They were sitting on the green grass, and we too set our asses down after introducing oneself to the others. The girls were beautiful and were drinking beer, we men got to drink pastis in glass cups from Jeremy’s house who apparently lived a few steps from there. The girls were just passing the weekend here, they were from Lyon, they found Madrid very big, they said some places look like New York or something, and both of them agreed on that Madrid was a nice place to visit, but no to live in. The blonde was more talkative, the other looked like a quiet artist. Jeremy was very thin and took ages to find the right word when he wanted to say something

Later, when the girls were standing up getting ready to go to have dinner at the house of the person who was hosting them, and interchanging some last words in french with the guys, a tall blonde guy, who seemed to me a kind of romantic english pirate, appeared from nowhere and said “français?” with a smile. We would meet the girls later after dinner for some drinks, so when they definitely left I invited Raphael, the newcomer, to sit down with us and stay for the fiesta if he was alone and had nothing to do. He looked somewhat shy, and although he was getting bald on the front, he was nice-looking. So there we were, four people who didn’t know much about each other, but didn’t know many people in Madrid anyways, and wanted to have a good time. We had someone to take a picture of us.

Later we went to J’s house to eat. There we met his gay flatmate, who was waiting for the heater to turn the shower water hot. He was without shirt, and covered his chest with his hands while talking. When he saw that the heater was taking its time, he went to put something on. J made salad for us. We ate green and drank water. When done, he asked if we were full, and I lied a light Yes.

We left to have a drink somewhere while waiting for the phone call from the girls. On the way, I talked mostly with R who seemed a very interesting person to me, the conversation were in english and spanish, we talked about music, among other things, and I learned he was a guitar player and he loved flamenco. He mentioned “fados”, I didn’t know what it was, traditional portuguese music. They are songs about pain, he said, sad songs. So, obviously, I got intested in this music. And I wonder now why some people like sad songs, why we have thirst for tragedy, why one of the songs I have played more times, according to last.fm, is Verso por una niña muerta (verse for a dead girl). Why T likes ska, and I don’t, finding it too… happy. Shouldn’t this be a bad thing? why we like to chew the sadness, to appreciate it? Is this a kind of masochism? No, of course not. Has it something to do with the fact that some people, me too, like scary movies? I mean, fear is bad, we shouldn’t like something that tries to impose fear on us, but actually it happens that the more scared you get the more you like the film (if it’s a scary movie). Why Shakespeare wrote… why there are so many tragedies written since …ever? We humans are weird, aren’t we? Anyways…

Out there in the night, you will find people who wants to invite you for a drink and take you to a pub. They make a direct approach, speak fast, smile at you. There are a lot of pubs, and no one wants to go into a pub where there’s no one, so the pub managers need to put people in somehow, so they have these people working for them, they are walking the main street, they tell you “free drink”, you follow them to the pub, you suspect most of the customers in there must be having a free drink, probably they had, then they decided to stay for another drink (this time, paid). So we had a soft sangria for free, and as the place was not so pleasant, we left.

Then we went into Bodega de la Ardosa, and asked for beers except Raphael who asked for a glass of red wine, una copa de vino tinto, he said, yeah, you can say just un tino, I said. Posted on the wall, there’s a board with some drinking records. The winner is someone who apparently drank 17 pints in less than three hours. Obviously this is not so important for me as to remember how many pints exactly, so most probable it’s not 17 but another number. On other blackboards it was written what there was for eating and the prices. I decided not to look at it because it was expensive and I was getting hungry.

Two missed calls, oops, I didn’t hear them. It’s an unlisted number, probably the girls, or their host, a spanish guy. I call back and the blonde answers. She tells me where they are, not far from here I say, I tell her to wait there, we have to finish our drinks first.

