Cough, cough

I guess March is just... not my blogging month. I've been under the weather over the last week or so, battling laryngitis that was initially caused by a cold, then made worse by my insistence on singing in a concert last week, and accompanied by a persistent cough, the kind that feels like it's out to strangle you to death. I was virtually voiceless over the weekend, and it is only today that I actually can speak somewhat normally again.

Ironically, the day I fell sick was the day I had my first blood test in the Spanish health care system. Brandishing my brand new health card, I had asked for an appointment for a checkup the week before, and two days later I met with my new doctor, after practically no wait. He kind of insinuated that as a healthy thirty-year-old, I didn't need a "revisió general," but he asked me a few questions about my overall health, took my blood pressure, and sent me on my way to schedule a blood test. I was a bit put off by his summary appraisal, but I discovered later that it's true that the yearly checkup may not be necessary. Most medical sources I looked at suggested a checkup every three to five years, so I guess I'm on the mark for that.

Still, I'll be curious to see how medical care stacks up in the nationalized health care system. So far, I've been favorably impressed, by the friendliness of doctors and nurses, the ease of making appointments (and lack of waiting time), the organization of medical care (you're assigned to the nearest "ambulatori" which for us is only about a seven-minute walk away), and of course by the fact that there's no exchange of money whatsoever. It's all entirely free. Of course, I have yet to (and hope not to!) require any serious care for serious issues, so it remains to be seen how things go when the going gets tough. (Or if the tough, say, get pregnant.)

Tomorrow I will go in to pick up my blood test results. Do blood tests show that you have a cold? If so, under the microscope the medical technicians will probably see little blood cell guys duking it out for the chance to strangle me with coughing fits. (I know, my grasp of medicine and physiology is astounding, right?)

Stairs of song

Spring has well and truly come to Barcelona. The sun is steady and bright, the breeze is gentle and pleasant, and buds are bursting out everywhere. We had guests this weekend and they probably stumbled upon the most ideal weekend of the year to see the city. Lucky for me, showing them around involved long strolls by the waterfront; a stop at that welter of sensory overload, the Boqueria market; midnight tours of the gothic quarter; a sunny afternoon at the park; and lots of truly delicious food.

Our internet is mysteriously not functioning today (this will be posted via a tenuous neighbor wifi signal), which I think is the perfect excuse to scoop a couple of books into my arms, grab my sunglasses, and find a park bench or a café table and soak up this pleasant spring sun.

Other of the weekend's activities were musical. My choir debuted a jazz cantata set to Salvador Espriu poems. These works are beautiful in their simultaneous expression of despair and hope, in their expression of love for a place, for a people, for a language. I did a quick translation so our guests could follow along, and here is one of the more hopeful poems, set to a rollicking, exuberant swing.

(If the Catalan title looks a little funny, it's because it's in medieval Catalan, which Espriu took from an 11th century troubadour poet.)

"Levem nos bon mayti e no'ns adurmam plus"
We Awake in the Morning and Sleep No More

by Salvador Espriu

If you want to listen,
open your windows.
Truths climb quickly
on the stairs of song.

In the very heart of night
a new canticle begins
and will accompany your step
at the threshold of hope.

We must burn every memory
of a yesterday full of sorrow
in the bonfires of tomorrow
that today it is time to light.

Look always ahead,
leave your tears behind.
The young sun turns red
rising from the depths of the sea.

Awoken by my nightmare
cry, the eager, slow radiance
of every furrow
walked the wide earth.

It rests on the sand,
white sails burnished.
Riding on the wind’s back,
the keel crossed the mountains.

Within the order of light
we saw the house resplendant
that we wanted to watch over
when thieves misruled.

The air carried the good smell
of new wheat, of goldenrod.
The poppy is saved
from the danger of dying.

Now you hear how the song
broke holes in the chain,
the villainy of fear
that tied up our tongue.

One voice, two hands,
strong hands stretched out.
Wake up, laborers,
for now it is time for work.
Wake up, people of the land,
for now it is time for the harvest.

Card, credit

Yesterday I finally got my Spanish residency card. It's colorful and iridescent and conveniently fits in my wallet. Hooray! Now I can legally... get started on yet another pile of paperwork that was awaiting my official identification number. Still, it's nice to be official.

