whimpering and moaning about the bureacracy, the heat, all that-- I take it all back.
today I finally got off my ass and did the paperwork, and it's true, even if you have no freaking right to be here, like me, you are entitled to free medical care and tons of precription drugs under $10!
that means, no more ... "I'll wait and see how bad it really gets" - or "what difference do hacking cough and bloody stool make when you're out $400-$1000? I'll just see if there's any left over prescription cough syrup in that box under my mom's sink" - or "christ I have to completely revamp my resume and dress up in some jobinterview suit and say that 'i like working with people' so I can continually pursue a full-time desk job that I won't get anyway with a boss and a water cooler and an elevator and a parking lot and benefits so I'm not living some half-time, freelance, HOURly paid, 1099 type hodge-podge kind of existence where I just might slip on an ice-patch or fall off my bicycle and be in healthcare debt for the rest of my natural life because in the end I need to contribute what would be $250 in bluecross health insurance to subsistence stuffs like food and toothpaste."
I don't care that the emergency room is up a flight of steps, that there's no computer system, that it's full of gossiping old ladies that have nothing better to do; I don't care that they don't change that paper on the patient's chair, or that their scheduling is arcane and asinine and that the whole place closes at midday so everyone can take a nap.
Amoxicillin is $4, people, and I'm putting in diddly squat.
And if I just had the luck to make a lot of money, they would take out a fair percentage of that to contribute to the health care of those who don't make as much money. I know this is a difficult concept to grasp, and that the mere thought of it makes some people spew spittle as they seethingly remind me that I don't deserve to be an American (and I have been reminding, also been called commie scum.) But to a certain extent, I dunno about the macro of it all, but on the micro level it works. You get treated. Doctors get paid shit, that sucks. But if I understand correctly, in their training they didn't have to put up however many hundreds of thousands.
que viva europa, goddamit. I can't wait to get sick.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Monday, August 08, 2005
celia cruz risen from the dead
fiestas en lavapiés. yesterday three chicks in g-strings, feather headpieces and very high heels passed beneath the window to the thunder of deafening samba drums. now I think santana is playing, somewhere around the corner; celia cruz around the other corner.... it's monday and this thing is still going... since last thursday..... (though the jackhammers don't seem to be taking a holiday, pity.)
it's Spain and people are dancing in the streets! beer flowing and everyone, you know, just, living life...
being neurotic as i am, these sorts of things used to fascinate and entice me; i will admit to -in my early twenties- waxing orientalist, exoticist, exalting such vitality with all sorts of baroque adjectives... come to think of it, I don't think I would have ever learned spanish if I had not just lived a little bit of the vida loca, in some loca locales, dancing in the streets, blending in, as it were. i mean, alcohol and grammar are not such an unlikely mixture....
in the meanwhile, my bf's best friend's name is detritus. he's a painter and sufficiently quiet and intense to seem trustworthy. we went over to his place for lunch last saturday, and he made hotdogs. his goth girlfriend, who is very sweet, has the same half-shaved head haircut I had when I was 15 and used to got to revival on 3rd street back in phila... where we used to "dance" to joy division and bauhaus, when we were all pretty intense and flirted with complex topics like "atheism" and "mortality"....
now, I'm really not trying to be deprecatory, (is that a word? either way, it's what I'm not trying to do....) so, I tread lightly here. but something that stands out to me here, in spain, part of those exposed wires.... there're the hippies (jipis), the squatters (okupis) and there are the moderns (modernos). there are also the preppies (pijos) and the fascists (fachas.) (I wish I could figure out photos to post some examples.) it's sort of like a video game. or a big reality show. everybody has their uniform, you know?
what I'm not trying to not be deprecatory about is relating it, sort of, to high school.
i probably see it that way because i am observing it absolutely superficially and I mostly don't leave the house except to get my ¡jamón jamón!-flavor potato chips. but anyway, (here's where I get really insightful...) maybe that there's this not-so-long-ago legacy of dictatorship, everybody's still sort of rebelling against the teachers and their parents.