Then we meet them at a terrace in Plaza del Dos de Mayo. Time for only one beer, because they’re closing in 15 minutes. Then we move to another place, and after one beer they turn on the aggressive lights, which means “get out”. Then we went to another place which… well, a good night. When the girls left at around 5 am, we didn’t see any reason to stay longer, so we decide to leave too, although I was having a nice conversation with R about acting, music, dancing… J took one direction, I and T took the other, and where is Raphael, I asked T. He had been all night long saying “I’m going home”, and only stayed with us after some of us insist him to stay. If he had left when he first said I’m going home, he would have left 4 hours ago. Now that everybody leaves, he decides to stay alone in the pub.

i kno ikno, i shouldve written something for anandalusiangod, but ive been quite busy u c, and now im working on another blog, in spanish.

fuck sake, you traitor. Well, do you have something to talk about? i guess you came ere with an idea in your head, didnt you? What are you going to write about now?

Truth is I dont have any idea, or rather i have a lot of things to write about, so i have to choose a topic, but it takes ages for me to make up my mind.

Ok, so, you prefer an interview?

OK

Let’s see. How do you like Madrid so far?

I do like it. It is much better than i thought. Before coming here I had an image of Madrid wich was totally wrong. I preferred Barcelona, because Barcelona looks like… younger, alternative, european, progressive,  etc. While Madrid was the city of the fascists, old people who vote for the conservative party, a city without views to the sea, a dangerous city of crimes, deeply spanish, dirty, polluted… Reality turned out to be better. I ask myself now, where did i pick those stereotypes from? Madrid is cool. There’re very nice places to chill ou, interesting people around, jazz clubs, infinite possibilities, magic… Of course is dirty and polluted, some areas more than others, it’s a big city.

Good. How many times have you masturbated since you are in Madrid?

Hey! what kind of interview is this?

Ok, ok…, er… What’s the last movie you’ve watched?

My Beautiful Laundrette. It was free with the friday newspaper. It’s not bad. It’s about homosexuals (now you realize, such a gay title), about money, about tradition, about ambition… Another good movie recently watched: Match Point, directed by Woody Allen…, oh, supreme!

Yes, yes. Are you comfortable in your new place? You feel good there?

I feel good in Madrid, I don’t feel like coming back home. I feel like staying here for a long time, cuz here i see a lot of … doors, you know, a lot of things to do. If i go to my homeplace, thatd be like a good portion of my freedom is suddenly cut off. Do i feel comfortable in this flat? I guess so. flatmates are nice people. the flat could be better, yes, but for now im ok.

Plans for today?

No. Weekends are time for meditation and creation. I don’t have any friends yet here. I was going to go out yesterday night, alone, just to have a walk, see the night atmosphere, have a coupla beers… I finally didnt. Today is sunday, so i’ll just stay here in my room, writing, reading and surfing the net.

Good. I think that’s enough. would you like to say something to the people who’s reading us?

oh yes, if they are thinking about coming along to madrid, i found something that might interest them. The New York Times published, in an article about the spanish city, a little funny glossary of useful words. It might interest anyone who’s learning spanish:

*

What they never taught you in Spanish 101.

Guay (gwhy) Cool.

Cojonudo (ko-ho-NOO-doh) Better than cool.

Me mola (may MO-la) Love it!

Alucino (ah-lu-THEE-no) Can’t believe it!

Paso (PAH-so) Couldn’t care less.

Juerguista (hwer-GHEE-stah) Party animal.

Cutre (KOO-tray) Seedy, lacking class. Sometimes used affectionately, as in, ”Sometimes the most cutre places serve the best tapas.”

Ligar (lee-GAR) To pick up someone.

Hortera (or-TER-ah) Flashy, tacky, kitschy.

Fashion (FASH-yohn) Trendy, obsessed with the latest. Used as an adjective, not necessarily related to clothing, as in, ”The people who hang out in Chueca are really fashion.”

Gente guapa (HEN-tay GWA-pah) Beautiful people.

Pijo (PEE-ho) A posh and conservative type, as in, ”That party at the golf club was crawling with pijos.”

