California, I love you.

California, I love you, You are all green and brown and purple, dotted hillsides and trees feathered out like amazing plumage. Up in Humboldt, strangely friendly hippies come out of their houses and RVs with stocky babies, full of good tidings and dark warnings.

Mishka rubs her muzzle in the dark soil and bounds with incredible buoyancy over fallen branches. Later, she will curl up on a mossy stump, nestled between the redwoods, and take a nap, looking royal and exhausted. We will dig a fire pit and burn dry wood and pine cones, their sap sizzling as they glow black, red, white, and then dissipate into the crisp air.

We've brought too much food, not enough booze, and wonder if we should ration our beer or start drinking cinnamon whiskey at dusk. The sky goes cold and we hang a bright lantern, drinking around the fire, and in the damp morning we drink watery coffee and seek out little patches of sunlight to defrost in. I change my clothes on a sunny hill and marvel at the soft sun all across my bare shoulders.

After scrambling eggs on a wobbling single burner, we gather bread and water and blankets and go tromping down a trail marked with big arrows made of sticks on the forest floor. The ground is soft with layers of fallen leaves and crackling twigs. We weave between skinny saplings and dark madrones, climbing beneath fallen trunks, and above branches that grasp at our ankles.

Up on the hilltop we spread our blanket in a sunny clearing and sprawl and explore and snack. Mishka disappears into the rustling bushes and emerges grinning and dirty, her long tongue lolling. We paint each others' faces, laying on our backs with our eyes closed, soft strokes turning us vibrant blue purple, yellow and red, stark white, smooth brown.

The sun droops, shadows stretching long across the yellow-brown leaves, and we gather up and head back down the hill, scattered in clumps. When we arrive at our spot, aglow with late afternoon sunshine, the rickety log benches, the still fire pit, our green and blue tents side by side, the little table perched in the shade, if feels strangely familiar. We spread out, building a fire, reading, gathering bread and pesto, slicing tomatoes. We cook paninis in a cast iron fireplace press, and eat them in little shared pieces. They are sticky and melty, warm and crisp.

California, I love you, and the golden singing treetops high up and green, while down below we crouch low to the cold packed dirt, listening to the crackle and hiss of the fire. The pine cones hold on tight, and the ashes come floating down, elusive and white.

I love the cold apricot ale at dusk, and layers of smoke-smelling clothing, bundled in hats and thick socks. California, I love you, and the promise of spring and the promise of pasta. I love you and the painted faces of my friends, wavering behind a plume of smoke across the fire, and my lover, with his hands on my shoulders, and my dog, gnawing on pine cones and bringing us twisted sticks, triumphant.

Blog #100: Cádiz, Coming Home, and Cat Sedatives

Guess what!

This is my 100th blog. 

I was going to try and do or write something awesome, but life is just too crazy for me to be that creative, however the month is slowly taking shape and making a tiny bit of sense. Chaotic, stressful, transitional sense, but still, something like certainty is slowly creeping into July.

For starters, Gypsy may actually be coming home with me after all. My cat-loving aunt got wind of my pickle and has offered to help out, so now I've re-commenced the kind of slow, confusing, electronic communications process of talking to animal shipping people and figuring out how it's going down. It's simultaneously a huge relief, because I'm so happy to be bringing him home, but also a huge stress, because the process is confusing and the people aren't extremely helpful, and because it's changed all my semi-formulated, half-assed plans for my last little stretch of time here. Which is coming to a close, very, very fast.

