undocumented

it was with bittersweet resignation that i passed in my battered old passport at the u.s. consulate last week for renewal. on the one hand, i was more than a little sick of looking at the horrendous results of my decision in 1998 -- deep into my college hippie phase -- to not bother showering before having a photograph taken that i would be looking at frequently over the next ten years. yet what ten years those were. that passport was with me for most of the defining moments of my twenties; it helped me define myself.

i remember taking that grungy photo in hanover, before tami and i went backpacking around europe after junior year of college. the first stamp was at gatwick airport and there are a good collection of european stamps from back when they did that kind of thing. it came with me on my globetrotting early retirement year of 2001-2002 where it was filled up with page-filling asian visas and stamps i accrued walking through rainy border towns in central america. it was in costa rica that i maxed it out, and proudly marched down to a consulate for some extra pages.

the latest group of stamps has been mostly banal: from airports in the u.s. and madrid. combined with a noticable lack of working visa, these present a tell-tale history of my illegal status in spain. luckily these clues are hidden like needles in the haystack of my colorful and exotically-stamped passport so nobody seems to notice.

all i have left from the little book is a set of photographs i took of its pages, which became the banner for my webzine nothing to declare. and now i sit and wait for the new one to arrive: blank pages, ten more years, a challenge to fill up those pages.

well, i have a few stamps coming up for it. i've been on a flight-buying and trip-planning rampage. portugal in a few weeks for easter. back to the alps two weeks after that. morocco with michael at the end of april. barcelona with sky in may. and all while sporting a shiny new blue book with a vastly-improved photograph inside.

i'm still here

oops, haven't been around here lately. can i blame the doldrums of late february-early march city living? not exactly, because the weather has been unseasonably warm. how about my well-documented bumpy landings after returning from the u.s.? ok, but it's march! i don't know, the culprit is probably just laziness.

so what's been new with me? brace yourself....i've been knitting alot. knitting is a winter hobby for me and lately i've been churning out armwarmers like nobody's biznatch. oh, and reading. yeah, finally finished pollen's omnivore's dilemma -- totally recommended -- and now i'm burning through great fortune about the development and construction of rockefeller center, also a great read (thanks dad!).

around the internet i've been reading this:

• new york times: this article inspired my column idea for nothing to declare (coming soon!) and this makes me sick. every so often there is an article putting the cost of the war in perspective which i read with morbid fascination.
• i know everybody read about this last week, but i never claimed to be on time around here, did i? anyway, holy crikey! and, a year of prison is more expensive than a year of dartmouth? did anybody else find this startling?
  
• this little easily-missed article was the best thing about the new yorker's anniversary issue, in my opinion. praising philippe de montebello's work as director of the met, it goes further to investigate why some museum experiences feel so good while others render you a pawn of the unseen deciders of the art world; it also explains perfectly what i have struggled to put into words about my disappointment with the moma expansion.

ok. so. reading, knitting. my life is boring. maybe that's why i haven't been blogging?

the alps, darling

i just returned from a weekend skiing in the french alps with my friend john, who is a pisteur or patroller at chamonix. i hadn't skied in five years, so was a little nervous but ended up having an amazing time. although now my body hurts. nothing a shiatsu can't fix.

i've done the majority of my skiing in new england where the weather is cold, the trails cut down into thick forest and the verticals aren't anything to write home about. the alps are completely different -- there are no trails whatsoever except groomed bits that weave through the open snowfields. you can ski wherever you want -- even a closed section is yours to explore if you dare. another thing we lack in the east is powder; what they call "packed powder" is usually crusty manmade snow that gets skied off by the early afternoon. in chamonix although it hadn't snowed in days, the mountains were covered by fluffy bumps, making adventurousness an easier prospect. you are sure to fall, but it doesn't hurt.

my third day we skied the valle blanche, which is a glacier that comes down the side of mont blanc, the highest mountain in europe. this required no less than crampons and ropes but was the most backcountry terrain i've ever done. glaciers rose up on all sides to rocky peaks -- a larger-than-life landscape that resembled a postcard. i could hardly believe i was in it, let alone skiing down.

