Holy Shit: thanks for the sanity.

You know how there are certain friends that have had such a formative effect on your life that when you talk to them it is like having a conversation with yourself, except without the feeling of the little voices that make you think you´re losing your fucking mind all the time? You can usually tell within 5 seconds of listening to their sense of humor again that it is exactly like yours. There are a few of these people in my past. Only a handful. At this age I don´t know if it´s possible to find new friends that have the same effect, because you´re fully formed now, you´re fucking thirty-something and you may as well be 80, your mind is a damn rock, and besides you are busy as hell and don´t have time to hang out, you miserable adult. You are who you are today because of those people in your past that helped shape your personality.

I just talked to my dear friend Mary. My god, do I miss thee. Can you just hang out in my brain and then when I need a laugh or need to make fucking decisions consult you as needed?

Could I get this lovely handful of friends in a room and can we give each other shit again for hours? And can we just toss our beer bottles from our chairs into your kitchen again and listen to them crash? No? Come on. I´ll let you laugh at me until I can´t take it anymore, or you can slam my back again into the asphalt in front of your damn apartment complex and then act like it was the funniest joke ever (thanks Josh and Mary, I doubt you even remember that, you A-holes). And then I´ll write all over your face with permanent marker while you´re passed out. No? Doesn´t sound like fun anymore? Are we too adult for this shit?

There´s been talk of a New Years reunion of the lovely handful. If any of you A-holes are reading this (I know some of you read this and you biatches never leave a comment) and are even thinking of not meeting me in New York in January, I will hunt you down and make you drink with me whether you are in Seattle, San Francisco, fucking Milwaukee or Philly. Either that or I sweartogod I´ll drunk dial you at the most inopportune moment.

All I want is a few hours of the crazies being around the table with me and not just in my head.

Peace.

-Bluestreak

Age blows

Age. It is happening and it is not what I expected. It is much more annoying.



I remember being 21 years old and thinking that I had absolutely no problem with ageing. I knew that the physical was not going to be there forever and the things that really mattered got better with age (sex, intellect, finances, emotional well-being, and ummm, there must be a few more examples). In other words, I had the optimism of a village idiot eye-balling the haystack he just tossed his fucking needle in.

For some reason, my 31 year old self has forgotten all about my 21 year old wisdom. I see my crows feet, my bastard arms that aren't supposed to look like that, those funky gray WTF hairs, my changing nose, the weird spots that appear out of nowhere, my fading and blurring tattoo (that just turned 13!)



My boobs are holding up alright against gravity-the-infidel, but let´s be honest, that´s only because they don´t weigh much. Plus I haven´t had kids yet, so we´ll see how it goes, I´ll keep you posted.

But what about sex, intellect, finances, emotional well-being? Yeah, yeah. Shut the hell up. I want to look hot, okay? And I don´t want to have to give up food and alcohol to get it.

A friend of mine once said, "my goal in life is to look good and have fun parties" and I envied her honesty about her lack of depth. Because I´m discovering I may have been being a bit dishonest this whole time, pretending to care about other shit more than my fleeting youth. And now I admit that I might spend more time in the mirror doing WTF double-takes than feeding my intellect. Truth be told.

So does anyone care to remind me that there are things more worthy than the fountain of youth? Or is ageing just the mortal coil that´s gonna just be with me from here on out?




-Bluestreak, shallower and shallower every day.


p.s. Don´t you dare tell me i look good unless you saw me naked when I was 21 and have seen me naked recently, and then your flattery MIGHT be taken seriously.

Alice in Wonderland illustrations by Sir John Tenniel from Fundraw.com.

Grad School: I don´t talk about this much cause I try to suppress this shit

A friend of mine sent me this article from salon.com. The author, a T.V. reviewer does a fine job of comparing prostitution to what the majority of us have accepted and know as the daily cubicle grind. That is, get it up the ass by The Man in exchange for money.

I am currently trying to remember when the precise moment was that I decided to stop idealizing my future and just deal with the life-sucking reality of needing money.

Could it have been at midnight on my 30th birthday, by chance? Could it have been the day I defended my MA thesis but for some reason let the door hit my ass on the way out, because I could not spend another day of living like a damn leech?

The pull. Have you ever felt it? This fucking academic pull. The pull is the thing in my brain that teases me telling me I quit something I was somewhat good at. I quit that outlet for all of my brain energy that actually produced something tangible and real and above all, worth it (the creation of knowledge), that I now use to decide which pumps to wear to work and which lame report no one will ever read I´ll put together for some dumbass in H.R.

I know, I know. 95% of the what is produced in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences ends up in the stacks bound and never to be cracked open again until some schmuck thinking there might be a job for him in academia goes to write his thesis and finds that shit again, buried under a giant pile of "knowledge". An enormous chunk of what goes on in academia is intellectual masturbation, mutual intellectual masturbation (I´ll cite your pointless study in my next journal article that no one outside our esoteric jerk circle will read, if you do the same to mine. Aaaah. That feels good.)

I know all these things.

