Tallying up the points of substance use

Lately I´ve been listening to some good music. "Will you welcome please, the Grateful Dead"

And, well, because my life is one giant fucking cliché, it has brought back memories wherein I ingest certain substances for recreational and/or educational purposes.

I´ll elaborate. Some of you may be shocked, others will think "that was nothing". But here is the confession about my past and present drug use:

Marijuana - The Omnipresent vice

Marijuana has surrounded me since, like, birth. I´m surprised I´m not a total pothead. The first time I smoked pot, I had a lovely pole vaulter blow the smoke into my mouth cause I didn´t know how to inhale. He was nice like that. The following 5 years can be summed up as me always having a bag of schwaggy weed. Always. My nickname during this time was Heads. As in, Heads in the Grass. I don´t really smoke pot anymore. I don´t think the nickname sat well with me.

So let´s summarize my experience, along with a point value system to see who the winner of this game is:

• Smoking pot while chilling on a terrace on the island of Kauai +50
• Smoking pot with a parent before going for breakfast with Grandma -150
• Husband having mental collapse after a bong rip and subsequently begging to be taken to the hospital -50
• Getting caught smoking pot behind a bowling alley by the cops and your friend passing out during the interrogation -250
• Smoking pot on a giant rock in a valley of Sedona, Arizona while contemplating vortexes +75
• Smoking pot and then remembering you´re an aerobics instructor due to give a class and your roommates are laughing at your oxymoronic existence -100

TOTAL POINTS: -125
VERDICT: YOU LOSE AND YOU SUCK.


Psychedelics

In college I dabbled in psychedelic drugs like acid, mushrooms, ecstasy, mescaline (yeah, I freaking ingested some synthetic peyote, ok, WTF???), and some other drugs that were acronyms that I can´t remember because the drugs effectively killed the brain cells required for remembering their names. Most of these experiences involved trips to Disneyland or a water park of sorts, or camping in the Arizona desert. I don´t regret any of these experiences. I would do psychedelic drugs again, if I were in a controlled environment. And by controlled environment I mean in a padded room with a straight jacket on and a team of medical professionals ready to euthanize me.

Let´s look at how I stack up with psychedelics.

• Take ecstasy at a rave in the middle of the goddamn desert where some idiot puts Icy Hot on your temples that temporarily blinds you and upon regaining eyesight finding your 14 year old cousin standing in front of you, also on ecstasy, and the friend you came with laying on the ground with a credit card in his mouth to stop himself from grinding his teeth out. -500
• Take mescalin with some lovely boy on a camping trip and take pictures of plant life, laughing hysterically all night long. +100
• Realize you should have pitched the tent before you were tripping balls. -25
• Take mushrooms and then turn up to the house you just moved into and have to deal with your new roommates for the first time, while your sister smokes a cigarette in the house, something that was specified as prohibited behavior as a roommate. -150
• Take acid with a sibling and then realize that being around your sibling without drugs already makes you feel like you need to be institutionalized, rendering the consumption of said drugs rather superfluous. Feel as though you would rather cuddle a cactus than continue the trip. -75
• Take acid and then watch the movie Rubin and Ed, the most awesomest Crispin Glover movie EVER. +80
• Accidentally answer the phone while tripping, and it´s your dad. -90

TOTAL POINTS: -610
VERDICT: YOU LOSE. WHAT´S WRONG WITH YOU? SRSLY.


Rx drugs

In grad school I became friends with a group of psychiatrists, one of whom helped save me from scholarly damnation by getting me drugs invented to help keep me from procrastination and worry.

• Take Strattera and write your Masters thesis in a week. +1000
• Take Propanolol and calmly give a lecture to 200 people, defend your thesis, and lead any discussion. +600
  

TOTAL POINTS: -1600

VERDICT: YOU´RE A WINNER. MAKE AN APPOINTMENT WITH A SPANISH PSYCHIATRIST IMMEDIATELY TO PUT YOU ON ADHD MEDS AND SAVE YOU FROM LOSING YOUR JOB.

So that´s my chronicle of substance use and abuse.

I didn´t mention alcohol, because I might need to do a tally that´s like 3 posts long, and I already know I would be in the red numbers.

Peace,

-Bluestreak

"Your Mom Is Melting My Brains"

This is the text message that I just got from my husband.

I assume he is on the phone with her on our landline and is texting me with his cell phone.

I think I know what he might be on about.

I have to admit, his parents can be a real pain, but they don´t melt brains like my parents do.




-Bluestreak


Screaming Marble Head by T.SC 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

Back to the Present

Quick update on me for anyone who gives a damn before I proceed to post on some sick shit: Head has been pulled out of ass and am finally thinking in present tense instead of past. Pat on back. Nothing like a good massage and having your hairs ripped out by the roots by a fucking sadist to put you in the present.

I am in awe right now.

In-law Land never ceases to amaze me. Although this is the place of weird flamenquín fans I discussed earlier, it is also the place where Bob Dylan just played, so it has something going for it in my book that it never had before. There are two other things In-Law Land has that are high on my list right now of things that make my eyes roll back into my head with pleasure:

1) A kick-ass massage
2) A thorough wax job (I told you I get embarrassingly personal).

Let´s start with the latter because I have bitched many a blue streak (in real life, not yet on my blog) about waxing, hair removal, and the endless-hell-that-is-my-ape-like-albeit-blonde-body. If it were not toxic, I would superglue every single hair follicle on my body shut after first having each hair ripped out to its death. I don´t care if it isn´t natural or if I have bought into sexist consumer culture and the barrage against women convincing them that they should go through these painful procedures in order to remain youthful and sexy. Blah blah blah. Bullshit. Hair is sick. Get. Off. Of. Me.

I´m actually one of these weird people that gets pleasure from getting waxed (that is once I get over the initial fear that the aesthetician’s jaw will drop to the ground and then she will proceed to tell me that I am the hairiest individual she has ever laid eyes on). I actually like the feeling of having my hairs ripped out. I know that is weird, especially since and I have zero tolerance for pain normally and if you come near me with a syringe I will pass out before you get within 3 feet of me.

DISCLAIMER: Proceed only if you can bear TMI (too much information):

Spain is full of waxers, and this is where I was turned onto the whole joy of it all. But for some damn reason the ole U.S. of A. has surpassed Spain in the waxing of the nether regions (i.e. Brazilians, thanks Sex and the City). When it comes to that area of the body (the area that really matters) wax jobs SUCK here, and by here I mean the whole fucking city of Seville because my hairiness has been around town, believe me. Brazilian, Caribbean, what the hell does all this mean?? They still do not get all the effing hair off. I am sorry but there are certain areas of my body that I should not have to ask to be serviced (that sounds gross, I am talking about getting waxed here…Ok, admittedly still gross), it should be understood. No words should be exchanged. They should just think to themselves “Aaaw, honey, trust me, you don´t want that there….let me just…RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA” and then life would be golden.

Lucky for me, this happens in In law Land. They are ahead of the hair-game. They are ahead of their time for being such a small Andalusian city. Maybe they watch more late-night free Spanish T.V. porn and know what the nether regions are “supposed” to look like in 2008.

As for the massage, I was delightfully surprised the other day when I spent the day at the spa and got a GREAT massage. Normally it is like someone tickling you with a feather over here, they do not seem to get that they need to actually work at it and bust some muscle into it.

So here I am today in the NOW, happy, relaxed, muscles that feel like butter, hairless and loving it. The present is good right now. My past was much too hairy….but those were the 90´s. It´s forgivable.

-Bluestreak

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