Considering that I have no idea what will happen at the aeroport on Sunday, I am not very nervous about my impending voyage (doom) to Praha from Madrid. Originally, I thought I’d leave Fresneda tomorrow via bus from Belorado and arrive in Logroño at an unspecified time in the evening. I would then have an evening in the casa in Paseo del Prior alone to collect my rational and recharge my hungry power supply.

At the moment, I am sitting on the bed in Marisa’s room in Fresneda (as opposed to the bed in my old room in the other house that I had grown a bit acusomed to) trying to ignore the people shouting fragments of conversation at each other to and from the upper floor (where I write). We shall embark on a paseo to get away from the closed spaces and multitudinous warm bodies.

At least, that is the relief it will give me.

As the room is being populated by others who must conduct conversations no matter if a proper topic exists or not, I am a bit distracted and shall continue like a proper mustelid later.

I am not Shambal Brambel, but I know him. He is a greasy spic who sleeps on park benches beneath seven month old newspapers. You smell him from several hectometers away. He produces expansive and even at times artistic puddles beneath his place of rest simply by drooling during his slumber.

I plan to kill him. Perhaps I already have and do not remember.

The purpose of this post is to test whether blog_to_mongo.js still works on my new system. If it does not, I shall kill Shambal yet another time. The good thing about immortals is that you may slay them various times, each with pleasure.

During the next few internet blackout days (in Fresneda), I want to rewrite the bulk of martenblog in Clojure. The original was in Clojure using Noir, which has not been maintained in ages.

However, blog_to_mongo.js, if it is still functional, will remain, at the moment, as a script to be executed in Node.

The weeds, as they term them, teem with thriving insects in an ecosphere unknown to neighbouring lots

This could be an analogy of the multiverse concept, but I’ll distill it down to something more simple. Humans, even in the same city, divide themselves into different peergroups. Perhaps peergroups is not the best word here. I’ll go with penguins. So, humans, even in the same city - even in the same barrio, divide themselves into different penguins. These penguins are mostly oblivious of each other. Or, rather, they choose to ignore each other. They are the differing mini-cultures of insects in abstractions of different fields.

I see this breaks down, obviously, when penguins are required to overlap, such as in the workplace, but I’ll ignore that for now. My mind is set on the family clusters especially that I have encountered in Spain such as the one I find myself a part of at the moment. A central hub of this penguin centers on the grandparents. Further out on the spokes are nuclear family. Here the spokes are close. As you move further out from the hub, family and friend groups of this penguin populate spokes, but are further apart. Communication between them is more rare.

Kurt Vonnegut’s folk group discussion in one of his books echoes this. Communities, even in this so-called interconnected world, conform to the 150 person max. After that, things get fuzzy. Family breaks down. The penguin breaks down. At the edge of the wheel, where the spokes are furthest apart, are the stragglers. They are also a part of other wheels. Those further in on the spokes may be, as well, but not THOSE IN THE CENTER.

More later…

An aside - I am on the autobus from Belorado to Logroňo. Eskaton is playing in my ears. They rock. As always, whilst on an autobus, or in any form of transportation alone from one distant (relatively speaking) place to another, I feel a distinct feeling of displacement. The feeling is not negative. It is not even neutral. It is thrilling. No matter the eventual destination, I am thrilled to be on the way from one life (however transient or temporary) to another.

A day has passed and the ecosphere is mown, lost to care and trimming to please surrounding ecospheres that care only for its outward aesthetic.

There comes times when one penguin interferes with another penguin’s way of life enough for a sort of purge to occur. It actually makes me smile when something like this happens, but, sadly, instead of mass bloodshed, it is mostly metaphorical. It takes the form of gossip. A member of one penguin becomes involved in an unsavory manner to one of another penguin. Usually, only the parts of the spokes furthest from the hub are riddled with this, ahem, problem.

