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

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.

‘Tis the hour, methinks, when the winejug, metaphorically speaking, is most grateful in Ye ancient hostelry.*

So, what exactly am I doing in Barcelona? I realize that I have been very skimpy on the explanatory posts, especially in expounding the Santa Fe, New York, and Barcelona connections.

Well, as of right now, I am working at the front desk of a cute little boutique hostel started by two intrepid young American women. They opened the ten room hotel/hostel last year and I’ve been there nearly a year now. How time passes!

Aside from giving metro directions to travelers hailing from everywhere, I have been freelance writing. Hold your breath, I work for a client in New York writing internal corporate communications for enormous global corporations. Okay, the tough part is over.

I have been published a few times in a local glossy magazine here, The Barcelona Metropolitan, but the times have been particularly rough on them as they survive entirely on ad revenue. So, I am not sure they will continue to pay as well, or at all.

Otherwise, I spend my days procrastinating on learning Spanish, forcing myself to meet complete strangers to talk in a foreign language, writing poetry, cooking, researching other places to live, and lots of sleeping. Exciting ex-pat life!

I don’t make much money at all, but somehow, I have been scraping by. As I tell many people, I moved to a foreign country without a job, without knowing anyone, where they speak two languages I don’t know, and where my U.S. citizenship can be problematic…but it is STILL easier than living in New York.