometimes filled with shellfish. I closed my eyes, controlled my vomit reflex out of politeness, while really wishing for a Tilt-A-Whirl, a Yo-Yo, or a Gravitron.


Yessssssss.

-Bluestreak

P.S. I´m quitting smoking today. Fer reals.

Photos from Flickr:

On On The The Yo Yo by base10

The-Claw-III by thephotoholic

Outgrown

2:00 a.m. Alone, weird apartment in España profunda (Alomartes, Granada -- DON´T google it). Don´t ask.

I have no idea how I ended up here.

I am thinking of the sweetest, truest words I have heard from any friend in a long time:

"You have outgrown your old self".





Thank you.

And I am thinking "Anda que la vida no da vueltas ni ná".

Then, four nut-covered chocolate donuts later I am thinking, "What´s so bad about a fat ass?".

-former aerobics instructor, current donut overdoser, Bluestreak.

artwork from Flickr by nuanc

Homesickness?

Ugh, that heavy feeling again. What is it?

Homesickness? Well, yes. Sort of. But homesickness is a constant now that never goes away - not even when I am home, because my home is neither here nor there. It is something never found again.

Regret? Maybe that is not the right word. Maybe frustration that I could not have chosen more than one way. Sadness for the doors I have closed along the way to be able to go through this one.

Is this normal? Is it part and parcel to being "foreign"? A constant state of re-examination of what-ifs? Or is this what any mildy neurotic thirty something feels that has not had children yet to take away that curse of looking at ones wrinkles in the mirror too much or the sickness of dwelling on paths not taken, (wrong?) turns, U-turns...

God, I sound so unhappy. It is not like that. How lucky to have had a life with so many brilliant choices. I chose this one, which was the greatest. So what now? Forget the past? But I am too afraid to lose my memories, or that the only universe that exists is this one -- and not the one with the open Arizona roads and a cabin in Strawberry, and wood-paned walls, and vintage blues.

It is fading.

And I do not remember a time when I did not think in Spanish or have Luis at my side.

But it is scary to think of the essence of me dissovling into this morphed version of myself that I am observing as if from the outside. This person that feels almost Spanish on the inside, but will never be Spanish to anyone else.

American as ever here, far from American there.

Ugh. Who am I? How did I get here?

"Naci en Alamo"

No tengo lugar

No tengo paisaje

Yo menos tengo patria

Con mis dedos hago fuego

Con mi corazon te canto

Las cuerdas de mi corazon lloran

Naci en Alamo

Naci en Alamo

No tengo lugar

No tengo paisaje

Yo menos tengo patria

-written by Dionisis Tsaknis

"I was born in Alamo"

I have no place

I have no countryside

And even less a homeland

With my fingers I make fire

With my heart I sing to you

The chords of my heart cry

I was born in Alamo

I have no place

I have no countryside

And even less a homeland

Mackin Ink put it so well. "oh, i must be homesick. which is only a problem when you realize you're already at home".


-Bluestreak

Arizona Highway from Flickr by Embot

Original Video Clip Vengo with Remedios Silva Pisa