[ 31.3.03] · [ ]
the blood drive was yesterday. I was gone from campus all day, away and back again on express trains like a real commuter, and when I got home the population was spotted with round white stickers that said be nice to me, I gave blood today. because blood, you know, is precious and vital. some of us don't get to decide that we want to give our blood away. we just lose it, sometimes by the mandate of doctors and testing procedures, sometimes for no apparent reason at all except maybe that someone thought the world needed more crimson. the labwork is no big deal, really; the needle lets you know that this is supposed to be happening -- and if you're like me you can watch carefully as it's inserted and the blood snakes through the tube away from your skin -- and that it's under control. but nosebleeds are something else: the sensation is so strange, so warm and wet and fast, that you don't know what it is until the blood is dripping off your lip and running between your teeth. my nose wouldn't stop bleeding today, for nearly a full hour. at first it was a little bit funny, how I couldn't tear the paper towels from the dispenser in the bathroom quickly enough to keep the blood from flowing through my fingers and down the back of my arm, and all the people filing past the sinks were stopping to stare and sometimes ask if I was okay. I'm fine, I said, it's just a nosebleed. one girl told me that she worried about getting nosebleeds sometimes, as if we were making water cooler conversation. but then the blood started splashing onto the faucets and spattering the mirror with red, pooling in the sink, dripping on the floor, sometimes hitting my shirt on the way down. the people stopped looking concerned and started looking ill, and they skittered past me like they were afraid I might explode. I kept one hand held over both my nose and my mouth -- I looked like a ravenous vampire, with blood smeared across my lips and glistening on my chin -- as I rinsed out the sinks and wiped down the mirrors, then stumbled downstairs to the relative seclusion of the lab. my nose wouldn't stop bleeding. I dripped into the trash can, watching red trails slide across the brown plastic bag -- no matter how much I see it I am always startled by how brilliant that red is -- and then, lying on the floor with a stuffed squid under my head, dripped blood from the inside of my nose down the back of my throat, all thick and salty. it feels like melting from the inside out. one professor brought me water and helped me sit up; another looked at me sympathetically and said I should send brain mail if I needed anything. there was dried blood on my face, my fingers and palms, my forearms, my sneakers. I felt like an extra in a horror movie. two hours later I was fine, but no one ever gave me a sticker...
[ 26.3.03] · [ ]
am I guilty for being too busy to be truly upset by the war, or grateful that my hectic life leaves me so little time to think about it? I can't decide. when I was changing into my dance clothes this evening I turned on the news -- I'm trying to keep up, with the times and the bbc and the local broadcasts -- only to find the meteorologist giving a bluescreened forecast of the sandstorms in the iraqi desert. a cold front is moving in, he said. indeed. after that I went to dance, with my pants rolled up to my knees and my turquoise socks distracting me in the mirror, while stevie sang through the speakers. these normal things have always seemed special to me, but now they seem especially normal.
[ 24.3.03] · [ ]
I tend to be fickle about such things, but these are my two favorite pictures, so far, from barcelona.
most of the tourists at el temple expiatori de la sagrada família were taking pictures from the front, but I thought this side was more interesting. I had to slip around a construction trailer to get everything in my viewfinder. (the big version is my current desktop background; you can have it too, if you like.)
I traded cameras with a pre-school boy at parc güell. he went a little crazy with the zoom button. I love watching kids play with cameras, maybe because I still like playing with cameras myself. I'm a little sad that I can't see how my picture of him turned out.