The new plan is something like this: stay in Granada, in my house with Gyps and Borja until the 12th, then bum a ride with Borja and friends to Cádiz, where he's from, meet his fambam, see some stuff, hit up a little festival for a couple days, probably be a beach bum for a little, then try and get a rideshare on the 20th or so back to Granada, be a homeless cat person at Mauna's house for my last few days, and then rideshare or bus (potentially sedating my cat and sneaking him onto said bus...) to Madrid to catch my 11am flight from Madrid back to home sweet San Francisco, where my lover will be waiting with burritos in hand. And from there it looks like we may be headed to the woods, potentially escaping my reverse culture shock and despair by camping with mom, Uly, Casey and hopefully Kelsey for a couple days. I agreed to this without thinking about what to do with Gypsy, but I also recently bought him a harness and leash, so maybe he'll be chillin. So far he doesn't seem to give a fuck, even though Borja and Guille won't stop making fun of him and warning me that I'm going to give him a complex.

Look how many fucks I give about my cat harness.

Guys, I'm gonna be home in 19 puny days. This is incomprehensibly awesome and terrible. I don't wanna go home, but I can't wait to go home. Shit is strange. I've skipped a ton, but that's all for now. I have to go buy cat sedatives.

Let the Mayhem Begin

Alright, it's been a while since I've sat down and written something about what exactly I've been doing these days. Here's what's been going on:

My house is still wonderful, and it's more of a BroMansion than ever, since yet another dude has taken to inhabiting our basement, but he's also a mega chiller; David's long-haired juggling friend, Guillermo. He's older and cleaner than everyone else. A while back Matteo found a kitten in a trashcan (and when I say kitten I mean eyes-still closed, so small I thought it was a hamster, kitten) and we all become a like four-headed cat mama and fed him with a little squirty thing like a billions times a day, UNTIL: one fateful day we took him to the Huerto de Carlos V, because no one was home to take care of him, and I ran into Alberto, a jolly dreaded festival friend we made at the Dragón, whose housemate really wanted a teensy kitten. So we handed him off right there and then. Thank god he didn't end up as the fifth animal in our furry family; it's already impossible to cook without eating hair in this house. We plan on visiting him someday soon, though.

What else? A few weeks ago one of the biggest music festivals in Spain, el Viña Rock, took place in Villarrobledo, about a four hour drive North of Granada. The actual festival was quite expensive, but since Spaniards are awesome, they tend to set up the "anti" festival, or in other words, a free electronic rave fest, right outside...why don't we do this, California? Anyway, Leon, Adam, Carlos, Jarir and I rented a car and headed over. It rained ALL weekend, but we had an amazing time.

Picture: rain, mud, my polar bear hat (muddy), face paint, bodybuzzing speakers, thunder, lightening, short-lived, weather-defying nudity, vodka, muddy boots, muddy tent, muddy car, cereal out of the box and rain-soggy bread, one precious avocado (no knife), beer, star stickers (a gift from a fairy with a glowing wand!), strange coincidences and shared acquaintances, the thizzle dance, goosebumps, shit-smeared Port-o-Potties and bared asses in the field of stubby bushes, huge tarps billowing over the sweaty gape-faced masses, that collective stomp with the drop, bonfires, lakes of mud, giant pupils under sweeping colored lights, three hour sleep sessions cramped up in the front seat of the car, losing my third phone, losing Adam (who we recovered, unlike the phone), and then Monday morning deliriously scrubbing the seats of the car, vacuuming up the ashes, the roaches, gathering soggy brown articles of clothing, eating oranges and melting into couches, into bed. Twelve hours of recovery sleep. And then, in Carlos' case, fever.

Since then I've been in quite a mellow mode (understandably, right?) Recently had some couch surfers by- German and Finnish- and took them tapa-ing, strolled around the Albaicín, showed them the Huerto where I stopped briefly and had my face painted and befriended a gorgeous Australian Shepard and a hairy-chested shirtless old English hippy man. I also now know how to say "laughing sausage" in Finnish.

This is the last month of class, and I've quite honestly been a horrible slacker. It's become quite clear that all  my scholarly motivation is based on an actual interest in learning, something that is not really an option in this University system. Anyway, the slacking is at least half due to the holidays and strikes that have knocked out probably like 50% of the classes I would have had these past months. (For example,  I'm not at school right now because of striking...) But classes end soon and then I have June to "study" and exams at the end of June, beginning of July.

