análisis del entorno social
Greetings, Spring.
1. Spring officially arrived today (or yesterday, now), but it had taken up residence in Madrid weeks ago.
This was evident both in the flowering trees on campus, and in the famous Castilian Radiator Trees, which were already dropping fruit, to some degree of danger to the unalert passerby.
2. Blood Orange juice is mighty delicious and yet, despite having grown up in a major orange-producing state, I knew it not until I went to Germany (where it was quite the popular breakfast beverage), and I've only just rediscovered it here. I am wondering if Miami people are familiar with it? Have I just not seen it, and instead been distracted by Grapefruit and regular Orange juices? According to Wikipedia, it seems to only be cultivated in California and Texas in the U.S., while European varieties are from Italy and Spain.
3. Caroline stayed over this weekend, and it was nice. I've been extremely fortunate so far; I've had excellent, extremely compliant guests. This weekend involved alot of cavorting and dancing, which was fun, but more than anything, it involved unanticipated sociological fieldwork, as Caroline and I both spent much of the 6-7 odd hours of straight dancing each night basically making fools of ourselves to much entertainment / commenting to each other on the behaviour of others. Seriously, give or take a notepad and the dancing, we might as well have been on-the-scene Kinsey reporters, but despite the academics and speculation and shared conclusions on other groups / couples / individuals and the mutual fascination, it was all quite fun and relaxing.
4. Nonetheless, I'm glad that I won't be taking on any additional lodgers for atleast the remainder of this month - it's not them, at all, they've been wonderful, but things have begun to get complicated again, and what with the exhaustion provoked by regular matters, I'd be altogether fatigued if, additionally, I had to also attend to others. Still, even though things are busy, I've finally been getting enough time to attend to personal matters, which is awesome. Amongst them:
- Drawing, painting, alot. I spent all of yesterday painting, which was most excellent, and once I post this I'll probably paint till 2 or four. (Which isn't ideal, really, I must be up by 9 tomorrow, but it's a far better thing to do with insomnia than, say, lie in bed worrying over not having yet fallen asleep.)
- Reading non-school things: I finished The Magician's Nephew last night; I began Prince Caspian today. I missed these books, and I am glad to be revisiting (every time I open them, I am brought back to the better parts of the autumn, winter and spring of my 6th grade year, and hurrah to that.)
5. In The Magician's Nephew C.S. Lewis "reveals" (though not really, if you read the books in correct order, though the boxed set of my childhood did not have them so-listed) that the White Witch of Wardrobe fame is actually Jadis, the last Empress of Charn, this ruined city in a dying world that the kids discover; faced with defeat in a civil war, the last Empress instead chose to utter "the Deplorable Word", instantly killing every living thing on the planet. At the end of the book, in a fairly obnoxious, speech-type way, Lewis (channeled through Aslan) nonetheless makes the following anti-war dialogue:
"Look here, children."
They looked and saw a little hollow in the grass, with a grassy bottom, warm and dry.
"When you were last here," said Aslan, "that hollow was a pool, and when you jumped into it you came into a world where a dying sun shone over the ruins of Charn. There is no pool now. That world is ended, as if it had never been. Let the race of Adam and Eve take warning."
"Yes, Aslan," said both the children. But Polly added, "But we're not quite as bad as that world, are we, Aslan?"
"Not yet, Daughter of Eve," he said. "Not yet. But you are growing more like it. It is not certain that some wicked one of your race will not find out a secret as evil as the Deplorable Word and use it to destroy all living things. And soon, very soon, before you are an old man and an old woman, great nations in your world will be ruled by tyrants who care no more for joy and justice and mercy the Empress Jadis. Let your world beware. That is the warning."
Right: even though I was annoyed by the lack of tact in his pontificating, this reminded me of the Doomsday Clock, which I find quite interesting. I think it rather fascinating that we are so efficient in going about our business and worrying about our problems, when really at any moment we could be blown to bits. I don't mean to say we should do otherwise; worrying won't change any of the situations, but it is amazing to think we're at seven minutes to midnight at the moment - exactly as things were when the Clock was created in 1947. Especially when considering the atomic issues, I have a feeling as if it could all really be compared to the interwar period. Post-Berlin Wall things were quite glorious, and what with all the Strategic Arms Reductions and whatnot, there were moments of truly optimistic, progressive thought (and the clock itself was rolled back to its safest point so far, of 17 minutes. But with the changes of the past few years, and calls decrying our systems of international dialogue as being useless (a term now being applied, atleast here, to the International War Crimes Tribunal as well as the U.N., in light of the Milosevic issue, not to mention the Iraq War), it all rings terribly familiar, in a 1930's, generally growing turmoil / League of Nations sort of way. Dunno, it's all subconsciously creepy.