big world, small world. it's hard to believe that was only a week ago. [ 19.3.03] · [ ]
well, here we go. let's forget for a moment that there is no reasonable connection between september eleventh and saddam hussein, that our government gave iraq its weapons twenty years ago, that this war is motivated not just by morals but by economics ("don't burn your oil fields," says bush) and fear (and even religion), that I personally find war ro be generally repugnant and unnecessarily destructive. I can accept and understand that sometimes war, though it makes me feel like I swallowed a bunch of cold rocks when I think about it, is not always a stupid idea. I could even, maybe, envision some scenario in which a war with iraq might not be a stupid idea. I can see that saddam hussein is kind of a lunatic, and definitely dangerous. but this is stupid, stupid, stupid. first of all: forget that iraq has anything to do with this and just think about world politics. in the last two years, this country has thoroughly abandoned the wellbeing of the world as a whole (refusing to participate in the kyoto treaty, the antiballistic missile treaty, and the international criminal court; bullying into russia and alienating basically everyone else in asia; going completely insane and xenophobic post september-eleventh). but we have still been a source of economic and democratic and even moral stability, because although the united states has always had some horribly destructive foreign policies, motivated (I guess) by rampant capitalism, it also has a history of coming out on the right side of some epic struggles. here, though, it doesn't matter if we win, because we've burned our bridges. how can we be the guardian angel of democracy after such a blatant disregard for our democratic allies and the concerns of the united nations? (I don't buy for a second what bush says about the u.n.'s failure of responsibility. the united nations wants iraq disarmed. the united states wants iraq conquered.) after this goes down, the worst aspects of our international reputation will be all that we have left: we think we're above international law and diplomacy because we have big guns and lots of money. we won't be a source of stability anymore. bombing baghdad is not going to improve the lives of iraqi civilians, no matter what delusional speechified claims our president makes. this is going to hurt the world. and then: this is going to hurt us, too. I think these terror alerts are bullshit, but I also think we're asking for it now. duct tape is not going to do a damn thing. but more importantly: it is impossible to win a war against terror. why is this not obvious?! there will always be lunatics, and tyrants, and madmen. there will always be weapons of mass destruction -- we make them ourselves! it hurts me to even write that down, because I am still an idealist and a peacenik, but humanity is humanity. I do believe we can do better. but the way to start is not by trotting out the might-makes-right banner, and it is certainly not by forcing governments and leaders on other countries (we have a stunningly bad track record here; saddam is just one example). we cannot kill all the people who hate us, not because it's wrong but because it's impossible. does that mean we should simply shrug and look the other way when there are serious threats to our (or anyone else's) freedom or safety? no. but we can't just bomb people! all we're doing is driving countries into such ruin that they can't maintain democracy. we are not capable of controlling the world -- not america, not the united nations, not any single entity -- so we need a world where terrorism isn't worth it. right now, we're moving in the opposite direction, not just with foreign policy but here, too. you can't get rid of evil by reading civilians' emails, wiretapping arab-americans, or having an office of homeland security. all you do is lose the things you think you're fighting for. ugh. I'm too upset about this to be especially cogent. I'm frustrated with the call for candlelight vigils and silent protests. maybe it would make me feel a little better to stare at a candle flame for a while, but that is as selfish a goal as I can imagine. I can't go to iraq and stop the war myself -- nor would I want to try, truthfully -- so maybe it doesn't matter. of course, that's the real problem: what I think, what a whole lot americans think, what the united nations think, what the iraqi civilians think -- none of it matters. we lose.
[ 18.3.03] · [ ]
I've been home for three days, but I can't find time to write. (instead: reading in central park, dinnering in central philly, working on a paper.) what have you been doing?
[ 16.3.03] · [ ]
I made it through the afternoon without falling apart mostly because I had to, but also by telling myself that it would make a good story in the end. so now I'm here to tell you the story, and you decide whether it was worth the angst.
the morning was great; I got up early as usual and went out to soak up the barcelona aura for the last time. after breakfast (why don't we have pineapple-pear juice in america?) I checked in with my still-abed sister, who said she was going to the beach, before taking off for some museums. on my way down las ramblas I saw a new human statue (all white and apparently pretending to read the newspaper on the toilet, with his pants around his ankles and a top hat on his head) and bought a ticket to palau güell for the afternoon. then I wandered around art galleries and video dance installations for a few hours, happily quiet and cultured, before I headed down to the beach via port vell to see what was up on the sibling front.
it was so crowded on the sidewalk that we almost passed one another, and all I saw was the cover the book she had been reading shrouded inside a plastic bag. I called after her, and she turned and ran back to me, crying. mascara was smeared down her face on one side. "my bag was stolen, my bag was stolen, rabi, my bag --" I asked her what was in it. everything. of course, everything. (even your passport? everything.) "ít was behind me and then it was gone, I don't know what happened..." I repressed the urge to ask how she could have been so stupid, took her in my arms, and we went off to find the police station.
the police station was closed. siesta whatever, who closes a police station at 2:30 in the afternoon? we walked around to the back ("during closed hours please use behind door," said a sign in front) and pounded on the window. my sister had a multicultural entourage helping her, including several australians and a few elderly catalonians; I managed to come up with "perdido pasaporte," backwards, before the more fluent members of the group took over for me. the police officers, who apparently spoke not a word of english, waved at us to wait our turn.
