An Homage To Dance Class

My body is many things, but sexy is simply not one of them. Or at least that’s the truth as I’ve known it for as long as I’ve known anything at all.

I’m all right as an athlete. I’m okay as a student. I’m okay as a comedian, as a friend, as an employee and as a daughter, but at the barest glimmer of envisioning myself as a sexy woman–a potentially desirable sexy woman–I blanch, my mind goes blank, and I begin to (very unsexily) perspire.  As you might imagine, all of this swirls into a rather violent shitstorm of denial of sensuality and womanhood, to say nothing of my confusing balance of competence, confidence, and complete, strident failure to honor (or even acknowledge) my body as a physical, womanly entity.

No, but seriously people. I live in fear of being asked to shake my ass.

Because my body is not sexy, for twenty-three years now I’ve diligently kept it far, far away from potentially sexy situations. I’ve arranged these TSSs (Terrifyingly Sexy Situations) into  echelons of horror, but for now I’ll just offer a few illustrative examples. TSSs include but are certainly not limited to: hot tubs and saunas, rooms lined with mirrors, the gaze of men (most especially men I find attractive); night clubs, bars, gym class and some kinds of clingy fabric; large groups of women, large groups of men, and very short shorts (also, for most of my adolescent life, I shunned sleeveless tops). Most significant to this particular post, unless very, very drunk I kept my unsexy body the hell away from any situation that might involve dancing. Recently, at least that last one has changed.

For the past two months or so I’ve skipped to my gym at 10:30 every Sunday morning, warming up with a light run or a few minutes of sprints on the bike. At 11:00 a.m. I do something I never imagined that I–with my towering bulk, push-up given muscles, short hair and athletic wear leftover from college–would do, much less do happily. I go to dance class.

The first time was my mother’s doing. Seated at the dining room table late one Thursday night, I glugging a manly protein shake and leafing through the issue of Men’s Health that is somehow mysteriously delivered to our house each month, my mother made her pitch.

“Come with me to class on Sunday,” she wheedled. “Please. Just to try.”
I don’t believe I so much as bothered to look up from reading about how to make an erection last longer.
“Oh, c’mon, Cait! Try it with me!” she cried, reaching across the table and shutting the magazine with a glossy-covered “slap.” She met my offended gaze–I’d just gotten to the good part.
“Come on, you’ll love it–really. It’s fun!”
“Mom,” I said without emotion, as if reciting bad lines from an even worse play. “I don’t dance. No.” But like most things my mother gets set on, the issue was not at a close.

An hour or so later, I regretted for the first time in three weeks that as a means of instilling healthy habits in my alternately workaholic and sedentary mother I’d bought her a month at my gym. After roughly thirty-six hours of pointed begging, guilting and cajoling, I finally caved.
“Fine! Fine. I’ll go. But I’m standing in the back!” I fumed.
“Great!” she cooed, visibly delighted. “You’re going to love it.”

As much as I hate to admit this, my mother was right.

I would love to say that in that first class I uncovered some magical latent talent for dancing, or that I have phenomenally graceful, limber arms that I  use in artistic and expressive ways–but alas! I do not. From the waist up, I imagine I looked like something straight out of the petrified forest and brought to life by Tim Burton and Rachel Zoe. For the first half an hour I was so horrified of the way I felt my boobs moving, my ass shifting and my hips swaying, that I was barely able to get any of the moves right. I was comically, phenomenally bad, and it only added to my stress and resentment of being there at all.

But then, after my mother (who, by the way, is a really phenomenal dancer) and I had been dancing for about forty minutes, I began to notice something remarkable. Barbiesticks–those tiny, emaciated, tanned little women in Victoria’s Secret workout outfits whose body fat and muscle mass combined probably clock in at only 4 percent–don’t exactly look sexy when asked to shimmy, and are rather uninteresting to watch when they cumbia: there is too much space between their thighs and not enough hip to swing from side to side. With no little degree of satisfaction, I also noted that 5′11″ women with C cups dutifully packed into sports bras…well… kind of…do. This small moment of acceptance, of approval, was enough to help me let go, stop stressing, listen to the music and move, regardless of some bits wobbling a bit more than I’d like them to. For twenty minutes, I felt blissful dancing.

