in 500 words or less...

Please explain to me how Jim Gaffigan's latest stand-up DVD was suggested to me by Netflix as a result of my review of The Counterfeiters, a German WWII drama about prisoners in a concentration camp who survive by counterfeiting money for the Nazis.

overheard on 9th

"it could have even been a simple question, like 'the number 2 is bigger than 7'."

sea ranch

fear #1: spiders

her: today, i found a hobo spider in my garage.

me: a hobo spider? is that scary?

her: courtney, i would have rather found an actual hobo in my house.

me: yikes.

her: it is the size of my hand, like a tarantula. it bites you and your skin just starts dying all around. sometimes waiting until months after it's bitten you.

me: that is horrific.

her: i think i need counseling. i feel like they're everywhere.

me: maybe you should name it. take some of the power out of it.

her: i considered that...

me: like "Harry, the hobo spider".

her: it also has these fang-looking things hanging from its mouth, that are actually the male's genitalia.

me: wow, "Harry, the well-hung hobo spider."

her: Harry sounds like hairy, so that works.

me: what about Hubert?

her: or Howard.

me: actually, Hubert says "employed" to me, so that won't work.

her: Hector?

[pause]

me: is that a racist joke?

her: not intentionally...

me: because that would be more like "Hector, the day laborer".

her: wow

me: now i just see you loading up hobo spiders in the bed of your truck.

her: i meant like Hector, from Silence of the Lambs, but now I see how your mind works.

me: yeah, well...that was Hannibal Lector, so now I see how your mind works...

her: ...or doesn't...

love and the monotard

since i was diagnosed with Mono a month ago, my measure of success has changed drastically. today i left the house for a whole hour and, upon returning, felt completely satisfied with a full day's worth of work. to consider: only a short time ago i was lying around. lying around was a break from sitting around, and sitting around was a nice change of pace from sleeping. yesterday, my boyfriend told me the story about a co-worker who incorrectly identified a "unitard" as a "monotard" and upon hearing it, i decided "monotard" was the perfect way to describe myself. retarded by Mono.

i am three months into a relationship and i have been unable to kiss my boyfriend for almost half of it. there are so many times we have almost forgotten, and one time - upon waking - when we both looked over at each other at the same time and accidentally touched lips. i'm not sure if you can imagine what it does to your self esteem when kissing the man you love is immediately responded to with furious wiping of the mouth; but i can assure you it's not exactly encouraging. i have begun to feel poisonous--toxic almost, as if my kiss will be the death of him--and it has gotten to a part of me that i never supposed existed. as it turns out, kissing is a very intimate part of a relationship, and without it we seem like…chums. the kind of chums that shake hands upon seeing each other--that can still sleep with each other, but under no condition kiss.

"i feel like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman," I joke, when i notify him of my new sex without kissing policy.

he considers what i’ve said for a moment before shrugging: "i don't get that reference."

joel has been ridiculously supportive throughout my entire convalescence. i mean that mostly in that he hasn't left me for another able-bodied woman. "what do you think i'm going to do?" he asks me, "abandon you and say 'call me when you're better?'" If it wouldn't break his heart i'd answer him honestly: yes.

when i told my mother my worry of being a horrible monotarded girlfriend, she reaffirmed my worry saying "well, it must get old hearing 'i'm sick' or 'i don't feel well' and talking about vomit all the time." but for the most part i have tried to keep my complaining to a minimum, and i assure you i only brought up "vomit" once (excuse the pun).

my first week of being sick, the worst week of all, joel was lucky enough to be at home in Massachusetts visiting his family. i was so ill i couldn't take care of myself. i didn't have it in me to make myself a meal or pour myself a glass of water. so instead, i didn't eat and i didn't drink and i got much, much sicker. so eventually, my parents had to drive all the way out to the city to come pick me up and take me home to feed me and make tea for me and nurse me back to health.

