de·fen·es·tra·ted

skeleton scene in en construcción ROUGH DRAFT

2009-11-10T01:09:00.022-05:00

The most startling and fascinating spatial tactic in the film is one symbolically reclaimed not by the living, but by the dead. During the demolition of the old building, workers discover a cemetery of skeletons. Fences are immediately erected around the remains, and while construction work is postponed, Guerín’s camera continues filming, recording the disparate comments and facial expressions of the people who huddle around to speculate about what’s been found.

The oddity of the scene is not only due to the fact that it unexpectedly severs linear time, but also because it interrupts our familiar space. The spatiotemporal exception creates an unprecedented situation, rooted in history and ethics, and to which we are unsure how to respond. What are these skeletons doing here? Under my apartment? In my neighborhood? Aren’t skeletons supposed to be somewhere else, far from here? Two onlookers argue that the archaeologists shouldn´t be disturbing the sacred site: “ésta es una cosa histórica” says one woman, “no se tenía que haber tocado, qué barbaridad el respeto, hombre, esto es un cementerio…por ley es un cementerio no se tenía que edificar”. As if the skeletons were going to rise from the dirt and start accusing someone of something. And symbolically they do. Their mouths agape and eye sockets staring—something is pending, something has been left undone. Suitably, the bystanders come up with logical explanations (maybe they feel obligated) to quickly smooth over the historical gap, the embarrassing historical ignorance, and yet another example of the city’s inability to keep up appearances and literally hold itself together. They pose a series of disparate hypotheses: “eran romanos [. . . ] hablaban catalán? [. . . ] hablaban latín? [. . . ] enanos? [. . . ] una matanza étnica [. . . ] romanesco? [. . . ] godos? [. . . ] árabes? [. . . ] españoles? [. . . ] de la Guerra [Civil] [. . . ] de los asesinatos que pasan en España [. . . ] de los crimenes que había en España….”

Perhaps to a sigh of relief our questions and insecurities are pacified: the archaeologist identify the remains as Roman, from the sixth century. Accordingly, the scene suggests the Roman collective imaginary consists in a far away mythical and inferior place, one entirely disjointed from contemporary society, as we hear a male voiceover state “en esa epoca [. . . ] los romanos tenian cosas raras [. . . ] se hablaba un idioma raro.” Of two dozen or so commentators, only one woman recognizes the spatiotemporal continuity and oneness of the situation—shrugging as she gazes down at the Roman skeletons, she comments “todo el mundo en el mismo agujero, tanto los ricos como los pobres.”[1]

The commentary on the remains may, on one hand, reflect what Jameson calls a “dehistoricized present” in a neocapitalist society, a general ignorance of the past which is no doubt attributed to nearly 40 years under isolation and dictatorship, and a democracy that wanted to forget the past—"vives encima de los muertos, y ni te enteras"—critiques another observer.

On another hand, the comments symbolically surface and unite all the unaccounted dead, alluding to universal and hypothetical questions. What if they were Arabs? What if they were from the Civil War? What if they were our relatives? Am I an accomplice to a crime? Moreover, their hypotheses identify their metanarratives, triggering the question: what lies beyond, in-between, and beneath the imaginaries of Romans, Visigoths, and Arabs, Spaniards?

This spatiotemporal exception appears so out of the ordinary, that we see pencils, note pads, film and video cameras congregate from all over the city to quickly try to duplicate the remains. Why? Because we know something as unusual nowadays as coming face to face with raw history simply can’t last. We are aware that we are not supposed to see this, this rare glance of spatio-historical truth. Because we are accustomed to the fast pace and general predictable roar of consumer stimuli of contemporary urban culture, we assume, consciously or unconsciously, that a scene as spontaneous, truthful, and unpolished as this will be quickly taken from our view. Four months alter the discovery, the remains are removed from the site and the bulldozers and cranes, (the speculation machines of capitalism) are turned back on.

This scene resonates with many cultural texts that have been produced in the last 3 decades in Spain that represent the discovery of dead or sickly bodies, ghosts, and uncanny and/or haunting remnants of the past, especially of the Spanish Civil War and Francoism.[2] Even greater in number are the discussions in academic, grassroots, and most recently—political—spheres on historical memory, in which the texts are inevitably embedded. Generally speaking, critics have interpreted these cultural texts as restless and critical reflections on the country’s inability to collectively and legally address and reconcile with the horrors of the twentieth century. Cristina Moreiras Menor, for instance, opens up these discussions to current political entities with an analogy between the discovery of a cadaver in Alex de la Iglesia’s film La comunidad (2000) and the Ley de Memoria Histórica (2007), the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica, and the exhumation of mass graves in Spain (2009), all of which hope to _____reconcile w dead quote of people who are looking for the disappeared__.[3] We will soon see if the results of these political initiatives will improve personal needs and transform future debates regarding historical memory.

At the beginning of the film we see a series of eyes painted on a wall.Towards the end, the camera zooms in on the eyes and a bulldozer tears the wall down. Besides denouncing gentrification, Guerín is asking us to look more closely at the paradoxical significance of space at a time when visibility is being literally and symbolically torn apart. On one hand, we observe the dense socio-historical network that space provides and retains, but on the other hand, we observe its superfluity and irrelevance. We see walls going up and being torn down, floors being installed and ripped apart, doors being knocked down and put up again—constant movement on a variety of planes, transition, replacement, demolition, construction: all these spatial transformations on fast forward. In the end, it is as if all the material barriers cancel each other out or disappear. We see how silly they are or, how silly we are to give such importance to putting up a bathroom door, or a wall between my apartment and my neighbors, when soon they’ll be torn down again.

thinking about Tokyo

2009-11-05T05:43:00.020-05:00

Sitting at night here night after night, “I should do my article”, why is it that since I met Special Person I can no longer write my non-academic thoughts unless I am in Barcelona? (I'm making an effort tonight.) With the university leave regulations I've become more apprenhensive about my time, especially my future time away from New Zealand. What awaits me in Tokyo? Hugs and warm hugs! And good food! How can I see the city not as a tourist? In a new land it can be very hard to distinguish between the local and the fake stuff made for tourists. I will be inevitably attracted to traditional things with patina, to meticulous things, to architectural lines and colors, to what people are wearing, to cultural differences, and the majority of these things are prefabricated with the tourist’s eye and pocket book (Pocky!) in mind. I must try to get lost. I must go out without a map. I won’t have a cell phone or a key to the apartment, that may help. Luckily I will be there long enough to be able to return to the same spot many times (a plaza, a bench…), this has the potential of cancelling out the "new" in "new land", meaning that, maybe after several returns to- and several observations of- the same spot, the touristy will become obvious and fade out, and the “real” or “authentic” will come to the surface, regardless of the language barrier. ? (Now I must figure out what characterizes my idea of the “real/authentic” (perhaps all that which is NOT solely created for the tourist's consumption?) and why I prefer it (it makes me feel more free/less controlled?)...) I should talk to people. Eigo wo hanasi masuka? I once advised a friend who was going to Tokyo for the first time "to make peace with globalization." What was I talking about? I think I was referring to not feeling disappointed with souvenir shops and tasteless expensive tourist options, but rather trying to find something funny about them. (It could be that I'm mistaken about tourism in Tokyo, maybe tourism hasn't become such a corrupt and omnipresent business there like it has in other places.) Will I feel poor? Cities tell us what our ID is, tells us how we are categorized by others. I will obviously wear a racial uniform, but will I feel like a slob, a countrybumkin? My two nice sweaters are coming with me!

my goals without J

2009-09-19T00:08:00.010-04:00

- walk everywhere
- write more
- eat less cookies and sweets
- be more tolerant of convoluted and/or pretentious writing
- think and act more positive about/for the present and future

Dunedin (New Zealand) haiku

2009-08-24T23:13:00.012-04:00

Dunedin, where ex-
otic flora thrives peaceful-
ly alongside litter.

-rhododendrons, cocoa puffs, and mcdonalds

virtual 360 panorama -- crawl the prohibited walls

2009-08-09T19:15:00.006-04:00

the interior of the crumbling detroit central train station

click on the image, it'll take you to the 360-photo website of photographer Lowell Boileau. be sure to scroll up and down!

an almost miracle

2009-08-02T00:06:00.011-04:00

In her dream, she vulnerably yelled out Special Person's name.
Seconds later--
she was awoken.
Someone took the blanket off her face.
It was Special Person!

new definitions of winter and academia

2009-07-16T20:30:00.003-04:00

Hills like turtle shells, and flowers that sprout feathers...
Gills out of water, and flopping not wherever...
I´m astonished by the view, university policies, and Dr. Suess flora.

frequent reminders of mindblank

2009-05-22T22:20:00.014-04:00

oh man i´ve
forgotten all my words
i´m scraping at an empty bowl
my thoughts don't want to verbalate
my ideas don't want to penetrize
bad poetry
(searching searching...)
null
sterile
stoic
months of mindblank

redes chaterreras

2009-04-29T17:13:00.006-04:00

El Born, may 2005, Saltzman

"A saber lo que arrojan por las ventanas a estas horas de la noche. Vecinos desesperados. En las redes hay botelas de cava, recipientes de plástico, medias y calcetines, condones y pájaros muertos..."