Speaking of paperwork, I got a scary loan default letter yesterday, threatening all kinds of dire bad credit issues if I don't cough up the money.

But wait! I have paid off all my college loans! Why am I being bugged for money?

It is because of the folly of youth: in college, I co-signed a loan for a friend. I have not spoken with this person since college, so evidently it was not the kind of friendship that outlasts working together in the resident assistant program. But since she is not paying her loan, I am being hounded (my parents get all kinds of calls as well).

I have tried to find a way to contact this woman, but all I have at the moment is her street address. I guess I'll have to write an old-fashioned letter and ask her indignantly politely to pay her stupid $8.10.

Yes, all of this is over an unpaid eight bucks. Still, it really kind of stinks to be facing bad credit over not a lot of money, and I worry that she will continue to not pay off her loan, especially given the economy, and that this could get a whole lot worse.

Wandering words

I spent some of my morning with the two Paul Celan poems that deal (obliquely, in ciphers) with the Spanish Civil War ("Shibboleth" and "In One"), as well as Jacques Derrida's brilliant essay about them. Even if the poems fall outside of the scope of my thesis, having been written in the 50s and 60s, you better bet that I'll be drawing on both Celan and Derrida in my discussion of the "No pasarán" slogan.

I learned a new word, too. It's always fun to learn a new word, and I guess I didn't look it up the first time I read the Derrida essay, a couple of years ago, during a graduate seminar. The word is "gnomon," and as cute and gnome-like as it sounds, it actually refers to the stick part of a sundial, the horizontal blade that casts a shadow to tell the time.

After reading through the essay, I got sucked into Felstiner's translations of the Celan poems, reminding myself of my favorites and falling in love with others. If it wasn't so long and spread out on the page, I would reproduce "Stretto," an incredible poem and one I used for a course I taught on poetry and music. But I'll content myself with "Speak You Too," a haunting meditation on language.

Speak You Too

Speak you too,
speak as the last,
say out your say.

Speak--
But don't split off No from Yes.
Give your say this meaning too:
give it the shadow.

Give it shadow enough,
give it as much
as you know is spread round you from
midnight to midday and midnight.

Look around:
see how things all come alive--
By death! Alive!
Speaks true who speaks shadow.

But now the place shrinks, where you stand:
Where now, shadow-stripped, where?
Climb. Grope upwards.
Thinner you grow, less knowable, finer!
Finer: a thread
the star wants to descend on:
so as to swim down below, down here
where it sees itself shimmer: in the swell
of wandering words.

~Paul Celan (tr. John Felstiner)

Favas and kohlrabi

February hasn't done much for me by way of blog inspiration. I seem to be stuck in a rut. So sorry!

But the weather has been lovely, springy, sunny and good for my all-around energy levels and productivity (um, other than blogging).

As one more sign of spring in these parts, the fava beans have started to appear in the market. They come in long, knobby pods, and they are the fundamental ingredient in the Catalan dish faves a la catalana. I got to talking with the Mister's grandmother, and she promised to show me how to make them, minus the botifarra (blood sausage) that normally is another fundamental ingredient. (So fundamental, in fact, that when the lady at the market stall where she bought the beans smiled and asked if she was making faves a la catalana, iaia said no. I guess without the sausage, it's not really Catalan.)

Anyway, yesterday I accompanied her to the doctor's office, and after our little excursion it was time to make faves. We shelled the fava beans as well as some peas (she says the peas cut the acidity of the favas), then rinsed them and put them in a pot with a couple of roughly chopped tomatoes, quite a few whole garlic shoots (which also show up at this time of year), a few branches of spearmint (or mint, but spearmint is what she had growing on her terrace), plenty of salt, a pinch of sugar, and a bit of moscatel (she says anis--anise-flavored liqueur--is better if you have it). You don't add any water, as the beans and vegetables produce their own cooking liquid; only add a little bit if it gets dry. Covered, over a low burner, let it "xup-xup" (not sure how to translate that charming expression that evokes "soaking up" the juices; Catalan cooks use it to mean a slow simmer) for a good while, twenty to thirty minutes, I'm guessing.

The end result isn't pretty, but boy is it good. The silken beans are sweet and soft, and I pretty much ate until I was stuffed.

At which point iaia brought out the fish. (Despite my protestations, no meal is considered complete at her house unless there is meat or fish involved.) I ate leftovers for lunch today and they were just as good.