on the drive north, though i tried desperately to contain myself, i apologized to my mother, then to my father, and then poured my stomach into a plastic bag by way of my mouth. the only thing worse than having to hold a bag of your own vomit (though i suppose holding someone else's would be even worse) is for some of it to have gotten on your pants. and the only thing worse than that is getting a nose bleed immediately post-evacuation. four days unshowered, and i was one hot mess; but the best part is -- the absolute best part - is that at that very moment, plastic bag in hand and tissue lodged in nose, i received a text message from joel telling me that he thought i was beautiful, and that he loved me, and that he missed me.

my boyfriend reminds me a lot of my father: sometimes too intelligent for his own good, but excessively good and kind and generous; and while the comparison might be considered disturbing to some, i am mostly troubled by how much this relationship has made me feel more like my mother than ever intended. Love has enhanced the english in me. it is the part of me that becomes awkward and self-conscious when he tells me that he thinks i am beautiful when i'm feeling my worst, or the part of me that diffuses unease over confessions of love with an easy joke (like responding to that text message with: guess who just puked in a bag until her nose bled? your classy girlfriend.) joel has taught me many things: what a real man acts like, what a loved woman feels like, what it means to let what has, in the past, broken your heart open it instead; but i have also learned that i have spent most of my life wearing my heart on my sleeve, and my sleeve under a thick wool coat buttoned up to the neck.

but like i said: since i was diagnosed with Mono a month ago, my measure of success has changed drastically. now, every time i say "i love you" back, or graciously accept his compliments with an earnest "thank you" instead of asking "why?", my heart does a victory lap around my life, and that wool coat begins to come unbuttoned. because the truth is the hardest part about happiness is all of the obstacles we usually give ourselves to avoid finding it; and life has enough of its own obstacles without our help. like how to convince your boyfriend that your Pretty Woman reference was actually funny, or how to stop yourself from kissing the one you love when your heart -- the amateur -- is bursting at the seams.

growing pains

when i was in high school, i auditioned to be Titania, the fairy princess, in Midsummer Night's Dream. "That wouldn't work," a fellow actress informed me, earnestly. "Titania is supposed to be beautiful and sexy."

She was right. I was cast as the male character who gets turned into a donkey.

Diogenes of Sinope

Diogenes of Sinope was a greek philosopher who used to beg to statues.

When asked why he did it, he told people he was practicing disappointment.

the violinist and the disappearing city

On a cold Friday morning in January, a young violinist entered the Washington DC metro station during rush hour and, with barely anyone noticing, chose a wall to lean against, pulled his violin out of its case, and began to play. For 45 minutes, lost in a sea of analysts, policy managers, budget officers and contractors all on their way to work, the young man played. Nearly 1097 people passed by him. Of the thousands, only six people actually stopped to listen to him play and 20 people slowed just enough to give him money. He made $32.17.

When I read this story today, I thought of a tale from The Phantom Tollbooth, when the main character, Milo, visits a city called Reality. Though once an extraordinary place full of glorious things to see, the citizens of Reality eventually realized that the quickest way to get from point A to point B is if one didn't stop to admire the things that came in between. And so they began to walk faster and faster without ever looking up, without ever slowing down, and without ever stopping. Moving as fast as they did, they got to where they needed to be in record time, but at the sacrifice of their beloved city, and of course, their own lives. They never stopped to admire its beauty, they didn't realize as it become uglier and dirtier each day, and they failed to notice as it disappeared completely. "They went right on living here just as they'd always done, in the houses they could no longer see and on the streets which had vanished, because nobody had noticed a thing. And that's the way they have lived to this very day."

The story of the violinist may seem unremarkable, and you may even be wondering why I'm telling it to you; except that that violinist wasn't your average street musician. He was Joshua Bell, one of the most famous violinists in the world. The violin he played is almost 300 years old and worth over $3.5 million; and three days before that cold Friday morning in that subway station, he had played a sold out show at Boston's Symphony Hall, where tickets go for a minimum of $100 each.