6. Much like the Avian Flu, ridiculous as it is, which spreads further with each passing week. Not to be alarmist, but we seems to average a major epidemic every fifty years, so the likeliness of some terrible disease striking in plague-type mass seems to be more of a "when" rather than "if" issue at this point.
7. Ha, I've no idea why I even went on that tantrum. I'm cheery, I promise.
8. I saw Four Weddings and a Funeral and Átame! this weekend. The first I had never seen straight-through; it was great, and I now want to marry Kristen Scott-Thomas (though this will never happen, as I could never leave Robin / Madeleine). The second was Almodóvar, and pretty much crap. Not his best work, decidedly, and the fact that it was very 90's, in an obnoxious manner, and dealt with S&M was just bleh-producing.
9. A bull was pardoned on Saturday at the Fallas festival in Valencia. I feel the need to point this out because people love to talk about the inhumane aspects of bullfighting. I don't care to go into that debate, but I would like to emphasize that this does prove the fair-play aspect: the bull as much as the bullfighters are, ultimately, equals in the ring. Whoever wins really does win. So the case of this bull, which apparently fought magnificently, so much so that the bullfighter had to retire. The bull left the ring, alive and well, to a standing ovation, and has since been sent back to its breeding ground in Cadiz; it will spend the rest of its days protected by slaughter, and what's more, as a seed bull for the cows in the farm from whence he came. Fair play to the bull.
(That story reminds me of this; besides being a magnificent story, the bull in that particular image was tattooed on the late Elliott Smith's right-upper-arm.)
10. _____ _________-_______ does not like inconsiderate, ugly dancers, and is additionally annoyed when those inconsiderate, ugly dancers also happen to be overweight and rather smelly lesbians. He does, however, like that all the lesbians with whom he does have personal acquaintance practice most excellent (if at times lengthy) hygiene and are of excellent breeding, both in terms of looks & weight, and consideration on the dancefloor (the latter we theorize).
11. He also likes his tendency for silly, rash decisions. He will not be seeing V is for Vendetta; he has already decided that he will not like it. Simple as that.
(Well, pseudo-simple as that.)
12. Is it really summer in the Southern Hemisphere when it is winter in the Northern? Is that why a tropical storm or hurricane is hitting Australia? If so, in June, will it be awfully cold in Santiago de Chile? Will it be icy in Lima, Peru? I had always been intrigued as to whether or not that was earnestly true, or if it was just a ginormous lie that adults tell you.
13. I dreamt of zombies again, last week. This time, they invaded the beach house. Note to self: do not use the beach house as a refuge in case of sudden zombie invasion.
14. This flat isn't really ideal for repelling them either. The front door is pretty sturdy, but if they're the jumping kind from 28 Days Later (which I want to rewatch at some point this week, if at all possible) we should be utterly ruined, and once inside, forget it - it's tiny, there's no roof space, and the inside doors are either flimsy or made of glass. Upon reflection, I've really never had any particularly ideal zombie-proof lodgings, come to think of it. The German house, with its large expanses of glass doors and windows, was a death trap, and completely isolated, in terms of being a village in the middle of the countryside. The house in Miami was practically the same, with the windows and such, though with the storm shutters and the good roof-interior space there might have been a fighting chance, if we were talking about a short period of time. The flat in Pamplona had an excellent, strong door...I think...but other than that, it was on the fifth floor, with only one long way down to the street, and the entrance door to the building was made of glass, and it was next to the Cathedral (bodies galore in the crypt). If they do ever pop up, I hope they are of the George Romero, slow-moving Night of the Living Dead variety. Though I could see myself, once over the fact that people are being eaten by the undead, getting too cocky about their slow movement, and eventually falling prey to them, via hubris. Aye, hubris.
15. If any of you know of any movies that I haven't seen, and which I ought to, and which came out atleast a year ago, list them.
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