Here is a similar recipe, with pictures that are much better than any I would have taken, if I had had my camera, which I didn't, because the Mister has it, because he's in Bulgaria and promised me some photos.

Now the trick will be to see if I can replicate the deliciousness in my own kitchen.

Before that, though, I have another experiment to perform. Every time I go to the market, I've been trying to come home with one unfamiliar item--usually a vegetable I've never cooked before. Saturday, I spotted a lumpy green round thing that looked sort of like celery root or fennel but wasn't. It had shiny green skin like the stalk of a broccoli, and small stalks coming out of the top. I asked the market lady what it was, and she said it was a cross between a cabbage (col) and a radish (rave). Intrigued, I brought it home and consulted my trusty How to Cook Everything Vegetarian (Mark Bittman). Sure enough, his description of kohlrabi fit the bill. I should have figured it out in the first place, from the Catalan, col-rave : kohl-rabi (from the German, for cabbage-turnip).

I found some suggestions here for what to do with kohlrabi, but I'm not sure which direction to go...

Florid

The gargantuan bouquet of flowers the Mister brought home for me on Saturday was almost too big; it was hard to take it all in. So when the flowers started getting a little droopy and the water needed to be changed, I decided to spread them all around the house, a bit of brightness in every room.

There are gerbera daisies on my desk...


Blue irises in the bedroom...


Roses in the living room...


Lilies on the dining room table...


And on the coffee table, a, um... a lily-winged flying cow.

Off key

There was a time in my life when I didn't have any keys. I had sold my car: no car keys. I had moved out of the House of Love: no front door keys. I had left campus: no office keys or mailroom keys. I was living at my parents' house, and they never lock their door (it's Vermont, after all), so I didn't need keys while I was there. In those few months between moving away from Indiana and getting married, I felt a bit unmoored.

Because keys are like little metal dog tags; they tell you who you are and where you belong. I guess they're a sign of possessions, as well, and not having them might be freeing. But they also do what their shape promises. They unlock, they allow access, they permit you to enter the familiar interiors of your life.

I saw keys in a different way, however, when I watched a beautiful documentary about a young Bulgarian woman working as a cleaning lady in Amsterdam. The camera follows her through her lonely days in empty rooms, communicating with upper-class Dutch families mostly through notes, as she straightens and sweeps and vacuums and scrubs. Speaking to the camera, she says she thinks she is losing herself. She feels like a ghost.

But she also takes pictures. Self portraits of herself in the cleaning closet or the bathtub, surrounded by household cleaners. Empty rooms with rumpled sheets. They could be out of an interior design magazine, but because of the point of view threaded through the whole of the collection, they present a diametrically different message.

To the back of the photograph she pastes the words from those notes, repetitive in their obligatory "how are you" and their demands to sweep the back stairs, wipe out the cabinet, change the laundry, a never-ending to-do list. She hangs these photographs and the notes inside a paper cut-out house, and on the floor of the house, she places her large collection of front door keys, all pointing upwards, a menacing carpet of jagged metal.

For her, the keys mean alienation, entrapment; they are a barrier and a burden. She is permitted to enter everywhere but is denied anything that make a home a home. Far from her family, working illegally, she is stalled and alone. Remarkably, though, she seems genuinely optimistic and her smile is always at the ready.

The woman's name is Hristina Tasheva, and the documentary is called The Houses of Hristina (see the trailer here). You can see many of her photographs here (click on the collection "A better life" for the ones shown in the movie).

By following the story of one woman, listening strictly to her voice, the documentary presents a beautiful meditation on domesticity, immigration, interiority, gender, social class, and art.

I'll never think of keys in the same way again.

Loverly day

I get why some people don't like Valentine's Day, and I agree that it's an over-hyped, commercialized holiday. But it doesn't have to be, and I think it's a great idea to take time to celebrate all of our loved ones, not just our gooshy, swoony, romantic sweethearts, but also our there-for-you friendships, our fierce-hugs and belly-laughs family, the spinning-in-circles nephews and nieces, and our gone-but-deeply-missed grandparents.

If you fall into any of those categories for me: I send my love from Barcelona! I wish I could bake you all a chocolate cake.

