Response: We Have a Problem

I have an inherent tension within me which only becomes more pronounced late at night. (Can you take a hint as to when I'm writing this?) I want to be of both proverbial "camps", both parties, both sides. I endorse what I just stated in "We Have a Problem," but I also believe that everyone should have their say, and that things are not perfect, but we should do our best to try and make it perfect anyway. What we term "perfection" today may be obsolete by tomorrow because our societal morals and intellectual fashions are constantly shifting.

Sometimes, you should not just shut up and watch the movie. You should incite your fellow movie-goers to riot in a popcorn-filled frenzy, spilling over the faux red velvet seats into the projection room. You should stop the film, being sure to preserve it carefully for posterity and future study in a gigantic underground archival vault, and then you should make your own movie which does a mediocre job at the Sundance Film Festival. After so much time and effort, you become disillusioned and then work as a river guide at Disneyland's Jungle Adventure ride to find solace, meaning, and personal connection in your life which you're not sure actually exist. The only thing you believe in anymore is Mickey Mouse; he is real. Consequently, the movie you didn't just shut up and watch in the first place was Steamboat Willie.

I'm not sure if I believe what I just wrote in the above paragraph. Your actions made no impact whatsoever.  Switching to me and my narrative, I'm a dog chasing my tail - and I feel like I'm in good company with a lot of professors and intellectuals whose arguments are brilliant and well-articulated, but what's the overall point if you don't move anywhere?

My life could be an absurdist play. That is it; I'm living in a creation of Jean-Paul Sartre, who is in turn a creation of that little animator who sits at the corner desk in the back room under a fluorescent light, doodling on cardboard with a felt pen and mimicking the wails of Welsh alarm clocks.

This is a shovel. It is on top of a car.

You'd Think This Were a Tumble Blog II

I am in the midst of writing an exam essay, and I thought about putting this as the concluding paragraph and remarks. However, I felt it had a bit more potential than to be consigned to the end of a paper and then lost to oblivion. So I tweaked it a little bit, turning it into more of a creative-writing piece. This is a significant moment for me; I have forged a link between criticism and creativity. I have proved to myself that such a feat can be done, even if not well. I will wrise again.

‘The power of the city lies in the fact that it disconcerts you. You can try to master it, and for a time, you might succeed. Although you should never, ever forget that it has the ultimate control. Its an ever-shifting, ever-moving buzz. Oh, laddie, it is not safe at all. The only safety it affords is the anonymity, of getting lost in the crowds. The city is the important thing, the powerful thing. And you are living in a postmodern city. Postmodernism means refuting Lyotard’s ‘grand narrative’ theory, it means disruption and change and being unanchored. Cutting yourself off. From agriculture, from family, from friends – even though we play with a superimposed structure on our friends via the city, these little closes and alleys running into each other, like a game of cat-and-mouse. Only, you don't know that you're not the cat, or even the mouse. It means confusion, it means Edinburgh.’

Reading the City as a Sign

Yes, it's exam time. Isn't this interesting, though?! It's from an article about academically reading the city. She doesn't quite talk about understanding a city or a location through the body, rather than simply 'knowing' it academically/spiritually, but she gets dang close.

Moving about the city is not a passive activity. On the contrary, it stimulates our capcity to perceive, which enables Karl Gottlob Schelle to consider this activity 'non comme un simple mouvement du corps mai bein comme une action dans laquelle quelque chose de l'esprit est engagee' (not as a simple motion of the body but rather as an action in which something spiritual is engaged). It creates awareness of way that motion continually builds and rebuilds the world around us. The action of walking changes or usual or habitual view of the world, opens it up and helps us to reconsider the everyday.

-- Genevieve Quebriac, 'The City: A Space for Event-Related Encounters'

Note to La: Sorry I didn't put in the accents; I don't have the motivation.

I'm Two for Zero

I can now say that I have been to more police stations abroad than I have been in the United States. Last summer I went to my mother with to the Swiss police station when her purse was stolen; last night I went to a Spanish police station to file a report for my own stolen wallet.

What is up with people stealing things Can’t we all respect each other’s property? Meh, I was being stupid and had been lulled into a false sense of security because I’d had no problems thus far. (And I have less than a week to go!) My own fault, I suppose, for not being vigilant.

I had a microscopic glimpse at the bureaucracy rife within Spain last night. The Metro agent at Sainz de Baranda, where my wallet was stolen, said that I needed to go to Nuevos Ministerios to file a report there. Lucky me, Nuevos Ministerios is only five or so stops from Sainz de Baranda. I got off, looked around for a security agent who told me that the Comisaria was just around the corner, and then knocked on the door of the office. There was one officer left who said that they couldn’t file the report there, and that I had to go to Sol. Great. I had to switch trains, but it wasn’t going to be the end of the world to get there from Nuevos Ministerios.

At Sol, I looked around for the Comisaria, and lucky me, it was closed. I asked the guard if he knew where I could file a report for a stolen wallet in the Metro, and he said Calle Leganitos, which you can get to from Plaza de España. So I went on my disgruntled way to the Plaza.

Note that I had come back from a day of hiking and swimming in a river. I still had my bathing suit and swim shorts on, and I was oily with sunscreen. And my water bottle was low. And I was wearing my ugly orange – but comfortable – Keens. Everything from my orange-clad toes to my sun-burned skin and my pulled-back hair screamed that I wasn’t from around here.

I have some good news – my Spanish was good enough to speak with the security personnel at all of the places I stopped. The hardest was first explaining that “alguien robio mi carjeta” at the beginning, because I knew neither the word “robar” nor “carjeta”. Yes, yes, I am stupid. At the front of the Comisaria there was a guard who told me that I could go to the waiting room and they would send someone out who would speak English with me. 


The overall process wasn't too bad, and it involved me getting to speak to my mother for free about canceling our credit cards (thank you, government of Spain), and about an hour after arriving at the police station, I was walking out and going home and counting down the minutes until I could take a shower.

Estoy Cansada

I have less than a month left to go in my internship, and I’m tired.

I’m tired of trying to understand a language that I still don’t speak very well, of mosquitoes that bite me in the night, of jokes that I don’t get because they don’t have the right influx, of working and having the work that I do ripped apart. I’ve gotten used to the metro, I’ve gotten used to going to the local supermarkets, I’ve even gotten used to managing on just minimal food because – I admit it – can’t cook very well over here. I’m sick of feeling useless and superfluous. I hate feeling like I’m stupid, which is what this internship does to me a lot – however, it’s teaching me to have a tough skin in a way that school can’t teach.

I bought more stamps earlier today, and I went to my English bookstore yesterday. I’m happy with the three new books I have – Cymbeline, St. Mawr and the Man Who Died, and World Fall – but I’m not as excited as I was when I got the Colour of Magic (which I finished today) and The Book of Lost Things. You won’t be seeing any pictures of me peering over the tops of these books, although I’m really interested in the D.H. Lawrence St. Mawr and the Man Who Died.

I suppose that I can’t be happy and satisfied all the time, or energized and ready to take on all of my tasks. However, I can be optimistic – I can get a good night’s rest tonight, not stay up way too late perusing other blogs or working on this blog, and perusing the internet for good recipes I want to make. (I don't want to have another salami-ham-cheese sandwich for dinner, although they are quite heavenly on any other day.)

Being self-sufficient makes me feel good about myself. Doesn’t it?

"I Just Told You My Dreams" - Eddi