Blogging is like exercise: addictive, once you get the hang of it but dangerously easy to leave aside when life gets hectic. There is little to say about my several weeks’ hiatus apart from: stuff happened. Mexico. London. Ibiza. Plans made and then unmade for journeys to Ireland, the States, Mexico again. There were patches where I was seriously considering going to the nearest airport and buying a one-way ticket on the first flight to someplace I’d never been before. I got a little caught up in the idea of someplace new. A succession of adventures, coincidences, gin & tonics and long conversations with friends nudged me into the realisation that the ‘someplace new’ I need to explore is Ibiza – and my own motivations.
Home to Ibiza
Jumping on planes is A) more fun than jumping off them and B) only very occasionally an antidote to chronic discontent. I tried it with Mexico and couldn’t, at the end of 14 weeks, figure out why the hell I hadn’t learned anything there. Why I had come back as bored and irritable as I’d left. A few weeks rattling around in the Mediterranean sun, making fantastic new friends who kickstarted my brain from its tropic slothfulness into frisky, if somewhat tentative life, suggests that my problem wasn’t where I was but how I was thinking. Somewhere between Ibiza, E17 and Merida, I completely lost my bottle. Not that you’d have noticed, necessarily. I was still walking around spouting opinions, still capable of summoning enough bravado to actually get from E17 to Merida, but there was something missing. The best lack all conviction.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do, where I wanted to go, how I wanted to live or who I wanted to be. I was stumped. Then I got the following advice from a smartarse filmmaker:
Whatever you decide, feel good about it. Feel amazing about it. Feel as if you couldn’t have made any other possible decision. As long as you do that, everything will work out exactly as it should.
When I started to think like that suddenly the stubbornly wedged pieces began to fall into place. The decisions I fight the hardest are usually, in retrospect, as easy as falling over. It’s like standing at the top of a high dive. Turning, fretting, pawing at the board to buy time. Praying for a heavenly waterslide to appear. It never does. So I jumped. And my fear-hazed, pinched-in little world bloomed. There is much to be determined, questions to be posed and answered, work to be done, but it’s okay because life is exciting again.
I suspect my four blog followers are down to one or two now, thanks to my egregious neglect. For once, it’s not wilful laziness on my part. At least not entirely wilful laziness. Right after my last post Britney-blizzard struck and my lovely interlocutor Helen Skyped me a bunch of revision notes. A rush of freelance work (most of it odious) came rushing in at the same time. So I did the usual: panic. Cue 10 days of hyperventilating, staring at my laptop screen until my eyes wouldn’t focus then working more anyway (hurrah for being able to touchtype! It’ll come in double handy when I go blind) and going to bed every night with an unwritten-word tornado churning in my head.
It got done, somehow, in a flurry of strong coffee, biscuits, midnight MSN chats and the odd sneaky drag of a menthol. My last deadline proper was this morning. It was a strangely silent afternoon. Having no pressing work is far worse than having too much. After exhausting the entertainment potential of Facebook (about seven minutes) and a largely unsuccessful bash at making cheesy potato mash patties I decided to start studying for my UK driving theory test. Abandoned it to go running, then spent half an hour reading hostel reviews online.
I have a half-baked lot of short story ideas I want to tackle next but can’t bring myself to put my feet properly under the desk just yet. Hence blog-waffle. Ten days of hard writing-to-order has squished all the creative cells in my brain. They need a little time to ping back into functioning order, I figure. That, or I’m being lazy.
Estoy intentando a aprender Español, pero sigo a paso de tortuga. En este momento estoy abusando el verbo “ir” para describir mis planes. Siempre empiezo mi frases con “Voy a…..”
A paso de tortuga
Normalmente, en un dia, “voy a correr,” “voy a desayunar,” “voy a trabajar,” “voy a la tienda,” “voy a cocinar” y “voy a dormer.” Y algunas veces “voy al centro,” “voy al biblioteca” o “voy al parque.”
No es elegante pero es bastante útil. Espero que un dia voy a mejorar… jeje.
