characters and casings

a man must tell a woman she is

beautiful

(perky, a word that sickens an intellectual,

must nevertheless describe her breasts; her scope

must be large while her tags read small)

70 times before she believes him,

and even then

(our IQs as high as our weights

are low; original ideas must fill

heads of prepackaged hair)

though he is as honest as a scale,

she feels naive.

hmm. inevitable return-from-travel letdown, fatigue and sickness, or just plain depression — it’s hard to tell. i toddled along on a tepid trip to h&m, where i got a pair of pants on sale that need to be hemmed. looking at the cloth puddles around my ankles in the dressing room, and then up at my squat, unsmiling reflection (ye gods, what a waste these hips will be if i never have children) i decided it’d be preferable — and in the longterm more useful — to be stretched myself. have the tall skinny blonde women woken up from hibernation or am i just suddenly noticing them everywhere because i’ve been away and back? maybe now that summer’s hovering on the horizon, they’ve shed their coats and are out in full force, flaunting already-bronze corners.

alitalia was kind enough to return my duffel bag this afternoon, taped up with bright blue indications that it’s been security cleaned. i hope they enjoyed pawing through my dirty shirts. lots of mail today in fact: a letter from pakketrans in german; a contract signed by my boss-to-be at americans united inviting me to formally accept my position, which i will do with pleasure; and a lovely carepackage from the young gentleman, who knows that oatmeal cookies are the key to a young lady’s heart (especially a young lady in an otherwise empty kitchen.) he included a promising-looking mixtape that unfortunately i have no means to listen to, but i’m in the process of tracking down a walkman.

i’m not too consistent an a. o. scott fan, but this review made me smile and yearn to be back in my old caustic-critic position. (registrated required. sorry about that.)

chutzpah: (n., yiddish): nerve; shamelessness: e.g., The chutzpah of that girl — not only did she take the book lying on the floor beside my bed [in the hostel,] but then she told us we couldn’t turn off the light at 11:30 to sleep a little before rising for our 4:00 a.m. cab because she was reading it.

in fact, she never returned it, and what makes it worse is it was a DIS library book. luckily i slipped it from them — a minor larcenous habit of mine and in this case a smart move because at least i won’t get continually fined.

if i had been coherent last night i’d have fought for the book and the darkness. andrea lacks the spleen for such battles. but, just as in my first night in barcelona, i exhibited a new tendency to get violently ill three bites into dinner (and over such lovely paella too). either i’m under stress and under-hydrated, or i’ve developed an allergy to food in the evening. either way, it’s not pleasant.

it took about 12 hours before the shaking,weakness,nausea mamboed out of my system, during which time i had to do the pre-dawn packing and transport thing. andrea nursed me, and at heather’s suggestion i nursed sugar water on the plane, which helped. i deboarded in copenhagen, securely stomached, but very much showing my having traveled Sloth Air (boots, untied, above white atheletic socks; green ill-fitting pajama pants; rumpled over-sized Bomb Them All t-shirt sticking out beneath clashing green hooded sweatshirt; and maniacally frizzy hair.) worst of all, i can neither shower nor sleep since our bags got misplaced in milan, and with mine my towel and my sheets. hopefully we’ll all be united in clean, deep slumber by this evening.

i just peeled off my fleece, grimacing, and made a mental note that fleece is not the wisest over-thing to wear in rain. ah well. not to dwell on the weather, but it�s been the only really disappointing part of the trip – even today, the one day that weather.com guaranteed the kind of calm, beneficent sun we were craving. moving on to more positive things, HIGHLIGHTS:

last night — the three of us dined on excellent (yes, miss becca, vegetarian, or at least seafood) tapas w/ three georgia tech boys we met at the hostel. as the blurb i found online promised, it was an ordeal for which you had to brace yourself, throw your arm through the happily gabbing crowd, and grab something from a tray on the bar. we washed it down with glasses of a mix of whitewine and champagne and it was perfect

