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.

These days I feel like a ghost. Not tragically, its just the first word that comes to mind. I feel myself move through this environment, but not touch it. Partly, I think, it is because I am not invested here. The things that I do touch are ungrounded, like me. The improvements made on the house are temporary gains. It will probably be evicted and destroyed before the year is out. The people I have become close to have left or will be gone soon. They are from all over the world, and most of them have a lot more of being all over the world until they settle down for any length of time. Another reason I feel this way is because my footprint has become so light. Living here, like this, I have come to realize how minimal my need really are. This has been great. An absolutely necessary education I should have gotten when I was thirteen. It is strange to transition into having almost no income and no expenses: Everything I use to meet my needs are things that people have decided have no more use. Again I am a ghost haunting an old house, that last residents long dead. All of my food has sat on a grocery store shelf, passed by but for some reason never picked up until it was thrown out. My clothes are castoffs. Somebody bought and wore them until one day when they didn't make the cut. Everything around me has already had a life. Every day I spend hours gliding through this city on my bike, with my eyes open and my mouth shut, passing through overwhelming histories and a bright busy present. A present that is soon not to include me. It is a hallow feeling to think that one day soon I will walk down the stairs into the underground to catch the metro to the station, and it won't be until I am have left Barcelona that the train will come out of its tunnel.

Days of Fruits, Nights of Lipids

A strange wind this way blows. Our house has become a vortex of late. Things are coming inside. Our door holds none barred. Its become easy. Much of this has to do with a lack of discretion, plane and simple common sense. People are becoming comfortable. And when the people become comfortable, they become lax. Our young Slovak runaway has decided to adopt a young runaway rat. It feels soft but it grows fast. Aarto has brought a puppy into the house. Fleshy jowls wrinkle down from its wet eyes and distract you from its ominously large paws. It gnaws on the metal legs of our outside table as though its just warming up. A late house mate decided it would be a good idea to let an old graff artist friend from Australia stay over for a few days. He said they used to be on the same crew, whatever that means. Now there are 4 of them using our walls outside like the stall of a shitter in some dive dinner's bathroom whenever they can't find a parked train. Every time one of them throws up something I really like, the next day another one covers it up with something else. We have a sort of tiki lounge aesthetic going in the back yard and I thought maybe they could paint something to go along with the theme. I wanted one of them to do something really tasteful for a change. Well now we have some overgrown lizards breathing fire on Shiva. I know that doesn't exactly sound predictable, but it sort of is.

The last dubious addition to the household is all my fault. Coming back from getting food, I spied a large white kitchen appliance. At first I thought it was a rice cooker, which would have been great. I got all giddy and ran up to it. I saw a cord hanging off it, which was exciting because there are a million metal scrappers in this city that would scrap their own mothers if they were made of copper. I have seen so many nifty electronic gizmos on the curb with their electrical umbilical cords prematurely severed: another nickel in some metal mercenaries oily palm. It wasn't a rice cooker. And then it wasn't a bread baker. It was better and worse. It was a deepfrier, in all its dangerous glory. Its reservoir of oil runs parallel with the psyche of the house: sometimes sweet cauliflower tempura fries quietly in fresh sunflower oil, or golly french fries gostle around all rolly-polly. But more often then not more sinister things happen. Late in the night and inebriated, people convince them selves that they are being creative. They scan the kitchen looking for something. Anything. The rat scampers back to its cage and the dog whines by the door as cheese curds are stuffed into wads of pie dough. Croissants are injected with choco filling and then take the plunge. The thickly battered beer battered snausages let off a dank and hazy grease that crawls around room and eventually somebody makes a meek plea for somebody to change out the oil, but instead settles down with hot sauce and an egg deepfried inside a layer of onion.

There is a running list on the walls of experiments to be made, things to be deepfried. I regret to say that this list is growing faster than things can be cooked. But we are making an effort, these thing must be done. When something is fully submerged in boiling oil something special happens. It is an intrusive process, the oil changes it from the outside in to its core. To really appreciate this you have to be there with it, inside this three dimensional invasion. When it happens, when it really happens, something is expunged. Something bad is released and becomes good. Even though the end result is heavy and sodden with vegetable fats, it is somehow cleaner for all of this. Physically, everything is dirty and oily, from the air that we are breathing to whatever we are putting inside our guts, the slick plates and the filthy frier. But something intangible is somehow better. Its just better and its hard to explain why. It is a bitter sweet thing to be inside my house, and it is always there, sitting on the counter. It takes about five minutes for the oil to heat up to frying temperatures and who am I to blow against the wind.