it seemed like everyone i met was over-the-top adventurous. if they weren't biking across south america with a parasail attached to their back they were scaling some ridiculous peak to ski down the other side. this makes me want to be more of a daredevil too. note to self: have more adventures. of the outdoor kind. i'm open to suggestions.

dream diary

my dream last night: i'm at a party at my mom's friend's house. at the party are some college friends, some madrid friends, a random assortment of people. so i'm walking around the party naked because of course. not only that, my teeth are falling out. actually, i was holding my earrings in my mouth and swallowed them by accident, and while trying to spit them out all my teeth were coming out with them.

i feel like my dream is a high school student's psych paper. kinda trite, no?

life #6

over a year ago i wrote a post about my swiss army knife, detailing its long history of disappearing and reappearing in my life. well, not long after i wrote that, sometime last spring actually, i realized that i hadn't seen the thing in a while. i wasn't too worried, trusting implicitly that it would turn up somewhere -- it always had in the past.

the first doubts surfaced when i was packing my room up before leaving for the states last summer. i was going through all my stuff, thowing things away, trying to keep possessions to a minimum as usual, expecting to find it in the back of a drawer or in the medecine cabinet or something. but no such luck. in august when i was getting ready for the camino, i sadly shopped for leathermans at rei, unable to buy one and admit that the knife might actually be gone this time.

when i moved back into my room i thought: "this is the last chance. if i don't find it now, it's gone." and sure enough, there was no sign of my friendly little gadget.

until a few days ago. suddenly inspired to pick up my winter habit of knitting i dumped my knitting bag all over my bed and there...there it was. of course. i use the scissors to cut yarn and the hook makes a great crochet hook in a pinch. and i haven't touched my knitting since last winter, even during the packing and unpacking.

so we are reunited, again! i'm wrestling with disbelief while simultaneously chiding myself for having so little faith. it was gone for almost a year though; this is its second-longest disappearing stint ever! it occurs to me that perhaps i'm subconsciously always "losing" the knife by trying to get on airplanes with it and not being able to find it in my damn bedroom because i enjoy this little ruse. but i dont think so, because you know what i enjoy even more? using the knife!

hooray! it's back! never leave me again!

yes

yes, i'm devastated....

that was an excruciating game. it's 5am, i'm going to bed

superbowl

a few months ago -- near the beginning of the football season -- i was watching the rugby world cup and i posted to say that i felt the pain of the fans of the new zealand all blacks. they were heavily favored to win, then seemingly choked in the quarterfinals. i said:

the patriots are just a little too favored, they're a little too good this year. they are set up to fail, to rest on their laurels, to believe the hype. and while i love my team and think they deserve to win this year, i know everybody else will be even more satisfied to see them lose.

yet here we sit, mere hours before superbowl. the patriots haven't lost any games since that last post.

i weathered the last few weeks in new york, hearing the haterade coming from all directions regarding my dear patriots. yes people wanted them to lose in october, but that was before the pats went out and racked up an unprecedented 16-0 record for the season, now stretched to 18-0 in the playoffs. basically, they beat the teams of all the haters -- sorry y'all.

but now the haterade is stronger than before, the recipe has been improved. everybody is so ready for this perfect season to have the perfect ironic footnote: 18-1, the 1 being a little game called the superbowl.

do i sound nervous? i'm not. we're going to pretend the giants have a chance and they do, albeit a small one. but the fact remains: anyone betting against the pats, in the post-season, after a bye week, with a healthy team is drinking some spiked haterade.

sniggle!

here is a video snippet from tami and my new years eve halftime show on ice. this piece was choreographed over several days and included many cutting edge ice skating maneuvers. unfortunately the only extant footage is of the finale. enjoy!

goal oriented

my dad and his friends have a great tradition where they get together and set goals together at the beginning of each year. the idea of making your resolutions public not only makes them more concrete but makes the entire process more collaborative; you have a built-in cheering squad so there is more impetus to achieve them.

last year i did my own version by sharing my goals with all of you, my dear readers. so let's revisit. last's years goals were:

• start yoga again in february, continue for the rest of the year except for months when i'm not entirely in madrid
• celebrate my 30th birthday in style. feel wonderful about being 30.
• pick up guitar again. sit on my terrace playing guitar in summer.
• read the novel i wrote in november. edit it, if it seems worthy.

wow. check, check, check and CHECK! damn, that was easy. maybe i should make them a little harder this year. ok, here goes.

