Epiphanies on green oval leaves*

In an effort to fertilize my delicate young money tree, I have created an online portfolio. You may check it out at www.cassieoshea.com

Boosing shed*

Some ill-advised going away shots of cheap tequila in a random dive bar in Barcelona.

Unto a land flowing with milk and money.*

Well, after a long absence, I am back. The New Year finds me back in Santa Fe, living with my parents in our cabin in the mountains. Why did I leave Barcelona? At the time, it all made sense, but now I am not so sure. Certainly I miss it.

the wellfed voice*

In my previous commentary on my apartment, I forgot to mention one of the most mysterious occurrences. I firmly believe that one of my neighbors is keeping a pet whale in their bathtub. Some nights, we will suddenly hear this shrill bellowing sound, haunting really, almost wailing. It seems to drift from the core airshaft of the building and wafts in and out for about an hour. Is this when the whale is being fed? Or has the whale become lonely and is crying for a friend? Perhaps I should start leaving bags of krill outside my neighbors’ doors, ring the bell and wait for their reaction….

He laughed to free his mind from his mind’s bondage.*

The Irish are quite deft in the art of dark humor. The grim jokes run freely through Ulysses, and you always have the feeling that it is not only possible to laugh at almost anything, but that you should laugh at everything. In hard times, it does seem to be a great sanity saver.

In my years working in New York, there were many moments when times got tough, and I mean life/death, insanity, love/loss, fear of starvation kind of tough. Pretty much immediately, I learned to embrace my love of dark humor and wield it as a weapon against self-pity and sorrow.

I was pretty miserable slugging away at Ruby Foo’s in Times Square as a waitress after graduation. It was definitely the worst job I have ever had and, let’s pray, will ever have. However, my coworkers were a hilarious bunch and we always came up with some pretty evil jokes to pass the time. Some were on customers, like when my friend served a child a pint of pure grenadine syrup after his mother complained in a rude manner that there wasn’t enough in the previous Shirley Temple. We then watched the child burst into frantic hyperactive shenanigans, and then crash into a kiddie puddle on his insufferable mother’s lap. Entertaining. Another time, we convinced a few unsuspecting waiters that our cocaine addicted manager (who later was fired for doing coke in the office, stealing money and liquor, and left amid a sobbing tantrum) had overdosed. When he showed up to lead our meeting, he was very confused at the reactions from a few of his staff members.

When I worked in the publishing industry, life was better only in that I was a little closer to literature, and because it was a job I actually needed to have graduated from college to obtain. Our office could be a bit crazy at times, and we all kept ourselves from jumping out the window by concocting ridiculous situations and making sure everything was fair game for jokes, including suicide, heart attacks, and serious illnesses like tuberculosis and pneumonia.

New York is a fantastic place for dark humor, and in my next two jobs, I easily discovered macabre minded individuals to share a cackle with me.

Barcelona and Santa Fe, on the other hand, are not really friendly shores for this kind of comedy. Certainly, I have found kindred spirits in both places, but there is something about the plentitude of sunshine, the relaxed pace of life, the focus on things like living rather than working, the mañana attitude, that keeps people from finding it amusing that you would tell an annoying man hitting on you at a bar that you would like to take him home, chop him into pieces and store his body parts in your freezer, and that this would actually entice him further rather than scare him off.

amid hilarious applause from the girl hands.*

Fantastic news this past week: I am visiting my homeland! It has been a year and a half since I have been on the shores of America, home of the free and land of the brave. I will be in New York for one week and then Santa Fe for two. I am very eager to see how things have changed or have stayed the same, and how I have changed, or not! Will they make fun of me for my Spanish accent in Santa Fe? Will I melt into a puddle of anxiety and terror upon stepping onto the madcap streets of New York? Will my friends duct tape my hands and feet together and keep me in a closet until I miss my flight back to Barcelona? Or will Swiss immigration decide that my European adventure should end?

Oh…..all the possibilities.

Ah, poor dogsbody*

I suffered through another installment of ‘foreign-flu-cold-allergy-bacterial-viral-fungal-mystery-itis’ these past two weeks. Today, I am officially almost, kind of, just about well. It feels like there is a slug covered with acid dipped razors in my left nasal cavity, but otherwise, I’m great!

Of course, my first thought when I woke up at 5am with a fever two weeks ago was that I had la gripe porcina. My lovely imagination then filled in all the blanks with exciting details of lungs filling with fluids, infecting all my friends here, weeks in the hospital, and so on. Luckily, I think it was just a good old-fashioned case of ‘foreign-flu-cold-allergy-bacterial-viral-fungal-mystery-itis.’ Or, if it was swine flu, then hopefully I have some immunity now, and my roommates and friends seem to be fine.

The photo below is an approximation of what was marching through my head, endlessly repeating, during my fever dreams. Actually, no, it’s just a shot of some adorable kids randomly dressed as dominoes (por que no?) in a parade in Figueres, the otherwise unremarkable home of the Dali Museum in northwest Spain. More on Figueres and Dali to come.