metafold.:.currency

não, era lisboa________10 January, 2012

better three and a half months late than never, right?

lisbon was awesome. of all the places i’ve been the past year (discounting paris, which is in a parallel dimension of travel all its own), lisbon is tied with bergen for the title of most highly recommended. it’s a gorgeous city, breathtakingly hilly (literally), ecstatically caught between a rustic state of dilapidation and the shocking grandeur of a vanished world power. it’s cheap as dirt (certainly compared with new york or paris, but almost as much so even against neighboring spain) and the people are incredibly friendly. i stayed in a hostel so good that i’m actually going to name it here: lisbon old town. (although, if you’re a girl, watch out–the proprietor is kind of a player.) anyway, my first night there, they welcomed me in to an authentic, homemade portuguese dinner (which was attended by nearly the whole hostel). they also took us out dancing (don’t ask how that went). obviously, this started around midnight and went to about five.

you can also see a photo below from my first morning in lisbon. it was a sunday and they take their partying seriously. the street grows so swollen with plastic cups, bottles, lemon wedges, eggcrates, and so on that men in overalls and high boots actually come out with hoses and just power wash the stuff downhill. it collects in semi-massive piles at the nadirs before being collected and removed. i can only assume this happens every sunday morning. anyway, i hope you enjoy the photos. i didn’t get to stitch all the panoramas yet. since i’ve been pretty busy, i’m guessing that may not happen any time soon. so i’m uploading now before i forget absolutely everything about the place. stay tuned for belfast and dublin.

liminal________24 December, 2011

well, it’s christmas eve. i feel terrible. i started a project called liminal. you should check it out. i’ll be adding to it as i damn well please. (that is, desperately often, in a brazen attempt to defer beginning the third draft of metabolism. ) really lousy.

miss misc misery________12 December, 2011

so long, new jersey. you’ve been good to me (for the most part).

.

left-handed turnstiles________18 November, 2011

welcome to barcelona: a city so suffused with the spirit of artiness that even the turnstiles are left-handed.  spain is truly a country with two capitals.  the netherlands, arguably, has three.  china and germany have, in their own ways, many.  france, the states, japan, and the uk: really, just one.  and even though madrid has around twice barcelona’s population, the number of cultural and artistic institutions isn’t so different.  barcelona deserves its reputation as a city worth seeing.

barcelona is crowded.  some parts of it are times-square-crowded.  a lot of the city has a strange psychic disconnect between groups rendered unusually distinct by their surroundings: people just trying to get to work, gutterpunks, party kids who got lost on the way to ibiza, unemployed locals, jaded street vendors, mimes.  and, of course, tourists.  tourists tourists tourists are everywhere in barcelona.  every kind.  the grungy ones who walked overland from montpelier, the couples intertwined, the fat ones from topeka, the skinny ones from new york, the german ones from germany.  and all of it under the aegis of english as a lingua franca because castellano is persona non grata and every sign is in catalan first, biggest, and in red.  castellano seems present only by force of law, and always placed on a parity of size and position with english as if to advertise, “these are both foreign tongues to us.”