-- Juan Marsé, referring to the building Walden 7, p.67, El amante bilingüe

urban occurrences

2009-03-23T08:09:00.006-04:00

could it be any city?

day 1

day 2

mindfulness as too inward-looking

2009-03-07T10:57:00.002-05:00

http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/the-worst-buddhist-in-the-world/?em

i want to come back to comment on this

fun fact 8: Banksy

2009-02-12T17:54:00.013-05:00

A street or graffiti artist one of my students told me about: Banksy. I love how he harmlessly makes use of the dents in urban space for questionable purposes. Click on the photo for his website. I think his "outdoor" work is the most creative and effective (since it´s more public).

Guernica

2008-10-27T17:49:00.028-04:00

the other day i was grading papers and listening to my itunes on shuffle when i was stopped by the last line of the poem (below) by norman rosten, read by joan baez on her album "baptism" (1968). it's representative of baez´s stark tragic ballads and anti-war songs. my purposes for sharing this depressing poem: to remember what our tax dollars are used for, to illuminate and learn from some historical connections between 1943 and 2008, maybe to add that election day is around the corner, and finally (it's kind of far out, but why not while i'm on the soapbox) to promote adoption.
Guernica by Norman Roster, 1943

In Guernica the dead children were laid out in order upon the sidewalk, in their white starched dressed, in their pitiful white dresses.

On their foreheads and breasts are the little holes where death came in as thunder, while they were playing their important summer games.

Do not weep for them, madre. They are gone forever, the little ones, straight to heaven to the saints, and God will fill the bullet holes with candy.

soloblokus

2008-09-12T23:26:00.008-04:00

things to do in grinnell, iowa on a friday night:

current events 3: what's wrong with the picture?

2008-09-01T20:22:00.026-04:00

ethics, fashion, and economic difference? article in today's nytimes about millionaire fashion companies dressing the poorest in designer clothing in order to take publicity pictures of them. reminds me of when i was in tangier, morroco. we were walking through the narrow dirt streets of a lower-income historic quarter and i watched a group of frat boys in our tour group laugh and impress their friends as they took condoms out of their pockets and tossed them out to local kids who were playing in the streets. what does it come down to? an exposure of an unethical and unsympathetic juxtaposition between two extreme levels of basic needs? ...that would assume a sympathy for the have-nots. OK. but, who are we to determine who are and who aren't the have-nots? and what good does sympathy do if it doesn't... do anything? ...

my dissertation

2008-08-15T04:47:00.002-04:00

"the deteriorating histories in the public everyday space of post-francoist barcelona" by megan saltzman (FINALLY!)

time and the spatial tactics of birds

2008-08-11T15:16:00.011-04:00

(click on the image to find your niche)

Barrio Gótico, Barcelona

por ti, mi globo rojo

2008-08-07T07:22:00.055-04:00

libre libre libre como un globo sin cuerda

free free free like a balloon without a string

----------------------------------------------------------------

le voyage du ballon rouge (hou, 2007) in the beautiful open-air patio of the CCCB

symbols

the red balloon is optimism. it´s always bopping around around nearby when we look for it.

juliet binoche is the postmodern woman with too much on her plate. she´s also the depressed frenchperson who takes pleasure in gazing out windows while piano notes linger in the background. also, she reads out loud remarkably well.

song is the robot slave. she´s actually not a real person, but a robot. she´s secretly in love with juliet, and will do anything for juliet in hope of receiving 2 seconds of her attention.

the little boy is a poorly directed and an unrealistically dressed actor. (how could a 6 year old be dressed so fashionably if his father is in belgium and his mother is always busy?)

the blind piano tuner is the mortal incarnation of the red balloon. he´s also the hero of the movie. one day he will pop, and the red balloon will send us a replacement to populate the earth.

the parisian neighborhood is the one that always gets represented.

situation 3

2008-06-21T11:14:00.017-04:00

this is great, harmlessly playing with the silly boundaries between private and public space. i love things that we don't know how to respond to, and that question our taken-for-granteds. What would you do if you found a bright orange stairway peeking over your gated community?

(if you click on the images you can see them enlarged.)

from the excellent book design like you give a damn by architecture for humanity, pp314-315.

dissertation cover

2008-06-19T23:29:00.007-04:00

one space, two times--march 2005 and november 2006. (click on the image for a more realistic experience.)

Thanks to Eva Megias for the colored photograph.

night bus

2008-06-19T01:02:00.008-04:00

"where will we go tonight?" she wondered.

"close your eyes, and you'll see" smiled a bus driver.

Meredith the Seamstress (a la Edward Gorey)

2008-05-19T20:26:00.024-04:00

Meredith was deaf. She went deaf when she was six years old during a mild case of yellow fever. While she lay in bed that year, she learned to sew. Meredith was quick and precise and by the age of seven she became the town’s seamstress, replacing Francis’s reputation of being “good with her hands.”

One Spring day she decided to take a leisure walk down the train track. The refreshing smell of the blooming flowers, soft sun, and a couple hand salutes from her fellow townspeoples made her feel confident and content. The train track hadn’t been in service since the time of her grandfathers. She was thinking about the legend of the ghost train and how she might sew it along the hem of a blanket.

The next day Meredith was found dead on the train track. The doctor's biopsy concluded that she had been hit by a train. Meredith must not have heard nor felt the train approaching. Some members of the town were heartbroken and suggested she have an open coffin but be draped in her sewing pieces. Several invitees took the occasion to purchase new clothes. While Meredith's mother felt the coffin garment was in bad taste, others commented that it was symbolic of her unfinished talent.

fun fact 7: make a floor

2008-05-13T00:43:00.022-04:00

a fun way to waste time if you like tiles and wasting time like me. the designs come from "hydraulic tiles", which were produced in western europe in the mid 19th century. nowadays one can find the treaded originals in w. european and latin american interiors.

if you´re still interested, these photos of actual floors tiled in hydraulic tile s are incredible.

miércoles

2008-04-16T23:01:00.001-04:00

no me he olvidado que hoy es su día libre
como si fuera su cumpleaños semanal
su día de libre
el día que dormía una hora más
y tomaba un desayuno más lento
de tostadas y cigarrillos.

fun fact 5: antología poética popular

2008-04-11T23:25:00.003-04:00

amigos:

una página bonita, poesía con sus canciones correspondientes:

http://antologiapoeticamultimedia.blogspot.com

("aceituneros" y "era un niño que soñaba" son algunas de mis preferidas.)

xoxo
m

public documentation of 13 beautiful days

2008-04-01T22:06:00.022-04:00

13 days in a land of:

10 million strangers (in order of company)
eva megias (and her housemates)
migue angel
jaume and his friends
joan
rebecca
teo
gabriel
zach
andrés
ramón
dorian
albert
juanfer
eva durall
lourdes
david
frequent thoughts of those i see and don´t see anymore
50 million public spaces
gatwick airport
bus to victoria station
back and forth between victoria bus and train station and 3 burger kings
underground to brixton
bus to 38 moorish road
soho
bricklane
hamstead
oxford street
"the city"
el prat
carrer clavell 1-7
ferreteria
travessera de dalt
plaça lesseps (a concrete disaster)
passeig de gràcia
fotoprix
plaza de cataluña
plaza rovira
plaza de la revolución
plaza de la concordia
fontana
jaume I
alfonso X
raval
paralel
gotic
gràcia
les corts
maria cristina
l´illa
metro (new cars)
nit bus (new buses)
barceloneta
john lennon airport
south hunter street
where the streets change their name every block
lime street train station
university of liverpool
bond street
hope street
everyman´s theatre
10 thousand small drinks eats
la bombeta
buenas migas
supersol
consum
equinox
iztli (burrito)
horno foix
chocolat
el macareno
quincey´s cuisine
union coffee
uncle sam´s
geisha
beigels
sainsburys
100 billion educational cultural-social constellations (bang!)
scannerfm
reggae music
bbc
converse allstars, 70s boots, and pencil-tight pants
goodbye Cine París, a new hole in the historic quarter-- now the multinational inditex has completely colonized portal de l´àngel, recently razing the street´s last historical-cultural center
joan´s new paintings
post-it city exhibit
a late night cell phone affair
fingersmith
la central
the flat new and clean facultad de geografía historia y filosofía in front of the CCCB
the flat new and clean buildings that have gone up on the Rambla del Raval
tightening restrictions on bike use in barcelona
la casa del llibre
laie
helsinki´s distance master program
martirio (maría isabel quiñones)
bonnie and clyde
violence in american films on northwest airlines
fnac
beatles
theatrical interpretation of edward gorey´s "doubtful guest"
regina, canada
"2"
ghetto
10 thousand smells
car and motorcycle exhaust
cigarette smoke
hash smoke
sewage
fresh bread
cleaning chemicals on marble floors and storefront sidewalk
olive oil
pastry shop
mildew
pine
b.o.
wool blankets that were stored in new wood cabinets
tanned leather
laundry detergent
grease from jamón serrano
faint pee of english bathrooms
refined rubber of shoe stores
metal of coins
fried croquetas

the floating island

2008-02-25T08:11:00.011-05:00

Last night I dreamt I was searching for a floating island. I found out that it is Small, Flat, Moss-covered, and Meanders off a foggy coast near a swimming pond. If anyone has any other clues, please let me know.