half an hour later the office was empty, but I still got only a dismissive wave every time I stuck my head into the room. I had looked up the office of the american consulate in barcelona and discovered that it was at the end of a commuter train line, so I decided that we should leave the police report for later, and we headed away from the beach -- I have still never seen mediterranean sands, and won't anytime soon, now -- and north to the train station.
there was a security guard with a huge automatic rifle standing on the corner across from the consulate. we walked up to the door -- dark, iron, windowless -- and read the sign posted out front: office hours 9:00 - 1:00, monday - friday. "screw that," I said, "we have a plane to catch tomorrow." and I opened the door. inside, the security guard, a man whose thick brown mustache was exactly parallel to his thick brown eyebrows, told us that the office was closed. "I know, but my sister's passport was stolen and we're supposed to leave in the morning," I told him, feeling my heart twist around my throat. "yeah, but, we're closed." I bit my tongue -- literally -- for a minute as I mustered my most apologetic tone of voice. "I know you're closed. I'm really sorry for the inconvenience. but if we could just talk to the consulate..."
before we could go into the office, we had to send our belongings through an x-ray scanner and walk through a metal detector. I wasn't allowed to bring my camera inside. when I asked why, the guard non-explained that "sometimes people throw eggs." maybe he thought I was going to take surveillance photos and sell them on the sidewalk to people who needed help with their egg-targeting strategy. on the other side of the security gates, we found ourselves in an immaculately groomed courtyard full of verdant shrubs and a stately, columned, single-story building. there was a man painting one of the outside walls with a long-handled roller brush. I could barely tell the difference between the old paint and the new wet paint.
inside, we were greeted by a small, cheerful woman whose bright red lipstick was the same color as her short-sleeved sweater. "we're going to try and get this done," she said. my sister, who had no form of photo identification (or any identification, for that matter) or proof whatsoever that she was an american citizen except for her memorized social security number, set about filling out a new passport application form. I handed over my own passport, nervous to be letting it leave my clutches even to a government official, and read some of the posters on the walls. a lost passport may cause great inconvenience and lost time, said one. thanks for the tip.
we needed new passport photos and eighty-five euros for the replacement. "you should run," said the consulate's assistant, so we did, even though my sister was still wearing her beach clothes and high-heeled sandals. the bank was closed too, naturally. I handed over my fifteen remaining euros, which I had expected to last through the trip, so that my sister could go have her picture taken while I tried to figure out how to get money. I walked around the periphery of the bank, and when I spotted a lone worker inside I banged on the window, pressed my passport against the glass, then ran around to the front and buzzed the service doorbell. he didn't even speak to me, just let me in to use the atm. I guess this happens a lot?
back at the consulate, the assistant reported triumphantly that she had found us in her computer. "I love how we need machines to validate our humanity," I said, somewhat addled from all the running and worrying. everyone in the room gave me a collective puzzled look, so I sat down to read an old time magazine article about how bush is ruining the environment and doesn't deserve any of his successes, because our delinquent farce of a president is always good for an uplifting diversion.
finally the real consulate, who was undeniably american with bleached hair and a southern accent, came to talk to us. "I'm so sorry you had this happen to you," she said. "I hope it won't ruin your trip." we assured her, honestly, that it hadn't and wouldn't, but now we were just worried about being able to go home. "well, we can issue you a new passport that will be good for a year." relief. joy, even. I thought I would fall over. I gave her the eighty-five euros -- one hundred dollars! -- and she handed me a hand-written receipt. I was dizzy, full of suddenly-useless adrenaline and determination, laughing. "it looks just like a real passport!" I said when the assistant brought it out. "it is a real passport," she said, smiling a little. "take good care of it." I was so relieved that I even managed to say goodbye and thank you in proper catalan to the security guard as we left.