I have on my feet the second pair of Velcro tennis shoes I have ever had. The first pair met an abrupt and tragic end. I was young, strapped into the baby seat in the back of my family's Oldsmobile. I don't remember if it had fake wood paneling down the sides, but I hope so. My folks tell it like this: I had really wanted Velcro shoes because I could put them on and take them off all by myself. This was a really exciting proposition to a young boy who's chubby and uncoordinated fingers had yet to master the subtle art of shoelaces. So my parents gave in and bought me some snazzy new Velcro sneaks. A couple days later the three of us were driving along one of Eastern Washington's many high and dry bluffs, along a road that skirted around the top of a low valley. My father always drove, and at the time did not believe in using toxic conveniences such as AC, so all the windows were down. My mother looked behind her into the back seat just in time to see me, grinning from my car seat, throw one of my new “I took off my shoe all by myself!” sneakers out the window and down into the canyon below.

Needless to say, my parents never bought be another pair of Velcro sneakers again. This has not exactly left a whole in my heart. Or even left behind some kind of dull consumer ache. But I always coveted them. When I was old enough to request another pair I never did. I just wasn't courageous enough. Being that weird gangley kid hovering friendless in the back of the class was awkward enough without wearing the thick soled plastic shoes typically designed for severely handicapped. I wanted them because I thought they looked snappy and made fun noises. To me they are a throwback to very specific old fashioned genre of science fiction: When all the space ships were large and bulbous, the sci-fi damsels wore high boots and short skirts, and the sci-fi hunks wore tight one piece track suits that hugged thick shoulders and rumps. Needless to say, this shameless desire was put on the back shelf for some time. Years passed and I was only reminded of this odd affection by the odd Velcro shoe that happenstance passed my pay. This all changed a month ago.

There is a large squat in an abandoned arboretum around the corner from where I live. Inside there is a wagenplatz (a community of people living in wagons) there full of Poles and on Tuesdays we play soccer in a big dirt field up the road. I only brought my big steel-toed work boots to Barcelona, so I would always try to find or barrow shoes to play in. I have come to realize, to my annoyance, that Spaniards do not share my shoe size. One Tuesday after one of the games three toes from each foot were sticking out of the front of the shoes. Another Tuesday had me clomping around the field in my shitkickers. It was the third time I played that send me to a store. I had pushed my feet into shoes that were just too small. It hurt a bit to run, but I figured it was better then my boots. Until some big Pole and I decided to both kick the soccer ball in opposite directions at the same time. I thought I broke my big toe, but all that happened was a lot of bruising and bleeding underneath the nail. So I broke down and decided to look into buying some new shoes. Which was something, really. I have made a policy for myself to not spend any money here (with some very necessary exceptions of course : pens, beer, tobacco, bike lock, things hard to recycle). The cheapest shoes I could find were 6 euros, in the basement of some big sporting goods store. And wouldn't you know it, they were my new shinny white Velcro sneaks. Well, they were new and shinny and white. They were mine, and it itched a scratch that was decades in the making. And my toenail fell off a few days ago while I was swimming. Its a rather particular feeling, like a fresh circumcision.

Now, in the present, there is a special tenderness and sensitivity to every step I take. I walk forward into my destiny, but the shoes and that unguarded fleshy toe I walk with are always bringing me back to the past. Which is special. Thats why I included pictures of these things for you to see.

Our house, in the middle of our street

Excuses excuses: A kitchen full of food and people. A kitchen like the carcass of a gazel. If you don't join the circle of hyenas and get your snout in it then all that'll be left is the gristle. And these other hyenas are good folk: two stoic Finnish, one sassy French Canadian, a disgruntled and drunken Australian, a mum Pole, a young Slovak runaway, and a dashing and daring Minnesotan with a wry sense of humor bred from the long cheerless winters of the high prairie country. You might notice one glaring absence from this laundry list: Our house has a lack of that thick Catalan and Spanish blood. Well, its not my fault.

Our house is a large cumbersome old thing. Empty for at least twenty years, its only crime is inefficiency. The largest construction company in Barcelona bought it up to tear it town. Soon its footprint will be like the rest of this city: a boxy five story apartment building wall to wall with neighboring five story apartment buildings that look almost exactly alike. The ground floor is divided into a large business space that might have been used by a mechanic and a massive kitchen thats the best room in the house, with more gleaming white counter space then in right. I think it was rebuild for restaurant use. The business space with the large doors to the street is walled off from us, and is so full of rubble and boxes and metal and furniture we just can't bring ourselves to clear it out. We have the only back yard on the block, and it to was overwhelmingly crowded with trash, but we tackled it good. Green space in this part of town is so rare it would be a real shame to let it waste away under tons of debris. There are a couple shacks out back that have become bedrooms, and we have the best tiki-lounge this side of the Mississippi. Surf boards, hanging chandeliers, christmas lights, a burn barrel, and palm fronds. Thats right. Palm fronds.