If I’m not watching TV, I’m probably reading, surfing, writing, or doing everlasting paperwork. Two days ago I finished reading The Great Gatsby. I gave up Gravity’s Rainbow, because after a long pause I was a little bit lost, didn’t know who’s who, what were these characters talking about, etc. So I’ll start reading it again in a remote future. As related to The Great Gatsby, I liked it. It’s the story about a dead dream, and about a lively dreamer. Throughout the story, we find through the eyes of the narrator Nick Carraway, a depiction of a cynic and superficial society guided by the lights of two stars: money and alcohol.

The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo
and introductions forgotten on the spot, enthusiastic meeting between women who never knew each other’s names.

Nick is new in the neighbourhood, he guy living next to him is a mysterious character, everybody talks about him, rumours circulating get weird legends linked to his name. This guy with no face gives parties at his house, but no-one sees him, and most of the people doesn’t even know him. Nick is invited to his party once:

As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host, but the two or three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way, and denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements, that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table – the only place in the garden where a single man could linger without looking purposeless and alone.

He’ll find him. And he would dislike him and like him, he’ll learn him and he’ll learn from him. But probably he will be too late to save him from the vacuum that glitters… Vacuum that glitters? yes, well said, because in this world beauty is an appearance, something rotten inside. A further example of the society that Fitzgerald masterly depicts, a hilarious fragment:

‘What do you think?’ he demanded impetuously.
‘About what?’
He waved his hand toward the book-shelves.
‘About that. As a matter of fact you needn’t bother to ascertain. I ascertained. They’re real.’
‘The books?’
He nodded.
‘Absolutely real – have pages and everything. I I thought they’d be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they’re absolutely real. Pages and – Here! Lemme show you.’

He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf, muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable to collapse

But for god’s sake, who’s Gatsby? where does he come from? what does he do? Is he a bootlegger? – Who cares? I want party time!

‘Anyhow, he gives large parties,’ said Jordan, changing the subject with an urban distaste for the concrete. ‘And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.’

And now, I’m going to stop writing, and we’ll meet again in the next post. I know what you feeling, but don’t you worry, it’s OK, there’ll be more posts. This is not an end, this is just a see-ya-when-i-see-ya. I know how you feeling, I know it’s not easy, and as an example of my sympathy for your pain, here a last fragment from The Great Gatsby that’ll make you understand your pain:

The reluctance to go home was not confined to wayward men. The hall was at present occupied by two deplorably sober men and their highly indignant wives. The wives were sympathizing with each other in slightly raised voices.
‘Whenever he sees I’m having a good time he wants to go home.’
‘Never heard anything so selfish in my life.’
‘We’re always the first ones to leave.’
‘So are we.’
‘Well, we’re almost the last to-night,’ said one of the men sheepishly. ‘The orchestra left half an hour ago.’
In spite of the wives’ agreement that such malevolence was beyond credibility, the dispute ended in a short struggle, and both wives were lifted, kicking, into the night.

No matter how good your job is, no matter how much free time you get to think or to play videogames or to read Thus Spake Zarathustra in german, no matter how many books you buy or even read, no matter how many languages you speak,… You are going to die. YOU ARE DOOMED.

But who knows, maybe it is possible to cheat Death, hm? That’s what I think I’m trying, I’m making difficult for her to guess where am I going to be, so she (treating Death as a “she” is usual in english?) can’t catch me. At the end of february, if i am still alive, I will be in Madrid, I’m going there to stay for a while. Less than 2 weeks ago I didn’t know I was going to do this, did she? What I am going to do there is not so important, the thing is to go and live there for at least 2 months. Ocourse I would have been more enthusiastic about going to Santiago de Chile or La Plata or anywhere else in hispanoamerica, as I was willing to go, but at the end it has bocome impossible, I’ll do that next year if I get a grant or something, (improbable). But finally I’m going to Madrid, I’ve chosen so. Even if it sounds a quite arbitrary choice to some people, Madrid offers a greater variety of courses and jobs… Whatever.

So, I keep on running away from death, I don’t let myself get stuck anywhere, grgrgr. Although… now that I think about it, maybe what I am doing is exposing myself to an painful and slow Death, Madrid is such a polluted and inland city for such a healthy andalusian coast kid like me used to the salty smell of the sea and the sweet touch of the sun…

(Truth is: if I don’t get out of this humid house, i’ll get rheuma soon).