As for the gooshy, swoony part, the Mister and I had a fabulous meal last night at this place, and then chocolates and strawberry champagne and candles at home. I woke up this morning to a big bouquet of beautiful flowers.

We decided to celebrate yesterday, since today we'll be at the hospital--actually, the Mister was there (and helping out at his parents' house) all day yesterday, and I was there Thursday--and we were supposed to go hiking with a friend who had an unexpected wisdom tooth removal, so no hiking after all.

But that brings me back to my point, I guess: what better way to spend Valentine's day than being there for family, the ones we love? Actions speak louder than words, but words are pretty darn good, too: Happy Valentine's Day!

Drive on

I haven't written in a few days because of good things and bad things. There was my mom's visit, which was fun and relaxed. It rained almost the entire time, which was bad timing, because that's not what it usually does around here, but we still had a good time and ate yummy food and had fun shopping and chatting and just hanging out.

Then last weekend my father-in-law fell off the roof while he was doing some spring cleaning, and it was very scary for everyone while we waited to hear what the doctors have to say. He will be in the hospital for a few weeks, totally immobilized, while the cracked bones in his pelvis heal, and then the recovery at home will be another couple of months. It will be hard for him to be still for so long, and hard for my mother-in-law in terms of juggling her work and his care and so forth. We'll of course help as much as we can; while he's recovering at home I may take my laptop and work from their house so I can be available to lend a hand.

This unexpected turn of events prompted the Mister and I to think about certain Big Picture things, which brought us around to the rather mundane topic of driver's licenses and cars and if we should get one and if so when. Right now I'm perfectly happy--more than happy, really--to be living without a car. Not only are we saving money by not having the expense of car payments, insurance, gas, maintenance, and parking, but we are doing the environment a good turn by relying on public transportation (and taxis in a pinch). I love that we CAN get everywhere we need to go with the metro, a train, or a bus. And we can always rent a car if we want to take a short weekend trip.

The reason this came up in relation to M's dad is that we do, however, tend to rely on him and his car every once in a while for, say, transporting big items like furniture, and he also did a lot of ushering of M's grandmother back and forth from her apartment (around the corner from us) to their house outside of the city. And that's something we can't pick up the slack on, although it would make sense because we ARE around the corner, because we don't have a car. And even if we could use M's dad's now-unused car, there's the pesky detail of neither of us having a license. (!)

You see, the Mister, who has lived in public-transport-friendly Europe all his life, has just never gotten his, and when I started investigating how to have my American license converted into a Spanish license I learned some pretty depressing things.

First of all, there's no "conversion" process. I have to get my license again, from scratch, just like when I was seventeen and ran a red light during my driving test. (You might imagine that I have no desire to go through THAT again.)

This would not be a problem if getting a license was like in the States--relatively cheap, easy, and painless--because after thirteen years of driving experience I am now unlikely to run a red light during my exam.

But it is not cheap, easy, and painless. It is expensive, hard, and painful.

Here in Spain, the AVERAGE (and now I'm going to get all-caps squealy because I'm outraged) cost of getting a license is 936 euros. NINE HUNDRED THIRTY SIX. That is ALMOST A THOUSAND EUROS, people. You have to pay ridiculous amounts of money to the "autoescuela" to teach you how to get through the ABSURDLY difficult written exam (which you pay also ridiculous amounts of money to take), which asks HORRIBLE questions DESIGNED to trip you up (I read some samples), and then do practice hours with an instructor in a car with dual gearshifts and brakes and then take the exam in one of those same cars. In other words, your hands are TIED because you have to pay the schools for the use of the stupid double-sided car, but they won't let you use their stupid car for the exam unless you sign up with them for a huge sign-up fee and spend a minimum amount of hours in the classes. Oh, and if you fail either exam within three tries (total, for both exams) you have to pay--surprise!--ridiculous amounts of money to take them again.

It's as if the autoescuelas and the department of motor vehicles are in CAHOOTS because they both earn OODLES of money from the whole setup. Harrumph.

You'd think that at least, with such a rigorous examination system, Spain would have good driving safety record. On the contrary. It is, with Portugal, the EU country with the highest highway mortality rates.

So you can understand why the Mister, with all of his traveling and living abroad, has never gotten his license. And you can understand why I am despairing of getting mine.