The land of the in-between, tucked neatly between where we are at this moment and where we need to be eventually, is absolutely pulsing with life. Let us take heed, therefore, that we have the wisdom and the courage to slow down just long enough to see it.

you've got to let love rule

So the law just passed that allows the re-writing of the California Constitution to ban gay marriage. the "yes" campaign said they were "protecting family" and the church; but i think they were wrong. the church was not going to be legally affected by gay marriage. they claimed they'd be sued if they refused to perform marriage ceremonies for single-sex couples, but those are just laws we already have in place against discrimination; they claimed that kids would be taught gay marriage in school, but this Proposition had nothing to do with schools or education either, and i'm saddened to think that children being taught equality and tolerance is such a threat to the moral fabric of our society. they even went so far as to claim that two men getting married or two women getting married would be a threat to marriage as an institution. This means that men who beat their wives, parents who neglect or abused their children, or men who ordered brides over the internet would have more rights, their bond considered more sacred, than two men who have been together for over twenty years. to me, marriage wasn't at stake here; humanity and equality was. Last night, in California, both of them lost.

There is a separation between church and state in this country, and i'm disappointed that people couldn't make that distinction in the voting booth yesterday. i could take a man to a church. we could have a wedding ceremony with a priest presiding over us, we could drink the wine and eat the bread, say our vows and look out to see our friends and family watching; but that still wouldn't make us married. nope, not until we went to city hall and signed that marriage certificate. that's the law.

maybe i'm just jaded. i live in the tiny microcosm of san francisco where there are so many gay people and straight people that no one seems an outcast and no one seems unnatural. sure, there are the assless leather chaps that roam my streets, and my favorite stationary store has now become a dildo vendor; but that's just an over-sexualized response to a society that tries to tell gay people that who they are and what they do is not "natural" (don't underestimate the pervasiveness of straight sex in our culture either). In my community, there are also couples who are committed to each other, who have fallen in love with each other, share similar values and dreams with each other, met each other's families and have even been together for almost as long as my parents. the fact that we will now be writing into the california constitution words that say that their love is unnatural and ILLEGAL is just so many steps in the wrong direction.

we have just made history by voting a black man as president. he won the popular vote by a landslide. in fact, he *lapped* McCain. while no one knows for sure whether barack obama can fulfill any or all of his promises, we are clearly more than willing to let him try, and god bless america for that. but for as far as we've come, we still have a long way to go as a society. 40 years ago, a black man and a white woman could not marry. to me, preventing a man from marrying a man he loves is the same kind of discrimination. i know that is a controversial statement for some, and i have heard the rebuttal "you can't choose your race". well, in my book, you can't choose who you love either. love chooses you.

but we have to believe in the change that obama has inspired. we have to believe that we have the power to "bend the arc of justice" in our favor. so while we may have lost the fight now, i hope that we may never lose our faith and our hope. so please, stay strong and keep your hope alive. we will get there eventually. yes. we. can.

Puns and IM

Tommy: When is National Rabbis Awareness Day?
Tommy: that may not be the illness
Tommy: Spelling?
courtney: Rabies
courtney: unless you mean the day we celebrate jewish holy men
Tommy: little bit of both
courtney: National Rabbis with Rabies Awareness Day?
Tommy: Oh, lets trademark that
Tommy: the cards will be HILARIOUS
courtney: as long as they incorporate the joke "Shaloaming at the mouth"

the birth of genius

my early work is really quite remarkable. packed with passion and emotive description was i, at the ripe and prodigy-esque age of six - maybe six and a half. my first "short" - as us literary novices say - was entitled "why water's great" and was a creative nonfiction piece about my family's brand new hot tub. it was written for a class project on the conservation of water and, in words too well put together to paraphrase now, i wrote "i like water because it goes in our hot tub and when my daddy sits in it he says 'ahhhh'."

thus began my career as a literary genius.

i was always very good at telling stories. i often spent the entire forty-five minute car ride home from school everyday telling my mother vital life lessons like how to tell time or how to make a hamburger. she never seems to sound inspired when she reminds me of that instance, but i am sure that that has nothing to do with the length it took me to describe one simple action, and everything to do with the fact that my father was more of the chef in my family. yes, looking back on it now i realize that my story was too much for my dear, barbecue-ignorant mother.

