now with videos...

I've spent entirely too much of the last three days up to my neck in code. I found and joined a site that hosts videos and figured out how to imbed them in my pbase galleries. The result is that now you can watch clips of gypsies dancing in Kashmir, my commute to work by fishing boat at sunset in the Maldives, salsa dancing in New Zealand, boys dancing in India, and even a man "channeling a hindu god" at a festival in Malaysia and much much more!

To access the new videos, click on the title of this posting or the following link:

www.pbase.com/gypsygemini

Skim through the galleries and at the top you should see the available videos by gallery. I haven't fixed the code yet so that it works with Firefox, but if you are using Internet Explorer or Opera, you should be good to go. Drop me a line if you are using another browser and can't open it.

besos

secrets....

I love the delicious little secrets that one discovers if one only takes the time to stand still...

I'm not working this week and I've had a bit more time to really stop and observe. Being the imaginative sort, I like to have theme days to inspire me and generally leave me as pleased as a kid in a cape. Example? Well, the other week I was out shopping and since I hadn't done laundry, I found myself wearing my red bikini bottoms instead of underwear(small shorts style). In the changing room, I tried on a blue t-shirt...and suddenly I was a little kid again in my Wonderwoman (now Superman) Underoos! I was so happy..and the t-shirt was only three euros, so I got it. Now Saturdays are Superman theme days.

This past Saturday, I discovered that my neighbor across the way also has a theme day on Saturday. Monday - Friday, respectable average businessman, and Saturday is the day he sits on the terrace enjoying the morning sun dressed like a cleaning lady.

.....

I live in a flat with three others...one of which I haven't met because he's on a three month holiday. The other two don't speak English...or so I thought. One of them is highly suspect because everytime I have a great difficulty and don't know the word in Spanish, she looks at me...gives me a minute and then just gives me the word as a statement. Not a question, a statement. This makes me suspect that she might actually have a very good level of English. Obviously she doesn't care to speak English and I respect that because I need to speak Spanish. The other flatmate is Mexican and really doesn't speak English...except that tonight I overheard her on the phone having a rather full conversation entirely in English!!

...realising that I had overheard her secret knowledge of the language, she now responds a little better to me and helps when I'm stuck for a word.

....

Watching me watching them....

I also discovered that the favorite Sunday morning pastime is to sit on one's terrace and watch what the neighbors are doing. While I "wasn't looking", I noticed that at least three separate terraces across the street were watching me play guitar on my bed on Sunday.

It's all very strange to me to live so close to so many people after the Maldives.

....

On the bus that is substituting the Metro for the month of August, there's an interesting sort of "forced intimacy" amongst strangers. Some days we're packed in like a subway in Tokyo. Something about this amazes me..I mean you're touched by strangers in ways that you would never stand for normally, but what can you do? There's no space. One such morning, I found my arm around a rather dashingly built young man because I couldn't really reach the bar above us, so I had to hold on behind him. Everyone is careful to avoid eye contact when in such close contact with strangers...it's polite. At the same moment, a small woman was completely pressed against my back so that when we attempted to move, we discovered that she was attached to my bum by means of my knitted skirt and I realised that I was helpless...she had to undo us because it was too close behind my back.

....

My first night out in Madrid I ascended from the Metro to the bus stop to take the final leg of my journey home just before sunrise. I walked with the walk of someone who has been up for 25 hours (it was about 6.30am), hasn't worn shoes in two years and has been walking around in heels for about 8 hours. It wasn't the most graceful walk I've ever managed. I took in the scene at the bus stop: about 20 people waiting facing the street and a bench facing the shops. On the bench was a young man who looked more than half asleep, and in front of the shops were his friends laughing and making jokes. I thought about standing, waiting...thought better of it and sat down..ok, I semi-collapsed and was lucky not to make old man noises when I did so because the relief of sitting was so great. The young men began making jokes, "Oye! She's drunk! Ha ha..." one of the other young men suddenly stopped and said, "Oy. Me too." I closed my eyes and ignored them, pretending to be asleep. Since midnight, I'd shared one glass of wine with a friend and was therefore fully in control of my senses...but was truly exhausted. Some of their jokes were funny though and I couldn't help but laugh. They picked up on the fact that I was pretending and tried to engage me in conversation. I merely opened one eye, shook my head and then continued to pretend to sleep.

Suddenly, the zombie next to me moved quickly, turned on his side, "fluffed" my lap and lay down to sleep. My hands went up in alarm as I stared down at him, his friends froze. "Joder!" one said with alarm (f**k). They looked at me to see what I would do next and if they needed to apologise and/or rescue their friend. I was shocked...then I looked at him. Truth told he wasn't threatening or doing anything bad...he was just tired and drunk. I shrugged, patted his head and went back to my own semi-concious state. His friends went wild. "Oye! He's gay! Be careful!" I opened one eye, "Good. If he's gay, I'm alright then." They stopped for a moment, confused, did the math and realised I was right. the quietest one (the one that had said, "Oy. Me too.") asked me quietly if it was ok..."Eh, no pasa nada." (It's fine, no worries.) When the bus came, I apologised as I jumped up quickly, hoping his head didn't bounce on the bench but not really caring.