In other news I'm shitting bricks of anticipation and glee because my babygirl Kimmykins is coming to see me in 9 short days! Balls Almighty, it's gonna be a frolic and a half! I don't really have plans for June or July, but I want to go somewhere at some point... I'm kind of just waiting for the adventures to manifest themselves- they always do! Vin has mentioned planning some sort of roadtrip, to Poland, for example, and I also really want to go to Germany (there's apparently an amazing festival near Hamburg in June!), and Ireland is also high on my list... This world is so big and beautiful, I just don't have time to tackle it all, but I suppose this is really only the beginning.

May is gorgeous and sunny and I love it. I've started doing yoga on the terrace, and reading on the terrace, and generally living on the terrace. Three hurrays for sunscreen!

California, I do miss you, despite all the shameless fun I've been having. I can't believe I'll be back "home" in three short month! I hope you guys are all prepared to burrito binge with me, to Boardwalk our faces off, to embark on facepainted frolics, get our fresh produce on at Twin Palms Ranch, spazz out at the dog beach with my flufferbutt and my tan man, get some three am nacho fries at Saturn, be critters in the Meekerite woods, and I guess take a peek at some American bars for the first time in my life (unless you count the Jury Room in Santa Cruz...I don't.) I also hope y'all don't expect me to come back fashionable and cultured-- quite the contrary; Granada has cultivated the wild child in me more than ever!

Anyway, I take my leave to try and get some useful things done right quick before heading to Mauna's for breakfast-for-dinner tonight, hitting up a screening of También la Lluvia at some bar and maybe checking out a concert/party at a nearby squat on Friday, and who the hell knows what else! ¡Hasta pronto, bitches!

Belgium

I haven’t slept; the bright sunlight feels like a heavy blanket against my chest. Along the freeway are big stretches of warped glass, or birds and fish on long cement walls, we drive across a bridge with sleek cables that stretch out like big wings, like sails. We pass clusters of trees that look strangely flat, trees full of nests. The black birds seem to leave ripples behind as they glide through the purpley skies. All around us is a bright rainbow of green; light spring green, deep damp green, green leaves aglow with sunlight. At a gas station we pick up festival-bound hitchhikers. They give us Swiss chocolate and a little weed. We sail through the border and say, oh. We stop and smoke a spliff in a little cluster of trees, and later wish each other happy lives and I doze off watching orange rooftops and clusters of cows pass by the window. It all looks so clean and wholesome. In Brugge we park and then follow the peaks of old medieval towers, the big ancient brick buildings, wandering around and snapping photos of the red doors, the green shutters, the geese and swans and ducks along the murky canals. We buy French fries and write Brugge a letter. We gawk at big chocolate Easter sculptures. We stop at an art gallery with slippery floors, We find a wall of beer. We find a huge red poodle sculpture; it looks diabolical. We stop for tea, and then back in the car we begin to drive whimsically, turning onto smaller roads and searching for some quiet place where we can park. A headache grows in my temple, and finally we find a little turn out in the countryside alongside a swampy field. We push down the back seats and lay down blankets and pillows, and smoke out the door as the sky turns dusty midnight purple. The sound of rain drops patters through my dreams.

When we wake up, outside the window is thick white-gray mist; skinny reeds bob through the milky morning. We hit the road. In Antwerpen we stop at a little café and have tea. A man comes in with a sweet lab dog, and she walks over and greets us quietly. We find a busy market where men are calling out the prices for their asparagus and selling olives from enormous silver bowls. The scent of feta cheese and oil lingers in the air. They sell salami and cheese, they sell dream catchers and posters, tulips and clothing. Vincent buys a little water pipe. We hit the road, and eventually recognize the warped glass along the highway. Back in Amsterdam, traffic is fussy—we wiggle our way into a little parking space and eat Chinese food before parting ways.