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.