Intl Doc Film Fest A'dam

I think that is what IDFA stands for. Stand for something or you aill fall for anything, eh?
I saw six films in four visits. Gosh I heart film. I have a few dvds but its no fun on the laptop.

The first doc listed is relevant to my coursework. The Scandinavian countries come up a lot in discussions of well-functioing social benefits systems. So imagine my intrigue when I read the film's premise. Went with a classmate who it turns out is doing her term paper on Sweden's welfare system.

If you get a chance to see a film, anywhere about anything, do it for me.

As We're Told  Any story told through gigantic cardboard heads is good enough for me.

The Poetess  Boy this was something. I could not locate a banana (what a weird way to start a film description) during the walk from one cine to this one so halfway through this film I started seeing voices. There may have been a q & a afterward (as with many of the IDFA screenings, which was an unexpected treat!) but I lit out as soon as the credits rolled.

Rezo  This was paired with the big fat Swedes up top. Another unexpected gem. The filmmaker came out afterward and talked about the challenges of making a film about a family member. Rezo is his father, an illustrator, who did all the drawings for the film, I believe.

When You Look Away  Things were heating up in my class assignments book. I needed, desperately so, a metaphysical getaway. Research is so linear. Bring me back home to chaos, filmmonster. Dooooo it.

See You Tomorrow, God Willing!  This was adorable. Watch the trailer.

Roosenberg  Quiet and beautiful. An 18-minute short about the last of the aged nuns at a closing abbey in Belgium. I think my cousin was a nun for a while. She was also the president of the Beatles fan club in the late 60s. It's an honest segue.



UPDATE

And one I really want to see, though I'd like meet the players myself in Istanbul-

Kedi

4540

From 06:30 yesterday to 15:00 today I wrote 4,540 words among three separate assignments.

I left the apartment last night for an hour walk.

I left today at noon to go up and down the stairs three times, then to the bike shop and mailbox below.

I have one more assignment due tomorrow by midnight. It's the rough final copy of our term paper. I hear it is supposed to be 6,000 words. I told one classmate that I have a title.

Then they asked how many words I have on it. I repeated, I have a title.

Let's see if I get another four thousand five hundred and forty words submitted by tomorrow midnight.

I am not terribly stressed about it. The rough is 15% of our grade but to me that still leaves me 85%. It will most likely be a substantial number of words, not 6000 and probably a day late. That is OK too. I will live.

It doesn't make much sense to me, really. The finished version is due on January 5th. That is a month away. More than a month. The prof says it is to have something substantial to offer during peer review which is most of December. That is when, you guessed it, we review each other's rough drafts. That is also of little value to me, really. In my experience people end up saying the stupidest shit just becuase they think if they dont offer criticism then they wont appear intelligent. I usually just go for syntax. Who am I to judge.

I'm hard to intimidate. I have nothing to lose. I do my best and I work to the whip of my anxiety. If the whip aint cracking then aint a human on the planet going to make me work any harder than I feel like. I woke up rigid with anxiety yesterday. Actually it was more like surrender. I didnt even go for a morning walk. Just coffee, stretches and turning on the machine.

I'll nap for a bit (it is nearing 5pm here now), get up around 19:00. Go for a short walk or maybe even bike ride, start writing around 21:00 probably til 01:00. Class tomorrow from 15:00-17:00, home by 6pm and write til I feel like I am done.

That is the plan anyway. Not even sure if I'll get the nap in. Though it is much easier as I have no tv or facebook or friends or drugs or food or shopping or car or job or cat (oh, btw it occurred to me today that cats are so good at looking innocent), or lovers or movie passes or discretionary income or political views or weather or anything to distract me from living the monastic life that I do.

Excluding the sentence you are reading right now, that was another 400 words.

Seeing how tall these people are I dont think ''big'' is being used in a complimentary way.

 I cant read Dutch but judging by the suspension rope, the tighty-whiteys and the business heels it must be saying this way to a damn good party.

So only gays and straights get fucked and the rest get loved? 

      

 I havent seen these amber-eyed ducks before.

Sometimes you are quite pretty Amsterdam.

