Limb Rick

Dave and I will go down in history for our fine poetry:

I.
I once put domestic abuse
at the top of my list of to-dos
but decided against it
when my ass, shoulders, left tit,
and beaver got covered with booboos.

II.
A guy come to Portland from Wintrop
had trouble with gettin his prick up.
Turns out his fancy
was not his wife Nancy
but his '64 chevrolet pick up.

III.
A man with a great pompadour
forced a girl to lay down on the floor.
He was so sleazy
he got her all greezy
in both the front and the back door.

IV.
There once was a boy who went pee
and asked his classmates to come see
He went to the pisser
but boy did he miss 'er!
His classmates ended up with wet feet.

V.
I know of a man with a mower
who uses it for just one chore:
he shaves his wife's cunt
so he won't have to hunt
when it comes time to fuck, suck and blow her.

VI.
There once was a woman from Paris
who touched herself out on the terrace
she came with such power
that the old Eiffel tower
blew its load all the way to Polaris.

VII.
There once was a chick named Kate
her boobies were massive cock-bait.
When put on display
even a gay
his own skivvies would saturate.

VII.
There once was a fella named Jimmy
whose ass was as wide as a chimney
they tried to extinguish
but couldn't distinguish
the smoke from the smudge on his skivvies.

Malmö

After one amazing week in Stockholm, I took a night train south (back down south, that is) to Malmö, just to see the city, and it so happened that the family I am now staying by had a gig there last night, so the meeting was arranged perfectly. This is the family I will be wwoofing with for only a couple of days, they have 13 Icelandic horses, and they all play traditional Swedish tunes. The concert was a most excellent introduction to the family, after a long and lonely day wondering the streets of what I found to be a rather...boring...city. Malmö is mostly just shopping, and there is an old part which is nice. I was recommended to visit St. Peter's Catherdral, which I did and it was beautiful just like everyother Northern European Cathedral I've ever seen, and to have a coffee and cake at Konditori Hollander, which I did and it was regally ornamented, charming, and absolutely delicious. I walked around the city, alllll around the city several times, took a nap in the park, used the internet at the train station, and began my next book, Freakonomics, which I am enjoying with a potential newfound interest in some branch of economics. But since I had a rough and short sleep on the train the night before, and had 12 hours to occupy myself there in that small place, I did not enjoy it to its maximum capacity, feeling sad to have left familiar friends in Stockholm, and anticipating anxiously the next people I was to to meet. The train ride...I was in a compartment with a family with two small children, one of whom wet the bed before the train even left Stockholm Central. Perhaps it is a more well-known fact than I had previously assumed that children have a pleasant smell to them...maybe that's just babies. But it is very fortunate, I will tell you, that the human nose is capable of adapting to any odor, no matter how wretched, within a fairly short amount of time, so that we don't wander this earth vomiting all the time.

This farm is so far the most comfortable place I have traveled. Although I of course enjoy the cities a lot, I feel so much more at home here amongst the trees and the countryside and the animals, which I have not seen yet, but hopefully will a bit later. My task thus far has been to pick cherries from the tree outside, the huge cherrytree, with most deliciously dark red cherries. I picked the ones I could reach, but will need a ladder to get the others, and some help.

So, that's the update, I can't wait to be home, but it will be a wonderful final week abroad. Cheers.

Jazzzzz

Hejsan from Stockholm. This week happens to be the 25th annual Stockholm Jazz Festival, featuring Van Morrison and Mary J. Blige. Pontus and his friends will volunteer there, and I will absorb the music for at least one of the days. It takes place on Skeppsholmen, the island where the Modern Art Museum is located, which I saw last time I was here, and which featured a fantastic Dada exhibit. I'll check it out again this year.

And so I am here after my very first couchsurfing experience in Göteborg with a fellow named Karl, who plays a little bit of every type of music (from folk music to heavy metal) on a little bit of every type of instrument. He has a nykelharpa that his grandfather made, and I learned one tune on that, and then we went to a small folk festival south of the city, where I met a few fantastic Swedish fiddlers and recorded tons of tunes which I will try to learn before I see them next, at the Korrö festival in Småland next weekend. There were a lot of older folks at the little festival, playing mostly tunes that were easily fathomable and not as enticing to my ears as what these fellows, Roger and Erik were playing alone in what they called Logen, which is a barn, but a barn built and designed specifically for dancing in. I asked them what the difference was between their tunes and the other tunes, if it was a matter of region or time period or anything. They said it was simply that they prefer the more complicated tunes, the polskas or all varieties, particulary the Slängpolskas. So next week I will meet them again as well as a million more musicians and hopefully pick up something useful while there.

Karl plays in a bluegrass/country band as well, so last Saturday we went to the Nääsville Bluegrass festival, also south of Göteborg but a bit further. None of the musicians has a driver's lisence, though one had access to an old Volvo 740, so I had my first driving experience out of the states, the roads are so narrow! But driving is driving, and I think I'll rent a car next week to get to all the places I need to be, and to have a place to sleep at the festival (it's a camping fest), so I will have much more experience.

And before I got to Göteborg, I was in Helsingborg and Helsingör and staying with Leon in Copenhagen, at which time the Copenhagen Jazz fest was going on. So, needless to say, I am getting a little of my two MOST favorite kinds of music, traditional Swedish and jazz jazz jazz. In fact, now Pontus is rocking out on the piano right behind me, so I must get my fiddle out! Signing off for now, home July 28th.

