Thank You / Sign off

Thank you all of you who have shared the dizzying highs and terrifying lows of my expat life the last 5+ years, on both URLs. It has meant the world to me. But now i am home. I can call you on the phone and visit you! I'm also hoping my life will be a bit less frantic and exciting, (but i doubt it.) So i bid you adios and good-bye in blog form only. This is The Spanish Exile, signing off. 

-Jay 

Out of Exile

When I first came to this island
that I called by own name
I was happy in this fortress,
in my exile I remained
But the hours grew so empty
and the ocean sent her waves
In the figure of a woman
and she pulled me out to sea

When you come down to take me home
send my soul away
When you come round you'll make me whole
send my soul away
-AudioSlave

I have successfully been Craptured back to CT. I woke up in my own bed in Ansonia. 

I am a great deal disoriented from a lack of sleep, time change, soaring through the air at 700k and the negative effects being treated like cattle in Dublin Airport (they suck.) But i'll be fine. 
I have come home. 

Expatriation's End

19:44

And you know it's time to go
Through the sleet and driving snow
Across the fields of mourningLight in the distance
-U2

How i hate moving. I hate this fucktards i live with. There will be 5 people living here after i leave with on bathroom and you can't let the water run while your in the shower and you are only allowed to do one load of laundry per week between the hours of 23:00 and 12:00.

Someone asked me if i was going to poison them before i leave. I said i came to the conclusion that thier lives sucked ass so badly that it was crueler to let them live. In the end, i am not a humanitarian. 

Got to bring drums to Mike's (ugh.)

And you hunger for the time
Time to heal, desire, time
And your earth moves beneath
Your own dream landscape

Had lunch with Cara to say good-bye. She is moving in with her boyfriend. Great guy. Drummer. Sad to say good-bye to so many.

But mentally, i checked out in July. I am so done with this place. Spain is a disaster right now. 

But it's been a fantastic adventure.

Drop stuff off for folks at J&J's. See Maria, Gøran and Carla. Then go home and pack and clean and await the Crapture, 12 hours from now. Maybne no sleep tonight. I don't care. I'll sleep in the airport.

But now, a last minute check of critical crap (medication) and then start lugging the drums down. I really need to learn how to play Kevin's bass. 

Good-bye drums. You are beautiful and adored bashing around on you. 

But i am happy. This is the right move for me. I don't see how i could grow here any longer.


2:22

Packing..., waiting to be Craptured. So i guess this is good-bye...

EXILE'S END

2,047 days later...

I am coming home.

There were hugs and tears and people saying lots of sweet things about someone who i could only think resembled me but wasn't quite me. These people are family. I love them. 

Much to do! I'll meet Cara for lunch at 15:15 and then much to do. 

It all seems so surreal. 

Home.

I'm not even sure i exactly grasp what that means. But i am excited. 


5 years now this sight has been my journal, my record of all mine eyes hath seen. Thank you for sharing it with me. It means the world to me. Plus, i guess this means i know have experience in journalism, something i never aspired to. 

Okay. Got to get my ass in gear. 

Route 666

Sies de Agosto, 2012,  16:58

Google Maps tells me that from Madrid to Ansonia is 3, 666 miles. Ha! See, Satan is my Father. And if you had ever met my paternal grandparents, you never could have doubted. Bad people. The grass upon which they walked wilted. Scary, hateful, cold people.

I feel like it's a natural segway into the Republican Party, but i'm gonna classily walk away and not say anything derrogatory about Mitt Romney. 

Ha. That's what his Mom, Lenore, always says!

JUST SAY NO TO THE ROMULAN IN 2012

People are saying such nice things about me. I can't wait to come home and be treated like crap again. My sister brought a 32 inch screen for my room up to Mum's. Thanks Mel! You rock. 

Why do i have to clean? I have 3 cans of petrol. Can't i just burn down this place and take these morons with me?

The Cercanias train has been paralyzed by several days of strikes.  Madrid will be engulfed in chaos by November. Things are going to get hella-worse before they get better. And things will never be the same here. This is España's worst crisis since the Civil War (1936 -1939.) They are completely and utterly fallado (fucked.) 