• continue with: yoga, guitar, feeling wonderful about birthdays
• get nothing to declare to a solid 5 posts per week. bring readership up over 150 individual hits per day
• get going on writing that monthly column
• finish writing my novel in february. edit the two parts together and decide what to do with it
• stay at present weight
  

ok, there's five, one more than last year. two involve writing and two involve the zine, but none of this should be a problem. ready, cheering squad??

final boarding call

i am on the wrong continent. i was supposed to leave new york on saturday and fly back to madrid, but something was pulling at me, keeping me here. my gut was telling me not to go, and as my mother lovingly told me: i should follow my gut; it has not led me astray thus far.

part of the issue was that i failed in my efforts to get alitalia to book me on a direct flight back to madrid on a different airline. and the idea of boarding one of their planes and handing them back my property was making me queasy.

and then there were the patriots, who were playing in what i consider to be the best day of football -- the conference championship games. the opportunity to watch football in the afternoon on a high def tv was almost excuse enough not to go.

and there were a bunch of other small reasons, but mostly i just wasn't ready to leave quite yet. and why live this lifestyle, why have this type of freelance non-career if not to be able to be spontaneous?

so i didn't go to newark on saturday morning. instead i called my boss and convinced him to buy me a new (direct) flight back to madrid on friday evening on a real airline, in exchange for working one more week in new york. so i'm still here.

i've heard a tinge of concern coming out of madrid that this might mean that i'm not ever coming back, that i'm going to stay in new york permanently. fear not my dear friends, i'll be back on saturday morning, ready to spend a fun weekend with you all. this is merely a few extra days, one more paycheck, a different flight and a love for a little team that you may have heard of. they're 18-0 and they're going to the superbowl and i love them.

how to make your job more fun

working in an office can be a real drag, especially on friday afternoons! here are some things you can try that might be more fun than working! good luck!

1. remove your eyeballs with the staple remover
2. shove staples under your fingernails
3. hole punch the soft spot between your thumb and forefinger
4. stuff clorox disinfecting wipes down your throat
5. empty the 3-hole punch into your lunch. pick the white dots out one by one with chopsticks
6. pour the copy machine toner into your ear canal. shake your head back and forth.
   
7. put the recycling bin over your head and walk into the wall repeatedly
8. chew on a mouth full of paperclips
   
9. sharpen a pencil. poke yourself in the brain.
10. slam your hand in the file cabinet door

just a few ideas!

GOBAMA!

from the new york times: "mr. obama’s victory in this overwhelmingly white state was a powerful answer to the question of whether america was prepared to vote for a black person for president. what was remarkable was the extent to which race was not a factor in this contest."

fantastic. thank you, iowans. and thanks also for turning out in record numbers to vote. you have set a great example for us, even though your caucuses are basically bullshit.

noncellular

my mom pointed out that every time i do my little stints in new york city, i end up sick in bed. she's right. i need to figure out how to do this differently, how to not get so run-down. on the one hand i have so many people to see while i'm here and i would like to see each of them at least twice. on the other hand, going out every night and working for the man all day isn't healthy.

so i think i have a solution. this time around, i'm not getting a cell phone. shocking, revolutionary! no cell phone? but how will i survive?

we're taking a step back, to a bygone era, to a simpler time. back when plans were made in advance and people showed up on time. this will make socializing more difficult. friends will not be able to flake out at the last minute. i will be unreachable after working hours.

to tell you the truth, i'm liking this so much i'm considering getting rid of my cell in madrid. (i jest, but maybe not?)

so i can be reached on email during business hours and sporadically after work. i have a direct land line in my office. for emergencies, call michael.

it is a daring social experiment, let's see how it turns out.

alitalia sucks

flights are expensive this time of year, and so when i bought my flight home for christmas i chose the cheapest flight that avoided london, putting me on alitalia through milan and into newark. i had had a disappointing experience with alitalia a few years ago, so i was nervous about flying with them again.