Then, three metro stops down the line. Cranes follow me everywhere.

26 November

It has been an age since I posted. A few people have contacted me saying they checked my blog, so I guess people are reading it?

On October 20th I saw a chiropractor. For about the third morning I woke up and when my foot hit the floor it felt broken. I do not recall having broke it. I googled "foot feels broken". I have no other symptoms of diabetes so that was out. Somewhere down the rabbit hole a guy on a forum told another poster that their foot-feels-broken problem may be helped by a chiropractor. Huh. Never thought of that. I knew I was in need of an adjustment but I kept allowing the cost to put me off. That and just finding one. How do you find a new healer?

During the analysis the chiro put his hands near my lower abdomen and asked if everything was ok. I said, uh, as a matter of fact...haha. Who knew.

Do you recall that problem I had been having with my left ovary? The doctor visit, the exam, the insurance hassle, the ultrasound, the tears? That chiro had that shit and everything else fixed inside of ten minutes. Turns out my sacrum was so fucked up -- it gets that way from the bike wreck twenty years ago plus a generally shitty lifestyle -- that my pelvic bone was tilted (he told me to feel it, I did, it was half-up) and it was pulling one side of the muscles and scrunching the ones...on...the...left...side. Boom. That was my ovary pain. Gone. In an instant.

He also found something on my -- I'm going to mess up this pronunciation ala Dutch-English -- shirtrrib (trill it). Before I could figure out what he was saying he did this kind of pulling thing on my upper right chest/clavicle area and a flood of emotion came pouring out of my face. It was all the tears that were stored up since the beginning of the move, the packing, the last days at work, finding a home for the cat, the arrangements, moving here, delivering stuff, trying to find IKEA, dealing with financial aid, trying to get a bank account...loneliness. Anger. Terror. But it wasn't tears that came out. It was laughter. Like everyone better stand back because this is going to knock a bitch out kind of laughter. I havent felt such emotion. It was like he cracked open the lock on Pandoras box of emotion.

Then I got what he was calling thee area -- short rib -- and I howled some more cos all I could see were some fellas in the South holding up BBQ and yelling "SHORT RIBS!".

I had no idea that I was in such pain. I had no idea that physical pain, left unattended for long enough could lead to such emotional turmoil. I had not been down so far in a very long time. Then I remembered what I read in a Bio class a few years back:

Feelings are merely bodily sensations.

All those yoga assholes got it right.

Since then -- and the follow up six days later which found me bounding out of bed the next morning like a six-year-old -- I have been immersed in school work. I had my thinking brain back as soon as I left that chiro's office. All that frustration and self-doubt and bafflement over why I could not read a simple article and the panic that I could not do this program was simply a result of so much locked-down pain. I have been pretty damn thrilled with being able to "do" school again. Not that it is 100% glorious, I still fucking hate going to campus (but I love the lectures by my key instructor), but at least if I am not doing work, it is just that familiar and manageable resistance, procrastination and the plain old process of learning.

There is always a shit more to tell, but the above story is why I have been away and what  have been doing.

I raided the local thrift store a couple weeks ago and below is my 2.5 feet tall €17 Christmas tree. I fucking love Christmas, I never get tired of saying it.

There are black Friday signs in the centrum shop windows. But here they do not celebrate Thanksgiving. So I wonder how black Friday is justified?  I havent asked. I have no TV and left fuckbook a month ago so I dont know shit. I'll ask someone later, maybe.

     --------LaLaLa!------->




















Misc stuff:

These crows hanging out in front of my window in the morning :-)

Misc walking around the centrum A'dam center. There is no downtown per se, old cities are more like a big village, as more than one local has called it. Though it seems to me a series of squished together villages. Like the lifeboats that were tied together in that movie Titanic.

In between classes I take the staircase to get around. On ten minute breaks I go up the ten flights of stairs to shake the sitting loose. I like the view. I like the lack of people in the empty stairwells

I am not allowed to enter a bead store. But I took a picture of the sign. (No I have never shoplifted from a bead store it's just...well the bead story before I left we'll save for another blog)

More stairwell. Oh, did I not say? This is from the University of Amsterdam's new building at Roterseiland Campus. It is in a really pretty area. 