In contrast, I am an exception in this regard. Marisa is very close to the hub of her penguin. I am, most possibly, not even of a penguin at all, but one of the rare outsiders. I’m not bragging. I’ve reaped little reward. Basically, I was placed here when Shambal fucked my mother, waited nine months, pulled me uncerimoniously from her womb, set me aside, boiled and ate her, then put me up for adoption. So it goes.

Except for Marisa herself, I am still not really a part of the penguin at all. Her mother, perhaps, is the closest to letting me in. Others are, shall I say, wary. I am an invasive species.

Another aside - There are three girls a few rows up from me taking endless selfies. I want to rip out their entrails and decorate the interior of the autobus with them. Intestines draped over seat after seat! Old women with viscera coloring their hair! Three empty bags of skin flapping out of three smashed windows! A three spleen / three liver artistic hood ornament! This autobus would be the talk of the provence!

The inspiration for this quote, originally, was a walk in the park in Seminole years ago. During those walks, I wrote down many aphorisms I thought appropriate at the time. The tidy lawns, possibly enforced by some absurd city code, inspired both quotes. I imagined the pollution from one insectosphere to another. Mapping this to penguins and humans, Newcomers to the former from foreign penguins surely, especially to the hub, pollute the ecosystem.

You gotta marry within yer own clan, sonny!

After time passes, if the pollution is not expunged, it is accepted. This is a gradual process. I am currently experiencing this process.

So DIE!

Tuesdays come at us from all angles. And by that I mean every angle possible. This includes those angles not able to be perceived by human grumpiness. Truly, Tuesday is a day of change, and, as the omniscient Michal says, every day is Tuesday. Therefore, every day is a day of change and of opportunity. This Tuesday is bright and full of clouds - a good beginning.

If all goes as planned, I leave Fresneda today for home. Currently, as any reader might recall, home is Logroňo. Several things await me in Logroňo. The most important one to me at this moment is my guitar. I shall concentrate on lessons with my guitar. It is my hope that I will transcend other problems that I shan’t mention right now with this concentration.

Music has always been a defining factor in my life. It needs to be back in full force.

Second is study of spanish. El Principito is good reading material. It is within my grasp. I need to proceed through a bit of it every day and accumulate vocabulary and fix proper phrasal construction in my mind. I also have the idea to go to Santos Ochoa and ask for a good Espaňol para Extranjeros book. And / or scour the internet.

Third is a return to creativity in programming. Lua is an interesting language I could replace Ruby with for scripting.

• Reinstall from source.
• Install documentation.
• Rewrite some of my Ruby scripts in Lua.
• Investigate creating Android apps with Lua.
• Recreate the Addition app in Lua.

The ionosphere was not built in a day.

This I know.

I’ve listed aims in journals in the past, mostly in vain. My problem is that I usually lack focus. I drift. Mis pensamientos están desperdigados. Perhaps I take on too much simultaneously. Perhaps I get frustrated and give up too easily. Perhaps I am just a cunt.

What I cannot put in my enumeration because it is overreaching is my relationship with Marisa. I have felt alienated whilst here, but as people disappeared and just a few remained in Fresneda, I felt better and better psychologically. Yesterday was particular telling. Our journey to Pozo Negro was frustrating in the vehicle because the conversations escaped me, for the most part, and, besides, I drifted. The actual time at the pozo was bonding. That is, besides the nasty průjem attack I had! Errrggghh.

She doesn’t want me to leave today. She said it in words, in both English and Spanish but more telling was her face. She was almost pleading. I’ll see her again soon.

I have found a bizarre error in the Martenblog. It is not a, as they say, show-stopping error, but an error nonetheless. The last six or so entries are always rewritten to mongoDB (locally) when I call the aptly named executable blog_to_mongo, which is actually just a link to a node script in a distant directory not covered in my PATH. At first, I put this down to a change of date format in some new(y) version of nodejs - the fs module to be specific. Yes! My fetoid brain insisted that the manner in which mongoDB stored dates was just not compatible with node’s. I even planned, again in my fetoid brain, a manner in which I could easily repair said error. I would convert both to UNIX timestamps before comparison! Yes! In my fetoid brain, this plan had already succeeded, as it was particularly brilliant. Any user of UNIX-like dates would instantly agree. In fact, they’d send me grants in the form of the internal organs of their beloved pets to praise my insight. I’d be held in esteem by my universe-wide collegues for the valid lifetime of UNIX timestamps, which I belive is sometime in 2036, at which point I will be the ruling tyrant of the omnisphere, anyhow.

