lazy sunday

it finally broke 80°F/27°C. it is much hotter in NC but it feels terrible here in NL. we biked the 30 km to eindhoven for the de straatfestival via ventosa - steffan in a ligfiets/lying bicycle and me in one of those fold-up-for-the-train bicycles. it was so wonderful. it felt like summer. there but we got there a little late. i wanted the ride to be relaxed and we brought beers to drink during the ride. it was sticky, people dressed up to be looked at and the night felt open.

we didn't get to see much of the art and we missed the Ongemotiveerd Kunstenaars Collectief (translation: unmotivated artists collective). i'm kind of a huge fan of them. but we engorged on seitan flapjes. and we saw a bit of Sonido Del Principe before biking back - arriving at 4 a.m. and raiding our kitchen.

lessons learned: need alien-butt-cushion pants for anything outside of city biking (i plan on making this myself from the random lounge chair cushion we have lying around), more food for the return bike trip, an ipod in a plastic cup does not produce sound loud enough to hear over bicycle chains.

historical lies.

goddammit. this dutch class makes me RAGE RAGE RAGE.

i can't fucking believe that the dutch are painting their entire goddamn colonialist past as an era of "trade" and they attribute their present privilege as a result of immigrants and refugees (NOT coming from their own colonies but as jews and protestants in France and Belgium) and the water. wtfuckfuckfuck! absolutely no word as to how they colonized the world then dumped it all on the british. that the merchants did not actually "earn" their riches but earned it off the backs of others! fuck you. fuck this class.

spring fever in holland 2010

two things: 1) i want to go on a date. now that the sun is peeking out more, i have been spending a handful of afternoons on my friend's porch (from his flat) that overlooks one of the busier streets of tilburg's center. i felt like a teenager again in heat in the good US of A - with our big diva sunglasses, beers in hand, leaning over the railing to tell someone: "that coat looks GOOD on you!"

i kiss everyone but this season, i want: a "queer"-identified person and/or one of the very stereotypical "dutch" boys that seem to also find me interesting - exceedingly tall and skinny.

my partner and i already discussed the fact that i am feverish, my desires to go on a date, spend time with other people and he's supportive of everything that i would choose to do. but i still feel this strange devotion to him ... spending all of my time with him ... i need to be torn violently away and be forced to spend some time away from him and our gezellig apartment.

2) i just discovered that there was a HLBT organization on the same street as our apartment! it seems extremely "liberal" (i am using the american definition here) - in that they have sponsors and do things that i see as political lobbying or whatever ... but i'm not going to let that phase me!

learning dutch is fascinating. a german told me that dutch sounds primitive. an english expat calls dutch a farmers' language. i see where they're coming from. dutch has significantly less vocabulary words than the english language does and they borrow words from the english and french as they see fit. the communication comes through expressions, word orders, fillers, etc. and i'm having a hell of a time expressing myself through it.

i am curious to see how sexual identity is negotiated through dutch. at this organization, they only refer to gays, lesbians, bis and trans. with this kind of vocabulary in the states (and yes, it is used like that also in the states), i am already alienated because i don't fit into any of those. i can't tack on "male-socialized" and "male-identified" onto my dutch as easily as i can with english because i can pretty much express anything in english if i know enough vocabulary words ...

DIY dry cleaning: the green way

i find running errands in the netherlands intimidating. i can get by with my dutch but i am still consumed with anxiety. it's a familiar feeling that i have received in the united states. i finally finished off the kelly-green woollen shell from the beloved vintage coat. i needed to clean it. how many years has it marinated in the fine dust of greyed living?

going into a dutch dry cleaning and ask to clean this sad green shell? i've never even gone to a dry cleaners before and i wouldn't even know where to begin. communicating in a different language is intimidating to me on all levels.

the internet to the rescue! chemicals used in these dry cleaning places are "harmful to the environment" anyway. some flour and bran in the oven, spread it on the coat, wrap it in a towel and leave it for 3 days. here's to hoping & doing.

i abandoned my daily brunch routine of consuming pasta upon awakening. today i had a bowl of yogurt and muesli and a slice of hagelslag. lekker hoor!

dutch unemployment 2010

called randstand zorg hoping to discuss the possibility of me doing some vaccination research. the projects ends this month. no other possibilities until i am "inburgered"/fluent in dutch. klootzak.

golden sun today and i ventured to the canal because my ISO 160 film in my holga likes this kind of light. everything looked ugly and washed-out now that the snow is gone. the canal couldn't save tilburg's (lack-of) beauty. back home i go.

i'm starting to accept that during this phase - it's impossible for me to achieve anything.

when i'm not listening to the music...

georgian sludge-turned-boring-melodic-metal, baroness, played at the 013 last night. this band, hailing from the blue ridge mountains of my childhood, who i've seen in NC and VA, playing for a dutch audience.

i was already disappointed by the newest album when we rode towards berlin. steffan already had a place on the guest list as he was expecting me to be running around vienna rather than tilburg. we managed to get a free ticket while in line so we stood there in our free places bored and drinking our free beers.

the 1st time in richmond, i remember the topless butchies being carried over the teeming crusties. and in the nightlight in carrboro, NC, only being able to see anything because i stood on the couches by the books. they were large-statured, long-haired valkyrie-cowboy gods. i saw the swamp monster slowly rising out of the sulfurous silt of Montezuma's Revenge. green eyes glowing and scanning those in attendance. i understand this new artistic direction though i don't necessarily like it. they are good performers with clean, technical skill. they wanted more layers and more complexity so they ditched the sludged doom. i really think they could have taken the whole sludge-doom thing to a whole new level and make that more complex. but they didn't.

present baroness no longer produces horror stories. the intersections of geography, macrocultural attitudes, the ease of an identity purchased - the audience enraptured me. they bore a lot of the cultural symbols i found familiar. the red-and-black checked shirts donned by skater boys (@ least they present themselves in that way to me) with close-cropped hair and the ladies with flowered coiffures doing the rockabilly thing, etc.

maybe they were bored, too, but everyone remained crowded in the concert hall, politely quiet throughout the entirety of the show and politely clapping at the end of each song. some people bobbed their heads and throw up their hands to pose some symbol or another but they all stayed within their small circle of show-personal-space. no pushing. no excitement. no emotion at all. the front row was reserved for the professional photographers with their fancy equipment and not for the enthusiasts - my main WTF. the high stage became higher. preventing any sort of dynamic relationship between the band and the audience. why is this okay?

i miss DIY.

seeing baroness in tilburg, NL

i once couldn't stop thinking about the definition of health, relatively defined through different cultures, it's significance to differing cultural systems and its relationship with the physical, spiritual and social body. now i can't stop thinking about cultural consumerism, buying identities, local cultures and global sub-cultures. drunk and tired now but will expound on this later.