Mural on campus

Misc riding or walking around shot. I started walking to campus a couple weeks ago, when it is not raining. Takes about 70 minutes. I'm nice and relaxed when I get there. I fucking hate sitting.

Just a dork standing under a tree with a phone.

Over here...nice sky!

Turn the body not even 30 degrees to the right and the ever present storm. It will rain like hell for 5 minutes, or rain a little for an hour, then...sun. Or just gray. It is positively bipolar BUT. I have seen more rainbows here in my first month than in a lifetime, I believe.

Went for a Sunday ride a couple of weeks ago. Froze my tits off. But it was pretty. 

Went for another ride some time before that. This under the bridge that goes to IJburg, a little place I was quite fascinated with for a while. Did I post these already? I've a shit tonne of photos.

I want all these colors, everywhere. In my hair, on a sweater, on my shoes, in my eyeballs. I want to eat and drink and get awkward with all these colors.

The obligatory windmill.

the end!

Gravity

What goes up...

I was having a relatively great few days until dealing with the confounds of a) UvA financial aid and b) UvA doctors.

What an infernal piece of crap system.

Breakthrough

Worked on a paper for my other class last night (Sociological Perspectives). Final paper, 60% of my grade. Due the 27th, 2000-2500 words. Research proposal. Guess what? I had a ton of fun with it. I get to choose any topic, no need to get pre-approval on the topic so long as it incorporates two of the five topics covered in the previous five weeks. I had an idea to start with and as I was compiling the bibliography for it that idea kept changing, as in - getting better and closer to heaven. The topic I am working on is one I have been writing in my head for a couple of years. It has to do with the freeway off-ramp panhandlers that mark the landscape of Seattle. I am writing it as it's relationship to my doxa - the inherent bias formed by one's life experiences coupled by their institutional learning. Doxa is like the water in which a fish swims - they are not aware of it. Pairing freeway panhandlers with my doxa led to a bursting of ideas. I could not write fast enough to capture them. It was like an elaborate opera unfolding. It is the creative flow that made me remember why I love(d) school and these writing assignments.

Switch over to the other coursse and I can now see why I have been such a mess lately. Comparitive Organisations and Labor Studies. Oy. I mean, it's interesting, and I have learned a lot. But most of the course content and the concepts are new to me. Every day it is swallowing more hot food before it has a chance to cool off and then eating some more. Just too much. European labor markets, skill formation schemes. Varieties of capitalism. Liberal market economies versus Coordinated market economies. A lot of shit I just have no background in. So when I try to come up with something for a term paper proposal or worse -- a thesis topic -- then I just go dead inside. I try to fish for some jewel in the rubble, something that I can get excited about spending the next six months focusing on but so far the two ideas I presented were not good enough, were not close enough on track to satisfy the instructor.

I could try to bullshit my way through it like pick anything and just write about it. But that doesnt work for me. Writing about, or researching, homelessness, poverty, the eviction industry, poverty...things related to the underclass and the underground economy -- those things are more my interest and what I read in my spare time, or time away from school. Those are the things that grip and fascinate me and capture my interest time and again. I am having so much fun writing the SP paper that I care not about the grade - I know it will be fine. I have the technicalities of a paper pretty well locked down: formatting, sections, citations, operationalising a a proposal...shit like that. So it is the content where the heart of the paper lies for me. Once I get a topic that I am hot for I am out the chute running and grinning.

So, ok, I probably chose the wrong track for this Masters. I would have been better off in a class, inequality, poverty-type learning track. But it is too late to change. I am already here and two months in so just make the best of it, find little pieces of joy where I can. My next course, to replace the SP class is European Labor Markets. Shit. When I signed up for it I thought I would care about European Labor Markets. But I dont. Yes, I concede that labor markets in EU are relevant to what is going on in the US, and yes, I can still take my MSc degree to the US and get a job working with the underclass -- maybe policy or better yet, a non-profit. I am not an academic, in the sense of studying and writing for the sake of getting published and writing more. I have no ambition to make a name for myself in academia. I like talking with people or more specifically, initiating conversations and sitting back to listen. This is quite easy when dealing with the marginalised, as they are usually lacking for an audience. I'm talking about the guy or gal on the bus talking to themsleves that people try to avoid., THATS the one I sit next to. They usually have a real fucking fresh perspective on what is going on around them.

