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....