The upstairs has five bedrooms and lots of holes in the floor covered with wood. People tried to squat this house a year ago and got thrown out the next day. Some beefy construction guy thought that if he punched some holes in the floor and made a huge mess that nobody would want to squat it. If he had done that to the roof, he would have been right. But a shovel, a broom, and some well laid boards foiled his poorly laid plans. The upstairs upstairs is a delicious sunny patio.

It is big, it is dirty, but it is ours. Except for one small balcony. That is still the pigeons.

/ D Am Em G / / B F#m C#m E / /

Our house, was our castle and our keep
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, that was where we used to sleep
Our house, in the middle of our street (3X)

/ C Gm Dm F / / D Am Em G / / B F#m C#m E / /

NATO Maintains Control of Situation

In classic Yes Men style, NATO arrived in full force at an otherwise peaceful separatist rally in Gent. The preparation was minimal: copying 1,000 fliers the day before, and the morning of putting together the

amazing NATO banner, turning the van into a Police paddy wagon, and getting into the camo. But the effect was massively uncomfortable and awkward to the max. We rolled up on the steps of city hall, dropped the banner, and The General gave his speech.

A little back story.

The Flemish (north) region of Belgium has been on a conservative nationalistic streak. Politicians have been pushing an anti-immigrant platform and non-dutch speakers have felt an increase in racist sentiments. The more liberal Gent sits smack dab in the middle of all

this,and decided to secede from the rest of Belgium and become its own city state. Of course this was all in jest: Somebody's bright idea that the media jumped on and turned into a citywide joke. A big rally was planned downtown with a all day concert featuring Belgian bands. In the spirit of things NATO decided to step in to ensure the safety of everyone and the continuation of the ethnically diverse union that is Belgium. The url www.nato-press.com was purchased and set up to look just like NATO's official site (www.nato.int). Our NATO spokesman contacted lots of local media about our planned presence, and told them to contact us threw the website.

The guy who set the site up still has charges against him for doing a similar stunt last year. He set up a Belgian government website and issued a bunch of fake press releases to the effect that the Belgium was withdrawing from NATO. That got a lot of publicity and people were calling NATO and Belgian politicians for weeks. There is actually a long and proud history of these types of hijinks. The Yes Men (www.theyesmen.org) have a fake WTO website and they receive invitations to speak as representatives of the WTO at conferences all around the world.

NATO Game Over protest in Brussels

Laura is from Finland and has lived in the house with me for a week when she decided to hitch to Belgium for an anti-NATO protest and I joined her. The trip north went well, except for an unplanned 14 hour layover somewhere between Lyon and Dijon. We arrived at the action center in Brussels mid action, people were already going over the fence and at least 50 had been arrested. I thought it would be a bad idea to get arrested since I had some questions about my ambiguous legal status here in Europe. So I didn't rush in all gun-ho. I deciding instead to join a walk to NATO headquarters through some farms. It was as peaceful as 60 completly nonviolent poets and artists walking through a farm could be, but that did not stop a couple of paddy wagons full of police from chasing us down and at least a dozen cops of horses herding us away from the NATO compound. Here in the picture, two cops had Laura and I zip cuffed and were walking us back to there vehicles. Due, I think, to a 'lack of interconnectivity of police intelligence', the horse cops were pushing the rest of the protesters where we were being led. When I had a chance, I broke away from the cops and ran into the crowd. Some media people started interviewing Laura and there were lots of ridiculous pictures taken of us getting arrested on a farm, with nothing but grass and grass. These showed up all over northern European and especially Scandinavian newspapers, as a bit of a joke. I think the mustached reflective sunglasses wearing leader of the Anti-Farmwalk-NATO-Protest police didn't want all of this media attention, so the two cops who had cuffed us sort of slowly wandered away from Laura. We didn't have a problem getting the zip cuffs off. All the pieces in the mainstream media about the NATO Game Over protest talked about the excessive police violence toward the protesters that tried to enter the NATO compound over the fence (50 succeeded!) and the comically exaggerated police presence confronting us in the fields barely within eyesight of NATO headquarters. There were maybe 30 cops on foot, most in riot gear, at least 12 cops on horses, a helicopter over our heads, and more police cars that couldn't drive through all themud circling around the farms. There was not a lot of newsworthy stuff happening the day of and the day after the protest, so in terms of the media attention attracted it was a huge success. It was a bit discouraging that almost every report underestimated the number of people attending the action, the number of people arrested, and that a NATO press release claiming that nobody entered the NATO compound was included in most of the news pieces. I have not attended very many protests, but I think this sort of thing happens a lot. There were lots of good people there, and a two day antiwar conference in the days following. Laura and I were planning to hitch right back to Barcelona, but were convinced instead to stay with some new friends in Gent. More on that later.