Meanwhile, at home, my mother wants to loose some kilos and says to my father:

- You should tell me “I quit smoking if you loose ten kilos”, so I would be motivated.

- What?! – says Father, puffing his fag – You are free, you cannot depend on anyone to achieve your goals.

- I quit smoking if you loose 7 kilos – says Brother #3

So there’s the Deal. Mother is on diet now so that her beloved son stop smoking.

Minutes later, Brother #2 says he isn’t going to smoke any more cigarettes during the rest of the day. I say he isn’t able. He says he is. We shake hands on a €5 bet.

At night, Father tells Mother about the next bikers meeting, which is in Rota (Cádiz), Mother doesn’t want to go because: a) last meeting was not long ago, b) we are spending a lot of money lately, c) she is afraid of that road to Rota (Father’s BMW R1200 GS Adventure is not a bike like that one in the video). Father promises to give up smoking right now so that mother accepts going to Rota. I can’t believe you, says Mother. Father dumps his packs of Ducados.

I don’t promise anything, everybody knows I quit smoking everytime I put a cigarette down. Besides, I don’t smoke daily and I have been doing some sport since I am in Spain. When I arrived everybody said I was too thin. B#3 saw me without shirt and said I looked like a junky.

So everybody “improves”, but evolution does not take us away from death, no, no, we all end up in the same place. Anyway, I try to adapt, I leave a life behind, I come to a new place, to the same old place, and I try to re-adapt. We improve, we strenghen our bodies, we take courses, learn new things, we buy new underwear, dump old stuff, we say good-bye to people we love… But memories remain in our heads, and flashes from the past reminds us that we are still the same persons, that we cannot escape from the past, because the past is inside us, and has made of ourselves what we are now. “Love never dies, only changes place in our minds” says certain spanish rapper.

Anyways, I think I should start cooking up ideas like that one of the video, so I could quit worrying too much about my stuff.

That’s what Yuwie does.

You don’t get rich in one day, but at least you get something. So, from now onwards I’ll post some stuff in my Yuwie blog, (which is virgin, for now).

Yuwie also pays me if you guys follow my recommendation and sign up. That is why I’m talking about Yuwie. So visit my referral page for further info, sign up and you’ll automatically be in my friends list, even if you don’t know me. Then invite your friends, write some stuff in your blog, etc. and you’ll soon start getting your earnings.

But of course i’ll keep on posting things here. Lately I have been quite lost and busy…

Captain J. Soloblues wakes up, a little bit dazed and confused. What a weird nightmare, he thinks, and tries to calms himself down. The face of Happy Hamlet was still so real, even if it was only a character invented by his sleeping self. He feels a something in his pocket, turns out to be a piece of paper, Captain J. Soloblues unfolds it and reads: “That wasn’t a nightmare, nightmare starts now.” Soloblues looks around and realizes that he has been all his life digging a tunnel down to hell, and that now there is no way to go back, so he picks up the shovel and goes on.

What am I doing writing this at 4:52 am? Alternative realities love you. Imagination, the power of creativity, dreams, it is a nice way to escape, to forget, or even to enjoy, that you are digging closer to hell. There are other ways of escaping, such as drugs (heroine, LSD, TV,…), music, sports, or drinking tea with friends. Everybody has their own preferred ways of escaping, and some people hate other peoples’ ways of escaping. Most of the people switch from one to another. Today (yesterday) (Christmas Day) I met good old TV, I had been neglecting him for ages, and now, in this time of nostalgia, this time in which families gather together, enemies cease fire, people consume and eat a lot, I came face to face with the good TV. God bless our TV that protects us and keeps us away from our own madness, providing us stories that makes us forget about the story of our days.

