Time Stand Still

I turn my back to the wind, to catch my breath before I start off again. Driven on without a moment to spend, to pass an evening with a drink and a friend. I let my skin get too thin, I’d like to pause no matter what I pretend, like some pilgrim who learns to transcend, learns to live as if each step was the end. Time stand still, I’m not looking back but I want to look around me now. Time stand still, see more of the people and the places that surround me now. Time stand still. Freeze this moment a little bit longer. Make each sensation a little bit stronger. Experience slips away… experience slips away… Time stand still!

I turn my face to the sun, I close my eyes, I let my defenses down. All those wounds that I can’t get unwound. I let my past go too fast, no time to pause, if I could slow it all down, like some captain whose ship runs aground I can wait until the tide comes around. Time stand still, I’m not looking back but I want to look around me now. Time stand still, see more of the people and the places that surround me now. Time stand still. Freeze this moment a little bit longer. Make each sensation a little bit stronger.
Experience slips away… experience slips away… Time stand still!

Summer’s going fast, nights growing colder. Children growing up, old friends growing older. Freeze this moment a little bit longer, make each sensation a little bit stronger. Experience slips away… Experience slips away…

Goya Burger

Goya Burger, sponsored by Carrefour

Dia de los Reyes in Spain tomorrow. The Kings came from the East today and arrived in Madrid and all over Spain bringing gifts to the children that have been good all year and coal (!) to the nasty ones… It’s a big carnival-like parade in Madrid. Apparently a lot of children cry in awe when they see the kings (the wise men). I hate to tell them: It’s all a damn lie!

Meanwhile, Israel continues bombing the fuck out of the Palestinians.  It’s no lie. It was planned a long time ago.

Going to Lisbon on Wednesday for a few days, then London on Monday for a week. Bubba has a son. His name is Herbie Tribunales Ramirez. Sorry I hadn’t told you earlier, I just recently found out myself.

The just barely bearable ridiculousness of being in London

…a week already…

Duchamp Burger

…nectar points, oyster cards, bags for life, cctv, metro, london shite, bbc, argos, 6-month breaking clause, latte double mint frappuccino, loyalty cards, gourmet sandwiches, borough market, london eye, traffic wardens, community officers, gordon brown, david cameron, boris johnson…

The best of Britain, numero dos

“One More Grain perfectly pinpoint the wonder and disillusion inherent in these damp isles.” – Plan B

The Boycott Coca-Cola Experience: “The man, the legend, poet, voice of a generation” – Indigo Moss, 11/07

“Ok, gotta do some work now, if I’m ever gonna get out of this town…” – Spiros, 26/03

Finally, a bit of respect

I’m getting excited about going to Denmark next Sunday. Copenhagen has had great weather lately, just like London, in the early to mid-twenties and it sounds like a great place to just walk around and get lost in. I was reading a few things about the country and came across this thing called Jante Law. Apparently, the average Dane lives according to this law, it is their belief system. Really? So how different is this from a Japanese belief system? It depends on your perspective, but I have the tendency to view it from the side that sees it as the suppression of individuality, of personality, of creativity, of independent thought. Smells like uniformity and a noble way of controlling the population. I always respect the culture of any country I’m visiting though and they usually fear respect me.

One of the things I like about traveling is comparing other places to London, which, I believe is way ahead in… security, CCTV surveillance and visible police presence; at least ahead in European terms. I wonder what it’ll be like in Copenhagen, and will there be Tesco’s, like in Prague and Budapest? I must visit Christiania, but other than that, anything goes. Just walk around and enjoy the city and the conference, which will be an arty, music and computers one. I also want to get the waterbus. I remember loving the river transport in Hamburg. I might pop across to Malmo, Sweden for a few hours as well, just to tick that country off my list. I was looking at online maps and came across a town named Dorotea in Sweden. That’s my cousin’s name, almost, and so I did a search for my own name and … there’s a town called Spiro, OK.

I’ve shaved my head again. Because of the heat and because my clippers were having some difficulty cutting at number 3. They’re shite, but, they’ve served me well for at least 5 years, so, can’t complain. I went to the sandwich shop, next to the college, and there were some young white rude boys there. One was on the phone and the other was being rather impolite to the eastern European lady working there, ordering, and at some point he sort of shouted at her (“I SAID, not toasted”). Then he turned around and looked at me and after that started using the word “please” a lot. He called his mate over, who was still on the phone, to get his order and mumbled to me and the lady: “he’s a donut”. He said to him: “there’s a queue here, what do you want to eat?”. I think that if I hadn’t shaved my head, they wouldn’t have been so “respectful” to the lady and to me… I remembered what a friend of mine said about her husband, who also shaves his head and how, when he goes into a shop, they are very polite to him, like respectful, but as she put it in her inimitable way, “it’s a fear thing”.

So, maybe I’m not friendly looking anymore, and maybe people looking for Tower Bridge won’t be asking me the directions to London Bridge anymore, but who cares? What good were they anyway? Bloody tourists.