I know we americans are all supposed to be big 'ol flakes, but, I dunno, i have this sense that we're a bit less obvious than the europeans
or maybe it's all just relative.
or very possibly I have no sense of nuance.
to be articulated.
it's Spain and people are dancing in the streets! beer flowing and everyone, you know, just, living life...
being neurotic as i am, these sorts of things used to fascinate and entice me; i will admit to -in my early twenties- waxing orientalist, exoticist, exalting such vitality with all sorts of baroque adjectives... come to think of it, I don't think I would have ever learned spanish if I had not just lived a little bit of the vida loca, in some loca locales, dancing in the streets, blending in, as it were. i mean, alcohol and grammar are not such an unlikely mixture....
in the meanwhile, my bf's best friend's name is detritus. he's a painter and sufficiently quiet and intense to seem trustworthy. we went over to his place for lunch last saturday, and he made hotdogs. his goth girlfriend, who is very sweet, has the same half-shaved head haircut I had when I was 15 and used to got to revival on 3rd street back in phila... where we used to "dance" to joy division and bauhaus, when we were all pretty intense and flirted with complex topics like "atheism" and "mortality"....
now, I'm really not trying to be deprecatory, (is that a word? either way, it's what I'm not trying to do....) so, I tread lightly here. but something that stands out to me here, in spain, part of those exposed wires.... there're the hippies (jipis), the squatters (okupis) and there are the moderns (modernos). there are also the preppies (pijos) and the fascists (fachas.) (I wish I could figure out photos to post some examples.) it's sort of like a video game. or a big reality show. everybody has their uniform, you know?
what I'm not trying to not be deprecatory about is relating it, sort of, to high school.
i probably see it that way because i am observing it absolutely superficially and I mostly don't leave the house except to get my ¡jamón jamón!-flavor potato chips. but anyway, (here's where I get really insightful...) maybe that there's this not-so-long-ago legacy of dictatorship, everybody's still sort of rebelling against the teachers and their parents.
I know we americans are all supposed to be big 'ol flakes, but, I dunno, i have this sense that we're a bit less obvious than the europeans
or maybe it's all just relative.
or very possibly I have no sense of nuance.
to be articulated.
Thursday, August 04, 2005
not having a computer makes you nobody
I don't write in this thing mostly because I don't have my own computer. Not that I especially shun the bangladeshi guys with the locutorio around the corner; 1 euro 20 cents is fairly reasonable for one hour cubby-time with a pc. But it's difficult to let loose, or surf with ease, while you're thinking, OK, two hours here or a doner kebab, two hours here or a doner kebab....
My dear old friend who is letting me stay in the other room in her girlfriend's apartment has a computer. A very attractive titanium mac with a dsl connection. She and said girlfriend are on a (MONTH long/ from the jobs they don't have) vacation in the north of Spain and have left me with the computer, the apartment and its needy plants.
So I am still here, in Madrid, with the shutters closed and a pile of dirty dishes in the sink. I haven't managed to put on a pair of pants yet today. It's now 1:09 am, 12:09 en canarias.
So, despite that I haven't written an update in two or three months, not much has changed, except my legal status. My tourist visa expired, I didn't get on the plane back (I wonder if they were paging me in the airport? that's never happened to me before...) (I have subsequently had scores of anxiety dreams about trains and things leaving without me/ forgetting my luggage/ getting on transportation without the proper ticket, etc... can't fathom why... ) and have basically been waiting - as a friend has observed, "bunker style," - for my tramits to go through , and/or for some sort of bearable work for a bilingual sin papeles to present itself.
As I flip around the blogosphere, inexplicably drawn to the blogging of expatriates and their experiences (couldn't tell you why...) I think pretty much all of them have some sort of consolidated plan as to their immigration status. I mean, they all looked into visas and stuff BEFORE they left the US. Or they were shipped over with their military husband. Or hired by some tech company that took care of it.
Sounds sort of presumptious coming from a bourgie (booshee? booggeee?) ivy league, whitey-something, but for all intents and purposes, I'm an illegal alien.
I am fucked for money. Fucked. Looks like (longstory) I have to find a new place to live. I have very little residual spunk left for finding something outside the box/ under the table to make any money.... and a super vague, but vaguely insistent sense that work is still bullshit.
In the meantime, I am rapidly losing any and all integrity as an expatriate... I mean, what am I doing? Don't know why I can't just take it in stride and be surly and hemingway-esque, sketch mysteriously in notebooks in cafés and let strangers buy me drinks; exoticize myself a bit and TRY AND MAKE SOME MONEY off it. I think maybe being around sincere activists with trustfunds has warped me; I say to myself, but They don't work, or sketch mysteriously, but they seem to be OK... they play it by ear and it all works out.