I am a regular at dance class now, and it’s become a Sunday morning ritual for my mother and me. Two weeks ago, I even allowed the teacher, Karin (who is so lovely, and once she discovered I can indeed move my hips–and well–never permitted me to go back to dancing like a wine-coolered yuppie recently anally ravaged by a croquet mallet) to drag me up to the front row and help lead the rest of the dancers. Now I’m waiting anxiously for Sunday and a 4.5 hour event in which I’ll fulfill a childhood dream of learning how to belly dance (FUCK YEAH! That belly dancer I saw at Disney when I was five COULD STILL BE ME!). Outside of class, I think I move a bit more gracefully now, and in the full length mirror at work today, I spontaneously cha-chaed (shh! nobody tell!). Shockingly enough, I’m also at least 55% more likely to look at myself in the mirror in the morning and think, “Hey. You look good.”

It took rowing to make me realize that my body is far more than aesthetics. It took my hips falling entirely apart 3 years ago to teach me that my body is more than just a tool. It’s taken shaking my ass, moving my hips, learning salsa, cumbia, cha-cha and merengue to demonstrate to me that my body, for all of its flaws, can be sexy. I am so grateful and so pleased. And you know what? Shaking my ass is kind of fun. {:

An Air-Kiss of a Hello and Success With Nike iD!

This is just to say that I recognize that I’ve been horribly remiss in blogging and to mount a small defense of such truancy by publicizing the fact that–for serious, yo–I’ve been outrageously busy. I’ve been at Fathom 45 minutes to two hours early since Friday and also worked this weekend. Holy of uncomfortable holies. We’re ass kickin’, crazytown kind of busy at that place, which I hope bodes very well for the future. Fingers crossed, eh?

In more exciting, less 9-5ly depressing news, I’d also like to report that my Nike article for The Retrospective is not only (a)live, but very, very well! I’ve been in touch with Nike’s lovely PR rep at the Atlanta headquarters a few times now and she’s sent me tidings of not only her personal satisfaction with the piece, but reams of dazzled, exhilarated and approving comments from Nike HQ staff all the way up the ladder. Color me delighted, and now go check out the thing itself on The Retrospective.

And now, I must sleep–but I’ll be back, I swear, and quite soon! I’ve got tidings of comfort and joy to share, various thoughts on the shambles in which contemporary society finds itself with regards to love and marriage, and a wee report of a rather sordid lust letter I received all the way from Spain, which may or may not pertain to this fellow here. And why yes! I’m a tease, but don’t tell me you don’t like it.

Dysfunctions

Realization: I do not know how to live with my heart in one place.

Will I ever want anything that I can actually have? Clearly, I’m not the one to answer this question, but I do hope that time might answer it for me, and I hope that it’s in the affirmative.

I’m uncertain whether the above statements are cause for alarm or a simple opportunity to look in the mirror and undertake a calm reckoning. This is not, after all, the first time that I’ve suspected that for me, happiness will always mean yearning for something that lingers on the periphery, flashing white teeth and bounding smilingly, just out of reach.

Good Things Come To Those Who Weekend In New York

And tonight I discovered that the way to have a great fucking time in icy spring rain is to refrain from getting angry and make a music video instead! It’s true: on my umbrelaless walk back from the gym, sweaty and flushed, I turned up my embarrassing musical selection (an Enrique Iglesias song called “Do You Know?” heard of it? Unfortunately I have, and it’s righteously stuck in my remarkably willing cranium), tossed around my soaking wet hair,  stalked rhythmically to the beat and lip synced in a fashion befitting the drama and anguish of the song, all the way down the shimmering dark streets of West Hartford.

Oh. And did I mention that in said music video I was wearing knee high rain boots emblazoned with particolored hearts, navy fleece pants, a very sharp plaid trench coat and a striped scarf? Yeah. That wasn’t an escapee from The Institute of Living you saw on Brace Road. That was me. Rad.

Why so jazzed, you ask? Well, this past weekend I hopped the Peter Pan from The Hartbeat to Nueva York. Though the ride down lasted a good 5.5 hours (that’s THREE MORE HOURS than it ought to, folks! Three! Count ‘em!), leaping into my darling Katie’s waiting, rib-cracking embrace made it more than worth it. We did together all the things we customaritly do–eat, cook, engage in punishingly awesome workouts, trail giggling around New York City and generally hug and lavish enough attention and pet names upon one another to produce sufficiently more embarrassment than being caught listening to Enrique Iglesias loudly. In public. Topless. While eating bananas dipped in lard. I mean… I love this girl. L-O-V-E–and even that doesn’t quite accurately express the force of my adoration and apprecation for all that she is. There are few people I know who are more generous, sensitive, thoughful and truly kind than my sweet starboard. I am quite glad at this point in my life to have either healed or expunged from my figurative Rolodex all of the relationships which have historically dragged me down. I find that I’m left, happily, with the people who have never done a thing but support me, be proud of and glad of my success, hug me when I’m down and rejoice with me when I rejoice. I have wonderful, wonderful friends, and Mme. Katie is most certainly one of them.