Pues, poco a poco entiendo mas y tambien aprendo varios palabras de Español Mexicano que distintas desde Castellano. Por ejemplo, en España todo la gente siempre dice: “venga!” Literalamente significa “come on” en Ingles, pero es utilizado como un interjección – “venga, hasta luego!” “Venga, gracias” (siempre juntos). Pero in Mexico nunca oí.
Acá tenemos “mande!” (de “mandar” – to tell). Si no entiende alguien, dice “mande?” Es igual a “perdón” en Castellano.
Otra frase muy útil es “con permiso” y la respuesta, “pase!” Un ejemplo, cuando paso por la cocina y el dueño esta cocinando hablamos un poco entonces, cuando él va a salir, dice “con permiso”, por cortesía. Y digo: “pase!”
Bueno, algunas otras:
Ingles / Castellano / Mexicano
Cool! / Güay! / Que chido!
Annoying / Pesado / Fastidioso
To chat / Charlar / Platicar
To rent / Alquilar / Rentar
Internet (service) / Wi-fi / Albarca o Inalambrico
Real Estate (agent) / Inmobilaria / Bienes raíces
Computer / Ordenandor / Computadora
To park (car) / Aparcar / Estacionar
Ticket (train, etc) / Billete / Boleto
Mushroom / Champiñón / Honga
Apricot / Albaricoque / Chabacano
Pea / Guisante / Chícharo
Sweet corn / Maíz dulce / Elote
Juice / Zumo / Jugo
Prawns / Gambas / Camarones
(Sun) Glasses / Gafas (del sol) / Lentes
Grapefruit / Pomelo / Toronjo
Cuando encuentro otras, voy a añadirlas!
It seems there is a segment of the population who think women who have tattoos are white trash hos. I refuse to take this personally since, on principle, I disregard the opinions of people whose IQs are lower than their waist measurement.
Tattoos 1 & 4
Anyway, I love my tattoos. They each have a very specific and personal meaning and I remember with what is, for me, uncanny clarity the situation and circumstance of each one. My first was 6 March, 2000, my bestest friend and biggest crush Andy’s 21st birthday. Partially out of bravado, I think, I went to Camden Town with my friend Miranda and had an Aquarius symbol tattooed on my right shoulder blade. It cost £55. I was petrified, but I survived. That night I went to Andy’s birthday drinks wearing a hot pink Oasis vest. I have no idea if he noticed my tattoo.
Giddy with my own courage I went with my friend and drinking buddy Lucy to get my second, at the end of term that year. We went to a place on Berwick Street, Soho, that was roughly twice the size of a phone box. I went first, getting an infinity symbol tattooed on my left hip. It was a blazing hot day and I remember looking over at myself in the mirror. I was literally as white as a sheet, sweat pouring off my face. Agony.
The next time the impulse took me was back in Philadelphia, the following autumn, during my final year of university. I persuaded my two roommates to come to a dingy little tattoo place on 43rd and Chestnut. They were good middle-class girls and didn’t take long to refuse to get involved with ink and needles. I wanted a tiny crescent moon on the top of my right thigh. It was a Saturday night and the parlour was full of West Philly hoodrats, goofing around. I had to drop my trousers and sit in the middle of all that, trying to look nonchalant — which at least took my mind off the pain.
After that I eased off. Three seemed like a nice number and I didn’t have a blinding urge to get any more work done. Then I moved to Ibiza. Surrounded by gorgeous bodies adorned with stunning tattoos I started to crave another. One of my all-time favourites is DC10 DJ Tania Vulcano’s tattoo. She is one of those striking woomen who don’t mess with makeup, hair fripperies or, heaven forbid, dresses. She’s always in jeans and a tee-shirt, with just this fabulous tattoo around her right elbow. I wanted one too. My first mission to find the right artist didn’t go well. Inkadelic is the dudely tattoo parlour of choice in Ibiza, where I met Luca. I told him what I wanted and his reaction was: “if you were a big hairy lesbian I might do it, but I think you should have something more feminine. How about flowers?” I could hardly speak for scraping my jaw off the floor and, needless to say, never went back.
