the babel of circular labrynths
I did, ultimately, have to apply to get a new passport.
After tearing my room apart, going through each individual article of clothing, clearing my desk only to heap things obscuring its surface once more, scuba-diving under mountains of papers that covered the floor under my desk and bravely scavenging the deepest depths under my bed, I discovered it, nudged neatly between the pages of a book chronicling the life and works of Egon Schiele, sitting neatly in plain sight upon my bookshelf. The following morning (Thursday, and almost exaclty two years, to the day, since when I had been there getting that same passport) I made the trek to the Embassy where it was summarily declared mutilated, the multiple washings having but faded it slightly and little altered its appearance, but having completely annihilated its capacity for proper scanning and thus its general usefulness, and so I was obliged to apply. From there I ran home for a bit, then off to tutor the boys, and then zooming back to Carabanchel, on account of my really needing to get to work on my Public Relations paper, already three-weeks overdue (I had gotten a two-week extension, and I'm still kind of running with that).
I actually tried to go to sleep early, planning on getting up extra-early to write the paper, but I ended up having a very strange panic attack, and between the heart-racing and the worrying both sleeping and writing the paper were quite out of the question, and so I ended up puttering about and having a talk with Maddy until 3, when I passed out for about an hour, only to be awakened by a call from She-Whose-Name-Ought-Not-Be-Mentioned; this was okay, as it was scheduled, but it completely threw off my biological clock for the next day, and made for a hilarious hour-long phone conversation, as I was quite high off exhaustion. I find the concept of being high fascinating, especially when it isn't drug induced, and I especially like it when sensations in general start spreading by proxy. An example of this would be, for instance, when you're hanging out with friends and you start being silly, and eventually someone joins you, and soon you're all being ridiculous, so much so that the most common statement, be it rational or not, drives everyone into giggling fits and makes fluid conversation quite impossible but the moment especially delightful. Well, that's basically what our wee-hour conversation was like - I was too tired to make sense, and was sprouting out the most ridiculous things, and eventually she began doing so as well, and it quickly declined into full-out sillyness.
I was supposed to get to work at that point, and put in a good hard charge towards the paper, but after taking a shower and having breakfast I reasoned that there was no way that I'd be able to bang it all together before I had to head out to the embassy, and between transit there would really be no way for me to write the whole thing, edit it, get to school, print and present it before atleast 2 p.m. - hour by which my professor would be long-gone. Rationalizing thus that even the best effort would be fruitless, I went back to bed for a few hours.
I woke up later that morning (Friday) and quickly gathered my things and headed off to the embassy. Had my passport not been machine-washed I probably could have turned in the application directly on Thursday, but as the passport itself clearly states,
This passport must not be altered or mutilated in any way. Alteration may make it INVALID, and, if willful, may subject you to prosecution (Title 18, U.S. Code, Section 1543).
Assuch, I was obliged to go before the Consul-General in order to explain how, precisely, I had damaged my passport, and swear to him that it had not been willful, in order that I might escape being placed in the paddy-wagon and carted off to the big house.
I rather enjoy going to the U.S. Embassy in Madrid; it is located in the Salamanca neighbourhood (stomping-ground for the wealthier classes of the city for well over the past century) and the Embassy building itself is across the street from where they blew up Carrero Blanco (which is one of my favourite Spanish anecdotes of a historical sort for a number of reasons, not least of which is that its where my parents got my elder brother's name - tho, obviously, because they heard it and thought it pretty, completely ignoring the political implications of it being a terrorist's handle; my parents are flighty, not Basque ultra-nationalists). I also kind of enjoy going because four out of five times that I've been to the Embassy the lady (always the same one) who has waited upon me has had an uncanny resemblance to both my own and She-Whose-Name-Ought-Not-Be-Mentioned's mother, tho this may be due to the bizarrely firm but fluffy blonde shell of a hairstyle and the Cuban accent; either way, it's always quite a pleasant home-type sensation.
