A Blue Goodbye

Today I sat down to write a post, time on my hands for the first time in weeks and I said to myself, "It doesn't matter what you write, it doesn't matter if it's any good. Just write whatever comes and hit publish and then cringe a little. BIG DEAL."

Eyes to keyboard.

Sigh.



In the end, you just have to post what comes to you, what you feel inside, right? For me, this is it.

Working full time sucks. I have no time for anything anymore. It's a good thing that the 8 hours are not excrutiating like they were before, which makes life feel like less of a prison sentence but I still don't like the ratio of work/do laundry/cook/run errands to fuck around/rest/write/do-whatever-I-want. But that's life. We all live it. It may be part of the reason why I don't post much lately, but it's not all of it.

I didn't start this blog to have an online journal. I didn't start this to keep in touch with old friends or with family.

Well,maybe I did when I started and that's why I had linked to my blog on my myspace page and my facebook page for the (real) world to see. Those people that came here through those links or because I accidently told them about it may still read now.

The truth is, I don't really know.

They don't normally comment and frankly, it gives me the creeps thinking they might be there but not knowing for sure. I'm sorry, but it does. It's like inviting someone over to your house for a party but when they show up they just look in through the back window and sometimes you can feel their eyes essaying your cheeseball and your ham and pickle roll-ups but you don't see them.

I'm starting to think that maybe I only want people to drool on my cheeseball if they brought some mean spinach artichoke dip to share. And I'm not talking about comments; I don't give a fuck if they comment or not. I'm talking about sharing. I'm talking about writing.

It's not like I have big secrets that I want to tell and I'm trying to go all AWOL and undercover, it's just that I want to go somewhere else with my "writing" or creativity or whatever it is I'm doing here and I don't feel like this is the right outlet anymore.

Maybe I told people I knew because I wanted validation and readers and had to start with people I knew. What it has turned into has been a communication tool, to learn about people; some very far off and away, some relatively closer (like fellow expats), some with quiet family lives, some with crazy party lives, some of them living the country life, or small town life, some living in places and living lives that I know are not in the cards for me but that I want to experience, albeit vicariously. Maybe these are people that in real life I would never cross paths with or even if I did, (say maybe if they were my bikini waxer ) I would never know they could write their asses off. I might judge them and think we had nothing in common, but somehow across pixels and networks and webs, we happened to meet, thankfully.

Some of you are capable of writing about the day to day in ways that make me laugh my ass off or think for days about a few little phrases you cooked up, and you're honest and open and, hey, even your grandmas have your urls or you have your same story printed in the Irish Times for all eyes to see. I love you for that.

But that ain't me.

What I really want to communicate I'm not for some reason, and I'm trying to figure out why.



To those people that I had the good fortune of crossing paths with on the internet, discovering their talent that they so generously share, to those people that through their writing have given me so much more than boring updates on their lives a la facebook, I don't want to cringe when I hit 'publish post' to share myself with them anymore.

And, come to think of it, I don't want to share myself anymore with those that don't reciprocate by showing themselves to me through their own writing. That may sound horribly ungrateful to those non-bloggers and maybe friends that have been reading my posts, some of whom have told me in person that they enjoy reading. I'm sorry if this comes across as unappreciative of that, pero eso es lo que hay.

I guess I'm feeling less generous with my innards these days, except to those that have shown me theirs.

So here lies Bluestreak. For now, anyway.

At least for awhile, I'm going to that place that made me feel I had something to write about to begin; these streets and that Spanish sunshine and Luigi and, well, life.

Adios,

Blues

Goodbye Karey

I don't have much to say today because I think you all know my words don't come out in my way right now. Or maybe it is in my way but they don't come with ease anymore.

I feel a strain.

Heavy paperweight on heart.

There's some kind of muzzle but I don't know why. Or I do but I don't know how to say what the muzzle is made of. Because the muzzle is a little muzzling when trying to describe the muzzle. See?

Oh, it's not just about muzzles.

When I was in grad school and was attempting to read more than was humanly possible in a single day, I would go to sleep at night and have strange dreams of misplaced and sometimes invented words floating around in my brain, nonsensical sentences, ornamental paragraphs of pure jabberwocky monologue.