Open the car door slow
Don't think you'll ever know my name
Get all that you deserve, in this world

-Steven Wilson

18:13
This is unbelievable. judo olympian expelled for eating marijuana

i'm only going to say this one more time; unless you are a musician or having sex, marijuana is NOT a performance enhancing drug. Got it? Can we go home now?

The Apocalypse on 8/8

21:00

Crapture |ˈcrap ch ər|  noun
2 ( the Crapture) (according to some millenarian teaching) the transporting of a believer's crap (i.e., possesions)to Connecticut at the second coming of Jay.

Music to be Craptured by:

What Have We Sown - The Pineapple Thief

Clockwork Angels - Rush

Henry Fool - Henry Fool

E. Pluribus Funk - Grand Funk Railroad

Ghosts - Frequency Drift

...Laid to Rest - Frequency Drift
Snakes and Arrows - Rush
Somewhere Else - Marillion

LUNES 1:22

The Whore of Babylon

The book i'm reading, The Rapture, is fantastic. Chilling. Can't put it down.

The Washington Nationals continue to win.

The American women play Canada in soccer mañana.

I have to return books to two academies mañana, get my clip on sunglasses from the eyeball place, clean, take clothes to be donated and then head to J&J in the eve to say good-bye.

Got to back up my hard-drive too.

Haile Selassie, proclaimed to be the Messiah by Rastafarians

I'm leaving. It's August 6. 

67 years ago  the 1st atomic bomb was dropped on a city in Hiroshima, Japan. Two days later one was dropped on Nagasaki. 

This is an awfully dark blog entry. Here's happier news: 

The Summer 2012 Repatriation Tour

Aug 8, 9 - Ansonia, CT

Aug 10 - Wilton, CT

Aug 11 - Newtown, CT
Aug 18 - Newtown
Aug 30 - Sept. 4 - Washington DC

16:36

The last two companies have paid me. Woo hoo! 41 HOURS TO GO. Still got to take clothes to donation box. Then get sunglasses. Bring a humidifier and my printer to J&J's for Carrie and Vicky. And then, Bender Monday. Good-bye to me. This time it's for good.  

Snogging

Life is very odd. The Welsh Witch was busting my chops that i was going to a wedding where my date, a bridesmade and a third  woman (who shall remain nameless) were all people i had slept with. But she then said if anyone asked me anything about my love life, that they'd ask if i had slept with her yet (bitch, for being right!) Everyone asks if she and i are a couple. It does get old.


The funny thing is that on the way home my friend, who shall also remain nameless (Maria had left on the 2:00am bus, we took the 5:00am bus) kissed me. It was all very innocent and quite cute. We snogged a bit. It was quite lovely. She had just concluded a long, complicated break up, and said that maybe if it had been a different time, we might have been together. And that was that. I was blown away.  It was awesome. A lovely end to a perfect day.


 <<<->>>


i leave in 3 days! 

Scenes from a wedding

> Maria and i had a blast at the wedding. I'll post pics at some point. Right now i am in recovery mode and then must pack. It never ends. The place was almost two hours away in Ayllón. It was  all old ruins of buildings and was stunning. The food was top notch. It was a wonderful day. Tim and Laura were so happy and had guests from all over the world. 


>Andy Murray wins the gold in tennis at Wimbeldon. Nice job, Great Britain. 


>The Paterno Family is appealing the NCAA sanctions against Penn State. Give it up! Joe Paterno was not great. He was not a saint. He cared more about the fucking football program than he did about a grown man forcibly fucking boys. Fuck you, Paterno Family. Joe Paterno was a monster and a coward for admitting nothing of his complicity before he died. Shameful! I intend to enjoy the next 4 years of seeing the PSU program gutted. I smile every time i see another high profile transfer out of PSU. I have a friend of a friend here who i unfriended from BookFace because she was always getting on her soap box defending Joe Pa and PSU. Fuck you, apologists. Fuck you, Penn State. You should be banned from NCAA Division 1 football FOREVER. If i never hear about Penn State again it will be too soon.

postcard

My dear friend, Laura Kelley is getting married to Tim Stannard today. I'll meet Maria at 5:30 and we'll take the bus. And then, in essence, my time here has come to an end. Everything ends.


