Dear Guys,
I am coming to the East Coast, which is where some of you sometimes are. Are you there? I would love it if you were. I will be in New York City and in New Jersey sometimes, but I am without itinerary generally. I come the 24th of this month and I leave the 17th of the next month so I have some time to sleep on your couch and discuss being lost in this world, which is big. Let's compare struggles and cook, sometimes bake. Also can I sleep on your couch.
With my utmost request,
Sophie

¿se conoce alpedrete?

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A lot of the women from the Eskalera Karakola are lesbians---or bi, or trans, or otherwise queer--and many are immigrants. The Sunday brunch often turns into a discussion of various forms of discrimination these women experience, at work, in the street, and in the gay community. The term "gay pride" is particularly controversial, in part because "gay" conceals lesbian presence, and in part because, for most of these women, pride has never really been the issue so much as basic rights and dignity. Most have been victims of hate crimes, some have lost friends, and, as much in Spain as in their home countries, many have lost jobs. Since Spain allows gay marriage, facilitating gay migration, it is seen as a hub of gay culture; the Pride celebrations here attract zillions of tourists from all over the world.

The mainstream pride celebrations are mostly held in Chueca, the (expensive and male-dominated) so-called "gay" district of Madrid. My wonderful abundant Asor made the poster above to advertise various alternative activities the Ekka and others have organized: lectures, marches, fundraiser concerts and discussions focusing on the plight of immigrants and other otherized minorites. I've been participating as much as I can in these last few packed packing days--saw Asor and Camila speak, saw some legendary women rappers at a squat in a graaaaveyard, hoo, and have littered my neighborhood with propaganda.

I love the women of the Eskalera Karakola, and can't imagine this year without them. They accepted me completely, they've given me so much---many became my students, and many my friends. They're one of the biggest reasons I'm excited to come back.

When Mary Kate was here we hung out with them a lot. She was also impressed by how open and kind (and fun) they were--how the Brunch was truly a social space for women, not a cruise bar or a cult. We all went to see Clara in a concert in which Pedro Guerra and Ismael Serrano also played. Also a dude from my neighborhood who works in my favorite bodega.

Clara and the dude she played with:



The triumphant metro ride back--we pushed Anixua, the gorgeous Canary sexologist in the center, to get her photo taken with Pedro Guerra and Ismael Serrano like she wanted, and now she loves us very much:



The next day we celebrated Asor's birthday at a Cuban restaurant:



Anixua, Asor, Asor's childhood friend, me, Stef--Mk is taking the photo:

It's the last ten days! I'm miz, really. But how pretty things've been: Mary Kate was lovely here, charmed my friends and will hopefully send over some pictures so I can prove how charming. Since she left two more guests have come and gone.

Last Thursday morning Lizy phoned, saying she was near the center and would call me once she reached Lavapies. I said great darling, I'll have a student in my room but you can bop around and make tea. I said I live in the plaza my address is--and she said oh I'll just call you. So, lovely. My dear student Pablo arrives, we discuss the poetry we read last week (W. Carlos Williams Plums/K. Koch parody of), we---we are distracted by what sounds like my name outside. I balcon.



There is no one. We resume class, 6 minutes pass, then I am sure I hear my name again: "Sophiieee, Sofía, guapa, Sophiiiia," balcon again and indeed, Lizy is calling me from the street (having fully circled the plaza). I beckon from balcony and she bounces upstairs and all is golden apples.

Later we picnic with Bea. Bea is someone I have mostly known through others: Sergio calls her his beloved, Lizy calls her her twin/shadow (and indeed when we met up Lizy wore long white and Bea long black, amazing). I'm so glad we finally made it into each other's lives. Bea's extraordinary, a witch baby but a real woman: someone, like Sergio, I'm sure I'll meet again. After Lizy left she stayed another night, before being off to Francy and Sicily.



Since Ivan left we've filled his room with guests every night. Last night I slept there, as that's where the sheets were. Soon I'll be a guest--then truly at home--then hoopla dee.

After Allison Bechdel drew me, or drew a photo of me, I remembered my desire to wander fiction in fictional form. It will happen in time. Sergio, when here, gave me a copy of his super super funny comic, Serio te lo digo.

This is he drawing something in the front:



And this is that thing:



Roundheadguy: Excuse me, can I ask you something?

Myhead1: No

Myhead2: No

Myhead3: Yes

Roundheadguy: Well...nevermind.


I THINK depicting me as a threeheaded contradictress was cuz drawing someone's face is hard but with three resemblance can be approximated. Yes? No?

Duckums! So way back a week or so ago came one Katy Jane Tull, lately of Bard College. It was lovely to have her here: she is a thoughtful house guest and a total blast. She's been abroad for months, and'd just been in Israel, and made me authentique hummus to prove it, and one day before I went to teach we lunched thus in the Retiro:



Then went to rainy green beachside San Sebastian/Donostia!