Barceloning

Barcelona is a hot hot hot weather city and that is the sort of city that makes me tired and worn and smoggy like a humidinataur, whatever that is. Thankfully, the meditteranean is only a short walk from the apartment in which I am staying on Via Laietana with Kevin (my cow orker) and his wife and kids and now parents. We are squeezing into the small space, completely furnished by IKEA, and it is frankly quite delightful, they are wonderful folks. Spain beat Russia in the semifinals (?) last night, and all the while I was out walking around on the boardwalk and in the alleys and there were 3 goals scored which I knew because the entire city erupted for each one, whether watching the game or not. The soccer support system of Barcelona (and surely all of Europe) spreads like a virus, within seconds all humans know what is going on in the game.

I´ve been doing mostly touristy things here, but a little bit of playing as well. Lucy and Leo are learning to play little little violins, and currently the song they know is twinkle twinkle little star, so we made an arrangement for three violins and three voices and performed for the family on my birthday. We have hopes of going to play on the street for only 5 minutes, once through the song, but it may well be that none of us have the guts. Leo is 5 and Lucy is 7 so they have a good excuse in that their bodies aren´t big enough to hold large quantities of guts, but I have no such alibi. But because they are so darn cute, we could make some mad euros, and then buy ice cream with them.

There´s a huge bike culture in Barcelona. Or maybe it´s not a bike culture, maybe it´s just a very well accepted and encouraged mode of transport. Bike lanes are plentiful and wide and respected, and there is at least one citywide bike sharing program called bicicle. A flat fee of about 30 euros gets you access to heaps of special bikes all over the city anytime you want. Lots of bikes ride on the sidewalk too, which I think I heard about on the radio sometime back. Barcelonian pedestrians were upset because even though bikes are good for riders and the environment and the traffic, they ride too fast on the sidewalks and knock people down. It´s not a huge deal, but laws are useless here and probably any attempt to remedy the situation would be ignored.

Gaudi is everywhere but way too touristy. But gee he had a fine sense of style. The Park Guell is most beautiful, a place originally designed to be a place for people to build homes, but which would have cost too much to live in, so is now simply a lovely park with beautifully molten public buildings.

Internet time is almost up, so I leave it at this for now. Today´s agenda: the beach, and a little bit of cheesy tourbus experience which I hate but for some reason bought a two-day ticket for so as to ride around with the family yesterday. It´s not a good way to see the city at all, but it is all right for transporting myself from one place to another.

Another trip!

At long last I am traveling to Sweden via Spain and Copenhagen! I leave today, and am finally over the unexpected anxiety I was associating with leaving what is good here in Portland for what is unknown in Europe. I'm hoping to collect lots of tunes with my new Olympus digital recorder to bring back and share with all of you, and hopefully this musical experience will penetrate and help reshape the SK style of fiddling. I will also be writing some, trying my hand at some songs if inspiration hits, and all in all resurrecting some creative practices I have been neglecting for some time due to an influx of social skills, wonderful human beings, happiness, and unconventional work hours. Please check back for updates!

Arizoning out

There are probably not so many artistic renditions of human fecal matter in the world, despite the fact that the subject is so common to the hearts and hollows of all mankind, and even animalkind. But would you believe that I, SK Green, was blessed with the opportunity to not only witness one such sculpture on my recent trip to visit Dawn in Tucson, but also to lounge on it and experience it in all manners which one such piece of art ought to be experienced? The whole business began when one of the wealthier neighborhoods in Tucson thought it suitable to commemorate themselves via art. Artist Paul Edwards was hired to think of just the right way to honor the 'hood, and he did so by constructing a large mosaic sculpture in memory of the sewage overflow problems that the neighborhood had fallen prey to several years ago. BLAH! Said the neighborhood, THAT'S DISGUSTING! and they banished it from their proximity. Where did it turn up? Why the poor part of town, of course, and that's where Dawn and I got to enjoy this brown beauty. I thought it was quite a nice sculpture, really, but perhaps I was born into special circumstances. We brought our hula hoops (Dawn is an amazing hoop dancer!) and the ipod speakers down to the park and soaked up the sun on the geysers of mockrock raw sewage! It was by far the most satisfying and pleasant experience of an otherwise absobloominlutely amazing trip. Also below is a photo of a dead saguaro cactus; very interesting!

Derdiedases

I've been taking a Spanish class on Tuesday nights with my housemate Beth. I studied Spanish for a few years in high school, but have since repositioned the second language function in my brain towards German and all its absurd absurdities. Turns out said absurdities are pretty well ingrained in my mind, so although I can see that Spanish is muy muy facile compared to German, I keep putting all my verbs in a pile at the ends of sentences, injecting abers and derdiedases throughout, and otherwise speaking a German-Spanish-English hybrid that only Beth can understand. This will naturally repair itself soon, but will I then still be able to speak German? I would like to be extraperfectfluent in another language in the future, but am I sabbotaging my progress by mixing and matching? Partly, probably, but this way the skeletons and vocabularies have time to sink into my subconscious while I do other things, which I know is elementary to my learning style; allowing the basics time to sink in makes advancing easier in due course. Hey, isn't that the philosophy behind cramming as much info into growing children, so that thinking skills enhance, and there is a foundation on which to build in the future? Si si si si si si si.