my euphoria wore off over the course of a phone call to the credit card company, a train ride back to barcelona's old city, and ninety minutes inside a sterile, green-walled police station. we walked right past palau güell to get there, and I looked up at its curving rainbow chimneys and felt something snap inside my head. in the station I sat on a plastic folding chair and read through my guidebook, pointlessly counting all the other things I had meant to see today: palau de la musica, the rest of parc de la ciutadella, the beach, maybe another visit to the roman walls of the cathedral -- and finally I was angry, but without direction. it would be too easy to be mad at the person who took the bag in the first place; thieves are thieves and it's up to us to avoid them. it seemed cruel to be mad at my sister, who clearly wasn't having such a fun time herself. I remembered with a grim little smile how just that morning I had sat in the museum with my passport inside the velcro-closed bag I held between my legs, and how I had worried that I wasn't being careful enough, then chastised myself for being neurotic. all these days and I've never once let my passport out of arm's reach except when I was taking a shower, always kept it in a zippered front pocket separate from my wallet and my maps, checked every morning to make sure the photocopy of the front page was still safe inside my duffel bag. if I only I had spent some of that energy on my sister -- I was supposed to take care of her, after all. but who doesn't know how to carry a passport? there are five whole pages inside that tell you how to be careful with it, how to make sure it's safe but still replaceable. every time I had asked her, still got your passport? she'd rolled her eyes at me. of course.
when my sister crankily complained about how long the police were taking to stamp a stupid form, I told her to chill out because we were lucky that things had worked out as well as they did. afterwards, as we walked back to the hostel through darkened la plaça reial, I came up with a peace offering: "well. not many people get to see the inside of the american consulate in barcelona, right?" we looked at each other, worn out. "that's right," she said. "it was all a ploy. I really just threw my bag into the ocean." I laughed, because laughing feels a lot nicer than being angry.
it still took me until the end of dinner to really get over it, though.
[ 12.3.03] · [ ]
it didn't occur to me until I had been staring down my absinthe for a good thirty seconds that I've actually had drinks that were quite a bit stiffer, including the bacardi 151 centerpiece of my performance two halloweens ago, which was so (apparently) stylish that it still inspires reënactments at rugby banquets (and sometimes in academic hallways). but thirty seconds was long enough to work up a good buzz of nervousness, evenly divided between apprehension about the potency of the drink itself and anxiety that I would do it wrong and look like an idiot. the spoon holding my sugar cube looked more like a miniature gothic garden trowel than a normal utensil, and the liquid itself was an unearthly golden-green color that reminded me of the way seawater looks when lit by deeply-submerged floodlights. more green mermaid than green fairy. I had a glass of water, but I also had delusions of pride, so I left the water sitting there as an emergency chaser (if you know me, you know what it takes to get me to chase a shot, which is to say that I would probably drink rubbing alcohol straight without a chaser if my reputation were at stake). the sugar, set aflame by the velvet-clad bartender, melted slowly enough that I could watch the caramel bubble and creep its way across the surface, while the glass beneath it sent a green flicker-glow spilling across the tabletop. but it was still too soon that my spoon was hissing and dripping and I dropped it into the absinthe, swirled it around and around while ribbons of heat snaked off the spoon and I thought how I had never ever been so intensely focused on stirring something. when I drank it I couldn't taste it so much as feel it. it was a stream of molten emeralds; it was cold and hot and sweet and bitter and pungent all at the same time. it smelled like licorice and menthol, but in my mouth and chest it was only liquid fire. I imagined that I myself had begun to suddenly throb and glow like a firefly inside the dark smoke-threaded bar, but I looked down at my hands and they were the same as always, small and curved and pink. I dipped my finger into the water and swished it around to hear its wetness. I never drank it. there were no fireworks or green fairies afterwards, but I felt the lightness of my glow carrying me across the sidewalk and through the magical lamplit night. I suspect I would have felt that way even without the absinthe.