In Central Park! Wearing laughably hugeawesome glasses!

On Saturday we worked out, made luxuriant fruit and nut laden oatmeal, and took our water bottles, apples and a thermos of mate (my first!) to Central park to lavish in the sun along with the sea of other New Yorkers playing ball, cavorting and worshipping Helios. I, dressed as Betty Rubble (according to Katie’s boyfriend Pat, whom I adore just for that comment) in Katie’s very tiny babydoll dress got an even tinier bit of tan and marveled at the view of the skyscrapers through the just budding spring trees. See below.

Later that night we shopped at an amazing grocery store called Fairway and cooked dinner for our guest of honor–Katie’s new special manfriend, Pat! Pat is a professional swashbuckler, a former fitness professional, a high-echelon Art Guard and, in general, a complete sweetheart. We three drank lots of wine, ate delicious food, bonded over mutual horror at the level of uncomfortability of the new couch selected by Katie’s roommate, and enjoyed one another’s company. I woke up the next morning in his girlfriend’s bed, smiling, and then went with said girlfriend to the MoMa. On the way there, sadly, my jacket was pilfered by some fell subway fiend. That amazing tulip-collared, bright fuchsia jacket from H&M de España is no more–or perhaps is, but not on me. I am very, very sad, and it was a cold day in New York city. I could be angry, but instead I’m choosing simply to hope that whomever tugged the jacket from my backpack very much needed it and is now warmer owing to my accidental largess.

At the MoMa, Katie and I saw an exhibit on the photographs of the American West. Though it was the main reason we went, my favorite exhibit was one called “Tangled Alphabets,” and featured the works of Argentine artist León Ferrari and Brazilian Mira Schendel. Studying the works, composed of paper, ink, wire, photographic cut outs, resin and–yes–birdhshit!,  in those three rooms I felt my brain come a little alive again. I wonder: what happened to my artistic side? As a child, and in truth up ’til the age of 14 or so, I was defined as the girl who drew and sang better than anybody else. My singing voice has been robbed from me by vocal cysts, but drawing? Painting? General studio-arty creativity? I must somewhere have the latent, dusty ability. Perhaps I should try to start drawing again? Then again… perhaps I shouldn’t. (: Anyhow–the moral of htis paragraph is that if you are anywhere in the New York City area, I firmily believe that the $12 student admission fee is worth it simply to see this exhibit. If you don’t believe me yet, look here:

Work of León Ferrari

And if anyone knows where I can get prints of Ferrari’s work, I’d be inestimably grateful if you shared. (:

After the MoMa, I bid my Katie a sad adieu and metroed to W. 4th Street, where I met an old, old friend for lunch. I have not see Dan in something like three years, and the last time I did it was through a haze of tears on a subway platform in Hamburg, Germany, and not under the best of circumstances. I’m happy to report that the bloke has changed little, save for longer hair, and was full of enough good cheer and retroactive affection to take a train in from Princeton to introduce me to a bangin’ vegan restaurant called Red Bamboo. We had–get this–vegan buffalo wings, complete with wooden dowels as stand ins for drumsticks! I ordered the bourbon “chicken” and Dan the Soul “chicken,” and we swapped cuts of fake meat to compare flavah. Let me tell you–this shit is beyond convincing and beyond good. I left that restaurant feeling full in ways I remember only from my days as a carnivore.

Obeying the siren song (or harpie cry!?) of his doctoral lecture one state over, Dan left me to the Village, where I ambled about in the hazy city sun, munching on dried pineapple rings and poking in shops as I pleased. I had a few really shimmering examples of comfy conversations with strangers–one of them from whom I purchased a beautiful little handmade gold necklace. The artist selling them, upon seeing the wallet from which I tendered my cash, exclaimed a shocked “Morocco! Morocco!” gazing at me in something very near to alarm. Have you been, he asked?  Why yes! I replied with a smile, and thus began my lovely interchange with a Berber artist who’s lived in New York City for a full seven years now. My necklace is, by the way, totally beautiful.