The visit, itself, was pretty speedy - past the security check point, in we go, present our papers, take the pictures (substantially better than those I took on Thursday night in the train station, which were completely unusable having caught me completely by surprise and featuring me looking utterly bewildered; half of these are en route to become part of the Collection of R. Bijlani, Esq., as we type), pay for the passport then off to see the Consul-General, meet and greet, sign the Affidavit and swear that I did not knowingly spin-cycle my passport twice with insidious intent, get permission to both pick up the passport personally (I'm done with the Spanish post) and keep the old one (normally the State Deparment keeps the damaged ones to prevent their illicit use) and out we go. If I have any choice in the matter methinks I should always prefer to get my passport renewed in the embassies; in the States a passport application takes 10 to 12 weeks to process, and even the expedited service (which requires a hefty additional sum) takes atleast 3 weeks, whereas my passport will be ready for me on Wednesday. After that I walked across town to campus (to return some books) and delightedly took in the day and the weather and reflected on how much I love this city (kind of in the same way I love Maddy, with great passion and yet total contentment of being deeply emotionally attatched and entrenched to someone who completely reciprocates your love), and I reflected upon how passionately I adore its streets, how much it feels like home (tho in a different way from how Miami feels like home-home), and how pleased I am that I won't be leaving it (as a most-of-the-year-type residence) anytime soon. I also ran into / spent a few minutes observing Leandro Rivera, the fellow who played Penélope Cruz's potential love interest in Volver (the production assistant who hires her to cater for the film crew, yes?), who was sitting on the steps of a theatre looking off into space while having a smoke. After all of this I went home, had lunch, took an epic siesta and spent the evening painting and watching Callejeros.
I get angsty when I go for a long time without painting, and it feels good to get back to it and spend several hours just doing that and nothing else. I kind of shut off, completely, when I paint, and I'm just completely in my element and lose track of everything that goes on about me, not noticing things like the time passing by, which is why I'm often-times uncomfortable when people ask me how long it took me to paint something in particular, mainly because I don't rightly know myself. I generally know when I started, of course, and sometimes I know when I finish, but I don't notice the time passing, and sometimes even I am surprised when I realize that the sun's gone down, or that it's terribly late at night, or that the sun's coming up again, and that all of this has happened during one sitting. I really like those disconnected moments and the act of painting itself. It's curious, really, as it's something I've always done, but if you were to take the act as a whole and divide it, my sitting down to point is really a series of extremely detailed, repetitive, even tedious gestures that (in any other context) would probably irritate me intensely. A single painting, done right-proper, involves me drawing the image on a surface atleast four or five times - once quickly sketched, then penciled in, then a first inking, then a layer of watercolour, then a second, then a third inking, then touch-ups - pretty much the sort of elaborate processes that I used to hate as a child. I don't notice this while I'm doing it, tho, at all, and even when I do I don't really question or mind it, in part because I've always painted, and I wouldn't question the process any more than I would question the series of muscle movements I go through while riding a bicycle. I also don't notice it because, save a few very rare occasions sporadically during the year, almost always I paint because I want to, and I'm always kind of fuelled by passion, whether it be out of fascination with the drawing in its technical form, or the actual figure that I might be drawing, the symbolism behind it, or the person for whom it's for - intense enough, and I'm likely to go through the entire weekend working on a single piece without really noticing until my fingers begin to cramp or I get a severe headache brought upon from the bad lighting. The lighting wasn't too much of a problem yesterday, as I woke up from the siesta around 7, and there was still pretty brilliant sunlight streaming in until atleast 9:15, but after sunset things did get a bit uncomfortable as my desk lamp is irreparably broken and the main light in my room decidedly serves more of an aesthetic purpose than a practical lighting one, and, oy, this makes my eyes hurt, sometimes, if I read or write or draw too long in a too-dim setting.