And then something new begins.


I was married once (as you all know.) This is my first wedding since Sue and I got divorced. I didn't even realize that until 2 minutes ago. So obviously, things are fine. 


Laura's getting married! I love her so much. In the end, i am a big mush. I am a big puddle of emotion. I love you all so very much. So here's my e-postcard of this moment. Besos.


Time to get all gussied up!

The Rapture

How I prayed just to get away

To carry me anywhere

Sometimes the angels punish us

By answering our prayers

-Rush

No one tells me anything. I think there are now 2 new people living here, one in the living room. Dumb and Dumber were at Eduardo's parents last night. Two new people moved in yesterday and they never even warned me. So now i think Maracondes is going to share a room with Eduardo so that will make 5 people and one bathroom. And the two of them are always in the bathroom, always. It's disconcerting. But i'm out of here. I'm in the wind baby! 

Maracondes was just mopping at 1:45 am. Truly he is special needs. He mops every day. It's an obsession. They are both so OCD. 

Wedding mañana and then i'm virtually out of here. It is time to go. I look forward to never thinking of these morons again after Wednesday.

I am reading The Rapture by Liz Jensen. It's great. Haunting. Freaky. 

In a merciless summer of biblical heat and destructive winds, Gabrielle Fox's main concern is a personal one: to rebuild her career as a psychologist after a shattering car accident. But when she is assigned Bethany Krall, one of the most dangerous teenagers in the country, she begins to fear she has made a terrible mistake. Raised on a diet of evangelistic hellfire, Bethany is violent, delusional, cruelly intuitive and insistent that she can foresee natural disasters - a claim which Gabrielle interprets as a symptom of doomsday delusion. But when catastrophes begin to occur on the very dates Bethany has predicted, and a brilliant, gentle physicist enters the equation, the apocalyptic puzzle intensifies and the stakes multiply. Is the self-proclaimed Nostradamus of the psych ward the ultimate manipulator, or could she be the harbinger of imminent global cataclysm on a scale never seen before?

The Garden

In the fullness of time

A garden to nurture and protect

(It's the measure of a life)

-Rush

Last class - done!

My students threw a surprise party for me and gave me a new 2012 - 2013 Atlectico Jersey. Que bien!

So much emotion. On both sides of the Atlantic. But what if i don't belong in either Europe or North America. What if i'm incontinent?

The time of doing

13:26

"Two of us Sunday driving. 
Not arriving. On our way back home.
 We’re on our way home. 
We’re going home."
-The Beatles


How in the name of all that is unholy did i accumulate so much stuff? How i ask you? I will give away more clothes than i will bring home. 


Details- I leave Madrid at 10:35 on August 8. I arrive at JFK at 19:40. Leave my house at 7:00, get to Mum's about 21:30. That's about 14.5 hours of transit. Ugh! But Carolyn and Sarah will be on the same flight. Hooray!


My last full moon in Madrid has come and gone.


Okay, Jay. Less typing, more doing. 




Flying the coop music
Herd of Instinct - Herd of Instinct
Clockwork Angels - Rush


- - - 


USA! Now with healthcare, but soon without the Post Office. My Pop would be pissed. He was in the Post Office for years and years.


Bart's been raptured and his crap's been craptured
-Homer Simpson


Oh how i wish someone would Crapture my stuff back to CT.


15:15




Time goes by in slow motion. So, this is what Maria and i are giving Tim and Laura along with cash. 


Remember, Laura is from Texas. And yes, that's a riding crop.

Maria and i just aren't the type to give you a toaster. I don't care how they use them. That's up to them. And Tim will either thank us or curse us. I can live with that.

Everytime I see your face
I think of things unpure, unchaste.
I want to fuck you like a dog,
I'll take you home and make you like it.

