los lunes al sol

I decided to take up the blog again because I'm an american, back in Spain, and frankly I like reflecting on my daily life, here on the world wide web, to no one in particular.

But alas!  I have not taken it so seriously.  Or at least, I have not had enough moments of motivational inspiration to come here and ramble about them.  The photos and videos have been vain attempts to mask my lack of inspiration.

But wait..I'm wondering, can I, while on an island, in the mild mediterranean, young and unemployed but rent free, enjoying each day so incredibly fully with my partner in crime (we stole mandarins from an orchard the other day), call this lack of inspiration?

No, really, I can't.  Lack of..incentive?

Today I woke up around 9:30 and conducted my morning ritual, which consists of making orange juice and then situating myself in the corner of the living room next to the window, where I can access internet and thus, the world.  I look at my websites while I wait for Lucas to get up (it's not his forte), shower (I shower at night), and get dressed (I like to have breakfast in my pajamas and preferably stay in them all morning unless I have plans that oblige me to act otherwise).  Oh, and I also wait for him to prepare breakfast (tea and toast) because I usually get so wrapped up with the world on the world wide web that he gets around to it before I do.  Plus it's only fair because I squeezed the oranges.

Where was I?  Oh yes, lack of intelligence.

After we had breakfast, I got dressed, jumped in the car and drove through winding country roads, alongside bright yellow fields of mustard flowers and rolling hills scattered with white houses and the occasional almond tree in bloom ('tis the season).  I eventually arrived to a town nearby, Santa Gertrudis, where there is a knitting workshop (a wonderful place), to continue with my project.  You see, I'm knitting a sweater, and because I don't know what I'm doing, the woman who owns the store is helping me.

Lack of intelligence, no!  I mean lack of indecision.

Two hours later, I left the workshop with my project at the same point as where I left off...last night, in an attempt to knit and play scrabble simultaneously, I made a huge mistake that required backtracking a pretty long way this morning.  I redid some of what had been undone, and then I sat and talked with this woman for 45 minutes.  I bought a loaf of bread and went home.

What is lack of indecision?  Decision? I'm losing it. I meant lack of intrusion.

I arrived around 2:30, already realizing we were going to be having lunch no sooner than 4 pm yet again.  But to my surprise, we had impromptu lunch plans with some friends who were headed to the bar right down the road from us...

So at 3 pm, I found myself sitting out on the sunny corner of two country roads, drinking a beer and trying to pretend like it wasn't windy, because this is my version of Los Lunes al Sol, and if I were making this story up, we would have continued to have lunch outside in the sun.

But it was windy, so we drank our beers and went inside, where the six of us feasted until nearly 6 pm.

And upon arriving home, we started the fire, laid down on the couch, relaxed for an hour, and before we knew it, it was 7, Lucas had an appointment with the physical therapist, and I was to have tea all alone.

And that's how I got here, with my teapot (now empty), rambling away, and wondering if I will ever get to the point of this post.  Wondering, no, doubting.

Lack of initiative!  Yes.  Lack of initiative.  I don't think I'm alone in admitting that the busier I am, the more productive I am.  It must be human nature or something.   So I don't have much initiative lately, because I have so much beautiful time.  I don't get very much done, because I enjoy los lunes al sol, this being a phrase used often by spaniards, inspired by a 2002 film (starring Javier Bardem) about a group of laid-off shipyard workers who have their Mondays in the sun.

We are going to Madrid next week, and I'm scared for our lunes al sol.  Here, the people we know are either retired or artists or only work during the tourist season.  Isolated on the island, we don't feel the crisis as much, the crisis that has so many people out on Mondays in sunny Spain...

Morale in Madrid, according to nearly every single person I've talked to there, is not very high.  All people talk about is how bad things are, and I can vouch for that after what I've seen in the national news and press.  And what can I do?  Just hope things get better, my friends and family find work, and in the meantime try not to get contaminated by the low spirits.

And in any case, about my lack of initiative, it's the city, I am sure it will wind me up in the way cities do, and let's see if my next post is something more than, literally, my entire day (the only omission being the intermission I took a few paragraphs ago to dance to "Lust for Life" blaring on the stereo).

ibiza timelapse

This is Ibiza from Alejandro Iborra on Vimeo.