No class between last Tuesday and I think the 27th. My mood has improved a shit ton already. I like school, and I can deal with difficult text. I just hate GOING to school and I cant even tell you why. I dont know. I just feel better when I am working by myself and my company is strangers I meet while out walking, dogs and cats and birds I meet while out walking, and people at AA and NA meetings. I have nothing in common with the fresh faced youth of Europe out to save the world. I'm past it. I havent the heart to tell them they will not save the world and its unlikely their efforts will make a drop of difference and it doesnt matter if they recycle or not.

I also located a chiropractor that I can afford and is fairly close. I go in tomorrow. Thank the christ. I am so out of alignment that it is also to blame for much of my grouchiness of late. Oh and I located a public pool with a JACUZZI that is a 5-minute bike ride from my apartment. With my student ID it's €37 for ten swims. Yee haw! Hydrotherapy, at long last. Today I go to the UvA doctor to request a referral for Acupuncture so I can hopefully get reimbursed. My insurance will cover €30 per Ac treatment for up to twelve treatments. I found an Ac for €55 a pop. I've been averaging thirty minutes a day stretching and rolling but my body is still completely fucked.

That's the news for today.

October 15

Killed the facebook page last week. I had just emerged from seeing the new Blade Runner 3D at Eye Film museum. It was a long film, 2h40m. It was a treat. €11 with my student ID. I felt righted, mellow. I love post-apocalyptic stories for putting my troubles of today into perspective. That perspective being: it's really all just bullshit so bide your time til its over.

Lately when I get up the only thing I look forward to is bedtime.

I was rounding off from a meltdown, a sort of crisis of intellectual faith. Did I even have what it took to do this program? I had yet to receive a grade on any of the work I turned in from the same professor who rejected two of my proposals. I weighed in on quitting and what my options were - should I quit and return to the US? Only cos I refuse to learn another language right now and without that I could either (maybe) work in the UK or get some kind of grunt work off the books here in Dutchie land. Neither sounded appealing. But if I am wracking my brain to absorb this material, and not getting it (little is clicking, it is all uphill) then what's the point of dragging it out?

As a last resort to the challenge of that day I emailed a couple of classmates asking how they came up with their term paper topics, as I was hitting dead-ends. One mailed me back the next day, expressing shock that I doubted myself, that the prof told her that I am one of the two strongest students in the course.
What?

Long story short, I got through the readings for that week, and thank christ the next weeks topics were something I could relate to. I was able to pull myself out of the funk by killing off everything save reading and my morning & evening walks. I turned in a weekly assignment that actually had some fire under it (I gave a shit about the topic matter) and yesterday saw the grades list posted on the course website. I do indeed have the highest grades in the class. Go the fuck figure. Even though the assignment he returned to me was chock full of advice on how it could have been better,  got a high score.

Then I saw that the assignments from past courses he uploads for us to use as examples of high-scoring papers are ALSO filled with only comments on How This Could Have Been Better.

I heard that the Dutch are "very direct". Prior, I took this to mean that they say what's on their mind without all the pussyfooting around like polite society in the U.S. Imagine my state then when a couple of my typically blunt comments were met with expressions of shock. I have a new understanding of this "very direct" thing. I think it just means that they say whatever they want and give no fucks whether it is logical or matches their actions at all. Like, subjective and void of accountability. Fair enough.

This upcoming week is rest week. Well, the university calender calls it study week before exams week beginning the 23rd but for me, it is rest week because I have only one class. I get to work mostly from home, without my thought flow being interrupted by going to campus. Of all the adjustments I have made, the hardest has been a return to a campus-environment after three years of online school. I still hate being on campus. When no one is around (late Friday afternoons) it is bearable. Well, I wanted to see if an on-campus environment would be any different for grad school then it was in community college Fresh-Soph levels. It is not.

