Kristen P. flew in from Frankfurt to visit me in Madrid.

The first night, Friday, I took her to Pio to look at the city from the top of the buried trash heap. The view was magnificent; one could see from the river Manzanares in the south all the way to Plaza España in the far north. We went to bed fairly early as Kristen was tired from the flight. In the morning we got up around ten. We smoked and went to the Retiro for a stroll through the Bosque del Recuerdo (the Forest of Memory). Art at the Reina Sofia took up the rest of the afternoon. I took a nap at siesta while she read Thoreau. The race was the "Yeti" Allycat and I came in dead last but a kid named Juan offered me a spot as a bike courier. The courier service is called Trebol. I was wanting to make some extra money. I don't know if it's worth risking life and limb though. Kristen took some photos and I talked about fixed gear bikes with the couriers. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Sunday morning we caught the train and two buses to Manzanares Viejo where the Piedriza is. The bus took us through plains and past lakeshores to the little city center. We jumped a fence and climbed around the old castle. It was completely empty, standing over the lake below. Kristen and I sat in the plaza and ate a Spanish tortilla from the cafe, drinking sangria. Then we walked up through town till we got into the hills and kept climbing up through the boulders strewn about. When we got to the top of the hill we sat down to smoke and watch the sun set behind the lakeside city and the old castle, the mountains off in the distance.
It was pretty cold waiting for the bus on the way back but after the long haul in the early winter dark we walked up the hill to Lavapies from Atocha and went to the place with no name to drink Te del Bosque. Later, when we were at home and about to fall asleep, I thought about 30,000 miles ago to the last time I'd fallen asleep with her. It'd been a February morning and I'd set off through the frozen snow down at the end of Ohio headed for Chicago. I told Kristen "Feels like my life is going by real fast, sometimes." Looking at me with her big green eyes she said "Only when you look behind." That made me chuckle. She is twenty-one, now, and full of thunder, ready to storm. It's a wonderful thing watching her grow up.

This morning when I kissed her goodbye underground at the metro I said to her what Bones said to me: "I'll see you when I see you."

It's a long way back to Germany.
It's a long way back home.

peace.

madrid put up its christmas lights so i guess the holidays are here.

i had to make merry christmas posters at school. i almost said no, but then thought better of it and bit my tongue (would you ask a christian to make a satan poster?).
this illustrates the nature of my job: I get paid more than a $1500 a month to make construction paper posters and yell at kids to sit down properly in english. i don't think any of them are actually learning anything because the administration is a bureaucratic mess of joe heller proportions (surprise surprise). i'd try to change it, but i'm basically an intern with no power and i'll be gone in six months. while in terms of actual work it is the easiest job i've ever had (and the highest paying!), in terms of job satisfaction/lack thereof, it's probably on par with my stint making sandwiches at subway when i was seventeen.

*sigh*

at least the kids are cute (2nd grade! ouf!) and i have lots of free time. speaking of which. i finished the first draft of the novel, around 50,000 words (on the slim side, i know). copies are available upon request, but you'd better actually read it and give me feedback. i'm now in the endless revision process. maybe by the time i'm unemployed i'll have it done. it'll give me some false premise for hope before it gets rejected a million times and i burn the manuscript and cut off my ear and mail it to my agent in a fit of rage. then i'll die penniless and unloved in an alley. shit, i need to find an agent. i'm really not looking forward to that part.

i had a psychedelic experience the other week when a friend of mine came over gave me some infusion. she said "it doesn't have caffeine or teateine in it," but neglected to mention that it'd make you feel reeaaaaal funny. i thought i'd been shroomed at first. luckily, it only lasted a few hours and on the whole was very enjoyable although it pretty much made me incapable of rational speech.

i've been riding my bike all the time, eating loads, and working out, all to no noticeable effect. i probably still weigh 120 pounds like i have since i was fifteen. i got lazy my first few weeks in madrid and grew out a goatee and ended up keeping it. sometimes when i lean down to talk to a student s/he will grab it and give a good yank.