I rode the bus back to Hartford tired, happy, feeling relaxed and loved. I’ve closed some chapters quite well in the recent past, and reopened some other ones. I’m feeling very good about the point to which I’m drawing near as June 30th and my stint at Middlebury races closer. I’ll have educational debt, sure, but no regrets to leave behind here, and no lingering bad juju toward anyone. I will, however, miss my Katie.

More tomorrow–especially focusing on the little kids with whom I played (and was snotted on) on the bus to work!

Latest Piece in The Retrospective

This labor of love brought to you by years of Spanish, The Retrospective, and Alan The Gallant’s devastatingly talented and trendy  Creative head, Ana Montiel:

GO READ!

And yes–in fact I did translate that interview. Should you find mistakes, I apologize, and please DO let me know!

Silence

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about silences, those patches of misunderstanding, inference and psychic space that bristle between us and the ones we love, the ones we don’t love, the ones we wish we knew how to open our hearts to. Even within my own family it’s occurred to me that there is so very much that we do not–that we cannot–say. I wonder why sometimes, and realize that for most of the silences and their attendant whys, there are no answers, just stasis, just inertia, just fear of getting snapped at, getting hurt, or getting–lawd, no!–informed. If we all better knew one another and our intentions we might love one another less. Or worse yet, we might love one another more.

I cannot talk with my mother about her emotions, about her life before me, about her first husband or the ways in which he let her down. We cannot talk about the things that I love, about how if I didn’t work out and suck up my endorphins, I fear I might be as depressive as my dad. I cannot tell her how much I’m going to miss her when I leave in a few months, and that if I did come back, it would only be for her. I can’t tell her how much I worry about her and how much I love her–because I’ll cry, and then she’ll cry, and then I won’t know why I’m leaving anymore.

I cannot talk with my father about the legacy of hurt between us and all of the years we’ve assumed the worst, the most hateful, of one another. We are two wounded animals of the very same stripe, skittering  between huge, shadowy trees and stealing glances of fear, admiration, of a disappointed longing at one another–all of the things to which we’ll never give voice. I cannot tell him how much I still hate him sometimes. I cannot tell him how much I love him and wish I knew how to be his friend, either.

I cannot talk with my grandmother about anything that might affect her heart. I tell her I worry about my mother, about how she works so hard, about how she is the best person I know. To this my grandmother snaps a brittle, “I know. Now don’t make me cry!” rises stiffly from the table with a little laugh meant to diffuse the tension I’ve wrought, and toddles away, sniffling and singing to my cats, pretending that we did not nearly sink together from the surface into the deep.

There are so many things that I cannot say to the people who have made me. It pains me to see the ways in which I have followed their example of emotional confinement, the ways in which I have grown closed off, closed up, distrustful of the worth of my own feelings; it makes me even sadder to know that they have never trusted to the worth of theirs. It may be too late for me and my family to creek open the cupboards that shutter up the things we’d like to feel, but starting today, starting now, I want to walk into the world with my heart flung open and my dreams on my sleeve, regardless of whether or not it might get me hurt or frighten others. I will not be fettered in order to appear strong. I will not be silent in order to avoid ruffling feathers.

I only hope that they understand how much I love them, and that when I say it, I’m meaning it to get all the way inside.

Afternoon HaHas

Oh God, this makes me happy:

Give Me Goat Cheese or Give Me Death!

I’m embarrassed to confide here what a horrible citizen I’ve been for the past week. I am a big fat thundercloud of alternate woe and rage. It takes little to set me off, and much to reestablish emotional equilibrium. I think I’ve been happy for about 27.3 minutes over the past 72 hours. I thought I could blame it all on the tides and being residually off kilter from high dose antibiotics meant to knock my wee parasitic epidemic straight between the eyes. I feared that, like a crazy dramatic bitch I don’t want to be, my hormones were finally getting the best of me. And then I realized! it’s not that at all!…or, well, not that only.

Here. I give you equation:

No bread + no refined starches + no sugar + no chocolate + no cheese, milk or yogurt + no affection + no sex = now I am CERTAIN that single vegan ladies with a personal embargo on sugar and casual sex must be miserable–always.

So, Caitlin, why not just have the cookie, you ask? Why not just snarfle down that hunk of chocolate? Why oughtn’t you slather your body in yogurt then slide on under the nearest heifer, poise your tender young digits around an udder and get to squeezin’? Oh ho ho ho, my friends! Ho ho, indeed! (serious face). No reason. I mean… I could have the cookie. And what would happen? Oh, nothing. Nothing… Except fire would rain from the sky. And flames would shoot from the ground. The angels,  tenderly picking ‘pon their golden harps, would tumble from the heavens and the oceans would rid themselves of all sea life, casting whales as far inland as Kentucky and spewing tiny, clickity crabs deep into parts of Ohio that have never seen a crustacean outside a can. And the ground would turn to lava. LAVA! Did I mention that? And I would simply sit in my own pile of gastric woe and shame, wishing for a swift death or at least an airtight hole into which I might sink.

No big deal.

Really, lack of sugar and carbs is making me even crazier and more latently dramatic than usual, to say nothing of the wrath. I’d like to go all Godzilla on some small village right now. Got any shit you want destroyed? Any eyes you need blackened? Any cities you need razed or strongolds to be plundered? Any takers? Any? None at all? No? Fine. You know? You’re all pussies, anyway.

Do want ):

News, and For Just a Moment I’ll Be a Lazy, Narcissistic Jerk and Quote Myself

(: The entry below is from one of the best times in my very young life–last spring in Madrid. I’ve chosen to repost it today because its wistful beginning amuses me, and life has unfolded in such a way to prove all of my negative prognistication wrong. In case you haven’t heard–contrary to the fears and suspicions expressed in the first paragraph below–I’m moving back to Spain. I learned just two weeks ago that I was admitted to Middlebury’s MA in Spanish program. By August I’ll be gone, and I’ll see Madrid again at the first blush of spring. I’ll visit the children I taught, walk the streets I love, exhange dos besos with old friends and drink cañas, take walks, make memories with new ones. It’s also very likely that I’ll blog more–I’ve been missing it so.

So, welcome to the secret hope I’ve been cupping to my heart and quietly nurturing for the past few months. It’s finally real. I’m leaving. I’m leaving. I’m leaving and I’m going home.

Summarily: things are wonderful. This country has crawled in and infected my soul with a slow, sunny, golden kind of affection I remember feeling in Andalucía three years ago. I don’t know how I’ll leave so very soon, knowing that I’ll probably never come back again–at least not to live, not to be part of a city in the way that a resident, not a tourist, is. I am afraid that I’ll always yearn for it here, but always have my life in the States. An odd feeling, to be caught between two worlds. Then again, I guess that I never really did like to be comfortable; comfort, to me, is always being crushed by the weight of two different choices. Looks like I’ve fulfilled that desire beautifully by making a temporary-but-beautiful life here. teehee.

Madrid at the first blush of spring is a truly beautiful thing. Trees begin to open their tiny blossoms, birds twitter with a long-buried gusto, and that special Spanish sunshine wakes up at an even earlier hour to drizzle itself lazily over people like myself, walking to work or sitting in a café with a coffee and tostada with tomato. In Madrid in the springtime you can actually feel the energy of a previously sluggish and frigid, nylons-and-wool-coat-clad city pick up and shift—to unserious tee shirts and copas on the terraza, to 2 hour lunch breaks that feel like the majority of the day, to weekends spent outside in the tower of babel that is Retiro park. My springtime in Madrid has been beautiful for all of these reasons, but doubly so because I was able to share it first with my mom and aunt who came to visit in March over Semana Santa, then with my sweet Greg, who made his second journey out here only a day after my family left. I had the pleasure of showing both sets of guests Córdoba and spent a little time in Granada with the momma and auntie, with whom I went to some museums, caught up, went out to eat, and cooked a lot. Greg and I, as usual, passed most of our time rambling around the streets of Madrid and Córdoba, sitting on benches and making out which, naturally, is more than fine with me–and quite possibly preferable to museums.

My life here over the past 9 months has proven to me–and shockingly!–that I love small children and I love teaching. My work life has done a complete turnaround since the last angsty news you had of it in late February because, working with the Fulbright Commission and the Spanish ministiry of Ed, I changed from my old school in the boonies of Madrid to a new one uptown. Since March when I started at the new school, I feel like I can breathe again and like I can smile again and mean it. I arrive there every morning at 8:50 a.m. after a 35 minute walk in the sunshine (and the crappy rain, but we’ll look past that for now), ecstatic to see my kids and ready to work. I’ve been partnered with a wonderful Spanish English teacher who is very much like the Spanish mother I never had, and the rest of the faculty there has been warm, open and kind to me. I feel very fortunate.