[ 10.3.03] · [ ]
it's strange to take stock of the inconsequential things you learn about yourself when you travel. for instance: I do not know french. oh, I can spit out spontaneous (and probably ungrammatical) phrases, things that I say sound better in french (and they do), but that is ballet french, storybook french, pop song french, love letter french; in my head it all sounds breathy and musical and twee, as if brigitte bardot had taken up with the babelfish and had spawned lots of babies to be her bedtime story audience. when real french people talk, it just washes over me in a flurry of strangely hard vowels and soft consonants, except for the occasional cognate or coincidentally familiar word that leaps out to startle me into remembering that this is function, not just form. I do not know how to to move through the french-speaking world; it took me a full half hour of mutely smiling at our air france flight crew before I remembered merci. gracias, of course, or even gràcies now, is easy and instinctual. I can't carry on much of a conversation in spanish, much less catalan, but I can understand most of what I hear and nearly all of what I read. I can get around and I know what's going on, and I can communicate in a way that is adequate, if sometimes rather tortured and punctuated more by my wildly inconsistent memory for vocabulary than by any natural flow of the language. I can parse the accents of people who speak to me in english so that I hear the words before the phonemes. I don't know why this all surprises me so much -- I made it through spanish 4 before the stiltedness of classroom spanish and the inanity of weekly vocabulary (parts of the guitar, personality traits, fatal diseases) drove me into a temporary hatred of foreign languages, but I never studied french at all except for a little bit in preschool, and all I remember of that is that I once knew the french word for "spoon." but I am equally bewildered by my french semi-cluelessness and my spanish semi-competence. I wonder how I would feel in china or morocco, where I would be not just clueless but also conspicuously alien beneath my fair hair and pale eyes. it's not, of course, that I've really needed to speak anything but english, except in one case where some pointing and headshaking served as a perfectly fine substitute. but I am stubborn and I know I have the ability, whether innate or simply a case of delusions spun into reality, to think and dream in languages that aren't english. I know I will never truly perceive the world as anything but a monolingual american, but I still try to pretend. when our airplane left paris it flew almost directly over the eiffel tower, which managed to look diminuitively toylike even though it stretched above everything else on the ground, and I watched over the landscape in a sleep-deprived stupor and thought to myself that it did look very french indeed. as if I know anything! barcelona is fabulous, by the way.
[ 9.3.03] · [ ]
one of the things I like about traveling is how it makes me nervous, jumpy, strung with adrenaline all through my heart and nerves and brain. I'm scared not of being in a foreign city by myself, not of being unable to communicate even though I know only three words and two phrases so far of catalan (one of which is, of course, no entenc català which I will surely screw up by saying entiendo instead -- stupid american!), not even of being responsible for another (younger, sillier, smaller) girl, but only of keeping track of all these dates and times and numbers: flight number, gate number, metro line number (colors too though), street address. it's an obstacle course, 4242 miles and perhaps thirteen hours from start to finish, and I have to be always alert, focused, jumping. it's fun because I know it will all be fine, my half-planned half-haphazard whim of an adventure, and I will be back here and tethered again to my newly-blooming spring semester in less than a week. but there are little tripwires everywhere, like yesterday when I called the airline to make sure -- she asked for my trip number and flight numbers and I said each digit carefully into the phone (everyone always says I talk too fast), and when she asked for my name I said whitaker, one t and rabi, r-a-b-i like I always do to head off the inevitable spelling mistakes. but then she was confused, concerned, a little reproachful: there is no rabi whitaker in our database -- except it was only in my head, and I caught myself in time to remember that my birth certificate and thus my passport and thus my plane tickets all say my name is audrey rabi, or sometimes AUDREYRABI all inexplicably squashed together like that. I spelled it for her and she found me safe inside the computer. you're all set, she said, and have a nice trip. in between fits of packing and cleaning I've been looking out my window, watching down the hill of melting snow to the train station where soon I will collect my baby sister (her trip is longer than mine, starting and eventually ending in baltimore). every hour just before the half, the platform crowd swells full of college students, all draped in backpacks and suitcases and jackets too warm for this beautiful sunny weather. I like the way we have to gather in clumps before we scatter, channeling ourselves along those flightlines that arc from city to city and moving apart, together, apart, together. I've taken to slipping the ripped-off ends of my boarding passes in between the back pages of my passport, and somehow there are a few that haven't fallen out even as I kept traveling. now I have philadelphia to london, madison to pittsburgh, santiago-chile to atlanta, pittsburgh to seattle all lined up on my desk. soon there will be paris to barcelona, and more, which I think is not too bad for a year's worth of airplanes. I am flutterhearted and so full of buzzing energy that I could fly to europe myself, if only I had a place high enough to jump from.
[ 8.3.03] · [ ]
I don't have a web-birthday, because all my projects and websites have evolved from one another, and I definitely don't remember when I made my first website (sometime in the early fall of 1996, but more specifically? no idea). so I was surprised, when I updated my archives at the end of the month, to realize that wockerjabby has been around for over three years now. I think that makes it at least a young adult in web-time. still not sure exactly what it wants to be, but isn't that what makes life interesting sometimes?
[ 4.3.03] · [ ]
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