However.

After a bit of testing, naught came from this fetoidal brain excercise. The dates were being compared correctly. No incompatability existed. My fetoid brain was crushed. I am crushed. I lie on the lawn now with my fetoid brain weeping from my aural orifi.

Fuck um.

Marisa is mopping up un monton de agua whilst talking to herself. Her father and a number of other locals were standing near the door to the building and since she is technically not supposed to be in my room with me - or rather, her father may flip (her opinion - not proven to me). My room in fresneda is as such:

Note: I don’t have the patience to get bluetooth working on galictis-vittata, so the photo will be added later.

My semi-crisis from earlier has passed to an extent. I do not feel any particular alienation at the moment. I am, however, sitting alone in my house on my bed writing, so this could contribute to my positive state of mind.

Whilst I am here, what I look forward to the most each day are two things:

• Mine and Marisa’s very long and often semi-strenuous paseos around this less than lively little village.

• Getting back to my bed after a long night of trying to understand the crisscrossing conversation of her family so I can read something calming then fall to slumber.

Today’s paseo was up a long, winding road through the forest. It lasted over two hours, perhaps three, there and back. There signifies a point of formidible altitude at which she decided we need to get back to the family to create almuerzo. A note on the word almuerzo: It is lunch, basically, but I’ve never heard her or one of her family speak it (much less write it - ha!). They always employ comida, instead.

I suppose I’ll mosey on over there pretty soon. I just wanted to fill another entry. I need to keep up with doing just that every single day.

Unrelated note: The band Her Name Is Calla is very enjoyable and I have been listening to their album Navigator throughout this entry.

Another unrelated note: DIE!

They sit on the couches before me yelling at each other. Or so it seems they are yelling. Their voices are naturally very piercing to me. I have bearly entered the room less than 10 minutes prior and already feel like fleeing. At least the television is not blearing. It surely will be a bit later, however. The hated instrument of stupidity is perpetually in the background in this house. How anyone can have a free thought is beyond my comprehension.

I discussed my alienation with Marisa yesterday during our two times in bed. She seems to understand my plight. I understand little of the conversations between her family, and especially when we are all at the table of endless amounts of food. I sit silently. I try to eat slowly so I’ll have something to occupy my time, and therefore my thoughts.

I am the most lost when she leaves for the kitchen. The remaining at the table are shouting at each other (yes - so it seems to me, as my voice is very mild) and I am caught in a crossfire I cannot avoid or battle. I cannot even contribute. By the time I comprehend the topic of conversation, it has moved to another topic.

Yes - I am whining right now.

And it is also most likely true that I’d only be able to stand the same situation for slightly more time were everything in a language I speak fluently. So, one conclusion is that I am an introvert and need to recharge my mental faculties very often.

I have nothing against the food in this establishment (which is exactly what this family is), but, as any reader knows, sameness wears on me like sandpaper. My skin is thin in this sense. In this regard, as well, I yearn for release back to Logroňo where I can concoct anything exotic. Exotic to this bunch, anyway.

For example, yesterday, Marisa and I came up with an alternate form of tortilla de patatas that was more like something Patricia, Habosh and I used to create back in the good old days (the summer of 2005). Whilst we made this, her father created a more traditional variety consisting of solely potatoes, egg and a bit of onion. At the aforementioned table, this version seemed the more preferred. In fact, Carlos openly mocked mine and Marisa’s tortilla.

We sautéed zuchini, onions, red pepper and something else I cannot recall at the moment (they are shouting again). To be proper, we did add potatoes, as well. We added eggs and parsley and fried it as one usually does.