— ten steps outside the restaurant, onto a plaza, we encountered a folk-costumed troupe of troubadors. we followed them for a minute or two before one player whisked me to the front. the guitar-players formed a circle, serenading, around the gently-twirling duo of a tall man in black and me, and another larger circle of spectators formed, clapping. at one point during the song, my partner asked my name. ��i��m giovanni,�� he said. ��do you like it?�� i nodded, dazed. ��good, i like it,�� he said, and pulled me cheek-to-velvet. when it ended, he kissed me on both cheeks and bowed over my hand. my face remained red for the next hour

— two pitchers of sangria on george orwell place w/ the tech-ians, and a clever, well-hidden bar where we toasted heather�s 22nd birthday at the exact moment (12:15).

we�d needed a good evening too as we spent the afternoon walking, walking, walking, first to and through the picasso museum, then to not-near-finished gaudi/y cathedral and then up the 400 steps to the top of the turret. we discovered, to our outrage, that there�s only a two foot long platform with a balcony nearly too high to see over, apart from which the only option is 400 steps back down. in ludicrousness it matched the ��labyrinth�� in budapest. at least, just as there, senses of humor propelled us along.

montjuic this morning and the olympic stadium, after which we decided to give barcelona�s favorite son a chance to redeem himself. parc guell, which he designed, we all agreed would be prettier in summer, and as it has no drainage to speak of we would have had to wade in knee-deep to get the full effect. but the mosaics mollified us. if i could link i�d find you pictures of lizards and whatnot to make you grind your teeth in jealousy.

we leave tomorrow morning around six a.m. not too long a trip but really, it�s been lovely. we�ve had fun and traveled well together, which is always the make-or-break factor. paella tonite and i�ll be near-perfectly satisfied.

it�s raining. but it�s not copenhagen rain, and it hasn�t been relentless. while we kicked stones by the mediterranean and sat by the marina, with variations-on-the-strawberry-theme in cones, the sun and warmth suited perfectly. while we ate our first real spanish meal under umbrellas, rain made soft comforting noises without getting us wet. altogether, it�s been lovely.

travel made yesterday seem inordinately long. heather and i flew separately from andrea; we reconvened in the airport later than expected because of various delays, and finally got to the hostel, only a block from the cathedral in the gothic quarter, after midnight. our cab driver insisted the place didn�t exist so we were rather gratified to find it: and it�s clean, and colorful, with cheap breakfast. at the moment, a british couple behind me is playing scrabble, heather and andrea are drinking tea and scribbling away in journals, and bjork is crooning.

i clap my hands with joy whenever i see palm trees. when i wasn�t paying attention, heather took a series of photographs of my getting acquainted with one particular one near the aquarium (someone who�s been here: is the aquarium worth $11? we couldn�t decide.) like seasoned travelers, we�re conquering the city on foot, and as we strolled through Parc de la Ciutadella, admiring the gorgeous fountain and declining offers for weed, we tried to remember the words to piano man and american pie. andrea�s still working on that now: she has her headphones on and keeps saying things like, ��paul is a real-estate novelist. paul! who�d have thought?��

alliterative addendum: pacified by pastry, steeled by sunlight, bolstered by beauty — having taken heather to marvel at the same park tinka (“monika”) took me to marvel at, butts on grass and licking fingers — i’ve decided that as the vacation begins today, the loveliness here counts. it do. i scamper off to spain, content, without expectations. the hostel has net access, by the way, so you will continue to hear from me there. my goals: don’t think about politics; find vegetarian tapas; see dali; take what comes; enjoy.

i am packed. i am ready. i am perilously balanced. so when rasmus writes to tell me to check the weather in barcelona, i don’t panic. and when lana posts of a drastic change in plans that will keep us separate summer-long, i take deep breaths.

but i can’t guarantee a measured, positive ester outlook if i some third slingandarrow comes at me.

if anyone else has a surprise, do not, i repeat, do not, unveil it now. news of your real gender identity can wait. meanwhile, i’m going to go bask in copenhagen sunshine and not think about the fact that (oh irony) it might be the last time i see the blessed blue til i return.