i arrived in newark almost two weeks ago, and my suitcase did not. and still has not. in the first six days i spent upwards of 3 hours a day on the phone and did not speak to a single employee of alitalia. in all, my entire christmas break that was supposed to be spent having quality time with my family was mostly spent on the telephone yelling at people or trying to calm down after yelling on the phone.

the problem is that foreign airlines outsource their baggage handling to third party companies or partner airlines. therefore, the people who are charged with finding your bag have no real interest in serving you because you are not their customer. with alitalia unavailable for 6 days surrounding christmas, i took stronger measures.

i filed a complaint with my credit card company, who tried to help me but couldn't reach alitalia on the telephone. i called airports in boston, newark and milan without reaching an alitalia employee. i filed a complaint with the attorney general's office of new york state. i filed a complaint with the department of transportation's aviation consumer protection division.

i wrote a news story and sent it to news outlets in new york and massachusetts. this seemed to work. after six days, using a direct phone number given to me by the new york attorney general's office, i was able to reach a person in customer relations. on the seventh day they returned my phone call after i had forwarded correspondance from a new york city television station and my complaints to government agencies. they assured me that they were doing everything in their power to find my bag. they assured me that managers were being called. they assured me that a certain employee of newark airport was reprimanded for certain things she had said to me, including "ma'am, i work for delta" and "you are at the bottom of the pile."

i felt better. i went to new hampshire for five days and relished the lack of cell phone reception and internet to disconnect and stop angering about it constantly. today i returned to new york and i resumed my daily calling: the tv station, newark airport, customer relations. again i leave messages that are never returned; phones ring and are never answered. finally a phone was answered and they told me that a bag that might be mine will be arriving tomorrow. they told me not to get my hopes up. this is difficult.

so why am i writing about this here? a few reasons.

first, to let you know what you're getting into if you fly alitalia. maybe the flight will go perfectly. but if you have a problem, you'll be in trouble. i have traveled alot and this is by far the worst customer service i have ever experienced from an airline

secondly, i've heard of companies that for a small fee can help in situations like this. they put a GPS device on your bag, so that when the italians lose it for 14 days there is some way of finding it. i would recommend this service for anybody who is flying with a foreign airline outside of its own country.

third, if you experience a similar situation, i wanted to document the steps i took to finally get service. i spent countless hours doing research into how to be an outraged consumer, who to contact and how to get noticed. i found that the local news was the most effective means, and i used this website: complaint.tv to spread my story around.

so let's hope that the bag arriving is mine. now i have the fight ahead of me to try to get reimbursed for the necessities i purchased while my bag was lost, and another fight about my return flight to madrid. i obviously don't want to fly on alitalia and they certainly will not be allowed to touch my luggage. so we'll see. for the moment my hopes are slightly bolstered...

holy grail

i have this english class that amounts to the holy grail of this "profession." it is a class that cancels. they call you and suddenly you don't have to go to work. you're getting paid to get back in bed and watch a movie. when this happens twice a week for the third week running, you have hit the jackpot.

everybody gets one, eventually. you spend years sitting back and watching other english teachers effuse about the wonders of a class that cancels while you trudge loyally to your job and try to teach something. or some new kid will show up and have beginners luck, annoying everybody. but then it happens to you, and your friends shake their heads at you over coffee, call you a bitch, wonder what you ever did that was so wonderful that you deserve this, but are ultimately just waiting to grab that golden ring themselves or thinking back wistfully to their glory days of past.

request

can someone please explain to me why no country for old men, the new coen brothers movie starring spanish film star javier bardem -- for which senor bardem has just been nominated for a golden globe -- isn't opening here in madrid until march? MARCH. not to mention the fact that the darjeeling limited is neither in theaters.

nor is the jesse james pic with casey affleck, the ben affleck-directed boston pic with beattie russel from the wire, the yuma movie that the new yorker loved or anything else remotely being raved about.