The result was the following (before the last step):

My conclusion is that I don’t know how much longer I can be here and resist despondency. I am not sure what this implies for my relationship with Marisa in the long run. She is a very family oriented woman. As, I said earlier, the mastery of the language is not going to matter much in the long run.

I am an introvert. Absolutely no one here is similar in this regard.

This morning is Thinking Plague morning since, in reality, they are the only civilised music from the only civilised band appropriate for a civilised morning in a semi-civilised village in a pseudo-civilised country on a laughingly civilised planet.

Ayer, Paco and I took a long walk together in the evening. Marisa and Mari José were away at the doctor in Graus. Marisa is always seeking medical help for this or that ailment and it will eventually end in her demise, methinks, but that is another topic altogether.

So, Paco and I took a stroll along the crescent length of the village. The castle perpetually overlooked us, peering down from its dead husk. The most important feauture of our walk for me was the conversation. The contrast to dialogues with Marisa is sharp. With Paco, I feel comfortable saying anything at all. He enjoys my little philisophical quips and attempts to follow up with an open mind. Christián has a point when he says that women are unable to be wrong and it is therefore impractical to converse with them about any topics beyond the superficial. Well, I think Christián said that. Probably the conclusion was a joint effort, however, during a drunken word joust in Polo.

It is surely one of the reasons I left most of my women in the past.

Jeníček used to call Magdalena The Gestapo. I’d either get a blank stare from Marisa were I to do the same to her or she’d harbour anger for the remainder of the day. She is better at taking my jokes than most women, but that is really not saying much.

It should not be shocking to me after decades of dating that women (yes, I am stereotyping) feel uncomfortable or downright angry when they do not feel in control. Is there a means of making situations seem like the woman is in control but yet, at the base level, is not? I’m sure (and I write this laughingly) such advice is written in Christián’s beloved papers and books concerning Neuro Linguistic Programming. That vůl is a paradox in himself. He’s a fantastic friend but oh so easy to make fun of.

Earlier in the day yesterday, Marisa and I did have an outing. Our purpose was to visit the castle, but we found ourselves instead on a dirt, gravel and dog feces path around the base of the high hill on which it sits. The conversation centered on the stifling heat more than anything else, really. I could put that down to the weather itself, as when Paco and I went out, the weather was much more mild.

I failed to wander back to yesterday’s blog entry and therefore complete it. So, the next morning, here I sit in bed with Marisa drowsing beside me. The bed is a fold out of a sofa type, with a matress both old and terribly uncomfortable. Surprisingly, however, I slept better than I have in weeks. Fewer inquiet episodes mirrored my customary insomnia.

Today is day six of what I call recovery days. That is, it has been six full days since my last alcoholic drink. I feel fantastic mentally. The most important, is, however, sleep. Fractured sleep conquers my will to control my moods. Chemical imbalance is what I live through during every waking moment. I am impatiently shoved from emotion to unrelated emotion by the beast that is surely hormonal imbalance. Lack of sleep is the culprit. Cuando carezco de sueňo, soy un bastardo, por supuesto.

During a very pleasant visit to a waterfall, I said something Marisa considered very inappropriate and therefore was castigated during the majority of the remainder of the day. I guess I get it. My sociopathic tendencies run wild at times. I also realize that I was fantastically out of place and being a pitiful hypocrite, to boot.

Long ago, a chica named Trisha destroyed my friend Loyal’s life. That story is long and complex and I shall skip it at the moment. Surely it is penned elsewhere, or at least in parts. However, once, Loyal (or someone else close to us) told me of a time when a part of our fantastic little group was gathered at Craig’s place to watch some television. I can envision The Simpsons immediately, so let’s go with that. Trisha was somehow among the participants, but she refused to watch the television. She somehow found it beneath her. She sat around the corner so she was not exposed to the hateful radiation spewing forth. I criticised her actions to whomever told them to me. I’d like to think it was Loyal himself.

I performed a very similar deed yesterday. After relaxing minutes proximus to the waterfall, from above, a rope dropped. Some adventurers were about to rappel down the face of the cliff to the pool at the bottom of the waterfall. The evil chemicals bubbled and flothed in my brain and I simply refused to watch. I went to the other side of the pool and took photos of submerged rocks.

