A Human Condition

My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spareI had to cram so many things to store everything in thereAnd all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short peopleAnd all the nobody people, and all the somebody peopleI never thought I’d need so many people
-David Bowie

Time to tell you about some of my fellow students. Amazing stories. So much beauty and so much pain – fuck. It’s just overwhelming. Everyone has a story. I guess we’re all here for some reason. You all know my scene and quite frankly, I am bored to hell with my story. So here’s some others, truly extraordinary:

The Martian: 44 from Ireland. My good buddy. We are the two old geezers. He was a very successful IT consultant until about a year ago. About three years ago, he began getting the symptoms of MS. He walked around for another year sweating it out, afraid to go to the doctor. When he finally went to the doctor, after a barrage of tests, the doctor declared that he was fine. It was psycho-somatic. He was under a great deal of pressure and had actually convinced himself he had MS. So in his own words, he “fucked off” for a year, stopped working and traveled around the world with money he saved up. He came here to see if he would like to be a teacher.

Stuart: Also Irish, but only 20. Grew up on his father’s dairy farm of 40 cows. He spent this summer on the Spanish southern coast, working at an English immersion summer camp. He loved it. Then he went back to Ireland to work. In October, a very good Spanish friend of his, 24, dropped dead of an epileptic seizure.

“Fuck it,” he said, “I’m going back to Spain. Even at my age, who knows how long I’ve got.” For the record, we have three Irish with us and I have bet them 300 Euros to split between them if they can all three go a full day without saying ‘fuck’. They quickly rejected the bet.

Amanda: A good friend and good egg. 24 from Denver. She spent the last year in S. Korea teaching English. Then she came home this July. She was at a party in a hotel room with people she knew and didn’t know. This one guy kept talking about how he was sure he could jump from the window and hit the swimming pool. They were drinking beer and smoking pot, nothing too crazy. Suddenly Amanda looked out the window and this guy was lying on the pavement, a pool of blood at his head. Her guy friend tried to jump a fence to get to him and shattered his ankle.

They called the police and they got him in an ambulance. The police grilled them. They told them they were drinking and smoking pot – that was it – and how he was talking about trying to hit the pool. If he was on something else, they were unaware.

The guy’s still alive, but as far as Amanda knows, a vegetable. But she doesn’t really want to know. She had plans to come Madrid anyway, but the incident made it all the easier to get away.

Where the players lick their wounds
And take their temporary lovers
And their pills and powders
To get them through this passion plays

No regrets, Coyote
I’ll just get off up a ways
You just picked up a hitcher
A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway
-Joni Mitchell

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