February in Grinnell

2008-02-05T20:18:00.006-05:00

thick mute

thick silence

thick white

thick cold

thick distance

6th Ave. & Broad, Grinnell, Iowa

amigos amics friends amici

2007-12-25T10:29:00.003-05:00

you know i don't celebrate christmas but the spirit of gratitude from all the people who take time to decorate everything with cheesy green and red smiley things in order to cheer us up has gotten into me and i want to give thanks to all my friends. to you who are reading this, to those who don't read english, and those who don't read. for your ears, eyes, time, company, care, love, thoughts, and imperfections. is there anything better on earth than good friends? shouldn't the biggest holiday of the year be Friendsmas? i love you all very much and with out you all i would be much worse off. i hope we are friends forever. i am infinitely grateful. Merry Everything, and thank you.

xoxo
megan

bared walls

2007-10-25T14:14:00.009-04:00

dear friends, i'm posting another piece directly from my thesis in hope of feedback. please let me know your thoughts. also, if you see any ways the text could be syntactically or semantically improved, please let me know.
xoxo
megan

"In the following chapters we will look at more real-life cases of gentrification, ones that are represented in fictional films and novels. In the meantime, I would like to deviate the topic over to a new spectacle in Barcelona’s postmodern cityscape resulting from gentrification: bared walls. Unlike those bared walls that remain standing after a war, these bared walls have been carefully undressed by bulldozers. Once exposed, they do not bother to hide their intimate parts—bathroom tiles, children’s scribbles, severed pipes, a kitchen cabinet, a division between the bathroom and kitchen, a peeling sheet of wallpaper. All are exposed to the sun and rain, made visible to the public, and eventually adopted by strangers as their new and indifferent family (passerbys). The interior, once heated, echoed someone’s private thoughts, words, and gestures.[1] Similar to the spatial tactics in the next chapter, these bared walls are harmless, ephemeral, and unintentionally and visually disruptive to the nicety and totality of the city’s image. Bared walls are embarrassing for speculators, because they detract from the city’s aesthetic harmony and could trigger disturbing questions such as “What happened to the people who used to live there?” Since bared walls are temporary scenes, capturing them in photography is critical. Soon they will be re-dressed, and forgotten."

[1] These bare walls have also become a canvas for social resistance.

With the exception of the last photo of Ernest Pignon´s work, the following are pics I took between 2005 and 2008 in the historic quarter of Barcelona.

reviving the city, idea under construction

2007-07-30T18:44:00.002-04:00

hello, i'm posting this from my dissertation to see if posting it will sharpen my attention and generate any helpful ideas from a reader or two. so please send me your reaction/thoughts if you're reading this. i suppose it doesn't really make sense without providing some background, but i don't have time right now. maybe later. sorry if this sounds stuck up, but that's what higher ed is all about. i'll take it down or better explain it later. thank you in advance!

Andreas Huyssen in his academic book Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory talks about “the explosion of memory discourses at the end of the twentieth century” (__). The tendency in nearly all of the academic scholarship that has been published in the last two decades on historic memory is to advocate a need for recuperating the memory and history what has been lost to past dictatorships, wars, exile. While I agree with him that “memory discourses are absolutely essential to imagine the future and to regain a strong temporal and spatial grounding of life and the imagination in a media and consumer society that increasingly voids temporality and collapses space” (__). I also see the politically and emotionally stalling and depressing nostalgia it produces this makes me wonder: when will the process of recuperating historical memory complete? When a certain quota of monuments that commemorate marginalized subjects in the center of the city has been fulfilled? When utopia is achieved? What is needed to demystify and defragmentize urban history? These are important questions if we want to alleviate the pain of us urban-nostalgics and increase a more humanitarian historical consciousness in theory and practice. Perhaps the only solution lies in the hypothetical? Now I’d like to share a hypothetical scenario that has been tickling my imagination for a couple years now. What if nothing was ever destroyed in the city? Let us use our imagination to rewind Barcelona for a moment. Imagine if the turn-of-the-century textile factories returned to the Raval and the SEAT factory to Poble Nou, if the cheap desarrollismo construction in the periphery remained, if Franco’s equestrian statues returned to the plazas, if the shabby barracas reappeared along the coast, if the trolleys began retracing their routes from Gràcia to the Plaça de Catalunya, if in the Eixample still glimmering with beautiful modernist buildings but next to them grazed pigs and sheep and the wheat that preceded it, if the medieval walls went back up around the historic quarter, and so did the medieval synagogue on Call street, and if the streets were dirt, cobblestone and slick asphalt at the same time, and the Greek and Phoenician tombstones rose to the surface? Many questions occur to me. For example, by what names would we call the streets? Would there be unemployment? What would happen with places whose function is out-dated, such as dirt roads and the Roman cloacae? With so much ethnic architectural diversity would there be more social tolerance? How long would the farm animals survive in the Eixample? Why is this scenario confined to the hypothetical realm to begin with? Because there’s not enough space in Barcelona or any European city. The city would have had extended lengthwise running itself into the sea and mountains. But what if space were unlimited or in more abundance like in American cities? So much monumental and abolished history would be disclosed and on top of each other. It’s a hypothetical translation of Benjamin’s/Klee’s angel, the ultimate palimpsest, loads and loads of historical residues accumulated before us. Architects, students of art history, architectural preservationists, sociologists, and tourists would have a ball with their notepads and cameras. Not only that, but, returning to the topic of this chapter, could one still critique censorship, fragmentation, and mystification of history/memory if all its material references reappeared in public space? What would we learn about history? How would the state redefine cultural heritage (patrimonio cultural)? How would that time-intense scenario make us feel? Would we be able to emotionally take it--would we pass out or would we simply get used to it, developing an even thicker version of Simmel’s numbing blasé attitude to protect ourselves from the abundance of stimuli and surprises?

While the idea is fun to think about, in practical terms, I believe that the process of recuperating historical memory will be more so “complete” when authority stops exerting their hegemony over history, when memory is liberated to take it’s own organic narrative and duration. I suppose this could be reduced to our basic need for “belongingness” (Abraham Maslow). This need relies on ontological competition, the creation of enemies. With competition and enemies, memories of different political ideologies, different religions, different genders... will always be in conflict and one will continue to shade the other. If we could abolish the competitive instinct, then perhaps we would be able to strike a more peaceful balance with temporality (and our neighbors)!!

Help!

starfish

2007-07-22T16:02:00.001-04:00

I woke up this morning to find starfish all over my body.

fun fact 3: 20 best metropolises to live in

2007-07-15T13:17:00.001-04:00

The British urbanism magazine Monocle set out to find the worlds best metropolises to live in, rating them by:

- quality of life
- crime and delinquency
- nightlife after 1am
- cultural options
- cleanliness
- nature areas
- quality of schools
- social tolerance
- quality and price of public transportation
- communication/information access (internet, phone...)
- hours of sun per year
- average outdoor temperature
- medical care

and in their July 2007 issue, the results were published:

1. Munich
2. Copenhagen
3. Zürich
4. Tokyo
5. Vienna
6. Helsinki
7. Sydney
8. Stockholm
9. Honolulu
10. Madrid
11. Melbourne
12. Montreal
13. Barcelona
14. Kyoto
15. Vancouver
16. Auckland
17. Singapore
18. Hamburg
19. Paris
20. Ginebra

Should some other factor have been considered? Maybe "courtesy to strangers"? (Or maybe that fits into "social tolerance"? Although I think they measure social tolerance by the amount of gay bars...) Or perhaps something to do with the price and quality of housing? Maybe that's "quality of life"? I never liked the "quality of life" factor because it's so vague. Bush once said that we can't join the Kyoto pact because it would affect our "quality of life." Anyway, for more info about the city report: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/18/arts/rmon1munich.php

null dull

2007-07-14T21:14:00.003-04:00

Gray like immobile

Nothingness like gray

Repetition like nothingness

Nothingness like impossibilities/impotence

Silence of nothingness

Unfulfillness like infinite

Repeat

centuries of waiting

2007-07-06T21:17:00.002-04:00

NPR, July 6, 2007: “In the last two months, 125 mexicans died of heat stroke trying to cross the border”

El país, July 5, 2007: “Un alud sepulta un autobús lleno de pasajeros en México”

Charlotte Observer, June 30, 2007: “Monterrey is flooded; at least 20 dead”

waiting

waiting

waiting

Now I know what it must feel like for those cinematic women who waited helplessly for news of their beloveds miles away fighting some war. Looking out the window, fiddling with a hem, rereading the newspaper, mumbling to the maid to recheck to see if the mailman is anywhere near, hoping the sleepy feeling will come soon, staring motionless while the imagination runs wild...

but nowadays war is Voluntary
and Waiting isn't!

...

Johannes Vermeer, 1654

musac en león

2007-06-20T22:46:00.001-04:00

A new big and expensive building I like:
MUSAC: El museo de arte contemporáneo de Castilla y León
in León, Spain. Architects: Mansilla + Tuñón.

Se han ido

2007-06-20T16:19:00.001-04:00

para México. ¿Qué será de ellas?

They packed their clothes
They packed their maps
Anxiety in one bag, Apathy in another
They packed their materials to make puppets.

And they left their watches here with me.
¿Qué será de ellas?

On the other side of the border
the magic trunk will open

and in front of the kitsch church
kitsch puppets will be born
to blow their horn
to the nosey kids in the streets
and the skinny dog with drippy teats
to the sun when it glows
and the dirt between their toes
¿Qué será de ellas?

confiscation, flat tires
contamination, dead batteries
coyotes, heat strokes
thieves, lost directions.

¿Qué será de ellas?!

