LETTERS FROM THE FRONT

Here I find myself in an anarcho syndicalist bar. There are pictures of the circle A everywhere alongside trade union posters and one old timer for each seat at the bar. It is tiny and playing David Bowie. About 20 seconds in I am offered a cigarette and the warm pale beer is as Spanish as beers come. Luckily, more often then not, as far as beer goes, your standard bubbly barley hops beverage can't be all that bad no matter where it comes from. I have just dropped off my bike's bum back wheel at Nicks bike shop. I am pretty sure that I mounted it at an angle like a jerk and bent the axle. And I am going to need my bike on Saturday. The owner of the shop is paying me to trail a large herd of Danish tourists around the city on a bike tour. It has the potential of being absolutely horrible. I told Nick on my way out of the shop that we may be there when the tower falls. I will be something of a sheep dog, keeping everybody moving in the right direction and rounding up stragglers. They said I shouldn't need to use my cattle prod. Bowie sings “time takes a cigarette and puts it in your mouth” in between lines about space invaders. Why is he still so neat when he has always been such a dork? And why does the one drunk in a crowded bar always insist on talking to me? Questions for the ages...

Friends from the Auzzy squat Thumderdome came by today. Some sketchballs in an old yellow postal van were loitering in front of their house. After one of them was overheard talking about needing a ladder they started to worry about an illegal eviction. They were checking out the upstairs windows and balcony from the street and really really didn't like it when someone in the squat started taking their pictures. Sometimes the real life owner of a squat will hire a band of ruffians to break into a squat and physically evict its occupants. These types of evictions are against the law, often violent, and don't always work, but the upside is that the owner of the property doesn't have to go through the lengthy court process and the cops don't seem to care either way. My house will probably sleep over there tonight just in case, but probably nothing is going to happen, and either way all the doors and windows are going to be heavily barricaded. Now the old chap who gave me the cigarette is getting all upidy: leaving over my shoulder spitting slurred Catalan in my ear. I think he is talking about May Day and the price of beer and pointing at his empty glass. I have absolutely no idea what he is getting at.

There are few things niftier than getting on an underground train at one and slowly walking its length. Going from car to car, getting a good glance at everyone taking the ride. There is something about trains that make their passengers seem very simply themselves. It is like a random collection of people in a theater, stationary and having a shared experience. Instead of a constructed story projected in one direction, everybody experiences each others projections while pretending not to. Everything is lit harshly by florescent lights, some of it lighting up the black tunnel walls that crowd in and streak by the windows. The train rocks back and fourth meditatively while its captive audience think about where they are coming from or where they are going or what kind of problems might happen on the International Space Station when the US fleet of spaceships goes off line until 2015. The ends of the subway cars are joined by rubber walls, like an accordion, linking the whole train something like giant snake. If you stand in the last car it is possible to look down the entire length of the snake as it winds, twists, and dips along its tunnel.