my literary pique, however - my joie de vie, if you will - came when i was seven years old after a rather painful incident involving a doorknob, my eye, and the simple act of walking. after months of self-reflection and the healing all too necessary to cope with the emotionally and physically tumultuous experience that is the black eye that followed, i did what any other great writer of my generation would have done and turned to pen and paper to express my pain. the words came easily to me, as they often do. it was as if the tears translated instantly to poetry as they hit the page, transforming a once-blank and stark white piece of paper into the photograph of a young girl's tragic life: "my eye was really puffy and black," i wrote. "it hurt bad." my prose forthcoming, my pain clearly articulated, i added a lifelike illustration - courtesy of crayola - and handed it in, head bowed, to my third grade teacher.

it should be automatically assumed here how well-received my piece of work was. my father even went so far as to display it proudly on the wall inside his cubicle at work. i can only imagine it was so co-workers, as well as mere passersby, could stop, read and admire. he never told me its display was his way of showing off the unmistakable talent which he could then brag had sprung forth from his loins - but i knew that was why. no, instead, my parents told me that i never did in fact walk into a doorknob; that my black eye was merely a detail in a dream i once had - so vivid that, upon waking, i believed it to be real. their commitment to the lie was so steadfast that they even told every dinner guest invited into our home, every cashier at the grocery store, even every teacher i ever had the story of "the time courtney allegedly walked into a doorknob." if it weren't for my keen perception and superior intellect, i would have been humiliated and offended by their denial of such a traumatic experience; but i realized they were simply trying to lesson the devastation, so as not to take away attention from or threaten the soft, young egos of my two, less verbally-gifted siblings.

it is to both my mother and my father that i owe my humble disposition.

and wear sunscreen...

when my father was 60 he was arrested for a crime he committed nearly 50 years earlier and sentenced to death. it seems unfair that at such a late stage in his life, when he had fully atoned for his sins, that he would still be held accountable for actions he committed so long before. at 14, he was young and careless and did things without fully realizing the consequences of his actions; simply put: he didn't know any better. by 60 he was a professional man, had served in the army for his country, raised three morally-sound children and had a wife he looked forward to growing old with. now, because justice apparently had to be served, growing old seemed unlikely. that's the funny thing about cancer: it can lurk forever beneath your bed like some disastrous boogie man just waiting for you to fall asleep.

as a teenager, my father and his family used to vacation up at the russian river, lathering baby oil on their pale, irish skin until it turned a crisp and oaky brown under the summer sun. his parents never yelled at him because back then, they didn't know they had any reason to. cancer waited until life had settled down and had finally become enjoyable before it cast its shadow across my father's face. and just as quickly, it made its way underneath the surfaces of his skin.

my father has been sober for 15 years. the only thing cancer granted me, besides an increased appreciation for my father's life, was the chance to see the effect a substance of any kind had on my father. to go from zero to morphine in less than a month was quite a sight to see. there was the trip to the hospital that resulted in my father performing an impromptu song he had written for his doctor; there was the trip to the hospital where, tired of the repetitive question "reason for visit", he began to answer "hysterectomy"; and most notably, after his first surgery, where we learned that the cancer had already spread to his lymph nodes, there was the ride home in the very somber car when my father announced he had two, very pretty anesthesiologists.

"did you hear that barbara?" he slurred to my mother, "i had - not one - but TWO women on me."

a cancer diagnosis finds you at a fork in the road, where you have two paths to take without any indication of street name or destination. it is another cruel trick cancer plays on you that you only know where you are going when you've actually arrived there. my father's path miraculously ended at Recovery; you can guess where the other road leads.

i go in and out of believing we have any control over our fate. i keep expecting the winds to carry me to europe where i can write all day long and learn a language that makes my tongue move in ways it hasn't before (well, unless i'm trying to impress someone); but inaction doesn't do much for you either. all i can say is that we must always be in constant pursuit of our own personal happiness, provided it never steps on the toes of someone else's. without us, it has no chance to survive.

so fall in love when the mood strikes you, even if it goes awry--start with yourself and work outwards. signal when you're changing lanes and ignore rude waiters--or, for that matter, rude people. have good table manners and keep your kitchen clean. own at least one house plant, even if you can't keep it alive, and always call people back. eat lots of vegetables and send someone flowers when there's absolutely no reason to. send your mother a post card next time you travel.

i don't mean to sound like i know it all, because lord knows i'm figuring this stuff out as i go along; but if there's anything i've learned in my short time here, it's that it's important to give yourself a break once in a while. because the road ahead may present to you its own direction, in direct contrast to all of your intentions; and so you must live in such a way that upon arriving you can say "i have lived, and i lived well."