It's way up in the Basque Country, edging into France. My Basque housemate tells me Donostia (the B. name) is also known as Ñoñostia, or Prissville, perhaps cuz it's spense and well-dressed and considered the Cuisine Capital of Spain. We ate only pintxos (tasty tapas pegged onto bread) and wine from Navarra. Pastries also figured heavily. No regrets.


Everything's different from Madrid. (Dusty Hot! Landlocked Castilla/Green, Cold, Seaside Euskera). We went to a church to listen to service in Euskara (Batua, Gipuzkoan, Bizkaian, Upper Navarrese, we couldn't tell which). We blew about the rocks by Chillida's Wind Comb. I love the Wind Comb. It leaked rust over the stone it juts from. (We had already gone to the Chillida museum, landscape of grassy swells and mysterious rusted angles. We had a picnic and drank wine and rolled down one of said swells, all of which made the surrounding statues even heiroglyphicker) But here is Katy's red hair rusting the sea warpéd rock:




Oho! In the foreground: who knows.
In the background: a statue of Christ, on mount, reaching toward the city.



We climbed up to see: his hands and head are enormous, his spine is laddered, someone planted an antenna twixt his shoulder blades. While admiring the antenna we made friends who shared füet sausages with us. They told us there was another Chillida statue down the hill, so we wound down the leafy fascinating path, ignoring The Clouds Overhead. The statue was ugly. A storm broke out! We sheltered on a museum patio facing the sea, with some in-love teenagers and a sort of sprite in tiny guise of a 60-something Basque woman. We could see the lighthouses whitening the fog. Our friends gave us oranges. Hail just hurrrrrled at us, and we all retreated to the wall. What is that poem about hail popping on the lawn? Juicy hail balls bursting on the lawn? Actually it was bouncing off the patio and hitting our faces.

We took a nightbus there, and I took another back, arriving at work rumpled and salty.



Katy Jane took a train to Paris, making way for my friend Sergio from the old days, who, once having floated to Brazil, left space for Mary Kate, who is here now. On that, more later.

Oh I LOVE how the NYtimes writes about teenagers as if they were this alien life form. From an article about how huggy teenagers are, which also includes accounts of schools where hugging has been banned as "dangerous," and parents bizzarely mourn the decline of the "high-five":

Some parents find it paradoxical that a generation so steeped in hands-off virtual communication would be so eager to hug.

“Maybe it’s because all these kids do is text and go on Facebook so they don’t even have human contact anymore,” said Dona Eichner, the mother of freshman and junior girls at the high school in Montvale.

Maybe these kids have carpal tunnel syndrome from being on Facebook? So handshakes hurt?

ALSO I heard the best story ever from this other dude who teaches English:

So his father's business associate, like a zillion years ago, walked out of a building in NYC and bumped into this guy and this guy just fell right over and then a week later died in his sleep. Punchline: Andy Warhol. The guy was Andy Warhol.

Oh I should write about how super it was to have Katy Jane hereabouts (and how striking was San Sebastian) and also the gorgeous supper the Liss's treated me to (and how I shamelessly asked for the leftovers) and also the astronomic gastronomic party we're throwing for Ivan's third and probably final 26th birthday celebration tonight----but!

All I really CAN write about is how Archie is finally going to choose between Betty and Veronica and he TOTALLY has to choose Betty. Because she really and truly loves him!

Oh Yow!

So here's the news: last Sunday was Ma's Birthday. This Sunday is Posie's. Katie Jane Extraordinaire is here in Madrid and we're trading gossip. Tonight midnight we bus to San Sebastian, city I have been jonesing to visit since I damned got here. Saturday my student who reminds me of Hannah meets the Prez of the Dominican Republic, whom Hannah has also met. Sunday midnight I come back and teach again. A pigeon just landed on my balcón. This whole week has felt like vacations.

I suppose I ought write bout El Patio Maravillas.



The Patio is a squat in hipsterville Madrid. It's the most beautiful squat I've ever seen, and one of the loveliest liveliest places in all Madrid. The middle is an open patio, and all the floors above have outside passages, so the activity is nicely centered. It's full of beautifully executed graffiti, ditzy politics, concerts, workshops, blah blah. The aesthetic is comparable to Smog/Feitler at Bard, but, dare I say, the people are friendlier.



[Blah blah: There is a hackers workshop which has hooked up two telephones from which to make free international phone calls. There's a daycare. There's a restaurant and a pretty hoppin bar. There's a free clothing store which I use as a second closet, and a free bookstore which is pretty useless. There is legal advice and free Spanish classes for immigrants (and think, think how goddamn useful and kind it is to provide that service in a country so flooded with folk who literally floated over on a raft), as well as free English, German, and French classes. There's a rooftop garden, a bike workshop, an art workshop, and clubs for yoga, dance, queerness, political everything, yes.]