But despite being booshy and ivy leaguey and all that, I'm a pie-hole corn-hole debt-spiral, I'm in the negs with no assets and no work permit, I'm almost thirty now and don't really want to Chat with people or have Great Experiences in discotecas, cute mountain towns, or with all those dread-locked white people with purple pants playing african instruments while sitting indian-style in giant groups in the plaza de lavapiés; I've experimented with - and attempted to network around - about six or seven different types of careers (rockin resume, i tell you) and I'm actually pretty smart and strangely good looking.
But I think what all this is saying, when you spreadsheet out all the opportunities and 'traits' up against my level of chutzpah, or, well motivation in general, is that, well, I'm LAzy.
We could make the argument that the fact that I'm still no-ing so many things at this age kind of makes me an artist, right?
Right?
In my blogosphere ramblings, I came upon Mimi, the english chick in new york who works as a stripper and writes about her experiences as an illegal in that whole underworld of busboys and girls in tittie bars etc., things kind of got picked up by the village voice, there are links on her blog to the articles written about her, etc...
so, well, maybe I already am surly. guess that's sort of evident. maybe I should make some currency out of it, you know?
as long as they don't put me in a detention center....
My dear old friend who is letting me stay in the other room in her girlfriend's apartment has a computer. A very attractive titanium mac with a dsl connection. She and said girlfriend are on a (MONTH long/ from the jobs they don't have) vacation in the north of Spain and have left me with the computer, the apartment and its needy plants.
So I am still here, in Madrid, with the shutters closed and a pile of dirty dishes in the sink. I haven't managed to put on a pair of pants yet today. It's now 1:09 am, 12:09 en canarias.
So, despite that I haven't written an update in two or three months, not much has changed, except my legal status. My tourist visa expired, I didn't get on the plane back (I wonder if they were paging me in the airport? that's never happened to me before...) (I have subsequently had scores of anxiety dreams about trains and things leaving without me/ forgetting my luggage/ getting on transportation without the proper ticket, etc... can't fathom why... ) and have basically been waiting - as a friend has observed, "bunker style," - for my tramits to go through , and/or for some sort of bearable work for a bilingual sin papeles to present itself.
As I flip around the blogosphere, inexplicably drawn to the blogging of expatriates and their experiences (couldn't tell you why...) I think pretty much all of them have some sort of consolidated plan as to their immigration status. I mean, they all looked into visas and stuff BEFORE they left the US. Or they were shipped over with their military husband. Or hired by some tech company that took care of it.
Sounds sort of presumptious coming from a bourgie (booshee? booggeee?) ivy league, whitey-something, but for all intents and purposes, I'm an illegal alien.
I am fucked for money. Fucked. Looks like (longstory) I have to find a new place to live. I have very little residual spunk left for finding something outside the box/ under the table to make any money.... and a super vague, but vaguely insistent sense that work is still bullshit.
In the meantime, I am rapidly losing any and all integrity as an expatriate... I mean, what am I doing? Don't know why I can't just take it in stride and be surly and hemingway-esque, sketch mysteriously in notebooks in cafés and let strangers buy me drinks; exoticize myself a bit and TRY AND MAKE SOME MONEY off it. I think maybe being around sincere activists with trustfunds has warped me; I say to myself, but They don't work, or sketch mysteriously, but they seem to be OK... they play it by ear and it all works out.
But despite being booshy and ivy leaguey and all that, I'm a pie-hole corn-hole debt-spiral, I'm in the negs with no assets and no work permit, I'm almost thirty now and don't really want to Chat with people or have Great Experiences in discotecas, cute mountain towns, or with all those dread-locked white people with purple pants playing african instruments while sitting indian-style in giant groups in the plaza de lavapiés; I've experimented with - and attempted to network around - about six or seven different types of careers (rockin resume, i tell you) and I'm actually pretty smart and strangely good looking.
But I think what all this is saying, when you spreadsheet out all the opportunities and 'traits' up against my level of chutzpah, or, well motivation in general, is that, well, I'm LAzy.
We could make the argument that the fact that I'm still no-ing so many things at this age kind of makes me an artist, right?
Right?
In my blogosphere ramblings, I came upon Mimi, the english chick in new york who works as a stripper and writes about her experiences as an illegal in that whole underworld of busboys and girls in tittie bars etc., things kind of got picked up by the village voice, there are links on her blog to the articles written about her, etc...
so, well, maybe I already am surly. guess that's sort of evident. maybe I should make some currency out of it, you know?
as long as they don't put me in a detention center....
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