I had to laugh quietly to myself...what a weird thing! To have a stranger curl up on your lap at the bus stop at 6.30 in the morning! Further...not to mind. No harm done though. He wasn't a bad sort, just a tired and possibly drunken youth.

the world's greatest superhero....

The world's best super hero...The Tick.
Episode 1, "The Tick vs. the Idea Men"

hyperdrive....

If you know me, you know I'm the exciteable sort. If you knew me the last six months I was in Boston after I decided to leave the USA to never return...you know that I'm the unbelievably exciteable sort.

-For those of you who didn't know me way back then: I was too excited to eat or sleep more than the minimum to keep me alive for about 6 months and dropped down from a size 4 to a size 0 to 1. Apparently we need more than 3-4 hours of sleep a night to really activate our memories: I have about 6 memories in as many months. I DO remember a lot of 16-20 hour work days as I prepared for the transition. After work, I still had so much energy that I would walk home in an attempt to wear myself down. By the end of those six months, because of lack of food and sleep and living on pure (drug free) adrenalin), I vaguely recall that about two ciders/beers made me so fantastically drunk that I was unable to function, was very ill for many hours and when I finally did go to sleep and then to work the next day I realised I was still drunk...in fact I was drunk for about 15 or 16 hours...very drunk. (The body normally processes one drink per hour...so 15-16 hours of being ridiculously drunk off of two drinks is well...a sign that all is not right with the body). That was one of the few days that I didn't work 16 hours...I went home looking green and grey and luckily everyone assumed it was the stomach flu going round the office.

But, I digress....here I am in Madrid and I am so amazingly full of excitement over the incredible freedoms I have here compared to the Maldives and I'm not sleeping, I'm forgetting to meditate and when I go out I find that I'm super, super excited...I can see it in the eyes of people that they are well...
They may have the same look in their eyes when watching a car wreck in progress...or they may actually be both fascinated and afraid that they will get their fingers chopped off if they get to close to my spinning craziness. It takes about 3 glasses of wine to dull me down to my normal excitement level, at which point I guess they look less in fear of their lives.

Still...the people I've met so far are lovely. Life is a beautiful thing.

furniture has arrived...

After years of not really owning anything, I have purchased a bed, a chair, nightstand, fan, speakers and a plant. My room came completely unfurnished, so it was necessary...although the plant just looked really cheerful, it wasn't a necessity. It feels rather grand and luxurious to have all of this :-)

I'll post pics of how the room looks once it's all put together. I'm missing the middle support board for the bed, so my mattress is on the floor until I'm able to return to the store and get one. For those of you that have missed seeing the new flat:

http://www.pbase.com/gypsygemini/new_flat

the good news....

Oy, the good news is that after 3 painkillers and half a bottle of wine, I can only feel a lot pain in my tooth if I bite down, otherwise it's just a dull and slightly heavy background. The bad news is that I'm still in search of a dentist and my flatmate could only tell me about two dentists: one which is very nearby but malisimo y caro (terrible and expensive) and the other which is "the worst". She has lots of teeth problems but has had such bad luck here that she usually waits until she returns to Mexico. Tomorrow I'll ask my student if he knows a dentist in Madrid...the biggest problem with that is of course that my students are rich and powerful...I might not be able to afford their good dentists.

Why, oh why am I so stupid that I didn't stay a couple more days in Bangkok and get this taken care of? Oh the pain....

the downside of bohemia...

Ok...so, just over a year ago my friend Maia convinced me to go to the dentist with her. There was a tooth that I suspected could be pulled and she needed some work done and some moral support. The dentist was a lovely young woman and she was very gentle. She told me that it was actually the tooth next to the one I thought was a problem and it had a cavity...she drilled and filled it and I was filled with the most incredible lightness of being as I realised that that feeling of heaviness that I'd had for beyond recall was actually pain. It was amazing to be without the pain. I was warned by another friend who as a result of having had dental work done in Maldives, consequently lost 3 teeth that it was a bad idea to have anything done there.

A few months later, the dull pain began again, this time worse than before. Being used to pain as just part of my background feelings since I was a girl(backpain, neck pain, toothpain, headaches, etc) I didn't really notice at first. It just registered as "something funny in a heavy sort of way that made thinking more difficult..." By the time I went to Thailand I DID recognize it was in fact pain and growing bigger, but I didn't do anything about it. Would that I did! It would have been cheap there...now I'm back in Europe with little to no money and the most tremendous pain in my back tooth/teeth on my right side. Like it or not, I'm going to have to find a dentist soon or attempt to kill it with an ice-skate (see Castaway). I've taken 3 painkillers tonight and I'm still waiting for enough relief to sleep. As I lay in my bed, I realise now why I didn't sleep the last two nights...while it's my habit to ignore the pain, my body is nonetheless aware and sleep is usually out of reach.