After learning all of this depressing information, I looked into getting my license in Belgium, because any EU driver's license is valid in all other EU countries. Belgium has an examination system much more like the US--a provisional driver's permit after the written exam, and then a driving exam in your own car, without requiring classes. They even allow you to "convert" your American license, but only within the first six months of living there. Oops. So I may eventually try to find a way to use someone's car for the test? Or buy a car there, when and if we decide to buy one? But then I may not have a legit Belgian ID anymore? Doing it in French would be extremely daunting, to say the least, but it beats boring hours of classes and the nightmare of getting a Spanish license.

I'm hoping a magic fairy will come and tell me something I failed to discover in my research, such as that there's a Vermont-Spain secret treaty and that Spain will recognize my Vermont license and will just stick a little A-OK stamp on it.

Sigh. At least I had lunch in the sun today, soaking up every little particle of warm oozy light that I could.

Chandelierward

Last night the Mister flew in from Brussels bearing a big pile of books I had left there, most of them poetry. Isn't it fun to be reunited with books? Like seeing old friends again.

In honor of my mom's visit, I've chosen a Wislawa Szymborska poem about music (mom is a musician) from out of that stack. It's one that has long impressed me as much for the inventiveness of Szymborska's conception as for the virtuosic translation by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak. I wish I could read the original to get more of a sense of the work they've done, but it comes through quite brilliantly anyway.


**
Coloratura

Poised beneath a twig-wigged tree,
she spills her sparkling vocal powder:
slippery sound slivers, silvery
like spider's spittle, only louder.

Oh yes, she Cares (with a high C)
for Fellow Humans (you and me);
for us she'll twitter nothing bitter;
she'll knit her fitter, sweeter glitter;
her vocal chords mince words for us
and crumble croutons, with crisp crunch
(lunch for her little lambs to munch)
into a cream-filled demitasse.

But hark! It's dark! Oh doom too soon!
She's threatened by the black bassoon!
It's hoarse and coarse, it's grim and gruff,
it calls her dainty voice's bluff -
Basso Profondo, end this terror,
do-re-mi mene tekel et cetera!

You want to silence her, abduct her
to our chilly life behind the scenes?
To our Siberian steppes of stopped-up sinuses,
frogs in all throats, eternal hems and haws,
where we, poor souls, gape soundlessly
like fish? And this is what you wish?

Oh nay! Oh nay! Though doom be nigh,
she'll keep her chin and pitch up high!
Her fate is hanging by a hair
of voice so thin it sounds like air,
but that's enough for her to take
a breath and soar, without a break,

chandelierward; and while she's there,
her vox humana crystal-clears
the whole world up. And we're all ears.

**

Have a wonderful weekend. I know I will!

Dregs

The end of January is a tough part of the year. Christmas is over, the shiny newness of those resolutions has worn off, and it's still winter. I find myself:

Eating a lot of cheese.
Spending too much time asleep.
Battling the dreaded dry skin of winter.
Unmotivated to work.

Fortunately, there are some things that help:

My mom is coming to visit!
The sun is bright and the sky is blue, bearing a hint of promise for an early Spanish spring.
Warm tea and simple soups.
Actually getting the hang of some of those aerobics spins.
Nephews' smiles and laughter.
Good swinging jazz.
Dogged perseverance.

Hah! There are more things on the second list than on the first--take that, winter!

(PS: Happy birthday, sis!)

I heart google (or, why the internet is awesome)

I was hired to translate some poems recently (hurrah! paid to do something I do for fun!), and as I was working, I noticed that I had the following pages open as tabs in my web browser:

1. Google mail, from which I opened the text of the poem
2. Google docs, where I was translating the poem
3. Google search (actually constituting several of the tabs), where I sought out some obscure vocabulary about rocks (the subject of the poem) and an Auden poem to which this poem makes a reference
4. Google books, where I found a Glossary of Geology that was invaluable for finding synonyms for, say, "pebble"
5. Google reader, where I was NOT at the moment actually reading blogs, many of which are about language and translation
6. Google image search, where I WAS, out of curiosity, trying to get a glimpse of the face of the poet I'm translating

If you had caught me at another time, I may also have been perusing Google analytics to check out my blog's site statistics, or Google maps to quickly find that street where we have to meet for rehearsal.

Thrown into the mix were a couple of Wikipedia pages on marble and other stones, three of my trustiest online Catalan dictionaries, and the online OED, accessed through my university library.