Like an anarchist Small World...


I've started going once a week to the German Stammtisch which, now that the weather is gorgeous, usually meets at dusk right here in the central patio, in front of the bike workshop. Most patio activities happen after seven pm. People spill out onto (not over) the balcony passageways, or bring chairs out and conduct their workshops/meals around us. Today the English Convo. class sat RIGHT next to us and I got v. confused.

Anyway, dear Government, please don't shut down El Patio Maravillas.

Another favorite student has a particular request. See she's a curator, or an apprentice curator, hopefully heading to a MOMA next year, and she needs to read in English. I suggested "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," (she reads v. well) and she LOVED it. She loved it so much that she now trusts absolutely in my ability to recommend novels of art-historical import, and has requested I find a follow-up novel about the U.S. art scene in the 60's-70's. Any suggestions?

So! I've been told extra virgin olive oil, being good for All Parts of One, makes a killer conditioner. Thing is, though---I already soak my scalp in vinegar. So! The question is, how hot is it to dress like a salad?

Multimedia blog update! (tho I hate to see my Bechdel self scoot ever down the page ugh)


Firstly all things taste good in a pita, and all things look good from a balcony-y, particularly in sunlight, and any plaza with so many children playing and so many adults selling beer cans hidden in the trash cans and so much sunlight and so much pita full of hummus and dal while I look at it must feel like a neighborhood.

I'm putting everything in pita these days. It's the warm weather. Now I'm going to a party--made red pepper hummus and bought cheap rice wine from a Chinese-owned grocery store, and come to think of it what country am I even in. I made up a tierful joke nobody at the party will understand. It has to do with the concept of a pity party and the fact that everyone will have brought hummus and baguettes*. Instead everyone will be making a joke YOU guys won't get, which is that it is a mostly-gay party and everyone who will not have brought hummus will have brought tortilla de patatas.

This song by Clams' friend Dibs is beautiful: href="http://audio.dibson.net/albums/dibs-bleeds-books/03-Suzie-Queue.mp3"

*You get the first joke, right? [(pity-y)+party]+a=pita partyyyy!!!! but everyone will have brought baguettes, which is a PITY!!!!! ha! what is the area of a full circle? ha HA! okay party time.

I had a good conversation with a student yesterday:

Me: Well, I need to go prepare my next class now.

Him: You prepare your classes?

OH my gosh.
So, some news is good news: Alison Bechdel DREW me. She drew me!



I---it's----oh! Man! Yow! (Mang I take comfort knowing my Bechdel self is much more articulate than the self I have right now. Whenever I am at a loss for words I will look to her, smugly logophiliac, recently caffeinated).

Look, she drew my arms and hand exactly as they are in the photo. My face is smarter in the picture, but my arms hold exactly what they held.


Trivia: Jaya Ch. took this photo when she visited me in Madrid in 2007!
Significa: Ben Stevens romanced this photo from Bechdel when she visited Bard. This was the exchange as documented by B. Stevens:

I started the Q&A by asking whether
she could draw as a cartoon someone from a photograph?

"Sure!", Alison said.

A photograph I had printed out from facebook? (I printed out three,
for options.)

"She looks like a cartoon character already!", Alison said.

Flummery: I did not request such a favor, but I absolutely implied that, you know, if I were to be in the presence of the creator of "Dykes to Watch Out For" and "Fun Home" I would definitely do something nice for any luckless absentee in my life. Ben, and Bechdel, went far beyond my wildest hinting.

Tonight was horrible. Supposed to be gorgeous, but made horrible. Later I'll say why, but I wanted to mark this before throwing myself into bed. Horrible, horrible.

There are many things to say and do, but I had an unexpectedly carefree day and spent it on a ten buck haircut.



It has all the bumps and innecessities needed to justify my historically 30buck haircuts, without the charm of the free ones (O Christine) often ignored by historians, but anyway, awesome.

Spring! Also spite. Ten or so males whose business my looks are not have told me not to cut my hair since I let it ducktail out. So I curtailed it, bitchily.

UPDATE: I confused myself while using the verb "ducktail," and spent some time googling. The ducktail haircut is a 50's dude presley thing, and this is from the obituary of the inventor, one Mr. Cirello:

"Mr. Cirello, who lived in Williamstown, N.J., and operated a shop in Society Hill for years, said he perfected the DA around 1939 by experimenting on a blind boy who used to keep him company in the shop. ``He didn't know what was going on,'' he recalled in a 1979 Inquirer interview. ``He didn't ask. He just sat there. He was only too glad for the company. And I was only too glad to have him to work on.''

I like when I am doing anything and then the song iTunes plays is one of my friends's.