A#

"what the hell was that?" i ask eric.

it's 10:30 at night and we're making our way towards the bay bridge heading into san francisco. we were, up until two seconds ago, sitting in complete silence. then suddenly, out of nowhere, we both sang the exact same note for the exact same duration of time. the radio is off - there is no song to sing along to. the highway is deserted - there is no visual cue to start us singing.

"i have no fucking clue." he replies.

not yet able to comprehend what just happened, all i can think to do is laugh so hard my eyes tear and i'm sure i'm going to crash into something and kill us both.

"your period isn't due soon, is it?" eric adds. "because if our menses is also in sync, i'm going to freak."

this has only ever happened once before. in ireland of all places. mona, a fellow cellist, and i decided to sit in the audience to watch the piano soloist perform. he is a young italian who doesn't speak english and tried to make out with gabi who was roughly 13 at the time. he is an incredible player. as we sit there listening to him, i am moved by the fluidity of his technique. his sixteenth note runs are so smooth i can't shake the image of ice cream from my head - rich, creamy vanilla ice cream (or, i guess, because he was italian, gelato). at the end of the piece, when we stand to clap, mona looks at me and announces "this might sound really weird, but his playing reminded me of ice cream."

when we told the others, they either didn't believe us, or are less amazed and more concerned. "you guys have been spending too much time together."

"they're just jealous," mona will tell me later.

"that's exactly what i was thinking," i will reply.

i had a cello teacher that hated me; she hated me because every time i saw her i was physically incapable of playing the cello. i would have forgotten how to ride a bicycle around her. when she told me i had perfect pitch, i actually disagreed with her.

"say the first thing that comes to your head," she told me, playing a single note three times on the piano.

"F" i said, just to shut her up.

"and this one?" she said, playing another note.

"i don't know," i sighed, "...B?"

she left the piano and came back to sit next to me. "F# and B♭"

you know what they call perfect pitch that's a half step off? not perfect pitch.

the four years i studied with her, she accused me of studying with another cellist behind her back (false), called me a "money player" (true) and told me i was funny and should "concentrate more on that". she only once said anything nice to me, and amazingly it's probably one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me. in the middle of playing for her in a lesson, she stopped me to ask if i'd ever been in love. i was fifteen and pudgy at the time, and, embarrassed by the question, shook my head.

"well," she said finally, "you play like you have."

i know, right? nice.

ever since i got back from barcelona, i have done nothing but write and play music. as cheesy as it might sound, i think that when i am so filled with love it only makes sense that it would come out of me as music; music is, after all, love. isn't it? and i am lucky enough to have people in my life with whom i make music, whether it's the way we tease each other, how much we discover we have in common, or those moments where we're so in sync we even share thoughts. that night in the car with eric, if only for a split second, we were exactly on par with each other, and so together, we made music - we even had the A to prove it. or, because i'm a half step off, an A#.

it's late and this might not make any sense, but i'll say it anyway. i feel as though, in a way, i was unlocked by Barcelona.

oh españa...what an awfully long journey i took, just to come home.

barcelona

omar says it's lin's fault and lin says it's omar's fault. but either way we have missed our train to barcelona. after a ridiculously brisk walk to the station with all of our luggage, we arrive just in time to see the train pull away. lin got the time of the train wrong; omar woke up late with a hangover. ergo, i blame them both.