Speaking of bad lighting and eyes and digressing for a bit, can we just talk about the fact that I'm fucking blind? Indeed, I'm intensely myopic, tho admittedly my wandering about like a fellow who has been doused with Mustard Gas is really no one's fault but my own, on account of my having lost my glasses during the first week back in Madrid last fall but having done nothing to replace them in the time since then. Now, this isn't so much a major problem as it is something that is inconvenient, sometimes - in class I have to sit in the very front row and try (with varying degrees of success) to decode what my professors write on the board, at the movies it has been only luck that has saved me from forgetting and sitting too far back to make out the action on-screen. My visual disadvantage is at its most dangerous at night; indeed, I must wander about on my guard, as I can hardly make out if the figure up ahead is animal or mineral, if the statues lining the promenade are living or not, if there isn't something lurking amongst the trees. But at the same time I greatly enjoy these exhilarating moments because things are also at their most beautiful, and while during the day the images filtered through my damaged retina evoke the later works of Cezanne, at night my point of view becomes most purely impressionist, and everything gains a slightly blurred, runny, glowing air, as if I were walking within the frames of a living, moving Monet, rather than the working-class streets of Carabanchel. Beauty aside, tho, for obvious reasons the reacquisition of proper eyewear has become one of the most prominent practical motivating factors and objectives of my return to the home-territories this summer.
Digression aside, I spent the latter half of the evening watching Callejeros on Cuatro. Callejeros (entire episodes of which I've linked throughout the rest of these upcoming paragraphs - these are not only practical for those of you who want to practice their Spanish or get a kick out of the accents, but also great for those of you who just see some really great stuff) is my favourite show here, and pretty much the only thing I watch on the television these days - indeed, tho I rarely watch tv, when it comes to this show I watch it with a bit of vengeance, purposely either staying in or making plans late enough on Friday to be able to first take in this, my favourite program. The premise is simple enough: this is an urban-oriented documentary show whereby they have a group of reporters who they set up as one-man documentary teams, and each week one of them does a show about a certain topic. 20/20 does this sort of thing with dramatic music, excessive slow-motion reenactments, in-studio interviews and a pompous reporter covering the story with shellacked hair and a pant suit. The Callejeros approach is totally different - the reporter goes in with their single camera, and they hang out and interview the people that come and go from the scene, right there, with total humility and straight-forwardness, with minimal editing and added production quirks (like cheesy music).On Friday, for instance, the show was entitled "Next Stop" and focused on some of the most dangerous public transportation routes in the country; our reporter / documentarian went to these places and spent time talking to the junkies that hop the lines at Pitis station in order to get to a shanty-town on the other side where they can get their fixes (each year dozens of them die, getting hit by the high-speed regional trains as they cross the tracks), then she rode on the bus route that goes through another well-known drug-infested marginal neighbourhood and interviewed the undercover cops that try to keep the bus secure, and finally she rode about on one of the night-buses that convey drunken revelers (present company included) to and from the center of the city on weekends. One of the things I like most about this show is that they interview everyone without ever passing judgment or making any sort of difference between them, be it the junkie who has gotten on the bus and the cop who is arresting him, the bus driver fed up with the drunken youths harassing him over the course of a Saturday night, or the inebriated reveler who's just been kicked off the vehicle for mooning the conductor. They don't do bullshit voiceovers, they aren't condescending, they don't editorialize - they show reality, they show our cities with only give a brief introduction explaining what the episode is about, and letting the rest be conveyed directly by the people they meet, focusing on the characters they meet on the street with actual interest (and not the feigned curiosity of usual reporters) and, by allowing them to tell their story, discreetly drawing attention to the larger issue at hand (i.e., by interviewing the junkie who crosses the tracks at Pitis three times a day in order to get his fix they highlight, without actually saying-so, the larger problem of the total lack of government intervention in these drug-supplying shantytowns that exist under the radar yet in plain sight).