Lili, on and off screen

2007-04-15T18:18:00.006-04:00

childish french accordion music of Lili ("hi Lili hi Lili hi lo hi lo..."), 1953 but could be today, right now

I’m a problem

The abnormal one

The one who annoys, 'pesada'

Treated nicely like the retard

Watching the movie in front of you through clogged wells of hot gooey balls

'Keep away from me.

Do you have to be so close?'

Oh just shoot me in the back with your laser stare

That way it will appear accidental

Flat chalky vintage colors

Sometimes dazzling

Typical naïve innocent young girl

What good does it do to be naïve and innocent?

in a typical insensitive sexually-hungry reality

that devours

she’s sitting behind me

and my writing is motivated by the assumed laser-stare on my back

two grey lasers, zoom zoom

but she’s not really looking at my back

rather the TV, or nothing (asleep)

and without the lasers?

Why not just be devoured

Could it be so bad?

We will never know until we try

But everything will be all better

Like when someone has died

or someone has cheated

ah it was just a joke

or a dream, or a movie, or a puppet show

If sadness was as simple as Lili makes it appear

I didn't check this movie out for this reason

A gray blouse and a solemn face

the final credits.

"A song of love is a sad song,
Hi lili, hi lili, hi lo.
A song of love is a song of woe.
Don't ask me how I know.
A song of love is a sad song,
For I have loved and it's so.
I sit at the window and watch the rain,
Hi lili, hi lili, hi lo.
Tomorrow I'll probably love again.
Hi lili, hi lili, hi lo..........."

Leslie Caron and Carrot Top in Lili (1953)

situation 2 and dream 5

2007-03-30T09:53:00.001-04:00

Welcome back to writing, we haven´t seen you in many months.

It has been over a year since I last participated in a Situation.

A night of flourescent lights, stench, and mood swings from different souls
"te duele la espalda fuck it a mí me duele todo el alma"

with a stiff back and a sensitive chest
I set my alarm for 7:15am
I silently said "goodnight" and
laid down on my stomach and my melancholic thoughts quickly turned into fog.

I dreamt something quite boring
I was playing soccer with some kids
but instead of a ball we were kicking a red poker chip
and instead of a field of green grass were were playing indoors on thin grey carpet
I don´t know why I bothered playing
my back hurt, no one was on my team, and the kids were much more agile than me
Then I lightly kicked the chip with my right foot
Raaaaaaaaa
The crowd roared and cheered!
Raaaaaaaaa!
I must of marked a goal!?
then I realized that it was 7:15am
the Raaaaaaaaa! was the static of my alarm clock
an unexisting radio station set on full volume.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

And I came to my conscious
I was to help Marta with an unorganized, unlikely-feasible, bus project
The ghastly night before, the fluorescent studio lights
When I got on my feet would my back hurt?
Would we make history, a fool out of ourselves, or a police record????

I was to be the driver, la chófer, of Pepe's large van.
In Spanish, I was to ask the 18 freshman of Spanish 232
1) what country they were going to illegally immigrate to and
2) what type of work they hoped to do in the foreign country.
Then I was to drive around the block, picking up groups of students.
Marta was going to do the explaining: a simulated illegal immigration experience.
And she was going to record the event with a small video camera.
The catch: there were 20 of us total, and the van comfortably fits 10 human beings (regardless of legal status).

I was to wait in the van till she called me on my cell phone.
When she called I was to come out of the van and present myself as la chófer to her students.

From the van I watched the class.
Marta standing, in that red fleece jacket, talking with her hands and exaggerated facial expressions that I could recognize from a quarter-mile away.
Her students sitting around her on the cold dewy grass like sheep.

Then my phone rang.

To be continued...

unlearning numbers II

2006-10-11T17:59:00.002-04:00

"Researchers estimated that as a result of the war, about 655,000 people in a country of about 27 million have died above the number expected to have died without war, Bernham said. that means 2.5 percent of the Iraqi population has died because of the invasion and ensuing strife, he said.

At a White House news conference Bush said, "I don't consider it a credible report. Neither does General (George) Casey (top U.S. commander in Iraq) and neither do Iraqi officials."

Casey, at a separate Pentagon briefing, said he had not seen the study but the 650,000 number "seems way, way beyond any number that I have seen. I've not seen a number higher than 50,000. And so I don't give it that much credibility at all."

Bush said, "I do know that a lot of innocent people have died, and that troubles me. And it grieves me." But he called the study's methodology "pretty well discredited." Last December, Bush estimated 30,000 Iraqis had died in the war.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told Reuters, "The report is unbelievable. These numbers are exaggerated and not precise." Iraqi government officials put the total Iraqi death toll since the war started at 40,000."

--"Study sees 655,000 Iraqi war deaths; Bush disputes" (Reuters, 11 October 2006)

A slow conversation between Ferdinand and Marianne in a car. Ferdinand, with a cigarette hanging from his mouth, is calmly driving. It is night. We know they're in the city because of the colored lights that repetively flash over the windshield. A line from the radio breaks the silence:

Radio: Garrison massacred by the Viet Cong who lost 115 men.

Marianne: Awful, isn't it? So anonymous...

Fernindand: What is?

Marianne: They say "115 guerrillas" and it doesn't mean a thing to us.

[Pause]

Marianne: Yet each one is a man, and we don't even know who he is. We don't know if he loves his wife, if he has kids, if he prefers movies or plays. We don't know anything. All they say is "115 killed." It's like photographs. They've always fascinated me. You see a snapshot of a guy with a caption underneath. He was a coward maybe, or a nice guy. But at the time when it was taken no one can say exactly when he was thinking about. His wife? His mistress? The past? The future? A basketball game? Nobody will ever know.

Ferdinand: That's life for you.

Marianne: Yes...that's what makes me sad: life is so different from books. I wish it were the same: clear logical organized... Only it isn't.

Ferdinand: Yes it is... a lot more than people think.

Marianne: No, it isn't, Pierrot.

[Pause.]

Ferdinand: My name's Ferdinand.

-- Pierrot le fou, 1965, director Jean-Luc Godard.

un cortitometraje de veraneo

2006-09-27T00:28:00.002-04:00

some of my happiest solo moments were the fortunate weekends when after the midday meal i would take a bike out and go riding through the little towns around fontclara...

the air was so fresh!

i recently discovered a very-easy movie making program on my computer called ¨windows movie maker¨ and in about 30 minutes i put together this 1-minute piece of clips i shot with a digital camera in 2005.

if you could have been there!

PS- a friend recommended i change the title from "fontclara en bici" to "siesta" or "nap time." those titles would suggest contrast and explain the absence of people, but "fontclara en bici" is more simple and carefree, what i felt when i was riding... what do you think?
i suppose it´s irrelevant in the greater scheme of things...

come walk with me

2006-08-14T09:42:00.002-04:00

to walk with me: click on the picture below, zoom in,

come close to the computer screen, and scroll right

30 minute break

2006-08-06T11:37:00.001-04:00

I was hungry this evening but my stomach was bloated
in the grey-tan old quarter
I walked down one street
and then another
short breaths
(faint pee-garbage smell)
looking for something cheap to eat, not sweet, not another bocadillo
I came across a free exhibit
I went in, it was dark, empty, damp, old vaulted ceilings, large squared rocks
I looked at some video exhibits
probably done by young artists
I didn’t really understand the messages
I picked up their corresponding pamphlets
and walked back outside
LIGHT
across the street I spotted the Islamic pastisseria
I didn’t know if they would have non-sweet stuff or not
rows of different kinds of honey-dripping baklava filled the shop-front window
It looked like inside they had some non-sweet stuff
so I went in and purchased a frosted custard cream thing
and a pack of Lebanese pita bread
and a large curry chicken fritter.
3,50€
I gave the smiley curly-beard man a 5€ bill having forgotten that I had coins
“shukaran” I said, and he smiled
I wondered if he understood my Arabic
I wondered if his long beard meant he was extra religious
like “jamón extra” (supposedly a superior type of pre-packaged ham)
I walked out
headed back to my study place
on the narrow sidwalk
opened up the plastic bag of pita bread
opened up the oil-stained paper bag of the large curry chicken fritter
and wrapped the bread around it.
Yummm it was good,
it was white meat
not too spicy
I stopped.

I thought…

I could eat this for dinner too…

...
I turned around
headed back to the Islamic pastesseria
“¿me puede poner uno más de esos de pollo?”
(“can you put me one more of those of chicken?”)
it was a different guy (also with a long curly beard) he gave it to me
I put it in my plastic bag
I said “shukaran” and gave him 1€
I don’t think he understood me
I left and headed toward my study place
then on the left, on a façade, I saw something I could put in my thesis
there was some graffiti, and among it a Nike symbol
but instead of Nike it said “BCN” (Barcelona)
(a lot has been written about Barcelona becoming an international brand)
with the non-fritter hand
I got out my digital camera
took a picture
put the camera back in its case
back in the plastic bag
and headed back to the study place.

that´s all. in any case it was an enjoyable break.

