del polvo

of the dust

"the men who came with the dust, and were gone with the wind" (W. Guthrie)

this week has been eventful, present and future. I have only 6 technical days of school left, and preparations for the United States is beginning. Im moving to seattle, right? yeah, but where in seattle? and also, where am i going to school again?

just some questions i am currently working on.

But i have some good stories about the past 5 days. here is a rough outline, a few words, and one story. to preface, valerie's two parisienne cousins came into town (Boris & Ania) and we showed them around. 

Thursday - Joy Eslava (baroque theatre, converted one of the "hottest" nightclubs in madrid). i danced from 9 to 5:30, made it home by 6:30, and in bed by 7. that's a nine to five alright. Roommate valerie commented that my dancing was everything she hoped it could be.

Friday - Malasana! the heart of the aternative cultural movement of madrid. Malasana included a bar dedicated to the ramones, a club called tupperware (indie music club), a basement club called "El Perro" (looks like a brick dungeon, creepy and great), and doner alip (for kebabs at 4 in the morning). i made it to sleep at about 6 o' clock, very tired and grateful for my bed.

Saturday - el chapandaz (full story in the next post)

Sunday - after a desert filled evening at Jardin Secreto (madrid's response to NYC's serendipity, a cafe specializing in very delicious desserts), we headed to pent house. located on the top roof of one of madrid's finest hotel's (where penelope cruz had her birthday party, and yes, she is spanish), pent house had these little outdoor rooms (like wooden platforms on stilts, with canvas roofs and canvas walls seperating each other) with a sea of pillows in them. 6 of us crawled beneath the pillows, and boy, did it feel like a very lush, luxurious, and sanitary ball pit. we stayed until 4, when we were kicked out...

that is a little about the weekend. interspersed were picnics with good views, museums with picasso paintings, good eats, and new friends from paris. C'est la vie magnifique!

hunter thompson

Like most of the others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right. I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going.

(i read "Rum Diaries" while i was in france, this is an excerpt)

the farm 1

more or less, this an email i just wrote to anicia. so, i just copied it onto here.

the farm? wow, how do i describe it? i lived for two weeks with a bostoner/honduran (gregorio) and a puerto rican (celeste). the three of us had travelled together from the NYU program. ill have pictures up soon, i just need to steal them from celeste first. the house was a 1500 year old, and fully restored, farmhouse. the owners were two gay millionaires (english and german, jeremy and michael). they didnt have a farm, just tons of grounds/gardens. so i worked in their orchard, rose garden, vegetable patch.. etc. Gay englishmen love their gardens. apparently they got over ambitious and they had more beauty on their hands than they could manage... also, i am sure they enjoy the influx of new blood to stimulate conversation/soical movement. next to the house was a waterfall, huge and beautiful. the house itself was an hour and a half walk from the nearest village (so, fairly remote). most afternoons were spent meandering through the woods.. if you find the french town Amelie (in the french pyrenees, not farm from Perpignan) then you can be about a 45 minute - an hour drive from where i was. the dinners were the highlight. good food, 3 glasses of wine, and long conversations every night. the hosts were sooo good at talking and moving the conversation. Jeremy had studied history and history of art at cambridge (went on to make a software company), and michael was a lawyer in germany. apparently jeremy used to be buddy buddy with a duchess who had been the 3rd richest person in england, but then she died. Jeremy had one of those, "oh yes, i dare say..." accents. and michael, well.. he showed us how to play a german board game called Carcasonne (the equivalent of german-Risk). it was a really good time. the conversations had good depth to them, we explored nearby cities on the weekends, and the whole trip cost me 200 euro (would have been just 100, but i rushed back to madrid to see the padre). i enjoyed it so much. now, i am back in madrid. gettin into the final flow.

ill have pictures up soon.