And like this last episode there are hundreds, covering all sorts of different topics, and not a single one has been boring, and they've let us meet the most amazing, absolutely normal people, with fascinating stories - in "Vidas Interiores", for instance, they focused on people whose lives are connected with the subterranean, be it the gypsies who live in underground caves in Granada, the housewife from Toledo who stumbled upon miles of secret tunnels dug by the Knights Templar under a loose tile in her basement, the special police unit that patrols the sewers and abandoned underground bunkers in Madrid. They've spent a day within a convent of Carmelite nuns, hung out with the nation's ladies of the night (from the best strip club in Barcelona to the ladies that humbly work the street corners in the provincial capitals), covered 24 hours in a public hospital in Madrid, and they dedicated on episode exclusively to the birth of a child. They've apparently been to Carabanchel Prison, too (tho I haven't seen that episode), gotten to know the Romanian street-children that rob tourists in the Puerta del Sol, followed the kids who keep up 48-hour marathon party sessions with an assortment of energy pills, taken un to a gypsy wedding, and in one episode they took a stroll and spent time chatting with the countless over-80 citizens of several cities. The stories they tell are amazing - in the last episode I mentioned they talked with a 90-year-old woman who had buried her entire family over the years yet hadn't let that stop her from going dancing every weekend; in the convent episode they had talked with one nun who had entered the convent back in 1929, not having stepped outside the complex in the time since, completely isolated from a Spain that progressed from monarchy to republic to war to dictatorship to monarchy again; the man who read out the final letter written by his father, who died while trying to escape a mountain prison outside of Pamplona, in which he spent several years locked in a basement cell during the Civil War (event which I remember Padre Pastor told me he had witnessed as a child; one of his own professors, imprisoned for being a liberal, had also tried to escape that day and been subsequently caught and executed). At any rate, yeah, I love this show, I think it's awesome, I think the reporters are amazing - they're all 20-somethings, and they're all damned ballsy, given that they bravely go into quite dangerous places, talk to quite potentially dangerous people, and essentially pacify them into telling their stories by being human beings and treating the others like human beings (I really like that they always end their conversations with these people by saying, "Que le vaya bién" - "May things go well for you").
And yeah, so I watched that.
And I also uploaded alot of old and new drawings to the devinatart portfolio, which was pleasing as so far I've done rather good on keeping the promise to myself that I would continue to update that site and keep a close chronicle of the work I've been producing / have produced.
And so hurrah.
Finally, some notes:
- While taping the radio news show the other day someone reminded me of Children of Men, and in particular the scene early-on in the film in which the Julianne Moore character tells the Clive Owen character to enjoy the high-pitched beep in his ear (which he hears after the morning's explosion) because, after sustaining damage to one's auditory faculties, the ringing one hears is actually the dying squeal of a particular pitch that one won't ever be capable of hearing again. And so I ask, with no small degree of fascination: does anyone know if this is actually true?
- Regardless of their being exploited for completely narcissistic purposes, I think Facebook pictures are awesome. Not only has the social utility allowed me, in the long run, to clear substantial portions of my hard-drive with little guilt, knowing that they're safely stored online, but it is also enormously useful when it comes time for drawing; indeed, I cannot possibly count how many times Facebook has saved the day during the process of my sketching by providing me with the references with which to refresh precise curves of noses, the exact cleft of chins, the subtle slope of a neck, and hundred small details that one's memory is only too quick to mar, in the long run.
- Life imitating art?