Update: I returned to the ¨Pastisseria Islámica¨ the other day and learned that the shopowners are not Arabic but Pakistani and that thank you in Pakistani is ¨shukria.¨...(I think).

children´s poem or hallmark card in need of a drawing

2006-07-30T19:16:00.001-04:00

imagine
a
giraffe
whose
spots

are

fall

leaves

and

one

fell

off

miss

in the raval a la nit or ________________ (2 spatial tactics)

2006-07-17T16:01:00.001-04:00

Garden City, S. Carolina May 25 2006 or some other time and place

2006-06-22T10:09:00.001-04:00

the comedia

2006-06-05T09:54:00.004-04:00

HA HA HA
look at yourself pouting
a tiny part in an never-ending comedia
what clever props
what intense drama
what goofy masks
who are you trying to fool
are you trying to make me laugh?
why don't you spare yourself the petty
if you only knew
what came before you
and what is to come!
HA HA HA

[repeat]

Dream 4: the immortal turquoise sea

2006-04-12T22:25:00.005-04:00

Early this morning i dreamt that i had gotten off a plane or train and i was leaving the station which was right in front of the sea or ocean. (This was a mute dream, no sound, all visual and physical.) I remember looking out at the sea/ocean, seeing how dark-blue almost black it appeared. From the calmness and soft sun, i would guess it was early morning, like 8am. I watched a hard-plastic wind-operated jet ski go by. Next scene, for some reason, i was in the water with my clothes on, it was warm, my eyes were not being blinded by the sun or burned by the salt water, i wasn’t getting sunburned, it was perfect. I was waste-deep, my pants clinged to my legs, when a big black inner tube rolled my way on top of a wave. It was almost like a tire, i thought it would be safe and strong with these big waves. I caught it and put it under my backside, laid over it, and clinged on with my legs and arms. The waves were big and the tube took me for a ride, it was fun. At one put it took me far/deep out and i went on top of a very large wave, and then, the tube and i were safely dropped with a plunk. The drop gave me a bit of the roller-coaster-butterflies-in-my-stomach and i thought “how fun!” The water was a beautiful turquoise now. I felt at peace, I felt weightless, my extremities swayed and melted with the warm waves. I had a strong urge to stay there forever, let myself slowly dissolve into the water-- regardless of the consequences/risks involved. Laying there, with thin consciousness, I began thinking: it would be such a nice escape, a fun warm bath with Nature, to vanish under the soft sun; abstract, ubiquitous, turquoise, warm, and mute. But at another point i thought of my parents, and thought this could be dangerous, i could die... i could disappear... and they would worry. I thought the only news my parents would have would be that i disappeared abroad. It would take them a couple weeks to find out, and they would not-- for the slightest moment-- think that i disappeared happily in the sea, they would have dark frightful visions, they would think the worst and more-common, they would think some male did something grotesquely terrible to me, their minds would go wild with blood and knives and physical force and foreign stereotypes. I began to think that i could write a message in a bottle, saying something like Dear Mom and Dad, don’t worry, I’ve disappeared with the turquoise sea, left life the same way I came into life: wrapped in a blue, comforting, soft and warm blanket. But then I thought: but the bottle could break in these strong waves, and so, they would think something terrible happened. I thought: well i could fill many bottles with the message... then the tube started edging towards the shore. My toes hit the sand and I jumped off limp-legged and walked up to the narrow cement boardwalk.

spatial tactics

2006-03-28T01:45:00.005-05:00

One winter afternoon I was wandering around the Raval neighborhood (in the Historic Quarter of Barcelona) and I came upon a volleyball game taking place in a homemade volleyball court. Immigrants were playing inside an abandoned lot where a building had been razed. The lot was fenced off; the bottom couple of feet were cemented off. How did they get in there? I walked around it to see how they had gotten inside. On one side I found a jagged hole in the lower part of the fence, about 1.5 foot by 1.5 foot. I thought how they must have had to crawl in individually and slip the poles and the net through. Very clever, I thought, and I took this picture from inside that hole. After that day I began to find all sorts of spatial tactics in the city: heated 24-hour ATM nooks and storefronts being used as bedrooms; balconies used to hang clothes and protest signs, left-out construction materials and those big plant pots used as benches; dumpsters used as urinals…

And I began to think of how these spatial tactics not only fulfilled a basic need, but also functioned as little harmless, creative, political resistances, breaking through the city’s image, an international image ultra-protected by the increasing presence of video cameras, policemen, and tour books. Since spatial tactics are usually temporal, mobile, sneaky, spontaneous, small, and semi-hidden, for me they’re also a unique form of resistance because they hard to crack down on, categorize, or put your finger on them. (Like little sparks of truth amongst the ubiquitous stimuli and simulacra.)

I’ll end with a quote. "[Those who create spatial tactics] must vigilantly make use of the cracks that particular conjunctions open in the surveillance of the proprietary powers. It poaches them. It creates surprises in them. It can be where it is least expected. It is a guileful ruse." (The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel de Certeau, 1984)

May you find many spatial tactics then next time you walk outside.

No. I’ll end with a color picture of that abandoned lot, or volleyball court, one year later.

Color photo taken by Eva Megias.

(Published in Tiresias, vol. 1)

my niece and i, or, childpinkhood

2006-03-07T09:35:00.001-05:00

couldn´t find an epigraph, so i made one up:

2006-02-12T19:13:00.002-05:00

She didn't need to pick up the ramparts,
a milk lid would do,
placed on her head,
the city would be hers.

the three musicians

2006-01-31T08:55:00.001-05:00

Seaquins

2006-01-26T21:26:00.002-05:00

Section of a new painting. I named it Seaquins and it´s dedicated to the person who gave me the paint. Feedback is appreciated. Click on it to see the marvelous grain/texture of the paper.

"the ghost of material things" --Gérard de Nerval and the Bad Rhymer

2006-01-22T23:40:00.003-05:00

I thought those everyday things
had been long thrown away...
but then I discovered them
on a friend´s webpage today.

A message, like the food,
read and discarded
appears as a trivial memory
a pleasure surface-hearted.

(No, I don't like inside jokes either, so I'll turn this inside-out: I often left messages on food for my housemates in Barcelona. The cookie box reads: "eat me because I'm yummy and I don't want to make Megan fat" and the banana: "thank you for printing.")

fun fact 2: postsecret

2006-01-02T19:52:00.004-05:00

Megan recommends:
postsecret.blogspot.com/
Enjoy!

c l o u d s

2006-01-01T21:37:00.001-05:00

I've never thought much of clouds, but they've come up a bit this past week.

Iris said that there was an experiment in which one group of college students were told to think about life for a certain amount of time everyday, another group was told to think about clouds. The group that thought about clouds was much better off.

And then later that night I had a dream. Some prestigious woman said "let me see your portfolio." And I thought "hmm...do I have a portfolio?" And she reached to the shelve behind me and pulled out a black binder and browsed through it carelessly. It was replete of photos of paintings of mine and I wondered when I had put all that together and how much more/what was in those other binders of mine on the shelf. Then, she, pointing to my pictures of some neatly-diagonally-gridded clouds and the photos from Barcelona of empty facades (windows through which the sky is visible) she said "don't you see the resemblances here?" I didn't respond. But she was right. (And she was me...) It was a great juxtaposition. Both were relatively-flat planes that defy gravity and distort light.

Clouds are cumbersome to paint. Have you ever tried to recreate clouds? They even resist cameras. Maybe the only good representations of them are the abstract ones.

From my new apartment, whose chapter is only 2 days old, I no longer see clouds, or sky, or anything organic for that matter, with the exception of some food, water, and a plant that I found hanging from the bathroom ceiling. I look up and say "Hello, Plant." [It doesn't respond...] I'm going to try to keep it alive. In return will it keep me company?

Clouds I recently saw from Interstate-77 in Virginia on December 28, 2005.

Empty facade from the streets Corcega-Bailen in Barcelona, May 2005.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
"Esas fachadas, en verdad, son como sus caparazones después de que haya sido sorbida su carne, aspirado todo la blando y jugoso, suculento, sustanciosa, que tenían dentro. Las manzanas, los bloques y las casas de algunos barrios de BCN han sido vaciados también de esa carne y esos jugos de que está hecha, al fin y al cabo, la vida, una vida atesorada por el tiempo, acumulada. Las fachadas no son más que lo duro, el caparazón, el hueso que está afuera, una triste armadura. A veces, en las marisquerías, uno encuentra langostas disecadas, rojas y brillantes, no muy distintas de las de plástico: ¿qué puede haber más cruel, de más feroz, que aspirar toda la carne de una barrio conservando sus huesos o caparazones, y de más vergonzado que usarlos como signos de supuesto respeto, de recuerdo o de memoria? Memoria: ¿de qué o de quién?" (Juanjo Lahuerta "La destrucción de Barcelona")

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Update: September 2006: From 36,000 feet in the air I spotted some strange spots. At first I thought they were clouds.