i'm trying to go veg (again). i only buy/cook fish and tofu and am too broke to eat out. sometimes i slip 'cause there's this greasy spoon around the corner that has the best cheeseburgers i have ever tasted in my life and they're only 3 euros. the place is called Los Gauchos, which means the argentinian cowboys.

for christmas i'm going to gay perry* (get it? get it?) to visit my dear sis and see the folks, then olivia and i are off to rome to revel in the new year wih the pope. she and i had a blast in dublin. i have a great picture of us on the beach. it looks like the end of the earth. i'll post them when i get to a scanner.

oh yeah, for the record, i would like to state that EVERYONE HERE HAS A MULLET! yes. a mullet. men and women. mullet-hawks, poodle cuts, bangs plus mullet combos, even DREAD MULLETS!!! sometimes i crack up on the street. it's too much.

well, i'm off to the bicycle co-op. gotta be a good collectivist.

i miss you all and everyone take care.


love and rockets,
rafe


*paris

What I Did My Summer Vacation:






















































































Looks kind of like america, don't it, ma?

So for the last seven weeks i´ve been in a different city every weekend like so:

berkeley
boulder
chicago
cincinnati
lexington
nyc
madrid

Since February I´ve traveled around of 18,000 miles. That is about 3/4 the circumference of the Earth. Now I´m in Madrid and this is my home, at least for the next year. I´m still gonna be ramblin´ but not quite so much. I will have a real job and a place to call my own for the first time in a year.

I haven´t been posting much because after the Heaven Hill EP was finished, I´ve been working on the manuscript for City of Pigs. The whole thing is sketched out in note form. Now I must type it all up. I´m currently at 25,000 words (halfway to novel length!). Once it´s all typed I can actually start editing it and turn it into a coherent narrative instead of just a chain of related vignettes. I would put my overall progress at 33%. When I´m finished with it, I will post it. It´s about you all anyway, so you might as well read it.

NYC with mikey was crazy. we slept on scaffolding over a brooklyn sidewalk. met an asian guy in a suit with a ¨sea rabbit¨ under his arm walking around coney island right after we saw a model puke her guts out after a shoot at an abandoned amusement park. went to some nifty underground clubs (monkey house and nebulon) and saw some jazz. slept on a roof top with a magnificent view of manhattan. went to the empire state building. drank forties on park ave. saw some dj´s at some afterparty in manhattan. there´s more i´m certainly forgetting.

i almost missed my transfer in dublin. my feet are bruised from running through the dublin airport barefoot. dottie mae was in my arms (along with my shoes and my belt and my socks and my backpack and my jacket) and i was running top speed because i only had 3 minutes to get to my gate after i got through customs. but it´s alright. i´m in madrid now. i am at my destination. i have a phone and i talked to my folks and now i have to find a place to live. i´m really broke (´cuz dollars ain´t worth shit - it´s at $1.50/€1).

i miss everybody. especially my family.

lots of love from the heart of the iberian penninsula.

i'm up to my eyeballs in girls but the only one i really want is 2388 miles away
for the last week i've been hanging out in what is probably the last hobo camp in america.

the newest employee at my work, the dishwasher, is pre-pubescent.

i witnessed (and aided and abetted) an old lady tear down an american flag.

i've been writing. i made six pages of notes on jared hoft's character sketch alone.

i have saved up around $800.

i haven't been performing but i've been recording.

my grant from the ministry of education in spain got accepted. i'm going to madrid to teach in october. 634 euros a month, 12 hours of work a week.

i'll leave the bay area behind in about a week: the friends i've made, the songs i've sang, and the places i've come to call home for the last three months. i'm headed to eugene, oregon, to visit meizlish & mccartney, hippies at law. i'll spend about a week there and then i'll roll across to chicago and empty a bottle or two and sing a few songs with my boys there. and whaddaya know? cincinnati 'round the 26th; we ALL know what goes down in the big nasty. i'll tell y'all tells that'll make you bust with pride, blush with shame, you'll get sick from envy, get thankful it wasn't you, and get toe cramps from all the sexual innuendo.