-Liz Phair

I think i'm going to have to take two bags with me. I can spread out the cymbals between the two bags. 


17,000 page views for the site. Damn!

the Last Err Bender

July 31st


Ansonia 76 F
Madrid 98 F


Sign me up for CT!


Aug 1


15:01


A week from now. at this exact time, i will be in limbo - not in Spain, not in CT.


Last night, the last Bender Tuesday, was crazy. Some of my students came and it was great.


Aug 2


I got about 2 inches cut off of my hair and i now look rather employable. 


Got to really get down to the nitty-gritty with cleaning today. And pack up all the clothes i'm going to donate.


The big wedding is on Sat. Maria is my date. It will be a blast. American Laura is getting married. Well, i'll be damned. 

Closer to Home

The Last Bender Tuesday


I'm getting closer to my home
-Grand Funk Railroad


Playlist:
Alchemy - Dire Straits
Alladin Sane - David Bowie
Pack up the Plantation - Tom Petty
Communique - Dire Straits
Dire Straits - Dire Straits


+The US Postal Service is set to run out of money next year. That won't be problematic.  
+I am returning to my home continent in 8 days. The US government has not informed me that they have any problem with this, to date.
+Much laundry done lately and i am now about to seperate stuff into 2 piles; a) what i will bring b) the much larger what i will donate pile. 
+Have not been sleeping well at all. My mind is tapestry of cobwebs.


I said goob-bye to another student yesterday, one of my 1st private one's who refered me so many people. It was very emmotional. I think August will be a very emmotional month. Good-byes and hellos.

don't look back

Books i read in July:


First Blood - David Morrell
The Naked Edge - David Morrell
After the Apocalypse (short stories) - Maureen F. McHugh
Black Lung Captain (Tales of the Ketty Jay 2) - Chris Wooding
Savages - Don Winslow
Logan's Run - William F. Nolan


Great lunch with Amanda and Ale. Sad to say good-bye to all of these people. But there's really isn't anything left for me here. It's time to bug out of here. The die is cast. There is no turning back.

Let the games begin...

14:04
Creepy Bobby Wenlock                                                            

Sabado

If I were a rich man,
Yubby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum.
All day long I'd biddy biddy bum.
If I were a wealthy man.
I wouldn't have to work hard.
Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.
If I were a biddy biddy rich,
Idle-diddle-daidle-daidle man.

-Fiddler on the Roof

I have a list of things to do the size of my schlong. Well, maybe not that big, but fucking long.


Clean. Pack. Sell drums. Get recommendations. Send CVs. 


And i was looking at self publishing sites today. Maybe i'll just ePub it. It may be the way to go given the somewhat hard-hitting yet surreal nature for the novel. Time will tell. I could market it through Facebook, Amazon etc, The Fairfield Alumni Assoc., George Washington U Alumni assoc., viral porn sites. Stuff like that. 

If you should go skating

On the thin ice of modern life

Dragging behind you the silent reproach

Of a million tear-stained eyes

Don't be surprised when a crack in the ice

Appears under your feet.

You slip out of your depth and out of your mind

With your fear flowing out behind you

As you claw the thin ice.

-Pink Floyd

I'm such a drama queen!

But seriously, my life is in total flux. Hence lsitening to a lot of Pink Floyd.

Playlist:

A Life Within a Day - Squackett

Message in a Box (disc 1) - The Police

...Laid to Rest - Frequency Drift

The Final Cut - Pink Floyd

The Wall - Pink Floyd

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19015278 The Romulan proves once again that he is a horse's ass!

17:48

I am at J&Js. It was too hot at home. I am editing. Always editing. 

Domingo

It's done. I inserted all the Spanish characters and accents. I fact checked to make sure things are consistent. Houston, we have a novel. I am it declaring done. LET THE MARKETING BEGIN!!! There's a site called www.lulu.com that i might publish it through. This is going to be an adventure. "O brave new world..." I've dreamed about this my whole life. I've devoted countless hours. I've been writing for over 30 years. I finished my first novel in the 90's. It's time to get this done and publish this book, one way or another.