But then, using my camera as a telescope ;-) I realized that the spots weren't clouds but icebergs, Greenlandian icebergs!

situation 1

2005-12-18T19:59:00.001-05:00

Today she did a good deed. She fulfilled part of her purpose in life. She made a harmless situation, and stood back to watch it. She will brag about it: She parked in the Barnes and Nobles parking lot. She turned the car off and to her left she saw a parked Hummer. It occured to her that she had her art supplies with her. She got out a sheet of yellow paper and with a red marker wrote "How many dead bodies does it take to fill your gas tank? Asshole. Find another way to work on your low self-esteem." She was disturbed by having written the word "asshole." For a couple minutes she thought about crossing it out, but in the end she didn't because she thought that the-word-asshole-crossed-out would look silly. Then she got out of the car. Looked around. She was a bit afraid that if she touched the Hummer sirens might go off. She gently placed the yellow sheet under the right windshield wiper with the message facing the interior of the car, and then she went into the store. She felt like people were watching her. She kept an eye on the Hummer from inside the store. About 5 minutes later when she was looking at greeting cards by the window she saw a young skinny Orchard-lake-type (high heels, tight pants, black leather jacket, done-up hair) woman leave the store and approach the Hummer. Ah-ha! So she was the victim! She unlocked and opened the heavy Hummer door and got in. About 10 seconds later she got out of the car! Went around to the front of the car, took the paper off, (didn't throw it away) and got back in the car with the paper in her hand. (From inside the store, she imagined her tossing the paper in the passenger seat.) About 2 seconds later she drove off.
(For both of them, this situation was the excitement of their day.)

unlearning numbers

2005-11-10T18:57:00.002-05:00

when you're face feels warm
and your body comfortable
and the sounds are muffled
and what you love, doesn't love you back
and yet- you know in the end you are your own suffering
and every time I show the documentary 30,000 individuals are tortured again in Argentina
and two weeks ago the earth swallowed a group of 73,000 in Pakistan
big numbers, little numbers, single numbers
usually estimated numbers
but always whole numbers, never fractions or decimals

and the upcoming week's events giggle in the back of your head.
In moments like this it seems like one human life is just a miniscule spark of light
insufficent, even as a big number, to illimunate an entire void.

Dream 3: maternal miracle

2005-10-29T12:00:00.001-04:00

last night i dreamt that i heard a baby cry out, i don't know where i was, maybe in a mall or something, there were people around, their noise in the distance. there was a woman standing on my right and she told me: "look, you've lactated!" i looked down and sure enough my left breast had dampened my turquoise cotton turtleneck with a dribble of wetness.
not being pregnant and not having any children, a feeling of wide-eyed incredibility and beauty came over me, and i started to silently cry.

that's all i remember.
i think this scene was triggered by something i read and i can't figure out what!...

El País, Sept. 22, 2005: "Rita se convierte en el tercer huracán más fuerte en la historia del Caribe"

2005-09-22T01:37:00.002-04:00

The headline of El País read: "Rita turns into the third strongest hurricane in the history of the Caribbean."

A man who learns that another massive hurricane is coming his way and simply does not believe it. How can it possibly be true if people are still waiting on their roofs from the last hurricane?! (Why a man, I don´t know.)
He shuts himself in his one-level American-style home. Alone.
Sits in a chair, in his brown-carpeted living room.
And thinks, and reflects, calmly.
The rain is an incessant and soothing roar coming from some side of the house.
He meditates in denial.
He plays cards with himself on a small wooden table,
he chuckles at his own folly,
gets bored;
tidies up the coffee table,
gets up to turn a record on. (the stereo system belonged to his parents. )
The carpet soaks his white socks.
He sits back down and continues thinking about different things:
Person 1,
meditation techniques,
Person 2,
his youth,
Person 1...
As it becomes darker outside, he doesn't get up to turn the lights on.
Several hours later he is sitting Indian style on top of the china cabinet.
The music is barely audible over the downpour.
His thoughts have now become delusional and aggressive.
He jumps down, finds the table and
BOOM!- BREAKS IT once- and
AGAIN- CRACK!
against the cheap wood wall.
How good it felt, how good it sounded!
Staring down beyond the bobbing legs of his once table, he feels relief, he has reached tranquility, defeated..defeated what?
He takes slow deep breaths, tries to forget about the "what?"
he extends his arms and slowly brings his legs up.
He floats on his back, and the chair splinters tickle him.
His thoughts become calm again;
peaceful,
thick,
Person 1,
posthumous.

surrogate mother nature

2005-08-11T14:29:00.001-04:00

Though much of the veneration of the old is just hegemonic and corporate image/media spoof, we could ask ourselves if there is something real in this relation, something in our biological natural instincts that attracts us to the old? If we eliminated all collective influence, what urban public spaces would we be drawn to/holding history/meaning for us? Could it be reduced to those spaces which we recognize as authentically natural (which usually are old)? Entirely man-made, the city, to begin with, is the antithesis of Nature.Nature and humanness have been being replaced by heightened global warming, technology, architecture that reflects technology, and surveillance, all of which favor a more independent/private lifestyle particularly in areas (such as the new balconyless flat buildings in Barcelona's Ciutat Vella, the general lack of benches, and the recent installation of bancos unipersonales (to stop people from lying down), and personal mobile music players become more popular…) which decrease social interactions particularly where tourists and upper-class residents frequent. In many of the dry cities of South-West Europe there is little green. Parks are replaced by “plazas duras” —flat sheets of gray cement with a thin sprouting tree exactly every some calculable distance. For this reason, one hot summer day when I took refuge on the shaded steps of an old church it occurred to me that, in the city, Mother Nature had appropriate the old; a true urban “Giving Tree.” Contrary to the impersonal, generic, banal, hard and flimsy Postmodern urban spaces (like those that were constructed in Barcelona for and after the Olympics, the old spaces/ruins (particularly those not surrounded by gates, surveillance or tourist stands) are generally public, imperfect, approachable, generous, palpable, they’re soft and soothing but solid and dependable, moss or vine-covered, pigeons and stray cats make they’re homes in the organic niches between their stones, they offer you a place to rest. Unfortunately, they’re also going extinct.

things i saw in the city today

2005-08-02T19:14:00.001-04:00

A man who had peed his khaki pants.

A man who asked me who I lived with, I answered, then he asked me if my housemate had buenos aparatos. :- |

From the privileged high-up view from the 5th floor long window of the biblioteca arxiu historic in the historic quarter of barcelona, looking down over the large Plaça Nova, I saw:

gray heavy clouds and a sudden downpour. I had never seen it rain so hard before in Barcelona. it hardly ever rains. the gargoyles were VOMITING water.

the plaza was suddenly abandoned. the pigeons took refuge in the niches between the large facade stones, and the tourists ran to the nearest wall to put their backs tagainst it. i don't know where the locals went, but they disappeared too.

there was just one person that didn't abandon the plaza. she remained right in the middle of it. she was a street performer dressed as an angel. her face are hands were painted white. she lifted her white dress so it wouldn’t get dirty and wet, and then took out a plaid umbrella that didn’t match her attire. she stayed there, slowing walking back and forth with her umbrella.

then from the left appeared a Pakistani immigrant selling black-market umbrellas.

Later in the gothic neighborhood I saw a pigeon dying on the side of a pedestrian street. its head was sunk into its pigeon shoulders and its feathers were matted. i briefly thought of a vet.

And when I looked up I unexpectedly saw Joan! (in a city of 3 million, one of my exhousemates and friends.) (he treated me to a piece of chocolate cake.)

I also saw a very large middle-aged black woman sleeping on top of a green sleeping bag on the marble hearth of an abandoned storefront. her back was turned away from the street. i thought she might be an immigrant that didn't speak spanish. i thought "shouldn't it be common knowledge to know where the shelters are in case you find someone who is homeless?" i don't know where the shelters are. I left some money in her flip-flops and then like a bourgie went into a nearby shoe store to see what she would do when she found it. i didn't see her when she found it (i was probably looking at shoes), but i did see her awake, she was sitting up eating something out of a plastic.

update: since that day i have passed the storefront several times and haven't seen her, but folded up neatly to one side of the hearth is her green sleeping bag.

upadate 1 year later. I spotted this woman laying on a bench in Plaza Urquioana. I gave her 5 euros.

chocolate tea recipe

2005-07-04T16:20:00.001-04:00

I made a great discovery: chocolate tea. Yes, that's right! you serve it icy cold. it's light and refreshing.
Directions: Make some tea (preferrably "english breakfast tea") (don't put sugar in it) and put it in the fridge until it's cold. Then add about 1/3 cup of it to 1 cup of chocolate milk. Add a couple ice cubes. Stir. Drink.
¡Delicioso!

(Warning: chocolate tea has a high caffeine content.)

Dream 1: Apartment Searching and Hog Lynching

2005-06-23T06:11:00.004-04:00

Last night I had some weird dreams. I went to see two apartments in Barcelona. The first, I went into the house, it was an American style house with carpet. It was obvious that it had been recently cleaned. It was an international group of students, the ones around the house that I met were friendly. I blond haired guy came up to me and said that he needs a lot of space so he’s moving into the vacant room and so now the vacant room is his old bed. I thought, ok. We went upstairs and saw the room he was going to take, it was beautiful and large, like 20 ft by 50 ft and had a panoramic view over Barcelona, and the floor was covered in hairless sky-blue carpet, almost like a quality-flannel sheet. When I saw the view the clouds were Scandinavian style, heavy, fluffy, gray, navy and white. Then the guy who was showing me around showed me where my room would be. He showed me a room about 1/3 size of the first, and a bed that had two mattresses, the bottom mattress was much larger than the one on top, that made a weird bed. Further, it was a shared room, there was a single mattress on the floor nearby where someone else sleeps. I asked how much this was going for and he said 525 (euros). I thought oh my god but I didn’t say anything. I asked how many people lived there and he either said 10 and so I thought they are really ripping me off, but I continued downstairs with the guide. The house was nice and it was enormous. I chatted a bit with the international students, I got a long well with them, I felt comfortable, like I could live there but then occasionally the thought of the rip-off they were offering me came back in my head. Then next thing I was off to some traditional festival outside with them. There were a lot of people outside, gathering around for the festival leaving a path vacant, I supposed a parade or something would come down it. Then it began. I think there was music. Then came a group of men carrying a very large hog, it had hair like an ox, brown and fluffy, and it was inside something that looked like a cage. Anyway three males dressed as Roman soldiers came walking down the path carrying the animal and everyone cheered. The hogs eyes were big and round. I thought oh my god what are they going to do? so I asked one of the students next to me. He said it was a hog BBQ festival like the one’s down south (U.S.), that they were going to eat it. and I asked how they were going to kill it. he said that, like always, the normal way, you make it drink a lot of oil, and then then men hang on to its legs while one shoves a long kebob pole through it’s body and then you put it all over fire. I was totally disgusted (still am as I write this), I covered my eyes with my hands, backed off, turned around, and ran away.