Lovely Christmas Day:
I woke up at 6pm, my throat hurt like hell, a bit of fever? Everything was sunk in the most absolute silence; no cars on the road, no people at home…
I ate and then I saw three movies on a row: first Death and Loathing in Las Vegas, then a movie on RTE1 about corrupted cops on the LAPD (Kevin Spacey, Russel Crowe, Danny DeVito,…), and when it finished, I changed to RTE2 where Blues Brothers had just started.
Lovely day, huh? Pray for Happy Hamlet to be back again with us.

Paris. Which images come to your mind? The Eiffel Tower is among them, for sure. I never liked the Eiffel Tower, and although it is better than I thought (it is not just a shape) I still think it is overestimated (maybe it isn’t overestimated, maybe no one likes it, but it has an image that sells, that serves as an icon, as a symbol, cuz it is a simple shape, and A with a long forehead), but i love heights and i couldn’t miss going up there. We went there walking from Passy to Trocadero and from there (nice area) to the big metal thing. The views from up there are nice, or at least impressive, a lot of buildings, city-matter spread until the horizon (and probably beyond). You can spend a long time there, basically because of the long queues, so when we were climbing down day was getting dark already and the Tower lights turned on. The day before, I enjoyed the heights of L’Arc de Triomphe. From there you can see the Eiffel Tower, and in a certain moment it (the Tower) started to glitter with a lot of winkling lights. I think it happen every hour, and it longs for around 20 seconds, wow. From up the Arc, I couldn’t avoid stare at the avenues and watch people-as-ants and the traffic, and all that, as if it was all a kind of Sim City.

It’s curious to see all that from a third-person narrator point of view, it makes you think… (although you don’t reach any conclusion or epiphany). You see, that’s why I have always loved heights, I love balconies, to observe the living creatures of the city moving around, interacting, reacting, hey people down there! You are all enslaved in a videogame! But I never had a balcony, so when I’m a guest to someone’s place I always check the views from their balcony, if there’s any. Oh that is really interesting, but what were you saying about Paris?

Sacre Coeur Basilic offers good views of the city too. After avoiding a bunch of organized people who wanted to force us (us and everybody else) to buy stupid stuff, and after painstakingly climbing the stairs up to the Basilic (we had just come from the Eiffel), and after being enchanted for moments by a nice singing during the mass inside the sacred place, we sit down on the stairs just in front of the building, for there was a couple of guys singing and playing the guitar, and a lot of tourists there seeing the show and getting involved sometimes in some songs. Nice atmosphere and nice views again.

Let’s be fast: Champs-Elysée isn’t nice, Notre-Dame Cathedral is a must see, it’s just BEAUTIFUL. Musée de Louvre is great, I suffered a sudden urge to paint or draw something, I almost broke my neck staring at its ceilings (which are easy to miss, and are really fabulous), and it was really good that they have a space for art from Oceania, Africa, Asia and America, I mean, stuff from the aboriginals. The Latin Quarter is a nice area, where there is a lot of places to eat, but if you go there don’t eat in a restaurant called Le Marathon, because the service is really bad, even rude, (at least that day), and the food is… not too good. There is another restaurant very popular, near Notre-Dame, where food was really good, and the price was quite affordable, but I don’t remember the name. I don’t know if I could live in Paris, it is crazy, there’s a lot of cars, polution, etc. There’s not enough green parks (oh! Le Jardin du Luxembourg is beautiful!), etc. On the other hand, it offers a lot of cultural events, and there seems to be always something going on. I didn’t have time to visit Le Centre Pompedour, but I saw it, it is… curious. And I visited Le Musée de l’Erotisme, which is… curious too, maybe too small and monotonous for a 5 euro entrance, I missed more variety, things related with BDSM (although you can see some spanking scenes photos), etc Basically what you get there is a lot of homemade phallus from ancient times, and a lot of pictures of naked women, (sometimes two women in the same picture), some things more artistic than others, some stuff more pornographic or just popular and funny. If your legs are tired of your wanderings you can sit down there and watch a porno movie in black and white.

Basta. C’est suffi. I’ll post some pictures of Paris when I get them.

Was it really an accident? I can’t believe that!