When much of the rappelling was done, Paco asked me my opinion of the humans attempting and pulling off this feat. No, he didn’t put it exactly like that, and, as he asked me in Spanish, it would be impossible to actually put it like that, as English is superior in every manner conceivable to mankind, and to mustelid-kind, as well. My reply to him was No me interestaba. Marisa was shocked. I see now that my reply was rude and out of place. However, it could have been seen as a joke. Perhaps I could have even played it off as a joke. If I did, and I don’t recall now even though I was stone cold dead (I mean sober), I did it lamely. My actions did not hit Marisa as hard. The words were what mattered to her. Appearance, perhaps congeniality, are the most important things to her.

Presentation!

My actions were like Trisha’s and they affect me even more than Marisa’s distance and anger during the remainder of yesterday. I was a cunt. What I failed to do was actually ponder on any effects of my future deeds before carrying them out.

While I am sitting on this balcony full of plants that impale buckets of soggy soil, I sip my café con leche. I have neglected this journal and that is surely a pity, as many bizarre things have occured between the last entry and this one. They will be lost in time like, um, never mind.

Today we go to TORLA.

The village named Torla reminds me (in name, only) of Tuzla. There are obvious connections here and if you cannot, at a glance, recognize them, then you will surely die the flame death. Marisa and I originally planned it a few days prior as a trip for two. Our journey from Monzón in one of those silly apparati called a car was to include vistas of lakes snaking through valleys directing a path to the Pyranees. Torla is in the Pyranees.

Moreover, we are travelling with the family. Paco, Mary Jose, David and Juan shall accompany us on this trek. Perhaps trek is the incorrect word since we shall only be walking once we arrive to Torla.

Yesterday, whilst Marisa and Mary Jose were away in some Satan-forsaken village at a local witch doctor (or warlock doctor - take your pick), I had a grand time with Paco and David (the eldest son) convincing their printer to print from Paco’s IPad (DAMN Apple products and all who use them to the inferno that is the Monegros Desert. Speaking of which, and leaping from topic to topic like a flying squirrel leaps from human appendage to human appendage, much to the consternation of Marisa, during our drive from Logroňo to Monzón, I directed, being the fantistic navigator that I am, us through the most feared desert in Aragón on roads narrow and in Marisa’s opinion, treacherous. She wasn’t exactly angry, but the frustration showed clearly in the crooks of her visage. The episode allowing the printer to function from all of our phones, as well, was saturated with hilarity. You bet it was, you cunt.

(Monegros Desert)

Cunt.

Coňo.

The family uses this latter word with abandon. And when I say family, this includes the grandparents. Like all overused words and phrases, it has lost its meaning and is as harmless as leper or impalation.

I shall resume this plodding series of words once we return from Torla. `

I forget exactly what year it was now, and definitely what month, but when I was living with Jana in Praha, I began to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. I have no exact recollection of how long I actually attended, but it was probably on and off from between six months to a year. Remember: My mind always exaggerates.

(Alcoholics Anonymous)

Eventually, when you have been going long enough, an older (and I am not indicating age, necessarily, here) member becomes your mentor. A man named Paul was to be my mentor. I believe he was also from the fucking Estados Unidos, but my mind has been addled by too much booze in the interim between quitting AA in Prague and this very moment, I assume approximately six years later. I believe someone is chosen to be your mentor after you have reached a certain stage, or step, in the AA process. There are twelve steps. Here they are:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Ok, so I am going to go through these one at a time until the point where I believe I was when I stopped - possibly immediately before I was going to be mentored.

Uno. I would have to say that I knew this as far back as the year 2000, when I was with Vesna, so this one (a pun for another alcoholic named Christián Newman) is a given. During my time with Vesna, which began at the end of August (mas o menos) in 2000, and initially, I did not drink at all. We were in her home town (Tuzla - ha!) for weeks (Again, remember: My mind always exaggerates) in complete sobriety. However, I did begin smoking. Somehow, at one point, as it has done for much of the last fifteen years, a yearning gripped me. It was my alcoholism! Yeah! FUN! We went to a bar and began ordering vodkas sraight.