three hours later and we are finally on our way to barcelona. the view from the train is amazing. people say that water is just water, but there is little like the Mediterranean. we are joined by another passenger, a young man from Quebec named Domenic (pronounced, of course, do-men-eek), who is taking 4 months off before starting university to travel around europe. he tells us stories of staying in Provence for a month and eating baby birds after they've been put in a blender and spread on toast. he shows us pictures and even now, as I recall them, my gag reflex is still sensitive. when lin asks him if he sensed any tension from the french because he was quebecian, he replies innocently with a no; but i'll tell you right now, if someone gave me baby bird juice as a meal i would consider it a declaration of war.

we have rented an apartment for three days to be shared by six of us: lin, omar, myself and three other musicians from omar's orchestra. for some reason, though we've made it to our destination, omar is still moving with great speed towards the apartment from the train station. dragging our heavy suitcases down sidewalks and across roads - my hands blistering from my case's hard and heavy handle - i joke that on this day, Good Friday, it is ironic that i am performing my very own station of the cross. and just as Jesus carried the cross to Golgotha only to be nailed to it, I carry my suitcase to a flat in Barcelona only to find the tiniest single bed waiting for me. life is hard for us capricorns.

the apartment

the other three don't join us until the next day, and until they do, there is work to be done.

i gave up shopping for lent. last year it was chocolate and this year it was shopping. before then it was sex, but that was only a joke i made because i never had it anyway. (it would be like giving up stabbing people or hitting on babies). but shopping? i imagine it was as difficult for Fergie to give up meth as it is for me to give up shopping. i walk by shoe stores and my palms itch. the sound of a shirt being folded between sheets of tissue paper and slipped into a carrier bag tears at the worn seams of my soul. during my 40 days of withdrawal i have even tried to redistribute the addiction by getting others to buy things for themselves. I’d send links to friends or family members saying "this would go so well with your [insert piece of clothing here]" or "kill yourself or buy this." for the most part i was successful: my sister nearly had to file for bankruptcy and turn tricks for rent money, but damn would she rack up quite a clientèle in those new high-wasted jeans. on the other side of my catastrophe, i was now the proud owner of a savings account with high interest. i was so good with my money for so long. i had at least two months rent there, which - for san francisco's prices - meant i had about a gajillion dollars; and yet now, here i am staring down the shops of Barcelona, trying to convince myself that it's almost healthy to throw money away, otherwise you become a slave to it. i'm like a zen buddhist only with a fantastic pair of shoes.

as we walk from store to store, i can tell immediately that i am in love with barcelona. the streets are wider, the buildings higher, and the air even feels and smells different - not just from Valencia, but from any other place i've been. the hippest parts of new york city need 100 more years to ripen to earn the right to rub elbows with the alleys we wind through now. i somehow forget that i don't fit in here and feel instead that my willingness to relax in this place transcends any language barrier or cultural difference. this is spain, but not spain. home but not home.

boris, diane and brian, the other three joining us on this trip, arrive at the apartment at almost the exact same time that i announce to lin that i have reached my shopping capacity. she's almost as surprised by my news as i am, but i can't spend all my time in this city inside a store, and i can't spend all that money i'm not quite sure i even have anymore. the dollar is weaker than an orphan with pneumonia. and so, quite frankly, at this point, are my feet.

after dropping my bags off at the apartment, we're off to the Gaudi cathedral to meet the others.

i have been told that boris is crazy, diane is sassy and brian is the envy of most of the girls in the orchestra. when i put the faces to names it all becomes clear. boris, though hailing from canada, is officially the loudest of all of us. i smile because this entire trip i have felt all natives hear my accent and expect me to be some loud, obnoxious american. and here comes boris with his booming voice and incredibly foul language. but luckily, most of the things out of his mouth are either incredibly insightful, or very very funny: standing in a square where hundreds were massacred, boris declares "they must have been trying to outlaw siestas". juxtaposed with his bite, is a young man who has exceptional manners – holding the door open for me or letting me exit an elevator first. it seems small, but it’s noticeable.

diane, his counterpart, is a tiny thing -- unassuming and sweet; but just as you've adjusted to her quietness you are surprised by her brutally sharp sense of humor. when she discovers sunday morning that I am incredibly hungover, she insists i do a shot of tequila with her assuring me it will make me feel much better. she counters boris incredibly well; at least in my humble opinion.