Then I happened across an article about Tahiti Tiki Tattoo founder Sandra. She talked about the spiritual and emotional significance of tattoos, how each one she creates is designed for the individual. Curious as hell, I wandered up Calle de Virgen one night, about 1AM, and leafed through her booklet. Unlike Luca who was rude, combative and arrogant from the moment he opened his mouth Sandra projected tranquilty. Ibicenco tattoo parlours at 1AM are inherently hectic, but hers was a sacred space. I felt safe, welcome and understood.
A couple of weeks later I went back for the tattoo, equipped with a mantra to get me through the pain. It’s a line from Lawrence of Arabia…
“The trick is… not minding that it hurts.”
Armed with this wisdom, I lay down, took a deep breath and let the needle sink in. After about five minutes my hands went numb. After half-an-hour I started shaking involuntarily. Sandra very calmly told me to relax; somehow, just hearing her say it helped. We talked about Ibiza, about her daughter, about tattoos. Then, before I’d dared hope, she said, you’re done. I walked the two miles home in the warm Ibiza night, elbow sweating in clingfilm, goofy on adrenaline and pride.
This was more than a tattoo, it was an achievement; my gift to myself for surviving my first summer in Ibiza, for daring to leave London and everything I’d called my own for five years to start somewhere new. Sandra designed it on the spot, drawing freehand onto my arm as we talked. The pattern unites Tahitian symbols for freedom and creativity. It is my badge of courage — and an invocation for the future.
My most recent tattoo is another of Sandra’s masterpieces, done in spring 2008. Once again, it’s an affirmation of what I choose. This time, borrowing the lyric ‘like a rolling stone’ from Bob Dylan. Only, as it’s an Ibiza tattoo, it had to be in Spanish. Sandra’s first languages are French and Italian so we spent a week or so settling on the right translation, eventually agreeing on: ‘rodando como una piedra.’ It’s a literal, rather than a literary, translation but the sound and feel and freight of it is exactly right.
Sandra creating tattoo 5
Kat was visiting at the time and sat by me, bless her, for over an hour while I went pale, fidgeted, gnawed a lollipop stick to a pulp and talked utter nonsense to take my mind off it. When it was done I had that now-familiar rush of delight. It’s dangerous to get addicted to the adrenaline hit, but I’m hooked on more than that. My tattoos are precious because they mean something. They remind me of where I’ve been, how I’ve felt, what I love, who I am and what I want to be. For me, at least, a little ink goes a long way.
I am the worst sort of explorer, in that I am always stubbornly and vocally un-interested in something unless it’s something I’ve discovered.
True to form I have always publically yawned over Atlantis – Ibiza’s “secret” beach. The locals assure me it is no more or less than a rather nice beach and that’s good enough for me.
However, one of my best mates was over from London for the weekend. He’d found Atlantis on his last visit and – like any good evangelist – wasn’t going to let me off the hook till I’d found it too. So off we go in the hire car with a bottle of water, a camera and some sensible shoes.
Lucky it’s one of those glorious Mediterranean autumn days where the sky is hazy blue and the sun is a silky gold as melting butter.
Too many years in music journalism equals an irresistable impulse to make top 10 lists. Mr LK’s all time top 10 got me thinking.
I could never manage an all time top 10 but break it down a little and I’ll have a pop. So here goes my 10 favourite ‘signature songs’ (i.e. songs that define a particular artist)
1. New Order – Blue Monday
2. Michael Jackson – Billie Jean
3. Jeff Buckley – Hallelujah
4. Rolling Stones – Satisfaction
5. Patti Smith – Gloria
6. Nirvana – Lithium
7. Pulp – Common People
8. The Verve – Bittersweet Symphony
9. Bruce Springsteen – Born To Run
10. Depeche Mode – Personal Jesus
Cila Warncke 