All of which leads me to think: Google is taking over the world! (And I probably couldn't live without it.) Also, in the days before the web, translators must have been surrounded by towering piles of dictionaries and other reference books, and must have spent ages in the library looking through, say, the 779 pages of the Glossary of Geology or whatever other specialized vocabulary the text at hand called for. Now, it's all boiled down to a few virtual tabs on a flat color screen. It's dizzying, isn't it?

There but not there

I called my husband and dad on skype yesterday, eager to hear how the inauguration had gone... And it turns out, they didn't even make it inside! They stood in line starting at 8 am, and the line simply didn't move. There were no signs, no authorities, a sea of bodies as far as they could see, and the crush of people made it impossible to go anywhere. Other ticket holders started to protest, it was a chaotic scene, evidently, people clambering over walls, even some arrests after a while, and although they did everything as they were supposed to, they, along with hundreds of other people holding tickets, never got through the gates into the Mall. How disappointing! I'm glad I wasn't along, because I would have been just devastated. My husband, much more able to take these things in stride, was laughing about it already. He flew thousands of miles to attend the biggest event in recent history, only to stand in the cold for a few hours, unable to see or hear any of it! He was interviewed by a reporter and is already in the news, if that's perhaps some consolation. Sigh. He'll just have to watch the inauguration on the internet, like the rest of us poor overseas saps.

O happy day

Last night, well past midnight, saw me swaying onstage with a crowd of all the evening's performers as the credits rolled, singing "O Happy Day."

I thought it was an auspicious beginning to what is surely a great day in history. Today, Barack Obama will become our president.

During Christmas vacation, the Mister was finishing up an article, and our little nephew came up to ask him to play. M. told him that he just had a few more sentences to write, and then he would come down.

The three-year-old stood there for a moment, and then solemnly said, "Barack Obama is our president."

So when I say today that Barack Obama is our president, it is the little guy's innocent voice I hear, and I think this perfectly fitting. His voice is the voice of the country's future.

Another reason today is a happy day is that this is my 300th blog post! I can't think of a better day to write it, a better reason to celebrate.

Barack's Books

"With the right words everything could change," wrote Barack Obama. An article in today's New York Times describes the books that our new president has read and has loved, and how they influenced him. These include Melville, Marilynne Robinson, Emerson, Shakespeare, the Bible, Reinhold Niebuhr, Toni Morrison, Derek Wolcott, Doris Lessing, Ellison, and of course, Lincoln.

Words do change things. Words have shaped Barack Obama, and in turn, his words have already changed things. I can't wait to see what else will be transformed.

Parlez-moi d'amour

The Mister kissed me goodbye this morning during the pitch-black of the wee hours. He is flying to Washington to attend the inauguration! My dad managed to get a pair of tickets and so they're off on an adventure, my two main men, of battling crowds and traffic and cold to participate in this historic event. I'm a little bit jealous, but then again if I had really wanted to tag along I could have (I'm also a little bit nervous).

Instead, I get to appear on Catalan television Monday night. Wearing a red clown nose.

Our choir will be singing at the Catalan cinema awards show (like the Oscars but... quick, name any Catalan movie!). The noses are part of an elaborate gag that involves a besotted clown, a French love song, and the presenter. There's choreography involved, so this afternoon you will find me at the TV studios practicing a nonchalant walk in my ill-fitting choir garb (I have to borrow from someone else since mine isn't ready yet) and furiously memorizing the French lyrics.

Aside from that, my weekend sans the Mister will be all about work. Me and my laptop are going to have so much fun!

to learn, so much

Here's a favorite poem, by a favorite writer, C.D. Wright. The first line sticks with me, and I find myself saying it, and chuckling over it, from time to time and for no apparent reason. Imperfections and messiness are inevitable in relationships, from the fruit with fire blight and socks that get dingy and don't match, but still there is the river, the wind, the thunder...