Totally thought this video was going to be mega party time debauchery in da club.  Pleasantly surprised, and though the timelapse does make for some weird effects here and there, it by no means exaggerates the stars...they really are that big and bright.

"A toy boat, a toy boat, a toy boat..."

Swineburne Technological College brochure

or, how I'm thinking I might promote future classes.

Flashmob in a spanish unemployment office.

welcome back to spain

Welcome back to Spain.

After what felt like a lifetime but also the blink of an eye, I'm back in Spain after nearly six months stateside with a whole new outlook on things.

Well, a whole new outlook is probably an exaggeration, considering I can't quite pinpoint how I feel about it all.  "It all" being life and how or where I'm supposed to live it.

Decisions and inertia and immigration laws aside, it's turned out to be the biggest dilemma of my quarter century life crisis.

Raise your hand if you're one of mine...a person who mistook her character for a wanderer, simply because she felt deprived of a place to call home.

One thing I've learned about myself over this whole escapade (which amounts to nearly four years of some of the best of my life) is that I am not a wanderer nor do I want to be.  I am a nester, and, due to my own confusion, I've made far too many tiny nests.  And if we take this metaphor a little further, I can say with much conviction that my wings are tired.

Oh, I sound so dramatic but how else can I put it?!  Okay, fine, I'll put it simply.  Like I put it to Lucas a few days ago:  I just want to go somewhere, and stay there for a long, long time.

I guess our problem, though, is that tiny little word "somewhere".  Where?  I should really say,  I just want to go somewhere, close to my mom and sister and friends, that has a high quality of life for a low price, that's near the ocean and where I can bike and walk to all the places I need to go, that has mild weather but also four seasons, with good food and good people, oh and a job for the both of us would be nice, and then I will stay there for a long time.

Anyway, in the meantime, and let's see if it serves as some inspiration, we are stationed in Ibiza.  We are sort of taking care of this house whose owners split up and, in intervals, split, and the place has fallen into a sort of oblivion.  I like to imagine and days and weeks and months of silence and void that filled these rooms before we came to inhabit them...

I wasn't sure if it was the best idea at the beginning.  The house needed a lot of work to get back into livable shape, and we aren't even sure how long we will be here.  Of course handyman Lucas has taken care of nearly everything (from the broken water heater to the despicable plumbing situation) and that has left me with the womanly duties of interior aspects and cleanliness.  Knowing that we might not be here long, I did not want to get my hands dirty and in the process create some sort of attachment to the place.  There was even a small temper tantrum, I remember now, about the horribly rusting and slimy silverware that were smartly left in their own watery filth.  "I don't want to deal with this!!!"  That's what I said.

But if we wanted to eat we had to deal with it, and because Lucas had his hands full with firewood, it was up to me.  Once I had my sleeves rolled up and my hands deep in that project, I let them deal with a million other things in and around the house.  And of course, it felt good.

So, welcome to Ibiza aka country life aka DIY's birthplace.  We're in the middle of the woods, surrounded by Lucas's family and friends, and it may not be summer nor necessarily vacation nor a permanent spot to call home, but honestly I can't complain.  There's a million things to do beyond housekeeping, especially with the fantastic weather as of late.  Enjoy the photos..

Where I dwell lately.

This "interior garden" is screaming for help, but that might be a project I'm not willing to deal with.

I call this fantastic photo "Bathed in sunlight".

We went squid fishing...the first little guy...

Not really sure why this happens, but they change colors twice in the span of about 10 minutes...

We ended up catching eight squid (and one octopus which we let go)...I'll admit I felt sad for them...they made these little coughing noises...but two days later we ate stuffed squid prepared by Lucas's uncle (the bodies stuffed with the tentacles) and I have never tasted such deliciousness in my life. The texture has nothing to do with what I've tried in restaurants.

Taking picture of the sunset on a sailboat...not easy.

It's oddly forgettable, the fact that we are both in the land of the unemployed.

Best part of the house...wood burning stove.

Lucas pissed because I want him to be in every photo.  Thats a giant stack of rock salt.  Most of it goes to northern Europe, where, according to the informational plaque, it serves in a culinary fashion atop fresh cod.  Which is a lie, because they certainly don't eat THAT much cod.  It's actually used mostly for the icy roads.

Exploring the neighborhood.

The plot of land on which we and many others live is named after this well, which is over 2,000 years old!!

I'm happy and well, but missing you!!