now as for brian, I can’t write too much, lest boris read this and use it as even more ammunition, as part of the tradition of making brian the brunt of every joke (a role brian plays with great humility). but i will say that it is obvious why brian is as popular as his reputation suggests. he is good looking, for sure; but beyond that there is a quiet sensitivity and intellect to him that i can't quite explain. it is very easy to like him, without necessarily knowing all of the things there are to like about him. and while he is funny (you have to be with this group), it is his sinister laugh that makes everything seem even funnier.

lin, omar, boris, diane, brian and myself

i have seen the show friends but i never believed it. six people getting along so well just seems the most ridiculous of fictions; but omar, lin, boris, diane, brian and i prove to be a better ensemble than even nbc's thursday lineup could offer. everyone gets a turn being both the teaser and the teasee, and everyone handles it with grace. there are penis jokes, AIDS jokes, and sex jokes. Boris will comment on how omar is as a lover and brian will call him “omey”, parroting the nickname lin has given for her husband. with the backdrop of barcelona as the set to our scene, it's really too good to be true.

my memory begins to fade that night. we are sitting at a funky little bar in Born, the hip neighborhood the tourists don't yet infiltrate, drinking copious amounts of cava, spain's sparkling wine. before that there was sangria at the basque restaurant just up the alley, and before that there are caipirinhas, a traditional rum drink of brazil. i will do many uncharacteristic things that night, some that i will remember and some that i will not. i will remember the faces that i spoke to, but i will not remember what it was exactly that i said. i will remember my first trip to the bathroom, but i will not remember the trips that followed - leading lin by the hand only for a dance party in front of the mirror. i will not remember announcing to lin that i am smitten with her husband's friend, but i will remember his face; and for that, i am a very lucky girl.

the next morning i will awake almost euphoric, despite the hangover pressing at the corners of my stomach. then lin will come in and start her "remember when you..."s and i will tell her to stop before i become too embarrassed to face my other roommates. apparently at some point in the night i decided i was only going to speak french - a language no one else in the group understands. i am sure it is only one of the many embarrassing things i said that night; i still cringe at the thought. she will tell me that omar drank my last cava, which will make me feel better about myself since it will mean i didn’t drink it, but sorry for omar since he spent most of the night lying by the toilet. "i started yelling at him to come to bed before he passed out there," lin will tell me, "and he said 'shut up! i'm gathering energy.'"

the next day we ascend to park guell – another of Gaudi's creations - before returning to downtown Barcelona to eat mexican food and walk to the beach. we will each take turns trying to purge songs like "eye of the tiger" and "funky town" from our tired minds and we will all fail miserably. we will walk through gypsy towns and euro disney (or at least the boardwalk's pale version of), and while i will have started out the day worried about how the others would treat me after my french escapades the night before (among others), i will find them just as kind as they were the moment I met them.

the world has a weird way of presenting wonderful things in unreachable places at inconvenient times. i want to pack up these people and this city and pull them in closer to the life that i now have to return to, a million worlds away. but instead, all i can take back with me are the memories: the small moments that lin and omar steal to connect when they think no one's looking; omar and his videotaping of our every single move; the landscape, the language; even the split second, drunken flashes of a deep conversation or a new friend whispering that i’m beautiful as i finally fall asleep.

for now, these things are enough to get me by. and keep me very very happy.

greetings, from España

when i arrived in valencia, the sky was on fire. they say at this time of year, nearing the end of their festival Las Fallas, it is the loudest place anywhere in the world outside of an actual war zone. it's true. i totally know what it feels like to live in baghdad now.

i am here visiting my best friend lin, who moved to spain to live with her husband in July of last year as he plays with the Valencian opera orchestra. i am quickly learning the rules of her household, though it is hard to keep up. i have to take my shoes off at the door and put on "house slippers". house slippers are, however, not to be worn on the carpets, and are not to be confused with the slippers i have to wear when out on the terrace. so far omar has counted two strikes i've made against this rule: (1) running to my room from the living room without my house slippers, and (2) walking onto the carpet with my slippers on. i've actually made a third that he doesn't yet know about, where i just put on my shoes getting ready to go, and then popped around the corner for a quick pee before we left. shhhhhh.

