It's been a while since I've posted.

Friday I didn't want to go to the 2-million person manifestacion held in the city center due to my fear of crowds and such situations. So Kristina and I went to a bar on Calle Lavapiés to watch the event on television and drink a few incredibly cheap cañas. After, I rushed home, showered, and dashed off to meet one of my former students, a fine young Parisian gentleman who works in computers, for sushi. After a wonderful meal we headed off to the infamous Manhattan Martini Lounge, which was supposedly closing its doors (although I learned this wasn't actually true, it will just be closing them momentarily for a little retooling).

So the Parisian and I are sitting there, he enjoying his "Pussyfoot" and me my Mahou, when I get a text message from another Americana, that she'll come join us at the Manhattan as soon as she puts her clothes back on, as she's been snogging the Italian Painter after having her picture painted. Then, the Brit, the Australian, and another Americana show up, and I receive a text message from none other than this incredibly cocky, arrogant Spanish guy I had a very brief affair with back in November letting me know that he's returned from London: "do you wanna see me tonight?" Um, no thanks.

Drink after drink is had, eventually we cross a few streets and enter La Falsa Molestia, where many more drinks are had, I watch the two Americanas kiss each other, then one of them start making out with the Italian. The other Americana leaves, the bar begins to close, and the four of us -- the Brit, an Americana, the Australian, and I head to Candela, this very dingy, dark, and crowded flamenco bar a mere 20 steps from my house, filled to the brims with sketchy looking gita?os and alcholics.

To make a long, long story short, I made the mistake of leaving the Australian and the Americana unattended at my apartment, where her nudity was definitely displayed to my Finnish roommate, who did wonder why on earth the two were making out in my living room, and learned the next day that "things were done" in my bed. As in, they did it in my bed.

After half a roast beef sandwich and a half pint, I left to meet Kris to go shopping, ran into Megan, had a coffee, and eventually headed to another pub to meet up with the others. At this point, the other Americana (the painted one) had arrived, in the same attire from the night before, and informed us that she had indeed "done" the Italian Painter.

So it was something of a weekend of scandal. Saturday night there was a party at my house; I pulled my good friends into my room and made them hide until everyone else was gone, and with their assistance scavenged the last of the alcohol. Sunday I had lunch with 8 girls at Bluefish, and finished with a glass of wine at Pepe Botella in Plaza Dos de Mayo in Malasa?a, where we watched the results come in from the election.

I keep wanting to post something about the events that happened on Thursday, but each time I begin, what I have to say sounds trite and lacking in eloquence. However, I will note that today I spent a great deal of time pondering what awful precedence is set by the sudden turn-around in voting, and what new credibility is given to terrorist organizations to influence the political process. Then I went to look at the International Herald Tribune online and read this. I know this sounds extremely farfetched, but something about Zapatero has always freaked me out, and I almost get this strangely sinister feeling about it. I'm in no way justifying all the actions of the PP, either for their handling of the events in Madrid or in sending troops and committing an unenthusiastic Spanish population to the war in Iraq, but I hate to think of how much power this particular turn of events gives to the idea of using terror as a means to alter the political process. All it takes is 200 lives and 2,000 injured to totally alter the wave of political momentum? To an organization like Al-Qaida, that is not a very large or unobtainable figure, and I suppose that is what I find the most frightening. At the time immediately following the attacks there was talk of suspening the upcoming election, which I truly believe they should have done, in order to let those who went to the polls do so guided by intellectual commitment to their nationstate and the values and principles they wish to uphold, rather than out of emotional vengeance, remorse, anger, and anguish. (Speaking of which, I took the Cercanias train back from Villaverde yesterday morning, visited the makeshift shrine in the heart of the Atocha station, and thought for a moment how horrific things would have been had the train been just a few metres closer to the station, or in the station... and looking at all the red candles and signs and pictures of the Virgin Mary and flowers and a Real Madrid scarf and whatnot brought back that same weighty sensation I felt in the days that followed February 23, 2001 in Isla Vista, California.)

Interestingly, right now I'm absorbed in another great Dickens' novel, A Tale of Two Cities, in which terror is also used by France as a means, both by the dominated and the dominator, to alter the political process. I know that terror's application (and advantage) in politics is nothing new, just as the acquisition of material wealth and power is nothing new, just all being fair in love and war is nothing new, but how terror changes shape and force and form and function seems to be the relevant question to explore as we simultaneously reassess why we protect the values and freedoms we do in the sight of what is the application of seemingly arbitrary, yet chillingly calculated, violent, nihilism.

Greetings from Madrid. I'm not hurt, nor are any of my friends or acquaintances.

I woke up this morning at 8:15, exactly 5 minutes before I should leave to take the metro to Palos de Frontera, which is 2 stops south of my house on Linea 3. I teach at a construction company called OHL, which is located across the street from Atocha Renfe, one of Madrid's major train stations that services both local and national trains of the southern direction. It takes just a few minutes less to take the train on the yellow line than the blue line.

This morning, I was waiting to cross the street, my mind slowly beginning to churn and feeling the oncoming of a mild hangover from consuming a bit too much wine the night before. Ambulance after ambulance were pushing their way through the traffic, and I thought, "Well, isn't this just a chaotic morning."

Then I went inside to the café I always take my first café con leche at on Tuesdays and Thursday and saw the TV broadcasting the first reports of the explosions.

I finished my coffee and went to OHL. The room I teach in is on the fifth floor, and looks directly over the tracks of trains leaving Atocha. I saw the exploded train, and suddenly the entire situation began to make sense. And I thought about how if it were Monday, or Friday, I would have been on a Cercanías train leaving the station at precisely 8:03, or 8:13, bound for Villaverde, an industrial suburb of Madrid.

The suburbs to the north of Madrid tend to be thought of as upper-crust. The suburbs to the south, where all the train bombings occurred or originated, are full of Madrid's working class. I take a particular train down to a liquid air plant (aptly named Air Liquide) twice a week, and I know from the faces around me that these are Madrid's Most Ordinary. Good people, hard-working people, people with normal ambitions and desires. I guess that's what makes me the most sad. And angry. Regardless of who the perpetrators are, such acts frighten me not only for the violence, but for the blatant nihilism that they exhibit.