"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe."

- "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll

This is what my voice feels like right now; recursive nonsense, my mind a think tank of anti-thoughts.

Life feels a little like that too, and looks a little too much like Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights and I feel kinda like I'm the one bent over with the flower growing out of my ass, when I'd really like to be standing up, clothed, with the flower in my hand, maybe giving it to you, which I'm much more comfortable with.

On top of a jibberish voice, I have some sort of rhetorical laryngitis. I try to speak but it's just an inaudible, bleached out and faded whisper.

So today I'm just here to whisper.

I'm here to whisper a goodbye to Karey. I don't want to say she's a blogger, because she's so much more than a blogger. She is someone I love as a writer, but mostly as a person. And I'm just happy I get to share the earth with her and somewhere far away she's giving people huge smiles ear to ear.

It's strange how blogging friends come and go. I guess like how real friends come in and out of your life, probably because they are real friends.

The departure is just a little more abrupt I suppose.

So, Karey, if you're still out there, this is as good a whispered goodbye as it gets on the internets:







-Bluestreak

P.S. Pare, if you're out there, I miss you somethin awful too.

Old Wire Dog Muzzles by Feltbug from flickr.

Bye. by Nathan from flickr.

I might regret this...prolly not

Since my voice is muted with weirdness these days and my dirty fingernails cannot type a single word I´m happy with, I´ve decided to let Rassles loose on my blog this week with but a few misguidelines. She did, afterall, draw a picture of me.

Check out what she did over at Ginny´s house while she was away on vacation.

Girl cannot be trusted with a password.

So stay tuned.

-Bluestreak

Effort to change my karma

When I was in 5th grade I had a hermit crab as a pet. God knows what possessed my prepubescent mind to think that it would be a good idea to have a crustacean as a not-so-furry companion. But I loved that little pincher. I took it to school with me in a shoe box. On the bus all of the popular girls came over and stuck their pretty nails out for the crab to snap at and giggled and I gloated at the attention. In my mind it made me popular in some disturbing sea-animal way.

But one night I left my hermit crab near the window overnight. And in Prescott, Arizona it gets COLD and that poor little crab crawled out of his hermitage and died. Died of fucking cold. What kind of monster does that to an unsuspecting crustacean?

Karma, dammit.

Right now, I sort of feel like that hermit. I’ve been towed around to various places beyond what I would consider my will (ok, that’s my attempt to not accept responsibility for my life choices) and I’ve snapped at things that scared me and that I didn’t like from within my stupid shell that in the end doesn’t protect me from the elements.

And for now I’m staying inside.

Which makes this some sort of shitty-assed public apology for my friendship ineptitude (you know, things like not returning your phone calls, your emails, or commenting on your blogs). But at the moment, I’m inside my little shell freezing my little lobsteresque ass off.

Even crabs need warmth and love, but right now I’m just trying to find it within my own hermitage. See?

Those of you that have been blogging for awhile now must understand these funks. The ones where the microcosm of the internet becomes eclipsed by the macrocosm of those that breathe the same air as you and share your meals with you, whose smile you can experience if you say something funny and who can feel real pain if you inflict it on them. Not like you faceless internets. Sorry, that’s kinda mean. I love you. I know you have real faces that smile and cry and all that shit.

I’m starting to wonder how much of my blogging corresponds to a real desire for creative expulsion and how much of it corresponds to just another one of my forms of escapism or another attempt at seeking attention like when I lugged that little hermit crab to school against his will. On the escapism note, when I peek into the tiny fragments of your worlds that you allow me to see I forget my cumbersome life. Then I verbally eject a small fragment of half-truth in hopes of...of what? If it were true creativity, I would likely keep my blog private just for me. But it’s something more about the gratification of attention that leads me to believe this is really about escape. Hmmm, dammit if this isn’t a repetitive theme in my life.

And it´s gotten me fuck all in a tangible sense, and now I find myself unemployed, among other things, and at nearly 32 trying to figure out what the fuck I want to be when I grow up from within a damn seashell. But I still try to escape into your fragments a bit, into the multiperspectivalism you supply me with.

This week I only escaped a little and when I did I came across a couple of gifts that helped me escape even more and I gloated like I did with my little crab.