In other news Mata Hari has begun at the National Opera and Ballet. My student ID gets me rush ticks for €15 day of show. That is my next treat to myself. Today and all this week (and most of last week) there is no rain. Today is sunny and gorgeous. I have taken my walk, rode to get groceries, am now back in my cave with the curtains drawn, and happy to spend a couple hours working on an annotated bibliography for a term paper whose topic I am pulling together by threads.

I have a goal to finish this course by June 30th and travel this continent for at LEAST a month. If I go back to the US it will be to California. Where I belong.

I still haven't figured out how to reply to comments on this thing, so I am afraid it is a bit of a one-way conversation for now. Which sucks as I look forward to actually engaging with people. One help page I found suggested that since this blog is a part of G+ that I can only respond to those comments by persons who have me included in their G+ circles. What a piece of crap. O well. Nothing is free.

A good deal of my grumpiness has to do with the drastic reduction in physical well-being tools at my disposal. Back home I had an acupuncture clinic 5 minutes from my doorstep, at 10 treatments for $175 it was user friendly. My chiropractor was $48 a pop and the gym ten minutes from my house was where I could plunk into the jacuzzi for ten minutes. To top it all off, the Chinese massage place up the road was $30 for an hour. Bear in mind I was earning $3k/month. Now I've roughly €500 per month to live on, chiro is $80 (haven't gone) cheapie massage is €40/hour (went once), no jacuzzi in site. Living without a car is mostly OK but after a treatment I do not want to get on a bike and huff it back home. Whatever. In my grumpy state I come up with a lot of reasons why I cant do something, but the reality is that I dont have the money I used to. So, I do more stretching, foam rolling and tennis balls under my feet.

A City With No Logos

Imagine a city with no billboards, no public adverts, no logos. I couldn't either.

I am researching for a paper and came across Tony DeMarco as the photographer who best captured the city of São Paulo, Brasil after a 2007 legislation banned all forms of public advertising in that city. Here is a story on the story. For this blog post, I simply present DeMarco's photos.

It's surreal, to me. It's signs of life.

Muiden, I think.

Again, impulse to ride out thataway. I never really know where I am headed thus I cant tell you exactly where I have been. I did see signs to a castle and then saw a castle so I reckoned it was Muiderslot, which I intend to visit. Oh hey! I picked up my residence permit today. Do I care that I am legal now? No. What I do care about is that now I can buy a museum pass and AS A RESIDENT have a full year to use it. Tourists (said with that tone) only get one month.

The date on the photos tells me I have been meaning to post these for...28 days now. Time flies when you are suddenly in school again.

It was a nice day, I recall. My joyrides with Loretta have increased trazillion-fold now that I have to endure the perils of street biking on a penny farthing with 100 other cyclists and the constant death threat of motorbikers who nay give an inch as they whirrr past. Fuckers.

I've nailed down the route to my usual places and enough general infrastructure that I can find my way around to new places. Pretty much anything in the center is "turn right on the Rijksmuseum street", which is my heuristic. Anything on the west side is "ride past the Rijksmuseum on the rijksmuseum street". Still, on occasion I have to use the dreaded hand-held navigator which adds to the stress (still haven't really mastered sudden braking using my feet)(so I end up using my feet).

Thus, a joyride is going nowhere and getting there when I get there.

It's funny, for being in an urban centralized area how quickly one can be out among the sheep and other signs of pastoral life, within fifteen minutes, on a bike.

I'll take any road that leads to a brug (bridge).

Riding through a small community I spot this magnificent plastic cow...there, up ahead. I must get a picture.

What's that? A kitty! A tabby no less.

Cats here have been proving a little too nonchalant for my taste. I'm lonely. Cant I just pet you?

This guy was all for it. Hopped up on the table and let me pet his fur off.

I guess I did a good job cos he put on the belly show for me.

I'm keeping his fuzz on my glove.

 Happily riding home after having made a cat friend. I'll be back, tabby. Back for more. 

Nearing home. These vagrants hanging out in the parking areas. Probably stoned. Staring at utility boxes. 

Yup. A total nod.