putting on the same clothes as yesterday
July 12th.
I’m watching Blow Up and I am scrapbooking. I have an hour before I have to be at the train station.
There are a few things I need to complete before I leave Spain. For one, I have to finish packing. I started taking down my posters today, and as I put aside my clothes for Barcelona and for the last few days here, I realized I don’t have much. It's what’s in Ann Arbor I should be worried about.
When I took everything down there, all of my shelves and my decorations, I thought about how I would never live in that apartment complex again (thank God). That moment is in time now, and even though I may try to recreate it, I will only get older, and everyone around me will be different.
I’m excited for when all of my friends will have such removed lives from college. I think it will be gratifying, to still know those people and to watch them evolve, past our twenties and into who knows what.
SCRAPBOOK PAGE
July 16th
I honestly haven’t written a proper update in a while. I’ll tell you that I’m leaving tomorrow, and that I’ll be home for less than 24 hours before I go to Cuba. I’ll try to sneak in a coffee with Cielle, and maybe a run. God, I am so excited to return to my walking spot! There is so much that I’m looking forward to in returning to California. I had a really great time in Spain, and I hope to return soon, but I’m no longer certain that I’ll move here.
A few things: I do not like Madrid. I would use a stronger word, like maybe I am deterred by Madrid. There are people here that I met and were awesome, and welcoming, and I had a wonderful experience integrating into their group(s). However, Gerri’s pace of life is too fast. I recall one of the first evenings that I went to drink with him and his friends. It was a group of around twenty of us, combining tables outside of a small pub that only offered two kinds of beer on tap. It was a mix of coworkers and friends, and when he introduced me to the people sitting directly next to me, I realized they were in their fifties. They were industry people. They were slinging back triples at the same rate I was, and even when I slowed down, they ramped up. At one point, the man two seats down from me, who I presumed was Gerri’s boss for his upcoming project, took out his phone mid conversation and gave it a good sniff. I was in shock.
I’m not sure if it was that specific scenario that brought me to reevaluate whether I’d like to move to Spain for film school. I think what really guided me into another direction was the war. Ultimately, I have been thinking about it since it began, and for better or for worse I have learned too much. I can’t in good conscience work in film in a generic sense; it would be ideal to be a documentarian, potentially, but even that I am unsure of. I don’t want to lose my desire to make art, and maybe working on projects that I don’t agree with may affect me negatively. I don’t fucking know! All I know is that I want to keep learning history, and that might also mean going into academia. Not a lot makes perfect sense right now. I think that I just have to go with the flow and see what happens. But, most importantly, I have to make money.
I’m applying to the London School of Economics. I don’t know if it will be fruitful, it is a very competitive school, but it's the start of my journey applying to programs in Latin American history/politics/journalism. I found a program that I think aligns with everything I have been thinking about. It begins in September, which is only a few months away. Maybe it will be best to jump into the next thing, giving it only as much thought as is needed for me to move. Or, maybe I am not accepted, and that will be the choice I have to make.
I know I want to do something important, and if that means starting in San Francisco for a year, I’m okay with that. If it can be something more of an excursion, I will be proud to have it. I’m letting go more and more, and I am realizing that I have nothing to prove, to myself or to anyone. I have achieved things in an hour that I could not have previously imagined I was capable of. I need to give myself a chance to be creative. I want to be stable, be around my friends, and I want to make a difference. I know I’ve said that last part a million times, and every time I say it out loud, I am met with the response that I “will not do it alone” - I fucking hope not!
I want people to come into my life that I will learn to love and I want it to be equally for forever as it will be in passing. I want to hurt less. I want to stop smoking, and I want to treat my body better, so that I can live longer. I want to be old, walking my dog with Vincent; I want to read and then argue about it with Ruth. I want to wear what Belle makes, and rewatch what I create. I’d like to see what Matthew gets up to. I want the world to stop getting warmer, and I’d like to feel good about the system that I am a part of and which I support. I want to teach Renata’s kids about what life was like in the 20's, and to be respectful and grateful of their heritage. I hope that they speak Spanish with an accent that is recognizable to my grandmother, and I want them to make sense to me.
At some point in the future, I may become lost in new problems, ones that are trivial and ones that are important. I will be able to snap out of them when I recall what it felt like to be this young. It will be a point of clarity to remember that what I was struggling with never mattered all that much; I just hope that things improve, and all I can rely on for them to change is myself.
I need to let go, and let new things into my life. I need to know what’s good for me. That might mean forgetting Matthew, but unfortunately for me, I am reminded almost daily how common his name is. Do you think that a few Matthews, a handful or a dozen of them, have plotted to appear in my life during this time just to remind me of this? If Ruth were here, she would remind me of the availability heuristic. And then I would roll my eyes, and check to see if he has contacted me. When we talk now, it is pleasant, but it is fleeting. He’s always been hard to reach. I will see him in under a month.