- Despite keeping this venerated forum, I am generally quite a private person; indeed, Madeleine (the allegory of discretion itself) and I have discussed, on multiple occasions, whether my writing might suppose a contradiction in this matter, and ultimately I've concluded that I don't believe it does, mainly because even in my writing I'm discreet, and while I do keep up an active chronicle of my life (both through words and images), I write more about the ideas influenced by real-life events than the events themselves, and I generally do so with a healthy-enough degree of self-control that provokes even some frustration, it seems. Atleast, this is the impression that I get, from the varied comments from a plethora of close sources that do lament that I might be closed about certain matters, vague about others, and generally quite...reserved. And I think this is right, because I think some things are private, some things are intimate, and some things fall within the realm of bad taste when they are told, or perhaps when they are told badly, with specifics. I'm not sure if I've explained myself well enough, but this all came to mind the other day when I read an entry by a fellow who I don't know, but whose journal I've followed for some time now. He seems like a nice enough kid, and sometimes he writes really good stuff - but, more often than not, I read his livejournal with no small degree of morbid fascination because, between some pretty good entries, he posts alot of shit. Alot, alot. Some of which is quite bizarre / funny, especially because he writes about things so...seriously. How seriously? This is the kid whom I mentioned in the chop-chop entry of 2006, the one who wrote a very elaborate and totally straight-faced entry detailing how he planned to re-grow his prepucio, in what sounded like the most painful manner possible. His less bizarre posts, however, are fascinating to me in that he usually manages to do with his blog alot of things that I've always tried not to do in my own, - far-too-serious entries on politics, pseudo-philosophical entries that come off as completely absurd for a 22-year old, etc., tho methinks his gravest stylistic fault - and the one that prompted this note - is kind of perfectly captured in the post which I reproduce immediately following this colon:
I met someone.
I just met someone. Rather, I took a serious look at someone I already knew. We hit it off. I had been single for exactly a year, to the day; it was the morning after my birthday that we made plans to go out. For the first time in my life, I made the first move and kissed him next to the pool table at the bar. He didn't say anything. He looked at me and smiled for a long time.
Now I'm in that fuzzy honeymoon period between conception and definition; not quite "boyfriends," but I can't beleive it has only been eight days since we met. We can't beleive it. We are, in the words of a common friend, "an item," which means something people will talk about, as is the true indication of a relationship. I can sense the news now spreading through the town like ripples.
We are cute together. We were dancing with each other at a bar last night and an attractive, well-dressed 30-something guy bought us both drinks. I think he was trying to impress the girl he was with, but my boy thinks he was hitting on us; yes, on both of us. It was an alluring event for us, but we are too new to entertain those kinds of ideas. This whole situation is a first for me.
This is just - oh no. Part of my problem with this is just that it's so personal that it really shouldn't be written out so that a total stranger like myself could just stumble upon it - which is, admittedly part of what Maddy and I have discussed repeatedly, in that I could arguably fall into said category on certain things...and yet, my counter-argument would be that, again, I write more about ideas than actual events, and that, for example, had this entire episode happened to me, I would have summed it up discreetly, probably, by writing something along the lines of "Hung out with ____ on Saturday. Possibly received offer for a threesome. This covers my yearly quota for that particular sort of indecent proposal." Or I would have written at length about being happy, or perhaps about the theoretical in-between period of not quite dating someone. But I would not have written from a direct perspective because doing so really risks falling into what I find to be the greatest flaw with that entry: sounding like a 12-year-old girl gabbing to her friends about her first boyfriend.
Only I'm pretty confident that even as a 12-year-old girl I would never do something as totally cheesy / lame / a-little-creepy as writing "I can't beleive it has only been eight days since we met. We can't beleive it." We? "We are cute together. We were dancing [...] both of us." You've been dating 8 days and you're talking on someone's behalf? And you're using "an item" in quotations and talking about what people might be saying about you? I mean, even if one is really that...lame, forgive me for being cynical (which, honestly, this kid should be for his own good, considering another entry mentioned how he was dumped on his birthday last year), but...okay...saying that this clearly firmly-founded 8-day (!!!) relationship (which it is, of course - it's something people will talk about!) somehow, however incredibly improbably, doesn't work out - won't you feel like the biggest douche ever for having written such totally sappy shit? Hell, even if you go on to get married, isn't writing an entry about people talking about you being "an item" just incredibly idiotic - really, why the hell should anyone (including yourself) care? And why, if you felt compelled to write this, would you not make this friends-only, considering that the 5 articles before it are all blogs extensively deconstructing the democrat's plan for 2008, featuring polls on the best political strategies, making extremely superficial analysis of the elections in France this past May?
I am bewildered, m'lords.
And I'm also running late (economics study session, so that we might pretend that we won't be failing the test on Monday), so we'll cut it off here. Happy days, excellencies.
(Jesus Christ, this entry is massive.)