(Christián Newman)

During the relationship itself, which took place mostly in Muenchen, I found myself emptying bottle after bottle of our hosts’ alcohol. At first, we were living at an absent friend of Vesna’s. I cannot recall his name except for that it wasn’t Phaedrus. One evening, I thought I was having heart palpatations because either of the continuation of boozing, not boozing enough, or just a simple cardiac arrest. She rushed me to the emergency room. I had an EKG. I was fine.

At our second residence together, I’d run down while she was occupied to the service station across the street (or next-door - I don’t recall) and snatch up a two litre plastic bottle of very cheap wine. More exists to this story, but now is not the time to tell it.

Dos. When I was attending AA in Praha, I think I questioned the fundamental meaning of this step at first, giving it a religious significance. Therefore, initially, I was repulsed. I can see how religion could be a saviour from addiction. It’s an obvious conclusion, but the accompanying baggage that I saw growing up with christians made that passageway a no-go for me.

In some way, most likely through discussion with others, I found a way to abstract it away. The saviour or God could be anything to believe in that is more powerful than my own will. It could be my relationship with Jana (at that time), my relationship with Marisa (at this time), my belief in the will to live and accomplish positive goals in the world (at both times), or even mustelids. Yes, mustelids. I realize they do not care a whit about my alcoholism nor my recovery thereof, but saving an endangered species is much greater than any part of myself.

Tres. The way number three is worded helped me abstract the God, or, if you will, religious, part out of my proceedings.

Cuatro. I began to stumble here, I believe. In my conversation with Christián Newman today, I suggested he do something, also, about his apparent alcoholism and mentioned that I had gone to AA last night. He told me he didn’t want to hang out with a bunch of creeps (that’s a paraphrase) and he was too egotistical… well, here is part of the conversation:

(13:16:25) inhortte@gmail.com/D962C606: I even go to AA.

(13:16:38) christián neumann: That is good

(13:16:46) inhortte@gmail.com/D962C606: You should try it.

(13:16:46) christián neumann: I really want to quit vole

(13:16:56) inhortte@gmail.com/D962C606: It’s more interesting than you think.

(13:17:08) christián neumann: Nah, I don’t want to be around creepy people

(13:17:17) christián neumann: But I don’t think I need it

(13:17:23) inhortte@gmail.com/D962C606: Here there is even a group (at the same time) for the ‘parters’ of the alcoholics. So Marisa goes to this.

(13:18:04) inhortte@gmail.com/D962C606: Heh. Creepy. They are not that, certainly.

(13:18:45) christián neumann: Alanon

(13:18:49) christián neumann: That’s good she goes

(13:19:05) inhortte@gmail.com/D962C606: I’m probably the creepiest one there.

(13:19:07) christián neumann: Luckily for me, my urges to drink are not compulsions

I never thought my urges to drink were compulsions. I could, of course, choose to quit any time. Just like Christian, I was fooling myself. And like Aurelio said last night at the meeting, he had also thought his compulsions were not an addiction. He could quit any time. It was his decision. He was wrong. But, unlike Christian, he knew he was wrong. He needed group therapy (my words).

I never faced making complete moral inventory of myself. I failed. And at the next step, Paul and I parted company.

Cinco. In bed the other night, Marisa and I had a very long discussion about the history of my alcoholism, so I believe I am coming closer spanning the gap from where I left off before to the present. If our relationship is to continue in a meaningful manner, I have to stand on the stone that is this step until my feet are sucked into it and the endless sky scorches my brain. I’ll be released to continue the path after absolution, in a manner of speaking.

A group exists for the spouses of the alcoholics in Logroňo. Marisa attended whilst I was at my first AA meeting in what seems centuries. I hope she continues with me, but I certainly can’t and won’t blame her if she cannot or will not.