After leaving the college I decided to enjoy the weather by going for a cycle ride, without a plan and without looking at the map. I ended up on what is the longest, fairly straight and continuous cycle path I’ve ever been on in London. I got on it at around Tower Bridge/Aldgate and ended up somewhere near Canary Wharf. But, going east from Tower Bridge, there aren’t many bridges left to cross to get me back down south, so I asked some other cyclists, who were extremely friendly to me, almost… fearful and they mentioned a ferry that could take me across to the Hilton. So I put my bike on it and went across. And after 17 years in London, I used water transport for the first time. It was fun and it feels good to have finally earned a bit of respect.

Olympic torture… as it snows in April

…was in a typical English Victorian house with some rather strange people. I think I knew one of them from the neighbourhood and asked if it was alright to go out into the garden. Went out and it was a typical London Victorian garden, About 15-20 square metres. But it was a work of art. There were what appeared to be trees and grass and plants, all covered in a permanent snow like substance. At first I thought it was the real thing. But I touched it and it was just art. I commented to the unknown neighbour that I’m surprised they got planning permission for this. He said they hadn’t gotten any. I made a joke about some helicopter spotting it and…

… I woke up, quite early for a Sunday, around 7:30. When I looked outside it was snowing pra caralho. So much for global warming. And I thought of Prince’s Sometimes it snows in April. I like this line alot: Always cry 4 love, never cry 4 pain.

Prince was the first person, as far as I know, who wrote his lyrics as if he was texting, years before schoolkids were doing it. I stuck a video animation, with the song, on my vodpod. The animation’s not that great, but I love the song and hadn’t heard it for a long time.

Met a friend who got hold of some free tickets for an early morning showing of the Steve Buscemi film Lonesome Jim. It was good. Funny, lightweight, easy Sunday morning viewing. It was on at the ICA, near Trafalgar Square. By freeky coincidence, it ended at the exact time that the olympic torch was passing by that point. This means we were sort of stuck, because we wanted to head into Soho for some panini or other light lunch and so decided to wait until the runners and police had finished with their stupid little exhibition of pagan worship (Prometheus’s flame) disguised as evil consumerism (modern Olympic “games”).

Although I knew the Olympic flame was being paraded around London as a grand freemason symbol of corporate nonsense that it is, I had decided to not get involved. But to be honest I had forgotten about it when I set out to the cinema today in this beautiful snowy weather. When we were approaching Trafalgar Square and saw those Tibetan and Chinese flags waving in opposition, I was still unmoved. What really got me was when I saw all these normal looking people, chinese and westerners, waving their little Samsung flags! What’s happening here? I mean, nationalistic flag waving is bullshit enough, but now the sheep are waving company flags as well! It was shocking. My friend pointed out that the other side of the flag had the Olympic rings on it. It was nevertheless hilarious to see a bunch of people waving the flag of a mega corporation. It reminded me of “Manufactured Landscapes”, an excellent film that I watched recently with the same friend.

I’m not so sure anymore that the so-called Olympic spirit ever did exist. I’ve no doubt that nowadays it’s all about huge multinationals making more and more money while “athletes” are pumped full of chemicals to compete to see who is the fastest, strongest etc. I have the right to doubt that the games ever were noble. They sold it to us like this: the games would happen in ancient Greece and all wars would stop and athletes would compete, then they’d go back to whatever city-state-country they were from, and, the wars would recommence. What’s that all about then? Why not stop the wars altogether and write poetry instead?

We couldn’t go anywhere, so we had to wait for it to pass. We were up at the north part of the square, near the National Gallery. The small police presence was not disturbing yet, but then just before the torch arrived, there were a bunch of policemen on bicycles and some on foot. Then a London bus passed, full with runners wearing a blue tracksuit chavvy outfit and then I saw the torch coming. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a bunch of police started running after the torch. There was tension, confusion and maybe some of it intentional by the police and then the runner was redirected. We saw quite a few tibetan protestors being arrested. There were usually 3 to 5 police per protestor and they were dragging them away, through the corridor where the runners were supposed to be. Then alot of booing was being heard. Was it against the protestors, or the police? Then alot of “Free Tibet” shouts were heard and I lost it and was shouting it as well. One group of 4-5 police with a protestor were near me and they were shouting in his face “Shut up”, “Shut up”, although I couldn’t hear a word he was saying. I think what they meant was: “look, we don’t want to have to hurt you, but you leave us no choice because you are voicing your opinion”. It was pathetic.

I overheard one westerner say something that I agree with: “I’m not protesting against China, but against the whole Olympic games”. I think that although the Free Tibet protests are important and essential, they may be taking away from the other important issues surrounding the Olympics in general. This was done in previous Olympics, for example, and I think we’ll be seeing more and more similar protests around the world before this years spectacle, and I hope it includes internal (in China) protests, because I’m sure the effect on the average chinese person will be similar to that on the average Greek, who will be paying for the “games” in taxes for a long time to come. And why? Partly to have had the honour to pay for the building of stadiums which are now rotting unused.

So, I dedicate “Sometimes it snows in April” to the Tibetans and Chinese who are suffering and dying in any way related to the great Olympic spirit.