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.

blogspot or tumbler? blogbler?

happy holidaze.

it's been over a year since my last update. wth.

since that time, i've endured my last semester of nursing school/university, graduated, got my nursing license, travelled a bit of europe, then moved to the netherlands and am living in domestic bliss with my current and primary partner, steffan.

if you want to find out about him. he has his own blog:

http://www.staplerfahrer.nl

crinkly glass unicorn fingernails.

attempts to brighten the day's mood has me wearing floral bows around my neck, donning white fingertips, and hanging a burgundy tassel hanging from the hole of my collar-coat. trudging through the front lawn got me a ride from a med-student/friend that i only see on dance floors every once in a while; his fresh face and curl befallen on his exhausted forehead warmed the pyloric curve beneath my diaphragm. staring too much at screens gives me smarting lemon-juice eyes.

last night a dj saved my life.//

dancing harder than i have in a while. i was fortunately wandering aimlessly behind the hospital looking for nonexistent street signs to direct me to the party when a lovely faced soared upon me via bicycle. we trek up to bustling crowds and the smell of beer with my stomach twisting itself into knots; how intestines have been the inspiration for labyrinths. the continued lack of power to lloyd st meant that i could have late-night pizzas and take a bath in goats milk with good company and energetic dog-friends post-crazy party. i still feel the residue of dejection but the load has lightened, for sure.

it circles back again.

the list of losses:
1) the power at my house (and my nights spent alone under 3 layers with the smell of old matches floating in the air above me)
2) my 3 weeks of sworn celibacy that dissolved with the upswing of the proper hormones
3) $77.25 for the reconnection - an astronomical feat that is taking me a few days to scrape it all together in order for it to slip through my fingers again
4) the cellular device that's maintained a sticky web between me and the rest of the world and now leaves a sometimes-easily-forgotten black hole in the pit of my stomach
5) the energy that's kept me afloat until now and has been recently replaced with dejectedness and hopelessness
6) the internet - my back up sticky web that is out with the power
7) my laptop - the juice dripping out the battery while i was away on campus watching women have orgasms while popping babies out their uterus

the list of vices:
1) getting lost in the landscapes spun by magical-realists while elderly women beg me to take them home and simultaneously neglecting finals that will burrow themselves into my shoulders until mid-december
2) pumpkin, chocolate, cinnamon, soymilk, spaghetti (always), fried egg on toasted panini or arugula, at least every 2 hours during my 14 hour days
3) maybe avoiding a certain sweetheart for no particular reason at all
4) spending too much time with a sweetheart despite my skin being riddled with uncertainty
5) hanging out with b.r.o.b. despite needing to be in work in less than an hour
6) needing at least 3 cups of coffee a day and shamelessly trying to get my friends to hook me up with free goodies

the good things:
1) drinking a pumpkin shake while watching 'the golden compass' while @ work
2) a house show happening down the road from work
3) the possibility of walking 2 miles in the rain BUT i still have my ipod
4) my ipod! with newly acquired slavic soul party, from brussels with love, mutant disco, 70s disco from nigeria, and more!
5) breaking my 3 weeks of sworn celibacy
6) going to disney world for christmas
7) only having 2 weeks left of class then i am 'free' for a month!
8) still eating the remnants of the box of chocolate dipped pretzels dug from the pit of lowe's trash in rural north carolina
9) the people that love me though i don't see them too often

i am in his top 8!

they're still doing leech therapy. they advise it be done when there is 'vascular congestion' much like what he had on his bloated buttocks that force him to lay only on his stomach. his wife, equipped with black latex gloves, pocked at the writhing bodies on ice with scissors telling me to pick out the dead ones. 'sometimes, they get as big as your thumb,' she tells me. he maintains good humor despite the revolving door of alien bodies curious to see the hungry blackness feeding on his blood like he was a performance to be admired. he says that he should charge everyone $5 but what is it like to have a body that everyone wants to marvel in disgust at. who wants to fuck 'vascular congestion'?

the fall season.

i'm cumming all over my pants. en octubre, voy a estar un 'harlequin.' yo.

the re-ingratiation of self into the familiar academic rhythm

i feel good about this semester. i am not feeling that same oppressive weight on my heads and shoulders that i always do when i neglect reading about nursing bedside skills in order to read books about sexuality (though now my leisurely interest has now turned to linguistics and instinctual human communication networks.) i am craving hallucinogenic nights where i have my regular sightings of webs and systems and i feel fear and have meaningful conversations with inanimate objects. this should be in my near-future.