But I feel the pull. It´s the same one I used to feel for travel.

I feel this pull because I know that in the context of those circle jerks, some people really get off, I mean, they really create something worthwhile, that even the jack-offs all around them are contributing to or are at least contributing to the environment that allows them to do so. So maybe I don´t mind being one of the mediocre ones, if I´m part of a process that I believe has worth.

But then there is that annoying bug inside my brain that brings up the point that maybe I quit because I could not cut the mustard. Ok, those bastards in academia did scare the living hell out me when they demanded a coherent argument when I had no possible way to formulate one (ignorance is not bliss in grad school, it is called humiliation). It also scared the hell out of me that all of the professors in my department had degrees from the Ivy League, so where the hell did all the state University PhD´s go to make a living?

Thoughts about going back arise when I stop thinking about the practicalities of money, mortgage, life, kids, responsibility. I start thinking about it when none of those things fulfill me or seem to have a glimmer of hope to fully do so. But even in the crazy ivy tower world, it is a rat race. The University only lets you stick around if you are producing good shit.

And this is where I ask myself the scary question: am I capable of it? Answer to self: Oh fuck, maybe not. And then I go home, watch a stupid movie, wake up the next day and go to work. At least if I was a prostitute I wouldn´t have to get up so damn early.

Time for a change.

-Bluestreak

"Reality tag" by Scoobymoo from Flickr

Death by hyphen

I´ve been SUCH a bitch lately.

Why are you crying? I don´t KNOW. I´m angry and I don´t know what or who it´s directed at. You hate the house, job? Yes. Is that why your a such a mess? MAYBE.

Is it possible that I remember happier times, but in those times I wasn't really happy either, I was just thinking about the past remembering illusive better times or obsessed with the future? That this might be the case does not bug me nearly as much as not knowing for sure if that was the case or not. Was I ever happy before or not??? What am I, fucking senile?

I'm sad. I'm cry-your-eyes-out-over-that-song-from-the-mixed-tape-someone-gave-you-eleven,yes,eleven-years-ago-sad.



I'm get-your-life-turned-upside-down-because-of-a-fucking-sunflower-field-with-just-the-right-light-sad.

I am feeling the drawbacks of the information age. It is not natural to be able to know about peoples lives from your past just by googling them. These are ghosts that never rest in peace. Facebook is the spawn of the devil.

I'm angry too. I'm be-a-bitch-to-my-sweet-husband-no-good-reason-angry. He cannot avoid my ridiculous whatever-crisis. He is dodging my fly-away bullets that I am shooting at myself and whatever moves. I can't even decide what kind of a crisis it is I'm going through (Thirties crisis? Identity crisis? Cultural crisis? I´ve-turned-into-a-total-sell-out-and-have-given-up-on-my-dreams-crisis? Should-I-have-a-kid-or-is-my-life-gonna-get-a-million-times-more-complicated-if-I-do-crisis?). If I knew I could read some self-help book or watch Oprah and shut the hell up. Marriage blows, especially when you are married to me right now. I KNOW, babe.

I talk to a good friend, my real-life friend. Talking to M is like getting a free 1/2 hour therapy session on the phone. That is, if by therapy you mean, having someone tell you all your problems with go away if you just reproduce. "You only think about what an inconveience kids are, you don't know the good" Why couldn´t I have just gotten knocked up and not have to deal with torturous decisions, this constant state of examination of if I should have kids and what it will mean, and blah-di-blah-di-blah. I seriously wish I had gotten knocked up five years ago and avoided the whole overanalyzation-of-when-is-the-right-time-part. Can someone just give me a kid? Drop it off at my house, all helpless and cute and little, and force me to make this decision, cause apparently I have gotten to the point over the years of being absolutely incapable of it.

I was better at this 5-6 years ago when I KNEW what I was doing. Hello, no one was gonna stand in my way. Cabezona. Or at least had the illusion of knowing what I was doing. THAT is the feeling I miss. THAT is happiness. Feeling 100% sure your decisions are the right ones. I guess that is what being young is and making impulsive decisions that will forever inform the rest of your life.

Ah, Cariño. I love you. I could never be without you, I never could before, no matter how dumb of an idea it seeemed for us to try to make this thing work being from different continents. I'm here fully aware that this life is gonna be rough being over here, in this place that I blame everything on. Leaving you would be like gnawing off my own arm, leaving here like amputating part of my spirit. But that doesn't mean I'm not gonna suck to be married to sometimes. It doesn't mean I'm never gonna look back and be sad for roads not taken. Sorry 'bout that. P.S. wanna have a kid?

Clip from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

artwork from flickr:

Mixed tape love by e.c.

and

The last Sunflower by Bernat

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

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

Dirty Women

As per Kate´s request, I have decided to address the dreaded issue of housework in the context of mixed Spanish/American marriages.

Cleanliness standards here are based on an antiquated division of labor in the family that is obsolete.

I can rationalize this shit historico-sociologically until I am blue in the face, but the fact is, if someone were to stop by my house RIGHT NOW (A Spanish person, that is), they would not think “Oh my god, those people are slobs”. They would think “Que perra es la Bluestreak”, and dear husband would be left out of the equation altogether. They might even sympathize with the poor guy for living with a woman that does not own up to her responsibilities (which have done nothing but multiply exponentially over this period of egalitarian “progress”).

I think this is what bothers me most of all regarding this whole topic, the frowning upon the wife who does not do her job. Not that I was not also bugged by the marital problems I experienced in the past when I realized that I, Bluestreak– biggest slob I know, and utterly incapable of cleaning up after myself-- had somehow mistakenly been designated RESPONSIBLE for an even bigger slob than myself if that is humanly possible; my husband.

Initially I kicked and screamed. Nothing would extinguish the feminist fire in me (really the slob in me). And then one day I said, “Fuck it, I´m getting a maid”.

And I did. Marriage no longer a juggernaut experiencing downward spiral.

What a cop-out feminist I am, you say. And, yes I HAVE thought about the fact that my privileged situation has allowed me to employ another woman/cheap laborer and perhaps I AM contributing to the problem and not solving anything. My ability to NOT clean has been allowed by cheap female labor. Progress???

I do not see things this way though, as I do not undervalue the profession of cleaning (or childcare). This work is low paid (well, wait, it actually is not that low paid here) and has a stigma attached to it because it just so happens that it has always been associated with women. But that is not the real issue. The real issue is, I just do not have time for everything, dammit.

And if I am gonna work 50 hours a week TOO, I will be damned if I am gonna spend Saturday cleaning the entire house BY MYSELF. So I decided, it is either fair and square chore list or fork it over for a cleaning lady.

This has not solved everything. My dear cleaning lady only comes once a week for four hours. The dishes still need to be done, the crap still needs picking up, and the laundry still needs to get done. I would love to say that all this stuff has been so fairly divided between my husband and I but that is not the case. But, my husband is one hell of a cook and this has saved him many a hard night of wife-nagging. That combined with the cleaning lady, and, well, I am in a much better mood nowadays.

I do not think this addresses Kate´s question about the unrealistic expectations in Spain with respect to domestic cleanliness. But I think that will be solved a generation (or two) from now when houses are altogether dirtier because there just is not enough time in the day. Or, maybe kids will even have to do chores over here, just like we did in the U.S.

I think in the future the old ladies will definitely stop sweeping the street.



No time for that in our future.

Expat Purgatory

Seeing as I have gotten on a pessimistic note with my last post, why stop now? Now it is time to discuss Expat Purgatory (thanks Alexis for the term).

First, let us define the term:

Expat Purgatory: ex.pat (eks´pat´) pur.ga.tory (pur´gə tôr′ē)
noun

1. The distinct feeling that time stands still in the home country of a person living abroad. Side effects of such a state of mind include the re-surfacing of age-old issues out of the blue that would otherwise be resolved in a standard time-space continuum of a native living in a native land.

2. The state of being causing the sensation an expatriate experiences when returning to his or her native land upon which he or she only wants to re-visit places he or she remembers and has missed.
Ex: "Bummer. It would be cool to take Tiff to that new restaurant in Scottsdale while she’s in town but she wants to go to that lame restaurant we used to go to five years ago. She must be in Expat Purgatory."

3. A cause of the obsession upon returning to ones native land with driving by old places he or she used to live and houses of friends that have long since moved to Seattle, Atlanta, New York and Sacramento, so what the hell is the point of driving by?

4. A desperate sensation of not being able to move forward in one’s foreign land due to the inability to affront one’s past given the lack of any sensory reminders of it. Then when such sensory reminders present themselves (such as a hearing a song in a bar or being emailed pictures of an old friend) one’s past hits one like a ton of fucking bricks.

5. The sudden sensation that all one has done over the last 10 years of his or her life is assimilate a new culture and the realization that this is not enough because that culture then becomes as much a part of one as one’s ugly thumbs. This also includes the realization that besides the accumulation of said culture, one has done jack shit.

Expat Purgatory is a prime example of how space and time are essentially inseparable and meaningless one without the other. While time literally goes by with a space distantiation, it is meaningless because it lacks context. Space is meaningless too if the passage of time is not experienced. This is why it irritates me when I go home and they have torn buildings down that are supposed to be there or added new ones that are just wrong. The new space makes no sense because I have not experienced the time process there.

In Seville, however, I have welcomed the city changes with open arms. New bike lanes leading to a chaotic mutual biker-pedestrian and biker-driver aggression never before seen on the pacific sevillian streets? Bring it on. Light rail with obnoxious neon advertisement speeding by a 600 year old gothic cathedral nearly taking out 10 tourists in its transit and blocking traffic for miles? Sounds good. But you tear down a crappy gas station in Tempe, Arizona and replace it with a bright and shiny Borders Bookstore and that is just wrong. Put the scary gas station back with all the sketchy people hanging around. That is how I remember it, dammit.

I am in Expat Purgatory for crying out loud, have a little mercy.

- Bluestreak