Top 10

The 10 top things I still don’t get about Sevillanos.
10. Why it is a merit to get a baja (sick leave).
9. Why they must park where all the others are parking and on top of it must back into the space.
8. The tie - shirt combination and red pants. Just top it off with those mega-sideburns, please.
7. Shall we talk about personal space? Does it exist here? And how they honestly don’t know I am standing 2 feet behind them trying to get by.
6. Why they (excluding older women) are so obsessed with their food and what their mother makes but still have no idea how to cook it themselves.
5. In what parallel world store attendants or service personnel in general live in that they don’t recognise that you are there and instead continue talking to their co-worker.
4. How come they iron their sheets and underwear.
3. Why they still haven’t seen how convenient eating a banana using the peel can be and instead they remove the peel and hold it in their bare hand or cut it with a knife and eat it with a fork. (Likewise, why they use a fork and knife with pizza…hello that is what the crust is for).
2. How they still haven’t figured out how to form a line.
1. Why parents make their children pee in the streets when there is a restaurant with a bathroom only a few feet away. Usually they are sitting in the restaurant´s outdoor seating and others are eating while their child is being held with their pants down over a tree planter.

Logic stinks

What is with these people that think so logically that they ruin any fantasy or dreams a "crazy" person may have.

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.- Marcel Proust

Skipping stone

Lately I feel like I am a skipping stone. I never truly land, never quite drown: I just skim the top of the water, grazing the water’s surface feeling what it could be like to be here, there and over there. With each little skip and jump over the ripples of time, I awake and wonder will I sink, float or finally ride this wave in to shore?

One month ago I was thinking of leaving this country, waiting for another job to come through and take me away. Two weeks ago, I returned to Spain realised I didn’t want that job at all and that I was home in Spain. A week ago, I decided it was a good idea to go back to grad school for art. By the end of last week, I became an environmental inspector and will be climbing smoke stacks to take samples of air contaminants. Today, I sit reading Royal Decrees in Spanish and wonder where next?

All I know is all this skipping is wearing me down and I don’t feel as if I have control over where I skip to. Something started the impulse and I just have to ride it out.

Surrealing

This morning as always I woke up late, showered, got dressed and made my way to the garage in the basement to get my bike, Millie. I put her in first gear, ascended the multiple ramps, pushed the button to open the door and as it opened I proceed once again up another ramp towards the light of day. I squinted as I come out of my dark cave and people stood and looked surprised that I was only a meer biker and not a car.

Some mornings I like to listen to music. This morning was one of them. So as I began biking I fuddled around and tried to get those darn buds in my ears. Listening to music while biking allows me to disconnect from reality and bike in a sort of fantasy world.

I laugh out loud to myself as I ride along thinking of, I suppose, surreal thoughts and scenarios.

I decided that perhaps I should let you into my sick mind. Afterall if I find it so funny maybe so will you...

My first thought is a frequent one I have. It is this strange fantasy where I slap or pinch the arse of an old man. They seem like they are everywhere in the bike lane and are really just asking for it. I would just love to see an old man's face after a young lady like myself performs a drive by arse slap. This morning I thought about the old man's possible reaction and that of his old man friend. In my fantasy he gasps as he is molested and his friend turns to me and gives me a hand gesture of tisk, tisk. I ride off cackling.

As I pass cool looking people I always think it would be super cool to do like a drive by high five. I would scream "High Five, man" and these cool dudes would give me some skin. That would just rock.

This morning a public bus pulled into a bus stop and about 20, 17 year old boys got out. I pictured them all coming over to me to give me a good morning kiss on the cheek (I am not perve come on) and then skip off to their school.

There are always a few men selling packages of tissues on the street to stopped cars. This morning one man was walking to his post. I was thinking of how great it would be if I could give him money for all his tissues. So I imagined handing him the money and then tissues raining down on me.

Of course sex comes to mind in all of this and as I ride I intermittenly think about..well you know..afterall I do have a sort of phallus symbol between my legs.

As I almost arrive to work, I must cross a black and white striped painted cross walk. I picture that it is the back of a zebra and he lifts his head and tells me to have a nice day.

When I do arrive I come down through the cloud I was on during my commute. I greet a mother that is holding her childs hand taking her to day care. Her child is floating like a balloon, she too, I suppose is in her own fantasy world.

When I "land" at work, I park and lock my bike, swipe my card and return to reality. Hola, buenos dias.

To the screamers....

This is dedicated to you, the one screaming "here I am". "Listen to me and tell me I am special". I just recently moved my blog from myspace to blogger and became aware of all of you out there. Last night when I shut my computer, brushed my teeth and then shut my eyes, I could still hear the murmurs coming from my laptop. They are the murmurs of people, like me, not satisfied with their status quo, not recognised by their bosses or spouses for their achievements... So today, I want to say to you, my friend, you are special, you are doing a great job, you are worth so much in this house or company and I want to challenge you to tell someone today the same. Maybe hokey but I think it deserves a pokey...

A love haiku

arise pheonix
from cinnamon ash, divine

crimson-gold embrace

Reflections On The Road Not Taken

I find that through out my life I have nearly always chosen the harder path, purposefully selecting studies, activities, etc. I fully knew were going to be a tough climb. It was my thought that to challenge myself was the best way to grow and test my limits. Some of these choices have been fleeting adventures (like climbing canyons, knowing I am afraid of heights) and others have become part of my current life. Some have made me stronger and have opened my eyes to reality (working for the US military and in the Baltimore ghetto) where others have, in retrospect, become more detrimental than positive.

Lately, I have been thinking about this way of proceding through life. Perhaps at times it has some merit but I also believe that in other instances it is just putting stumbling blocks in front of yourself. There is merit knowing where your fight lies within the path of least resistance. Maybe there was a reason I got lousy grades in chemistry and good grades in art.

At the time I believed, sadly to say, that my art was not as valuable as hard science and that there was more merit and future in science than there was in art. So I chose a science degree. I did enjoy science but perhaps not as much as I loved art. Art fed my mind and soul where science just my mind.

Before writing this blog I browsed the internet to read Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken. I now see that the road less travelled is often our own and the merit lies in knowing and admitting it and, even more so, having the guts to take it.