indoor shoes

outdoor shoes

my first night here, after dropping off my luggage, showering and having some dinner (finally, after 24 solid hours of traveling), we walked to Cannovas to watch some fireworks. i have never been so close to fireworks before in my life. immersed in a crowd of spaniards, some with disappointingly poor fashion taste (think tan colored snake-print leather coat with shoulder pads (and then stop masturbating from how hot that image just made you)), we finally found an open space for us to stand. (i'm telling you, if you want to find a place to breathe in a crowd full of thousands, walk towards the police van).

it has been nothing but fireworks since. you walk through the streets of valencia to children as tall as your knee playing with fireworks, with little care of their tiny fingers or your fragile, flammable face. "Las Fallas" (sounds like fy-us) is the Spanish word for this festival, though it is more commonly referred to in these parts as "Nit del Foc" which is Valencian (the second language of Valencia) for "Night of Fire". Every time Omar refers to Nit del Foc, Lin and I begin to giggle. "It sounds like 'Need to Fuck'," lin will say. "I have a similar festival," i reply, "it happens once a month, and is called 'Ovulation'."

yesterday was the last day of Las Fallas. we started the day going to watch the Mascletá, which is basically the daytime fireworks show. the best part is, there are so many people and the streets are so narrow, the chances of you actually seeing any fireworks are small. the chances of you going deaf, however, are pretty much guaranteed. valencians are very proud of their fireworks. the louder the better, and they listen to the bangs in the sky like one might listen to an italian opera or miles davis. to put in earplugs, or plug your own ears, is looked upon as a great insult, and as an american - and therefore not particularly popular with the locals to begin with - i don't need to do anything to make it any worse. the fireworks are so loud and so close to you that they echo down throughout your ribcage. they say you have to watch them with your mouth slightly agape so your skull can properly distribute the vibrations. or maybe that´s just what they tell tourists so they look like idiots.

the people here speak very fast, and they don´t appear to have time for people who don´t speak their language. luckily omar is pretty much fluent, so i just turn to him when i need anything. i´ll hand him €20 and tell him what i want and send him on his way. i kinda wish i had that back home. except without the giving them money part. i think they´re called...a husband.

i hadn´t really had much time to casually walk around and soak in the city. instead, we rushed from block to block to see every Fallas before they were set on fire. each block has patrons that donate money that go towards an artist or two creating these huge structures, a Falla, that sit at the end of each block. these things are stories and stories high and wide. some depict trannies standing at urinals while others show a big breasted woman in a low cut top about to get bucked off a horse. in other words: classy. they look like disney floats and while people worship them as art here, they have ruined the aesthetic of valencia for me. i may never know what this town really looks like because it is covered in rubble, drunk people, and cartoon paper mache. last night we walked almost 10 miles trying to watch as many Fallas as possible get burned down. i took many many pictures, and looked on with great satisfaction as each Falla disappeared inside an envelop of black smoke and fire.

today, my last day in valencia, we biked to the opera house where omar plays before heading to the beach to eat my first paella. there at the beach, the shore is lined with restaurants and while lin and i admired the beauty of the beach, omar scoffed and said it had nothing on brazil. i guess he missed all the trannies.

i will say this only once, so read very carefully: i would fuck paella if it wouldn´t make such a mess. holy crap it was amazing. perfectly softened rice steeped in tomatoes with rosemary, roasted artichokes, broad beans and these big white beans that soak up all the flavor of the sauce. add to that chicken and rabbit, and you have heaven in a wide, thin paella dish. add to that sangria to drink, and you should kill yourself because everything after that is only going to disappoint.

and now i am at home. slowly pecking out this posting on a spanish computer, searching the keys for letters that aren´t where they should be, and pressing keys for symbols i´ve never seen before. i am exhausted, full, and happy. tomorrow morning we take the train to barcelona.

until then, ¡buenas noches!