Mountainlover and Mongoliangirl had both honored me with this award:

In an effort to help my karma, which right now is badly influenced by the hermit crab window incident, I hereby pass these awards on to:


Mackin Ink especially for this post

People in the Sun especially for this post

Almost Royal especially for this post

Regardez Moi especially for this post

Whiskey in My Sippy Cup for a post that I cannot for the life of me find but all her stuff is good so check her out.

Moutainlover especially for this post (Am I allowed to re-give a blog award? I don’t care, I don’t follow rules here).

Tobi et al for the many laughs you give me.


Some of these people might not even read my blog and will therefore never really get their awards, but I don’t care, because there is something in those posts that I go back to again and again and wanted to share them with you.


(NOTE TO RASSLES: I would have passed the award on to you, cause you know I love every little word your fingers type, but you already have two of these awards now, and I’m sure you already blew them up poster size and put them on your wall next to your NKOTB posters, so another one would just be redundant. And plus, I´m still waiting for my drawing, biatch.)


Ok, I think I’m done here, going back inside to clean my pinchers.

-Bluestreak

Warning

Beware.

There are dangers of going abroad.

You could get kidnapped by FARC while enjoying a peaceful holiday in Colombia. You could accidentally catch a flight on Phuket Airlines and the airplane could turn into a "flying coffin". You could go down to Mazatlan and eat a salad and become infected with hepatitis. You could get caught up in a bird flue pandemic in China. You could get your ass reamed, as it were, by an angry bull during the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona.



Lots of things could go wrong.

But the unanticipated dangers are the worst kind.

Like the danger of forgetting who you are, the danger of having the compass that guides your decision-making process malfunctioning, or the danger of the gravity of your convictions suddenly being absent, because this place is like fucking outer space, and you forgot; sometimes there’s no gravity here. You should have planned for that, because now you’re floating away into space and you should have been wearing your fucking space suit cause there’s no oxygen here either, you idiot.

There’s the danger of isolation that leads to an annulment of personality, an annulment of everything you ever thought you were. This annulment of personality leads you to becoming susceptible to contracting this horrible disease called loneliness that is not cured by other people anymore. It’s not cured by your fellow expats and it’s not even cured by the people you love the most that are nearby. The cure is still unknown. Studies are being carried out but thus far they are inconclusive. Correlations of variables have proved spurious.

I remember when I first moved to Spain my parents gave me these purifying pills for the water, in an effort to make me safe and keep me from the dangers of life in the big, bad abroad. You just drop one in a glass of water and it kills all the bacteria so it won’t make you sick. I guess they didn’t know Spain was a first world country and the water was potable here. They should have given me a fucking space suit, or better yet, another kind of pill that would make a day to day life of isolation potable.

I guess these are my excuses for why I’ve been silent lately and when I do speak it’s not at all funny or entertaining. I want to read all of your lovely blogs but I look at my reader and I’m overwhelmed right now. I want to post something that will bring you laughs and make you smile, but I don’t have it in me right now.

Maybe these are excuses too for why I just quit my job in the middle of a financial crisis.

-Bluestreak, unemployed and floating off in space somewhere.

"Kaleigh running" by Ryancbriggs from Flickr
"Spacewalk" by AlbinoFlea from Flickr

My happiness can be bought for the low price of 500,000 euros (or I´m only posting so I can abuse the hyphen key).

Sometimes when I’m looking for material to post on, I try to look deep within myself and find some really dark hidden reality inside of me to enlighten you all with so we can make some kind of human connection however fragile across these windows of integrated circuits and pixels n shit.

But, let’s face it, I’m not that substantive, and to be honest, sometimes I’m as shallow as that stagnant, piss-temperature puddle I just fucked my boots up in on my way to work. Trust me, I live with myself, I know this about me.

Shopping makes me happy. Not ephemerally, evasively happy, but real, Capitalism-Has-Hooked-It´s-Fangs-Into-Me-And-I´m-Ready-To-Speak-In-Tongues-For-This-Shit happy.

I know that deep down I’m a materialist. If someone gave me 500,000 euros it would buy my happiness. Or at least I feel like it would. I would buy a house in Arizona and a flat in Spain and I would quit my Being-Penetrated-In-My-Ear-Canal-Would-Be-Funner-Than-This job.