The children are by far the best part of my new job. True, the school itself is rather pijo (stuck up, well-moneyed, upper class); you see, the parents of most of these children are scientists who work for the ministry of science and education, reporters for newspapers, novelists, artists, and university professors, but the children themselves are wonderful. Being small ones who have never experienced want the way my kids in the first school must have, they are not greedy with their materials, with their time, or with their attention. They are excited to learn and listen and give me their markers and pencils and chocolate truffles to celebrate THEIR birthdays (no–I’m serious! They give ME candy for THEIR birthdays!). Their level of English is astoundingly good–so good that they pass the Trinity exam (oral, blingual school exams administered by live british examiners in May each year), at one grade level up from whichever they’re in, and I can have full, sensible conversations with them. They have so much verve and so much personality, talent, sparkle. I look forward to seeing them every day. Because of the way I work at that school, each class with a small group of 3-6 students in workshop-type settings with readers or key vocabulary, I also feel like I’m finally actually making a difference. Goddamn, does that feel good.

Switching schools has afforded me a lot of much-needed perspective about my experience at my old school. I alluded to the most important realization up there in the previous paragraph but I’ll rehash it in a broader sense now. At the school in the poor/working-class suburb where previously I taught English people were not very nice. In my opinion, the teachers and staff were not as warm or open. Certainly, they did the right thing by inquiring as to how everyone was, smiling warmly if disingenuously at one another upon passing in the hallway, but at the end of the day, no one really liked or trusted one another and it showed–priority number one was the self. The other? Well, that other could just go to hell–they probably sucked, anyway. No one at that school was a bad person–the problem was that everyone was overwrought and overworked, pulled in too many directions to be extremely good at any one thing, or beyond-the-call-of-duty good to one another. With a few exceptions (oh, Araceli! Encarna! Eli!) I found them to be ungenerous with their time–as when the teachers wouldn’t show up to my classes, but expect me to make lessons for them anyway–ungenerous with their materials–we couldn’t ever print there, and materials we as teaching assistants took to use in class from the supply cabinets were heavily policed–and we were treated more like tools than like partners.

At my new school my experience has been totally disparate from what I knew at the Vic. I’ve found that the teachers I work with want to know me, want to teach me and help me do my best, and want me to have a good experience working with them, too. I am not just a tool–I am a teacher and, also, I am a guest who is to be helped and appreciated and held accountable to her own supposed goodness in a respectful, not suspicious, manner. My new school is generous with computers, poster board, markers and human interest. The teachers are well provided for there, as are the students, and it shows. It struck me within a week at my new school that these people were generous because they could be. They, too, are always in meetings, always running to and fro to see parents and plan lessons, but they have decent checks, they have classroom supplies, they have the support of their administration. Unlike the folks at my old school, they are well enough provided for that they can provide–happily–for others. It’s a beautiful thing that makes me feel lucky to be where I am now and very sad for my old school and the people who are still there, struggling with too little time and resources and far-too-high expectations.

Well–on to happier subjects: yesterday was the beginning of a glorious weekend. I grocery shopped, bought the wherewithal for burritos and, in addition, fresh peaches, strawberries, and good Valencian oranges. I had a tremendously good work out despite the fact that I seem to have lost my pushup prowess (GRR!), and came home to shower, lounge, and read some of Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, one of the most captivating things I’ve picked up in years. Later, I was invited to Morgan and Charles’ beautiful apartment. Once there, these two sweet friends sat me down with a glass of water and a smile and entertained me with colorful stories of their uniquely awful days; Morgan was refused from a flight to Barcelona because she had her Spanish ID card, not her passport; Charles was detained by corrupt Coslada police, probably just for being black, and questioned while he was rushing to class from the metro. As we talked, Morgan made tea while Charles rolled out the dough for a delicious, sweet bread made with whole wheat flour and honey. The bread rose deliciously in the oven as we chatted with their winsome Guatemalan roommate and her boyfriend. Morgan topped the bread with fruit salad and honey-cinnamon sauce and I gorged and basked in the good, good company. Later, Charles and I went to the pub quiz at J&Js (but only after downing a king-sized tortilla bocadillo apiece!), where we came in third to last and spent only a little time with David, but had a great time. All in all, life is good.

Garden of Aural Delights

Sometimes I listen to things other than Beirut. And then I suddenly catch a snippet of Zach Condon’s voice and spend the next few moments/hours in audiogasmic glee, wondering why I ever listen to anything else.

Mmm. Happy.

Also: I have news, news that makes me glow. All will be revealed in time, but suffice it to say that the future looks bright, and will look even brighter in a certain sort of liquid golden sunshine.