'til then. love and rockets, young 'uns.

'cross the breeze...
now i left the so-cal yuplings behind in daly city and i packed up my things right when the sun was rising and i hitched my guitar over my shoulder and walked out the door (just like in a blues song) and

now

i live in a co-op in berkeley with the best and the brightest young 'uns i've seen in an indiana minute. i sit on the roof and sing the "sputnik blues" which goes something like this (bossa nova no-wave blues, of course):

space is big
laika is dead
sputnik is alone
so far from home

and now a word from the satellite

where is yuri g?
he knows where to find me.
russia hear my radio call,
mama, don't let me fall.

on the solar wind
is that the bark of a friend?
i was wrong,
just the electron ghost song.

where is yuri g?
he knows where to find me.
russia hear me calling?
mama, i'm falling!

and so i lost the cold war race.
my body burned as it fell from space.
goodbye, laika of my youth.
radio four told me the truth.
just one thing before i go:
russia, i loved you so.

the last thing that i felt my rivets were starting to melt.


city of angels upcoming, contact with agent N.W. le tiers imminent.
sayonara from the east bay, agent deth fuzz signing out.

chicago
i wrote this on the bus: she tells me she loves someone else and most of the time, i believe her.

it's snowing outside. i'm playing a show tonight, the formalton fest in wicker park. my bossa nova no-wave blues, in a corner of a crowded sweaty apartment performance art piece, can you dig?

and then tuesday, i'm riding the wheels of steel across that big wide open to the california coast.

i'm vibrating i'm so free.

chicago cold and grey, the old lady on the L last night said to her old man "que feo, chicago." the winter is so desolate and beautiful but it forces people together to keep warm and high...is this why midwestern kids hang together like they do? it makes sense. the south beach looked like brighton beach in the 1950s. piles of ice on the beach, visible from a 7th storie penthouse filled with photographs of a dead sister and capitalism. it breaks my heart but then mary jane and the ramblin' travelin' keep me and the kids! the kids! the kids. youth culture will save everything. i have faith in it like my mexican gramma has faith in the virgin mary. the funny thing is, it's pretty much the same thing.

sal looked at me across the couch this morning and laughed with a glee so good and said "lookit, rafe is in chicago learning the blues." and i didn't say a goddamn thing. i've always known the blues, i'm a refugee from agrarian culture, it's just now i'm figuring out how to play them.

thanks for that, baby.

i miss my boys. i miss my girls (everyone knows where my weaknesses lie). but then i remember i'm doing for them just as much as i'm doing it for me. it's a good thing being free. i love you all. peace.

|\|00 200|\|$
In the forest far from the city
I was searching for the bodhi tree.
Cortés the Killer went there to weep
as Aztlán burned on the noche triste.
Fire came with her breathy roar.
I was consumed; I could witness no more.
It was dark, I could not see.
But I was not tired, I was not thirsty,
just hungry like I’ll always be.
The only thing I’d ever hold the way
Juan Diego held the Virgin’s rose:
One lonely lily, white as the snow,
in a desert of ash: the bitter ends
of mother of father of lovers of friends.
My mind a mirror my cup empty,
I had lost the path when Dakini found me.
A salty kiss, warm inside.
She closed around me like the sea.

I felt the wet of your sweat,
the hot of your breath,
and the cold of death left me.
I made you groan.
Yes, I made you groan.
Like a ship ‘bout to break.
Like a string and a bow.
Like the earth in a quake.
Like branches in the wind.
Like closing a door.
Like the world 'bout to end.
Like a whore.
Like a lover.
Like a friend.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhi_tree
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noche_Triste
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Diego
http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Philosophy/Taichi/chuang.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakini