It's another fucking new year. A new year. Like new (period) year(period). Crazy.
I've been blog negligent lately. If this blog were a Tomagotchi, like the one my student Teresa keeps showing me in class (they still exist! hard to believe...), the poor thing would have soiled itself into oblivion already. I apologize if you've been checking up on me, waiting for an update with no result. I myself have been looking at my blog with regularity, with out updating it...as if it will spontaneously generate its own account of my life at the moment. I intend to put some pictures up tomorrow, in an attempt to recount the things I've skipped over in photo-essay format. Sort-of. Its a bit of a copout, btu I've never been a good journaler, and I look at catching up on lost time as a)an insurmountable task and b)yet another loss of time.
I just got back from my trip to Paris and Barcelona for the holidays with my friends Beth and Emily. We had some great moments - I laughed harder than I had in a few months, the kind of laughter that makes you feel like you've done situps. And that felt really good. We had a sort of a difficult time negotiating how best to both spend time together and make the most of our vacation time and money (we seemed to have different inclinations...a lot of the time). In the end, I think that we did a pretty good job of negotiating for 3 people living in the same space for 2 straight weeks - I certainly enjoyed the trip, and I'm glad it was with them. Paris was completely charming, as ever. I spent the majority of my time there taking walks that spanned half the city (7 or 8km in a day i think), and stuffing myself with cheap and DELICIOUS bread and cheese. To the point that I think I made myself a bit sick to the stomach on cheese just in time for our trip to Barcelona and had to spend a day of our time there resting...
For Christmas we met up with Nico, a friend of Beth's from her time in Uruguay, who was as charming and open to us as his city. We had supper with a mish-mosh of company, danced the cumbia until the early hours (I kind of pooped out of this part of the party - the part where they were doing shots of Absinthe and Tequila from Mexico - aka the real shit- since I was still kind of crashing from the end of school). But I overcame my initial inclination to call it quits and went "hardcore" with the girls on Christmas morning: meaning that we stayed up long enough to go to 8:30 am sunrise mass at Notre Dame and saw the stained glass light up with the daylgith through the service, and the sun reaching over the city by the Seine (we, of course, were totally cracked out from the night before and were cackling like giddy bums by the side of the river, taking pictures of ourselves.) We slept through the rest of the day.
For New Years, we met up with Nico again, who at that point had a gaggle of friends from out of town crashing at his tiny attic apartment. We had a delicous Uruguayan guiso made by Julianne (who is uruguayan by way of australia, and maybe switzerland?), and rang in the midnight hour with champagne and the carhorns and drumming of the neighbors in Nico's mainly hindu neighborhood. Later, Beth and I ventured of to a houseparty with a really swanky address - a few blocks away from the Eiffel Tower to be precise. At that point it wasn't lit up anymore, but was still incredibly impressive as this dark, shadowed figure looming in the fog. At 5:30 am we passed right below it on our way home...
Beth made an awesome new years day meal - traditional german pork, sauerkraut and applesauce for good luck (which, conveniently, was also the best hungover food ever imaginable). Emily and I both want the recipes so we can spread the tradition. ugh, YUM.
By the time we got to Barcelona, I think we were all sort of winding down. Emily and I spent a wonderful afternoon watching surfers and the sunset on the beach at the end of the Barceloneta, talking about life, the universe and everything of importance - which clearly had to be followed up by beers, patatas bravas (chunky fried potatoes in spicy sauce - AWESOME), and gelato. We both decided, I think, that even for all the things that perhaps are not at quite the place we'd want them to be in our lives, overall...We were standing on the water in an amazing city watching a beautiful sunset and eating ice cream, and really, we have to count ourselves truly fortunate.
The trip gave me the perspective I was seeking without finding before I left. A way to break with the monotony and constant expenditure of energy I'd been focusing on in my life here, and to realize this amazing opportunity for what it is in all its glory, and the will and desire to grab it by the balls and make of it what i really WANT it to be. Nothing short of unforgettable.
So here I am at my computer again. My room is a mess. I smell like armpit. I'm drinking beer alone listening to my neighbors sing merrily with their families (today is a big holiday in Spain.) But I just had a wonderful trip, and I just spoke to a beautiful, wonderful friend (Aiyanna) for the first time in a long time, and I'm not sad. And I'm no lonely. I'm thinking about all of you out there who I love very much and wish could be here with me if it were in my power to make all of our gals and desires coincide. You make this experience and all experiences worth living, even if we don't live them together in the moment.
I don't know if I'm any wiser this year. Or any luckier. And I have no idea where I could be headed right now. But I feel I'm in good company. And I'm learning the patience to wait out the rest. And for now, that's enough for me.
Love and Luck from Madrid.
(Cross your fingers that I get pictures together...Or better yet respond to my post and tell me if you want to see them, because i'll be more likely to get on top of it under pressure)