in a new record this afternoon, i was hit on by a forty year old man in a suit. all i was doing was walking up str�get — purposefully too, not ambling or batting my eyelashes at passersby; purposefully, like the natives; i know the drill — and he sidles up to me in danish. “sorry?” i say and he promptly translates his pick-up line into english: “isn’t it nice that the weather’s getting warmer?”

yes, i agree (though it’s maybe 12 degrees out, still green wool coat weather). small talk progresses til it’s revealed that i come from dc and have an interest in political science. oh, says my companion, that’s interesting: i work in the government, for the ministry of immigration. a policy person. i query him re: his involvement with the current government and he claims to be both “neutral” and a “humanist,” launching into a lecture about the failures of w./nordic europe to live up to the challenges of globalization. this takes us to gammel torv where i’m tempted to part ways and go to dis, where andrea’s waiting. but my writerly instincts win out.

“would you like to go for coffee?” can’t, i’m meeting a friend … but if he wants to keep talking, i’m up for continuing the stroll. reluctantly he agrees and we walk another couple blocks, buoyed by his discourse, until we reach r�dhusplassen, the city hall square. he gestures towards one of the many open-air cafes: “are you sure i can’t get you a drink?” i shake my head. he starts to look pitiful: “even orange juice?”

we compromise on a bench. awkardly he asks me a few questions. while i answer, he looks at not-my-face, then down at his lap; in a flash i make the mental shift from writer and woman, and it is time to go. i stand up.

“can i have your phone number?” i cloak my refusal in the logic of my leaving in a few weeks, and as a last resort he offers me his name. you can look me up, he says. you know, if you ever need material.

material all right. just not the kind he had in mind, i’m sure.

the western world is in an uproar and it’s an interesting time for an american to be in europe. it seems as though the two super-powers — assuming that the EU counts as one — are getting angrier at each other by the day. summing up the rage, from one side, is a polemic from the spectator (via mefi and worth reading, even if you don’t agree). others are trying to just calm everyone down.

is this just the hyper intellectuals shrieking at each other because that’s what they do best? are they out of touch with the man on the street? yet, wasn’t it the man on the street who shot holland’s openly-gay openly-rightist (do those cancel each other out? or was one or the other that made the man a target?) politician? if, as tinka told me yesterday, september 11 isn’t what sparked this craziness in europe, what did?

at the risk of sounding cold blooded, i appreciate the complexity of the situation. from a writer’s perspective, it makes for good narrative. so many different motives, no easy answers. the killer, apparently, was a white male with a shaved head. nowadays, who the hell knows that what means.

also interesting, though more specific to the u.s.: an examination of the textures of the left (via arts and letters)

(krissy: “ester, don’t you have class right now?” sometimes the world[wideweb] is too damn fascinating.)

today i met tinka and lived. it was unreservedly beautiful out and i basked, bare-armed, in the sun, ten minutes early to our assigned meeting place, with some half-formed notion of spotting her first. of course as soon as i let my guard down, i heard someone greet me by name. crushing: i was hoping the hairdye would serve as something of a disguise (“oh yeah,” she deadpanned, “you look like an entirely different person.”)

within minutes she’d taken me somewhere i’d never been, a lovely spot of hills and trees orbiting a lake. i got used to her british accent and we discussed politics and dogs and the whole blogging thing until the day grew less friendly and the drunks more loud. she claimed to be an atypical dane, which is vexing: i’ve had two Conversations with natives, neither of whom views him/herself as normal. well, where are the typical danes then? … oh right. jutland.

anyway, it was certainly a pleasant way to spend an afternoon in “meat space”, as my criminal justice guest-lecturer dubbed the non-worldwideweb-world.

i’m also wearing a thong today, an interesting first experience via heather, who bought andrea and me sets to match one she already had. as ilana put it, indisputably, “you don’t scream THONG.” heather knew that too, of course, which was one of the reasons she chose them as presents. while i admire that shrewdness on heather’s part, i’m not sold on the physical reality of the thing. it makes me more conscious than i like to be of my posterior with which, up til now, i’ve had a cautious, distant relationship. like with a prison pen-pal.

and does anyone have any suggestions, dammit, as to what i should read next?