July 16-17
It’s my last night in Zaragoza. I have 45 minutes until tomorrow. My bags are beyond packed, and I don’t mean that in a good way? I realize the way I began that sentence, I didn’t really know where I was headed with my point. I don’t know how I’ll fit that rug, and don’t get me started on how I’ll move it through Madrid. I will see what happens.
I’m debating whether I cut my Ben Davis sticker or not. I mean, these pages are similar to my walls at home in Marin, it seems, because I will look at them all the time. It might be better to paste them onto here instead of stuffing them into my luggage. That way, I can take my decorations from Zaragoza with me everywhere now, or at least wherever I go with my notebook.
LIST OF THINGS TO DO
Enjoy Cuba, enjoy Madrid, enjoy California, New York, New Jersey. I am grateful.
SCRAPBOOK
SCRAPBOOK
July 17th, morning
I’m planning my friend's trip to the Bay Area. I want to take them to the most show stopping places, so I’m planning for hikes and day trips. I can’t wait!
Almost done packing. I’ll need a third bag, maybe, and I won’t be able to get those cowboy boots in Madrid that I have been thinking about. I wanted to stop at this vintage store I went into last week and buy them if they were still there, but it may not be feasible, timing wise or space wise. That is sad, but if I did get them I’d probably need a matching bag. If you give a mouse a cookie.
Some of my scrapbooking is a little ugly. Alas. At least they all have memories tied to them.
I’m also reflecting on how when I visit Ruth, I don’t expect to be wowed, so I can just be chill and plan the greatest hits. They’ll be happy regardless.
I said goodbye to my boss today. She said she felt bad not giving me a ton to do this Summer - I told her I had my hands full, so I was honestly content with all I learned. Website development. Not really for them, for my own. Whenever I changed her templates, she would change them back.
I’m looking at my bag. It is daunting. I hope it doesn’t weigh too much. I’m really looking forward to the flight. I’m going to download so many movies, and keep reading Politics and Labor Movement in Latin America, and hopefully I’ll get a bit of sleep.
I should check exactly when my flight to Cuba is.
*CUBA FREE RADIO
July 18th
Notes on Capital:
monstrous rather than immense amount of commodities
use value is subjective, different needs for different people
less labor time a commodity needs, the less value it contains
substance = labor
measure of its magnitude = labor time
nothing can be a value without being an object of utility - has to satisfy some need, needs to be useful
labor as the source of a commodities value
exchange value arises from a decreased social sphere and an increased need to connect to the market to replace this lack
commodity production is the basic condition once we graduate from self sufficient village groups
excessive need to accumulate exchange values rather than satisfy use values
Adam Smith - mutually satisfying trade between buyer and seller
value of jobs and skills are historically determined : over time some jobs actually require less skill (access to materials) yet wage remains. this is relevant to “unskilled labor” (like a barista, who now merely has to push a button to dial in coffee automatically rather than manually, yet their wage remains) and “skilled” labor (a software engineer, who now has access to AI yet their wage remains stagnant but higher than the unskilled worker)
human labor is fluid, but it is not valuable until it creates something
historical limitations - different philosophers and thinkers believed in value differently because of elements such as slave labor, inequality, technological limitations, etc.
a commodity manifests its exchange value only when there is a form that can represent or express it against another commodity
silver or gold can have use value, but it functions numerically
we believe the value of objects to signify that they have some value outside of our need for them; we also assume that commodities have the power to make us,
presence of social energy within commodity, and we would like that value to be transferred onto us
commodity fetish
human origins of value production are obscured. historical explanation which is not acknowledged in everyday market participation, blind faith that insists the economic system works because it exists, and life before its existence did not work / was not efficient
prices may rise and fall, but they do so in relation to labor costs, not to relative amount of money
speed of exchange means that the value of money is not in the material, instead in the malleability of digital credit or more abstract forms of currency
hoarding is effective in societies with a traditional mode of production, where fulfilling own requirements corresponds to fixed and limited range of needs
capital is money invested for profit
money spent only to create surplus value
a commodity can be bought/sold for a price that does not reflect its real value and the difference is the surplus value (NVDIA, AI companies)
capitalist is both buyer and seller
mercantile and money lending capitalism
profit comes from circulation, also does not come from circulation
circulation is where exchange value is realized in ways that create surplus value
surplus value creating commodity is the the capacity for labor, or labor power
value of labor power not only determined for regeneration for the self, but also cost of social reproduction, support of next generation
capitalists do not cheat other capitalists, but do systematically cheat laborers. sole source and origin of surplus value.
if laborers were paid for the true value of there work, there would be no profit.
social justice means all should be compensated for true value of their work
factory worker can only be allowed to use materials and tools of the factory if they are given permission
commodities and money are only the forms of appearance