Going to Amanda's and Alessandra's for lunch. Lots of get-togethers this week before i roll out of here.

Acid Flashback: 2,000 Days in Madrid

• Annie is born April 11, 2007. She is not my daughter but my life changes for the better.
• Teaching in the MBA Program at the Universidad de Europea
• Playing in From Lost to the River with Tam and Pete
• Finished Buying New Soul, my fourth novel
• Seeing Porcupine Tree twice at La Riviera
• Atletico Madrid wins 2 Europa League titles and a UEFA Supercup
• Meeting Vicky (and hiring her as my editor).
• Bender Tuesday
• All my friends and students

Okay! Take in laundry, shower, go to lunch. Catch you all later.

The M-Chip

Mariah Scarey is the new American Idol judge. And just in time for me to return to the US. 


Desperate times call for desperate measures. Henceforth, Apple Inc. and i are happy to announce our new prototype - the M-chip. Once you have one of these silicon buggers jammed into you cerebrum, you will no longer be able to watch such moronic shows as, The View, American Idol, America Lacks Talent, Desperate Housewives, Charmed, etc., or anything with Tim Allen, Rob Schneider, Dana Carvey or Bob Costas. The screen will just appear as psychedlic colors and all you will hear is Led Zeppelin, Rush, Pink Floyd and the Who. The New M-Chip: 1/3 Steve Jobs, 1/3 Aldous Huxley, 1/3 sensibility/. 


So get your kids fitted with one today! Watch their grades go up, their setting of bugs on fire go down, and their sense of well being soar!

© M-Chip 2012, all rights reserved (Hands off muther f*%ker!)

Don't point that thing at me

This post is not recommended for hominids under 17


The olympics come to London. This is Wenlock, the official mascot. Yes, he looks like a penis, but then again this is the country that coined the words wanker and wanking (both of which refer to masturbation.) Still, i'm not sure a male member with lobster claws was the best choice to market a global event. 

And just in case there was any doubt as to the phallic nature of this thing, here's Wenlock in a Union Jack condom (we don't want athletes in the olympic village going home with STDs, do we?)


And it's expected to be so cold and dreary the next few days that many female volleyball players have said they might forgo the traditional bikinis. Hell no! That's going to put a real crimp in the wanking. 


SO good luck, London. And thanks for reminding us that making fun of the English didn't end after 1776 and the War of 1812.


I'm off to get a coffee and some breakfast.

The Construction of Light

Viernes

Puerta del Sol

00:49


It's been a tiring couple of hours. 


Days.


Weeks. 


Soon to be over. It rained tonight for the first time since, ...i have no idea. May? Early June maybe? Something like that.

Listening to:

Led Zeppelin - the Song Remains the Same (disc 2)

Steely Dan - Katy Lied

Blind Faith - Blind Faith

Herd of Instinct - Herd of Instinct

King Crimson - The ConstruKction of Light

I am currently reading Acacia: The War with the Mein (Book One) by David Anthony Durham. It's sci-fi/fantasy and it's great. It's monstrous at 784 pages. It's very in depth as far as creating a world. Two age old enemy empires go to war after years of Acacia subduing the Mein. And there are some dirty secrets as to how the Acacians have obtained their power over the years. 

Lightning outside. Lots of it. Kind of like heat lightning. 

I'll go see Spez (the cat) mañana. What an awful name. When i get another cat i'll name him after another great progressive rock guitarist. I don't know. Hackett, Alex (Lifeson), Gilmour, Belew, (Steven) Wilson? Well, i've got a ways before i have to worry about such things. Soon i'll be living with Mum and Mulligan. It'll be fun to have him around (He will probably think it's fun to have me around, since it's his house.) Cats are fun to live with and he is a very interesting cat. Like his brother, Fripp, he loves music. After all, anything is better to listen to than The View. That show makes me want to poke stuffed animals with a sharpened stick. 

But i digress. 

How weird it will be to be back in the same time zone as all of ye. Good old EDT.

Tired. Actually, i'm just going to tap out right here.