Everything Good between Men and Women

has been written in mud and butter
and barbecue sauce. The walls and
the floors used to be gorgeous.
The socks off-white and a near match.
The quince with fire blight
but we get two pints of jelly
in the end. Long walks strengthen
the back. You with a fever blister
and myself with a sty. Eyes
have we and we are forever prey
to each other’s teeth. The torrents
go over us. Thunder has not harmed
anyone we know. The river coursing
through us is dirty and deep. The left
hand protects the rhythm. Watch
your head. No fires should be
unattended. Especially when wind. Each
receives a free swiss army knife.
The first few tongues are clearly
preparatory. The impression
made by yours I carry to my grave. It is
just so sad so creepy so beautiful.
Bless it. We have so little time
to learn, so much... The river
courses dirty and deep. Cover the lettuce.
Call it a night. O soul. Flow on. Instead.

A dilemma

So I did this class at the gym today called 30-30-30, which is supposed to be thirty minutes of cardio, thirty minutes of strength, and thirty minutes of abdominals. Except it's an hour-long class. Which, um, yeah. Maybe math isn't their strong suit.

However. This is a good thing for me because I think if I had to do a half hour of stomach crunches I would die. The 40-10-10 formula we ended up doing was just about perfect. Although I got totally lost in the dancing/aerobic portion, especially on the spins, when I kept turning in the opposite direction of everyone else and nearly running into the more coordinated members of the class, I felt proud of myself for really holding my own in the strength portion. Maybe all the swimming has actually done some good. Who knew?

But that's not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about glasses. Since I'm new at this, I'm trying to watch the teacher like a hawk. But I leave my glasses at home, so that's out of the question. I find myself squinting at her, trying to see which leg is going where, and combined with the fact that it's hard to decipher the Spanish over the thumping music, I have several strikes against me. This happens even in a totally silent room, during yoga class, because the lights are dimmed and the instructor is a native Portuguese speaker so his Spanish comes out lovely and soothing but very hard to interpret.

What do other, non-contact wearing people do? I don't see anyone else wearing glasses, nor do I think it would be advisable (they'd either fly off during a spin or get crunched by the floor or my kneecap during a yoga position). And I can see more or less OK. It's not like I'm running into walls.

I should probably put myself in the front of the room. But that would mean I'd be more visible to other people, other people who, take my word for it, actually know what they're doing.

Is there a solution I'm not thinking of?

Piles of pretty clothes

I went to get my hair cut this morning, and when the stylist offered me a fashion magazine to read, I said, "Nah. It just makes me want to buy stuff." And I realized this statement was true only as it was coming out of my mouth.

Because I have a pile of clothes sitting on my dresser right now that I can't fit into my drawers, and I'm embarrassed to want more, to see pretty, nice, soft things and want to own them. When I already have more than I can even properly put away.

This overflow has a lot to do with Christmas presents, and post-Christmas sales both in Vermont and Barcelona, and also with the facts that winter clothes are bulky and that I don't have an actual closet.

Still. I'm sure it used to be that one had, for example, some winter pajamas and some summer pajamas. They were mended as necessary and replaced only when truly worn out. But now, I have the flannel pajamas that I wear when it's really cold, the new stripey Christmas pajamas, the broken-in pajama pants from college, the sort of sexy pajamas, the lightweight men's style pajamas, not to mention the yoga pants and t-shirts I often sleep in...and so on and so forth. And that's just the winter pjs.

I could make a similar list for sweaters, or pants. When buying, I justify purchases: "But that one's different from that other one! Those black pants are slightly more dressy than these! This gray sweater is much thicker than that gray sweater!"

I have to think: do I really need all of these clothes? No. Do I wear all of these clothes? Mostly. Could I function happily with fewer clothes? Yes. I know I don't own a lot compared to many others in the well-off western world, but I also know that I DO own a lot--embarrassingly too much--compared to many many others.

Anyway, I'm not a compulsive shopper or a fashionista (by any means!), and most of the year goes by without excessive purchases, and I usually wear my clothes until they're practically falling apart. I guess the point is that if I stay out of the stores (especially during the sales! which appeal to my frugal side!), I don't start convincing myself that I really need something. And keeping my nose out of magazines--even on the rare occasion that I might look through them--is one more step towards not longing for things.

Signed and stamped

I think we can say my appointment today was a success, if it is a success to have received a signed and stamped piece of paper that says to bring another slew of documents (most of them repetitions of the papers I brought today) to another office in an entirely different part of the city some fifteen days hence, at which point they will issue the card, which I will be able to pick up a month from then at yet another office. Mostly, I was impressed that I only had to wait about twenty minutes, which from past experience is a short time indeed.

One step further down the yellow brick road....