I know, I know, you will say that if I had the money, I would just find new things to be unhappy about and it wouldn’t bring REAL happiness. Well, save it, cause luckily I don’t believe in real happiness. How could I? I’m kidless. Everyone knows you can’t even fathom real happiness until you spawn. Duh.

So in the meantime, I’m gonna drool over some new boots I might treat myself to if I start feeling really desperate for some happiness relief and dream of the day I can tell The Man to get his dick out of my ear canal.

Anyone have a Q-tip?

-Bluestreak

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.

Drum roll please...

I´m not one for awards or achievements of any kind. Receiving them, that is.

I´m trying to recall any awards I´ve received in the past and the only one that comes to mind was when I was in the 5th grade Science Fair. I won 2nd place for an Acids and Bases experiment that was 100% designed by my dad´s girlfriend at the time, a 2nd grade teacher. I had no clue what acids and bases were but just saw a bunch of nicely organized cotton balls with different colors on construction paper. I remember being terrified when I won because I thought someone was gonna ask me a question or I would have to talk about it and everyone would realize I was a huge fraud (this same fear has accompanied me to date). My dad´s girlfriend had the best intentions, but being a second grade teacher, she could have made sure I had some inkling for what my project was about. Oh well, she ended up leaving my dad, which I thought was great for me, because I had recently seen Parent Trap and had a whole plan concocted in my mind for reuniting my parents. (Side note: the writers and producers of that movie should be burned at the stake).

Anyway, Awards and Achievements.

Grade school and Junior High, nothing. I was "uninvolved" according to my parents´accusations. I think it was because they forced me to do music and I hated it, quitting violin lessons cause the violin was too heavy, quitting singing lessons for fear of having to perform, quitting guitar lessons because I was embarrassed for having drooled on my guitar in a moment of intense concentration during a lesson once (my mouth was all full of braces and rubber bands n shit).

I tried out for the basketball team and made the "B team", which was a consolation prize for not making the "A team" (read: REAL team). They didn´t want us rejects giving up on our stupid dreams so they created a new team just for us. I sucked even on the "B team".

I tried out for cheerleading. (Insert game show noise alerting failure).

Gaaaaaawd.

High school, nothing. No Model U.N. No student council. No Spanish club. I joined track and field because I was in love with a pole vaulter, but asked the coach if it was possible to just go to practice and never compete. A resounding NO, was the answer. I quit again.

So you see, given this history, actually receiving an award makes me light up like a Christmas tree. I´m all silly and giddy now because I have an award for that scrapbook that never was.

Tobi et al awarded me with this:

“This blog invests and believes, in ‘proximity’ meaning, that blogging makes us 'close'. They are all charming blogs, and the majority of them aim to show the marvels of friendship; there are persons who are not interested when we give them a prize, and then they help to cut these bows; do we want that they are cut, or that they propagate? Then let’s try to give more attention to them! So with this prize we must deliver it to eight bloggers that in turn must make the same thing and put this text.”

So I´m passing this award on to eight bloggers, all for the same reason: because they make me drop whatever I´m doing, no matter how important whenever I see them updated in my reader:

El Guiri

Gnomespeak

Formerly Fun

Praying to Darwin

A Free Man

Sometimes I Make Lists

Xbox4NappyRash

Sanity, Interrupted


Thanks, Tobi, for making me smile.

xoxo

-Bluestreak

I was expecting a serious ass kickin'

Bluestreak has been reviewed.

When you voluntarily submit your blog for review at a site whose domain name is http://www.iwillfuckingtearyouapart.blogspot.com/ you have to kind of expect to get a good ass reaming.

I was prepared to have my limbs removed and then get beat over the head with one of them while being figuratively sodomized. (sound familiar, Key? I've had limb-fantasies ever since that post)

If you don´t know the folks over at Ask and Ye Shall Receive, they refer to themselves as dominatrixes who "love to deliver a well-placed and timely spanking". Formerly Fun refers to them as the "cool kids" that let you sit with them at lunch. I tend to think of them as the "bad kids" smoking cigarettes behind the dumpster at the 7-11 who may or may not kick your ass into an oblivion and then chuck your remains into the dumpster on your walk home from school, depending on your level of bad-assness and/or your ability to not talk shit (by having a crap blog).