so what is playing, you ask? well, tomorrow night's shows inlude i am legend, that animated shit starring big screen poison jerry seinfeld, that horrible one lions for lambs -- about which has been said that its best asset is tom cruise....tom cruise!...in a film that also stars meryl streep and robert redford, a kevin costner vehicle (oxymoron?), the golden compass -- featuring creepy poster of nicole kidman's forehead, guaranteed to scare small children and the faint of heart -- and last but not least 1408. and i hate to judge a book by its cover, but i can guarantee based on the poster and the fact that i've never heard of it that it is not worth the ticket price.

fortunately i will be back in my homeland in under a week. back to glorious massachusetts, where the malls are numerous and crowded, the cars have seatwarmers, the cereal aisle is ample, the patriots play in the afternoon, the gays can get married, the health insurance is mandatory and subsidized, and the films are current.

young face, old face

yesterday outside of the supermarket a guy called me senora. senora, as in "old face"

i was hanoi-d

but today a door-to-door salesman rang the doorbell. and asked me "are your parents home?"


so i felt a little better. super "young face."

yet today is a special day, the day we celebrate the passing of one seth spiro into the realms of the thirties. welcome, my young apprentice. welcome to old face.

i'm sure you will all join me in agreeing that seth is a force of nature. and if you don't know what i mean by that, you haven't met seth yet. shame on you.

he reminds me of air in that i could not possibly live without it. and i like to take deep breaths.

while you have always been younger than me, no gulf was greater than the last eight months while you soaked up the last bit of those twenties. so now we are together again my love. we did twenty together and thirty is even better. happy birthd.ay

strangers in the morning

anyone who has spent more than ten minutes with me in madrid will contest to the fact that i hold a special disdain for accordians. their attempted play for old-world charm is so trite it midas well be a werther's commercial. the accordian ranks up there with the fiddle as instruments i wouldn't miss if i never heard them again in my life. the accordian repetoire consists of a maximum of six overbearingly precious tunes that hold all the freshness of a mariachi band.

now add this to a crowded smelly metro train, amplified by a dime-store speaker system powered by a gerbil in a treadmill and you will understand why i dislike these whiny puffed-up casio synthesizers.

and yet, yet.

was is the crisp breeze blowing across the plaza this morning? the eleven o'clock sunlight finally cutting a swath through the morning mist? was it the yellow leaves scraping across the sidewalk; was it my wool scarf scratching across my face? was it that i had just got paid?

was it the song, pumped loyally by the toothless old spaniard: "strangers in the night," certainly outside of the usual playlist?

did i really feel like spinning around? i was certainly smiling. and so, despite my rush, despite having two banks to go to, not to mention the grocery store, before work, i stopped and dug through my wallet, tossing a fat two-euro coin into his greasy case. it made my whole day.

to-do list, another list

to do:

1. write heartfelt tearjerker mom tribute post on her birthday yesterday
   
2. tie that into record-breaking second heartfelt tearjerker post in one week re: thanksgiving, what i'm thankful for and how much the patriots rock
3. get knitting!
4. wait, finish the novel first
5. spend the next four days rocking the casbah with mr. michael
6. keep the zine up and running
   
7. stay updated on the news! days go by without my glimpsing the nyt front pages. going back to the states for the holidays, must keep up with current affairs!
   
8. 20,000 words and counting (eek!)

another list, this one unnumbered:

• here's a nice "what i'm thankful for" blog post. what she said!
• eli's helpful tips for taking good digital photos
• if, like me, you're not going to be in the 'ham for thankgiving, here is a amazing series of still photos from the niner back when it was navegable. home sweet 'ham.

happy thanksgiving everyone!

nina

nina simone is just one of those artists where...sometimes you feel like you know the vast majority of her oeuvre -- at least all the good stuff, which is most of it. then one day you're writing your novel and a song comes on that blows your mind. how have you lived so long without this song? how has it escaped your notice for this long?

and i'm not talking about a particular song, although i did have a similar experience yesterday with "nobody's fault but mine" off of her legends cd2. but what i'm saying is that i think i could continue listening to nina for the rest of my life and while writing like my 60th novel i would hear some new-to-me song that would have the power to stop me mid-thought so i could listen intently to every note she sang and played, almost make me cry and practically change my life.

you know what i'm talking about. or you do if you are familiar with ms. simone.