Then I was at a dentist office near the house I had just seen. There was a dentist and his female assistant, both were Asian and trendy. The girl gave me a tube thing to put on my lower lip. After I took it off I realized my lower lip was numb and I got scared because that meant that she’s numbed my lip in order to have a shot there. The dentist turned around with (a large) syringe in his hand. I remember thinking that he no doubt wants to give me the shot because it’s an expensive serum so he’ll make a lot of money off of it. he tried to convince me, I said no. he acted as if he didn’t hear me and got closer. i was thinking, this shot is money-driven. I grabbed a hold of the syringe, squeezed the serum out on his pants and jumped out of the chair and ran. I think I might have accidently scraped the needle on his leg. He was violently furious, but I got away.

Next scene I was walking down the street (also in Barcelona I think) and there was some terrible storm coming. Now I don’t remember if it was a storm, an earthquake, or a war, I just remember I had to take cover. As in many of my dreams, my legs felt like there were made out of lead. I managed to get into some doorway. I pushed on the door and it opened. Behind me came the jewish-american NY family that lived there, I told them immediately that we all needed to take cover. They didn’t know how, so I showed them. I don’t remember what all happened but it was chaotic because my legs were heavy and there was so many of them and they were not taking this very seriously! I think I told them we needed to take the elevator down to the basement. Later on, the storm or whatever was over and we were deep into their home. it was another enormous American-style home. since it was big I asked them if they knew anything about a room/bed I could rent. I don’t remember if they answered me, but I think the answer was no. we were sitting on some beds in a room with like 20 unmade colorful kids beds, 10 sloppily lined up on one side of the wall and the same on the other side of the wall. One lady said, I know we have a lot of beds here but there´s 20 of us living in this house. I thought wow, that’s a lot of people.

Next thing I remember was that that family took me to the beach. I walked out onto a low peer with the father. The water was pretty, very greenish-clear color. I saw a ton of those ugly fish with large circle mouths that look like they are guzzling down large quantities of water. They were extra large, like 3-5 feet long. They grossed me out. I pointed them out to the father. They were everywhere. Next thing, for some reason we had to swim back to shore, we couldn’t take the peer back. anyhow I don’t know how or why but I found myself in the water overcoming my fear. I opened my eyes underwater and initially I was very frightened. Underwater, I saw that those ugly fish had large brown pointy teeth. Anyhow, I swam, I saw them and their terrible teeth underwater, and luckily, they didn’t bother me at all.

Through out all those scenes, I kept waking up (in real life) with the image/sensation (not the words) of “cool dry soft straight-hair.” I know what this is, this visual senstation is the opposite of what I expected to be feeling and what I was worrying about because the last three nights several times I woke up hot, sticky, frizzy hair, so when I woke up and didn’t feel hot and sticky the opposite image came to me (even though it wasn’t entirely true, my hair was frizzy).

Also, I know that the reason I dreamt the hog scene was because yesterday I was thinking about those gruesome lynchings parties they used to have down south and I saw a picture of one.

Finally, all that about finding an apartment/room/bed was because I’ve been thinking how time-consuming and psychologically-draining it has been to search for a place in Barcelona, something I would have to do if I come back in January.

10 days of Hanukkah, 9 lives

2005-06-22T14:20:00.001-04:00

Perhaps, but I think she was dehydrated to the point where she didn't
even want food or water, cuz today she's been drinking like it's 1999.
But I don't doubt her days are numbered, because if the weather did
all that to her, she's not really doing too well. I meant she's a
Hanukkah miracle like the cat that keeps on giving.  I don't doubt
that perhaps she's Jesus.  In all seriousness.  That's why I was pretty
upset. Whiskers is my life-partner.

xoxo

> actually i´ve solved the case. Ms. Whiskers went into
> the wood Tuesday morning, ate a large-sized bird, was
> so full she took a long nap in the woods, woke up many
> hours later, still full, she weakly wobbled home just
> to take another long nap and refuse her can of
> white-fish that mom offered her.
> ???
>
> --- msaltzman@slc.edu wrote:
>
>> sorry.
>> she came back out of the woods eventually and was
>> still acting really weak
>> and not eating, but today she's totally fine.  She's
>> a Hanukkah miracle.
>> Sorry to worry you, but I cried the better part of
>> yesterday, ask Dad.:)
>>
>> xoxo
>>
>>
>> > yikes how did that happen? it must have been the
>> heat? what happened with those bumps on her?  i guess
>> old house cat memory chapter has closed.  hope you're
>> not feeling too bad, she was old and outlived my cat.
>> and mom fed her like a princess these last two years
>> > (maybe that's what got her, too much fatty
>> food?).?
>> >
>> > --- msaltzman@slc.edu wrote:
>> >
>> >> Yeah,
>> >> I actually have all of those it looks like- well I
>> >> don't have Damien Rice.
>> >>
>> >> Whiskers died today.
>> >>
>> >> xoxo

Fashion & Politiks

2005-06-14T16:50:00.003-04:00

Many decades ago Benjamin screamed "Fashion, Mr. Death! Mr. Death!" ( Sounds Wonka-ish. !)

What you see is no longer what you get…Not only does the Ajuntament, Generalitat …invest billions to promote Barcelona as a city of peace and tolerance (Forum, Picasso...)… but also the producers of pop culture have appropriated the left-wing image (peace, multiculturalism, progressive politics, Americana 60s-70s…) to market, and the people have totally bought into it. We can say that perhaps this left-wing imaginary is better than the contrary (like what we have back home, a scary streak of anti-intellectualism, which also has its apparel), because perhaps the humanitarian discourse, although superficial, after all does slightly sink into those who consume or perceive it (¿?). If representation is only superficial, does it make any difference if one's territory is represented with the image of Forum or of Iraqi War? Although superficial, perhaps the image is valuable in the sense that it is what initially attracts our attention to later explore it beyond its surface.

However, and most importantly, because left-wing discourse has become fashionable pop culture it occults actual social problems. In other words, as local society appears tolerant, as peace pins and third-world folkloric clothing (last summer in Barcelona Thai clothing was in, this summer it's Arabic!) and going to eat in pee-smelling ethnic neighborhoods becomes visibly popular among middle and upper class locals, real problems, such as marginalization by class or ethnicity or social class or gender, go further unnoticed because the false appearance is one of tolerance and integration.

The same can be said of Photography and Graphic Design and any visual arts that enter in the market. Left-wing discourse has become marketable strategy in these fields in the last couple years so we see things like pictures of "the other": ghettos, misery, indigenous populations, or third-world chabolas with the Gucci or Versace or University of whatever label stamped on them.

In conclusion, a marketed and/or fetishized image nowadays in more dangerous than beneficial and they're everywhere! So I make two difficult if not impossible suggestions: not consuming what they tell you to and not assuming anything based on what you see (that also includes not assuming any significance ideology based on what someone is dressed in...). What do you think, Wall? (What?) This is part of the burden that any well-fed thinker carries on his/her shoulders.

As the Beatles have an answer for everything, I'll end with Golden Slumber:

You gotta carry that weight, carry that weight, a long time...
[...]
you never give your mooooney,
(bum bum bum bum)
you only give me some fuuuunny paper...

"Sock-hoppin' Head-bobbin' Indie Desperation" Lyrics For Sale

2005-05-18T17:47:00.001-04:00

I would quit smoking for you.

I would clean the bathroom for you.

I´d wait in a corner,

until you tell me,

whatever you want to tell me.

Please contact me If you are interested purchasing the rights to reproduce "Sock-hoppin' Head-bobbin' Indie Desperation."

fun fact 1: How to Make a Bocadillo Cantabre

2005-04-02T14:45:00.001-05:00

1. boil egg
2. cut a piece of french bread down the middle
3. cut tomato in half and spread its juice on the two newly revealed soft sides of the french bread
4. put tuna on one of the two tomato juice-covered-french bread slices (if tuna was not canned in salt and oil then put some on)
5. once eggs cools, take shell off, slice egg and put on top of tuna
6. lettuce and other condiments are optional. (please don't put mustard on the Cantabre bocadillo.)
7. close the bocadillo with the other side of tomato-covered-french bread
8. eat and make someone else try it.

from the biblioteca

2005-03-29T14:37:00.004-05:00

I’m sitting at the library (Biblioteca d’Arxiu Historic). A beautiful library,
on the 5^th floor, on my left, through a very tall window, I can see over the crumbling Romanesque monastery, where pigeons have made their little homes within the cracks of the large grey millennia-old stones.
Anyhow, I really dislike the silence in libraries and museums, but today I heard music.
And it got louder.
I hear it nice and clearly now.
While the others continued reading and taking notes, I got up and went to over to look out one of those long library windows that face the Plaza Nova, I could hear the music even better now. And I saw where it was coming from. There below was a 60 person orchestra playing. About the same amount of people had gathered around the orchestra to listen.
The pigeons, who are viewing and listening from above, are flapping around like crazy. I think they´re happy with the music!
It is 70 degrees today, not humid, and clear blue skies with some soft clouds. It is 3:30pm, siesta time, and the streets are calm. This morning the streets smelled like spring, not like a sewage. Now it’s started to lightly rain, it's a spring rain. It hasn't rained in months!
Back on my left, the pigeons are fighting over who gets into the facade's niches first.
The gargoyles guarding the monastery begin to drool.
The orchestra has disappeared. The plaza is deserted.
On days like this I'm grateful to be able to enjoy the spontaneity of the city, that is, what is left of it.

meet Remei

2005-03-02T11:45:00.002-05:00

Una catalana, viuda[1], probably in her 70s, perfectly sane. She was sitting on the corner of Estel and Nou de la Rambla, between a vacant lot and a police station.