Later we met a cool guy from Za-Za-Zaragoza Ciudad. We three had a coffee or tea or something and then we went to the O’Flaherty Theatre to watch The Deerhunter, movie showed by the film society of the NUIG. Before the movie we met two more spanish (they seem to be a plague here!) who were looking for the place were the movie was to be shown, and Azrin got fed up of us speaking spanish. Sori Az,   n_n”  Few minutes after the movie got started, Azrin got fed up of Yankees speaking Yankish, so he left with some money I forgot in his bag. Some minutes later, the two lost Spanish got bored or something and left too. Movie was good, was tough. After that, I and the guy from Za-Za-Zaragoza Ciudad went to have a coupla pints.

So today I started smoking again… I think i smoked tonight all the cigarettes i didn’t smoke yesterday.

u_u

In a few hours I’m leaving for Paris, so I should go to bed and sleep something. Oh my Dog, it’s going to be hard to wake up tomorrow. Shit! I’m going to sleep around 3 hours (In fact, what the fuck am I doing writing this instead of being underneath my warm bedsheets, “ironing my ear” like we say in Spanish meaning “sleeping”?) Don’t know if I’ll post something during this French week, so I um… I disappear for a while.

Sweet dreams.

Later I found more loose coins here and there, and finally I have c. €100 just in coins. I have as well a small tube of Pringles full with red coins (the smallest ones), it dates back from Corrib Village times.

I realized I was counting coins in underwear, so I finished dressing up and getting pretty and ready, only to go to top up my Meteor but oh! where is my key? It is not in the place where it should be. Yes, there is an assigned place for my key, a small plastic basket I keep there on the shelf precisely because I don’t want my key to get lost, so every time I step into my room or before taking out my trousers, I feel my pockets, and take everything out, coins go to the coins-cup, and my keys go to the keys-basket. So where are my keys now? I check pockets of clothes I wore yesterday, I check the floor… oh this is a messy buggers, I get angry and decide to tidy up my room in order to find the keys. Finally I find the keys in the pockets of the trousers I’m wearing. (. . .)

I didn’t do anything for the rest of the day, just here, checking things on the Internet, looking for a truth or something. I answered some quetions for a test in selectsmart.com, then, depending on my answers, I’m told which is the religion or belief system I fix better in (or fix me better, not sure). Copy and paste:

HERE ARE YOUR RESULTS:
#1: Unitarian Universalist (100)
#2: Liberal Quaker (77)
#3: Humanist (68)
#4: Theravada Buddhist (68)
#5: Atheist/Agnostic (60)
#6: Mainline to Liberal Protestant (50)
#7: Neo-Pagan (48)
#8: New Age (46)
#9: Mahayana Buddhist (39)
#10: Taoism (28)
#11: Baháí (24)
#12: Christian Science (24)
#13: Hindu (24)
#14: Scientology (24)
#15: New Thought (21)
#16: Jainism (14)
#17: Orthodox Quaker (14)
#18: Reform Judaism (14)
#19: Sikhism (9)
#20: Eastern Orthodox (0)
#21: Islam (0)
#22: Jehovahs Witness (0)
#23: Latter Day Saints (0)
#24: Mainline to Conservative Protestant (0)
#25: Orthodox Judaism (0)
#26: Roman Catholic (0)

Unitarian Universalist? Nah, that name sucks. I’m thinking about creating a brand new religion, with a cool logo, some non-sense rules, an instant-built tradition and folklore, and a whole myth/story about God coming down in the form of a dog. The Dog. Un Chien Andalou! In dreams, he will fornicate with a famous female sex-symbol rock-star. That dream would change her career forever, and she’d be inspired by the Truth to write really good songs while travelling around the world, a-and she would give birth to a… Well, not that story, but I think the idea of a god-dog is good.

At around 5:00 AM I go to bed.

Next day alarm rings at 11 AM. I wake up at 11:40. I arrive five minutes late to work.

After work, I come home, write an e-mail and probably I’ll go to sleep after posting this. <– That’s a basic summary with the most important things of this day, exciting ah?