Well it turns out the bad kids didn't chuck me in the dumpster after all. So this is my BIG THANK YOU to Calamity for the very kind review and the friends who commented.

If anyone else has any suggestions on how I can improve my blog, please feel free to comment here or at the review site.

-Bluestreak, silly grin ear-to-ear

Cause I´d rather be pimping than working

Ok, this is my final attempt to help Ghost of Keywork get votes for Hottest Blogger, besides I´m well out of material for the week, and bored as hell at work. If you haven´t voted yet, just hop on over and vote. We could help this well-deserving hottie win a trip to NY (he is, after all, paying his debt to society).

If you are like me, and are more into personality as opposed to looks, consider the following statements he has made in the last few days in the blogosphere, which swept me off my feet with his grace and charisma:

"How does this Mormon-With-Lots -Of-Wives thing work? Do I have to be Mormon?"

"Well, I haven't killed anyone yet, so I would say the detox is going well"

"Tired of doing something 'just because'? So was I. Know what I did? I snagged a couple of ankle monitors and now I do things because I 'have to or I'll go to jail for 90 days'."

"Violence in trees is a big turn on for me too."

"I guess I could have just cut to the chase and said, 'I want to fuck a cartoon, I'm a dork'."

"...I could have Jesus giving me a foot rub and people would still know that I'm no good."

"...I think I´m tearing up. Kidding, I just got maced by a librarian."

"Look, my panties, you've bunched them up."


So come on, friends, get your vote out for Key, one day left. If you hadn´t noticed, I voted for him cause he makes me piss myself laughing. Oh, and cause he´s hot in uniform.

Good luck, Key.

-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.

This Blog Post Cancels itself Out.

Ok I only have two nouns in my head right now. One is “drag” and the other is the Spanish equivalent, “coñazo”, so I guess I will use arithmetic to get my point across:

Lack of Inspiration +Homesickness +thirty something crisis + identity crisis - living arrangements I am happy with - a job I like = a blog that is a drag to read.

So, nothing has come to me lately to blog about that does not sound like me whining and feeling sorry for myself, and while trying to think of a topic that would be fun to write about, I started thinking about the fact that I blog and it is making me feel anti-blog. It all just irks me somewhat, it just feels so narcissistic. I feel like it is on par with gathering a group of people in a room and orating a speech to them and then waiting for them to comment on my brilliance or at the very least not stone me to death. I would never do that (wait, what am I saying? I did that all through grad school and considered it to be the closest thing to torture I have ever felt).

So why do I blog? I guess it is more for my sake than others. Hey, maybe I like to hear myself talk and am interested in subjects that I would bring up. Come on, do I really think I have something valuable to say to you, the consumer of information about my fucking boring life? Some people blog as an escape from their normal lives. I suspect that such is the case of THIS GUY, probably THIS GUY, and most definitely THIS GUY. Other people I know blog to keep family and friends informed about their lives abroad, posting pictures and updates, which I think is great, but I feel like facebook and my picasa web albums get that job done for me. Besides, I do not need my family members having their suspicions confirmed about how disturbed I am, which is why I like to be at least somewhat anonymous here (ok, so my siblings are allowed here, but if they do not already know that I am somewhat disturbed they must not have been paying attention since, say, birth).

Weirdly enough in light of all of this, I think about ways I can get more traffic to my blog. Why on earth I would do such a thing? Once I had to give an hour and a half lecture on the Sociology of Religion to a SOC 101 class of about 150 college kids, the memories of which are mostly suppressed and the rest are filed away under “Most Terrifying Experience Ever”. So, why would I possibly want a lot of readers? Don´t know, I´m stumped.

Ok, so there it is, a blog post about blog posts. My e-world is going to implode in on itself any second now. I promise next time, dear avid readers, to post on something only slightly more interesting than a pile of rocks but probably slightly less interesting that picking your nose.



I just can´t blog about Spain right now, I can´t even complain about it. Because right now I just want to kick it in the cojones. Sorry.

Artwork from Flickr by scarlet_rose77