I didn’t know Remei. I was walking around a descampado[2] in the Raval to take a picture. She was sitting nearby and without getting up she asked me if I was “desorientada.” I told her no, I was just trying to take a picture.

She answered “porque todo ha cambiado y yo lo sé porque he vivido en este barrio toda mi vida.”[3]

I thought, wow, divine academic intervention.

I asked her to elaborate and she told me to sit down next to her on the curb-bench.

She wore a winter coat and had a white plastic bag with a pack of light bulbs in it.

Then she turned in my direction and said: “Este barrio era la flor y nata de Barcelona y ahora es una mierda.”[4] I didn’t say anything.

She continued: “Cuando yo era pequeña, esos bares estaban cerrados de día pero cuando las señoras abrieron las puertas para limpiar podíamos ver…”[5]

“Antes había pobreza pero había honradez.”[6] She said this twice.

“Y cuando yo era pequeña había prositutas pero en esa época las prostitutas no querían que los niños las vieran—no como ahora,. Ahora pasan.”[7]

I repeated her sentences in my head to try to remember them because I didn’t have a pen or paper with me.

Pointing behind her, she asked me if I knew where the Sant Pau church was. I answered yes. Then she said “ahora la Iglesia de Sant Pau está tan dejada que da tristeza, no da ganas de entrar”[8]

Where the police station is now there used to be “pisos guapos”[9] and calle Tapies passed right through.

“pero todavía en este barrio hay sitios muy bonitos tanto como en el Gótico.”[10]

“pero ahora están abarcando todo como en el barrio judío del Gótico.”[11]

En esta calle [calle Nou de la Rambla] se podia comprar de todo, de todo.”[12]

Places that used to exist in the neighborhood that she mentioned during our conversation:

“Casablanca”

“Cine Apolo”

Un cabaret

Mobles

Un bar de travesties “allí el sexo débil no existía.”[13]

I asked her if I could get a picture of her. She dryly agreed.

I asked her what her name was and she told me Remi. I didn’t get the name at first. She repeated it and explained that it’s Catalan for Remedios.

I asked her if she would like me to send her a copy of the picture and she said that she doesn´t give out her address.

And we said goodbye, and I went home to write this down before her words were forgotten.

[1] A Catalan woman, a widow.

[2] descampado = abandoned lot/field.

[3] because everything has changed and I know because I have lived in this neighborhood my whole life.

[4] This neighborhood was the sweet cream of Barcelona, and now it’s a piece of shit.

[5] When I was little, those bars were closed during the day but when the cleaning ladies open them to clean we could see what was going on inside…

[6] Before there was poverty, but there was honor.

[7] And when I was little there were prostitutes but back then the prostitute didn’t want the kids to see them—not like now, now they could care less.

[8] now the Sant Pau church is so abandoned that it makes one sad, one doesn’t feel like going in.

[9] pretty flats

[10] but there still are pretty places in this neighborhood, just as many as there are in the Gothic Neighborhood.

[11] but now they’re taking over everything like they did in the Jewish quarter of the Gothic Neighborhood.

[12] On this street [Nou de la Rambla] one used to be able to buy anything and everything.

[13] A travesty bar “there the weaker sex didn’t exist.”

(Published in Tiresias, vol. 1)

5 Year Reunion With Melody, my childhood neighbor (Detroit, 1980s)

2004-11-19T18:17:00.001-05:00

13 things Melody recalled and told me on November 29, 2004

That once when I was little I went #2, wiped my bottom, and then chased Melody around the yard with the dirtied toilet paper.

That one year Melody became anorexic and that year she improved her grades so much that her anorexia won her a full-ride Music scholarship to Michigan State.

That once when I was little I walked in on my brother while he was masturbating. My mom told Shirley’s mom, who told Melody. I have no memory of this.

That Melody’s mom ran off to California to live with a psychic who channeled with the dead and other worlds.

That Melody saw a real ghost in her old house with a long black turn-of-the-century dress on.

That Melody used to abuse her cat Smitty (picking it up by its tail, putting its head under the water). In the following years she would always sleep on the floor next to the cat so that it would forgive her.

That Melody’s uncle used to abuse his wife and now as an old man he’s suffering from painful chronic illnesses.

That she took a comedy acting class but failed at it because upon acting she could only be sexually perverted or present a profoundly developed serious character.

That Melody was boy crazy.

That when Melody was 7 she used to go to her mom’s art classes at Wayne State and when they were on break she would get up in front of the class and start teaching.

That we always ate hotdogs in my house.

That from my house and Melody’s neighboring house one could hear constant bickering coming from our parents.

That on her school trip to London to sing in a concert Melody got bored with the group and went off on her own for the week, nearly missing the return flight back because traffic was very bad and she was stuck in a double-decker bus on the highway.

fall

2004-10-12T10:43:00.002-04:00

ephemerality of Fall

fragile colors

sweet smell of damp leaves

sweet smell of dry leaves

chilling air on ones neck

golden warming sun on ones head

makes me feel vulnerable and extra sensitive

sends a shiver down my past

uprooting and baring time

like a raw piece of slimy chicken breast slowly sliding down a sheet of cold metal

that ends in Winter.

Current Events I: commendable solidarity

2004-03-12T07:53:00.003-05:00

This evening 11 million Spaniards (over a quarter of the population) demonstrated solidarity against war and state corruption in the streets.

summer heat wave

2003-07-25T10:27:00.002-04:00

“Con este calor no puedo estar tranquila sin ducharme primero con agua fría”, se dijo sliding onto the bed con la piel soft smooth dry, without the sheets sticking.

I lost the bloc with all my ideas, I left it in the train station by the telephone both. I also forgot my fancy royal blue fountain pen with handmixed ink there. When I went back the next morning they were (obviously) gone. Who will have them now? Will they read them? Will they write a story with them? Will I have to start over? Will they like the unique colors of ink?

He lives in one of the million flats that I can see from my balcony. I don’t know which one. But he will asomar one of these days and wave to me. And I’ll wave back and then look down, recalling the betrayal, painful consequences, and short-duration of happiness. We will communicate like that for a few days, with hand gestures, exaggerated facial expressions, and binoculars. We have decided to meet down in the street. He’s a little taller than me. First we just look at each other up and down and then he gives the 2 cheek kisses which I think are silly for that encounter. Le digo que the cleaning lady annoys me. Me pregunta por qué in a somewhat high nasal voice. Le replico que she blamed me for the scratched stove. She's anal. We walk up to the park Guell behind our street. We share a street. It’s late evening and most of the tourists have left the park. I enjoy his attentive company, but is it merely because I am not busy at the moment? Is it because I’m not annoyed by the heat? If I were busy and sweaty would I want his company? These days have been a little dull with no work, no obligations, no studies, no one to help…Now I feel like I have a reason to wake up in the morning. I put my contacts on, brush my teeth and walk out to the balcony to wave at him.

I wait sitting out on the balcony. “5 stories up and 2 from the left”, I keep repeating to myself “5 stories up and 2 from the left” and counting to see if I have mistaken, all the balconies of his building are identical and sometimes I get his mixed up with the rest. But it’s clear. He doesn’t asomar from his balcony to greet me anymore. I think he found my physical and verbal honesty- vulgar, and my lack of skirts- unsexy.

--Travessera de Dalt, 2003

windows on a sunny winter afternoon (ann arbor, michigan) (to be read out loud)

2003-03-09T07:48:00.001-05:00

Quick, curtains, make way!

It is the sun!

who barely ever pays us a visit.

"Enter, enter!

Please, make yourself at home!"

it difuses through three sides of the small room

creates a refuge of soft golden light

illiminates and LIFTS the room right out of the cold reality

into a warm silent refuge.

It will leave soon...

Absorb, absorb!

try to capture it!

"Don't leave just yet!"

I'm trying to capture you

in my pores and

in my notebook

so I can keep you with me

long after you've moved on

to the next house.

1st entry, testing

2003-01-22T12:20:00.001-05:00

my first blog entry! i wonder if anybody is really going to read this. probably just the holy inquisition. the first 5 people to send me an email will win a prize. meganazulejo@hotmail.com

it's kind of like in kindergarten when you send balloons up into the sky with your address on them.

what shall i write here? how bout nothing, just copy something from something else i wrote.

the fonts and tabs on this program are very screwy.