Tuesday, September 30, 2008





My BEDroom.

(I was trying to think up a joke based on the idea that most of my room is a bed)

I live in Puerta de Toledo with a lovely Ecuadorean woman named Monica, her son Jonathan, and his girlfriend Diana. They're very kind, and everyone respects everyone's space, which in a teeny apartment is v. important.
So, news. I have a job teaching + tutoring English, mostly test prep courses, with a company called Club Ivy (http://clubivy.com/). I guess their angle is that they're gonna get you into Harvard. I start this evening.

And, other news: my my my poet and I are meeting early next week.

And more other news: Rob and Keith are apparently coming to Madrid. I'm excited to catch up with them, though I'm also cramping around the idea of seeing anyone I know well. I just got here, I'm still finding footprints.

+ more news. Here's a photo taken by E. of my street at night:

Elvia, by the way, before we ever met, took this photograph of the plane we were boarding in JFK:



Monday, September 29, 2008

I didn't anticipate, seem somehow to have known, how familiar Madrid would feel a year later. Without making a reservation I planned on staying in a hostel whose location I never bothered to verify, remembering it close to Lizy's old place: later, leaving the Metro, I wound a few blocks up with my Santa Clothes bags and ála, found it footprinted in my mind.

People I've seen: Gustavo, Sofía, Álvaro, Ivan, + many nameless known faces. New people: many. They ask me how are Lizy, Codo, Mary Kate. I say Humming Who Knows Deciding.

In the Airport I made a friend:


Elvia! She speaks the same body language as Julie la Amsterdame, but she's much tinier.

Which is good, cuz it means she fits into my room and pasta plans.



Dinner in bed. Almost as glamorous as breakfast, lunch, reading, talking on Skype, folding laundry, doing work, and sleeping in bed. My room is really small.

Thursday, September 25, 2008



(That's me in the corner)

Ahumph. I'm madreeth. It's awfully familiar here. And homesickening nonetheless. I'm struggling to find room + work. Lovely hot sun coaxing me into this time zone. Occasional surprise encounters with old palses on streets, some say oh I know someone looking for a flatmate, ... I call a million numbers, wander streets, look at rooms, meet people once. When I need downtime I go to Xe.com Conversion and calculate my savings into euros over and over and over. No! It's fine! I'm fine! The hostel is draining me---it's like living in a bar, yknow, full of noisy Australians. Met some nice old kids who spent 6 hours in the Reina Sofía the other day, ups to them.

The Shipping News: good to read.

No human self yet, gimme a wait.
In Queens, honey and honeypie; also schnukumpts and snookum, tuckapie, plumwich, gumption. I like them.



Emma mapquested and phoneguided M + I from the Freeway.









Sam fed us handmade spaghetti carbonara, oh my mother.



In their old house, post-Rothko.


Monroe works on something awesome for his job teaching college classes to five year olds.





I, pre.

Was sea monkey unfurling in water glass.


No pictures of Peggy or pup, new house, monarch fields, the wild woods, music, forgive me.