they're telling me that our numbers are falling. that they have been falling since seattle. there have been hopes that st. paul 2008 would be akin to seattle. fear and dehumanization are their real tools and it is working a little bit on me but i can't say i feel hopeless. i just know that i want to keep fighting.

and as i do this, i will continue perusing for ridiculous looking shoes to adorn my feet and ruffles on coats in preparation for the biting cold that will greet me in a month or two.

resocialization of self away from the computer screen.

broken laptop// smashed software and now all i have is a blue screen that talks to me about memory dumps and i just wonder about my photographs. trying to occupy my mind with things that do not have phallases and live six hours away and don't call me. things like public health and mothers having babies and the neuroimaging of human aesthetics and that freshmen year paper i scrambily wrote about the biological basis of human emotion - this was conducted back when i believed in the false gender dichotomy and wanted to validate my rollercoaster emotions by attributing it to something as elitist as 'science.' kompakt record label and my sick love for micro-house and wondering if i flowered a decade or so too late. it's hard for me to believe that one could not crave intimacy the way i do and it's equally as difficult for me to accept this because all i care about are my relationships with people, substances, my body, communities.

why i cannot deny this love of the interweb

i've always been horrid with being up-to-date in internetland. speaking of all things horrid, my pool of of english vocabulary words, cliches, and idioms that i regularly pull from has markedly decreased as my skill in the spanish language has increased. my perfect track record of spelling all words correctly is starting to show some blemishes. i'd like to think that my personal cerebral area that governs languages would have say ... infinite space, but it does not seem so.

my relationship with internetland is cautious at best. i have made some beautiful writings that i had posted back when livejournal was more alive than it is now that i am quite proud of. as i packed my bags this summer to oaxaca, i made the off-hand comment that maybe i could start blogging about my experience. i recieved a 'tsk' response. within my motley crew of anti capitalists, one can only authentically impart their wisdom through paper then send it circulating through the hands of friends to friends-of-friends. then the real badge of honor will come when the zine is displayed in some local infoshop.

as someone who has experienced the full extent of alienation and isolation (and am aware of the cop out 'i am only a product of my socialization waah waah waah and that what is important is to first, realize this, before setting about to resocialize myself) and someone who had JUST become comfortable walking into my own local infoshop, the internet was my free literature. now that my comfort threshold has reestablished itself, and i have been happily introduced to a whole host of literature and information that i can't wait to gobble up, i just want to give tribute to those who do put the time and effort to post writings on the internet. it may be seen as less authentic but it may reach other people who were like me in their young'un dayz.

spring break 2008

fly out saturday. march 8, 2008 @ noon
guatemala here i come! poot!

my heart just turned into a fuzzy lil bunny.

letter of intent to get some cash

another letter in need of some editing

Dear Kathy Moore,
I am writing this in hopes of extracting some funds in pursuit of a global health career in Nursing, specifically, for my summer 2008 externship abroad. I have come to you in the beginning of the fall 2007 semester and recieved $3,000 in emergency loans when my financial aid failed to come in on time to pay for my tuition and books so you may be already somewhat familiar with my financial state. During class time, I have to work at least 16 hours a week to pay for bills, rent, and food but I am serious about my nursing career and I am serious about my desire to give my nursing skills in the field of global health. I have been wanting to join the PeaceCorp since high school so global aid has always been on the agenda (is this sentence too overdone?)
In addition to being accepted to the Nursing School, I also recieved acceptance into the School of Radiology at UNC for a bachelor's in Radiologic Science. Pay for Radiologic Technicians tends to be higher than Registered Nurses and the curriculum at the School of Radiology is supposedly easier than the demands of Nursing School. However, it is the venue of global health in Nursing that appealed to me and pushed me to become a Nurse rather than a Radiologic Technician.
I am going to Guatemala over spring break with Chris Harlan. I paid for the trip out of pocket and the cost amounted to $1,260. However, my interest is in Southeast Asia so I thought that I should do my summer externship over in that region.
My mother grew up in the Philippines and I still have family over there. I would be staying with my grandfather so housing and food would not be a huge deal. My cousin works as a doctor over at the University of Santo Tomas hospital in Pasay City, Manila. I had just written a letter of intent to the Nursing Director there via my cousin in order to get a volunteer job over the summer. My mom spoke with an agent and got an estimate for a round trip plane ticket for $940. I can only stay in the country for a month since I would only be volunteering there and not making any money. I have held a job since the age of 15 and have barely kept my head above water so not having an income for a month would be a huge financial blow. However, the benefits of this experience would outweigh the risks and I would love to be able to do my externship abroad. Thank you for your time and I hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely,
Leilani Trowell
711282632