the sun dawns. bright yet cold. i awake. stumble to the bathroom, greet the hotel owner, pee, masturbate, go back ot my room, charles informs me that there is an hour and a half more of good sleepin time, i chuckle, pack my bag, put on yesterdays shirt and pants, then pull on my socks and shoes, and wrap myself in my hoodie, grab my bag and walk out leaving the sleeping to chuck.

i walk outside, towards the street, and stop to watch the same snails from yesterday, fascinated by thier movement and voracity, there is one snail as large as my middle finger and two smaller ones with antennea that stick up like pins in a pin cushion. i reach the street tihnking about stew and the shoes that he uses to kill snails in his garden, by the dozens he says. by the dozens i think.

the road is empty, brisk, closed, its sunday, tomorrow is december.

i turn down a bench, no cushion i notice, and sit down. i take out my notebook and folder and start to write out my presentation for the 5th. i need another book so i skip to the room, grab it and return. breakfast has begun, brittany and jen are awake, my silence is disturbed, anndrrea joins me for food. i think about calories and veganism while i drink oj, eat a roll and some cookies. i drink a cup of tea and another glass of oj. i stick a roll in my bag for later. the movement of people is steady, people still waking up return to their assigned beds after nights of warmth and spooning. i think about last night and how i wanted to spoon, and who to ask. no one would say yes, so i let the question die in my mind.

the sun is up, the group is moving, slowly and quickly, ready to leave ready to sleep, eating, waiting.

the street is still closed, brisk, and we mush to the tune of 25 voices, we make friends with a trio of dogs, fatty, snow ball, and two legs after a few minutes, they join us as we explore the old town of rhodes, they wait outside palaces and anthropological musuems for us, they fight with other dogs, now we have 5, they 4 leave, fatty and snowball follow us back to doras. i eat the same sandwhich for two days now. i dont mind, its spicy and cheap.

they day is half over now, and i wonder about tomorrow and tonight, how many more mornings do i have?

isle of rhodes(rhodos)

surrounded by water on all sides, lapping at my feet constantly, the tide comes in, and i drown.

that is how i feel.

the tide is coming in. no doubt a level of my sadness is from this trip ending, and then the insanity of coming home and what that will bring.

job. car. school. more people.

but ive got a month off.

school dont get bumpin until feb 2nd or so.

im going to NCOR with Zack and hopefully others. Its going to fucking rule.

and all ive got here is two projects and two tests and im letting that shit manifest in crazy scary ways. letting it run into my brain and eat away at my fucking soul. gah. fear manifests so powerfully. its more than just simple fear it swells and builds on what might happend and the offshoots of the horrible possibilities its so hard to focus on the positives these days so hard to see the sun lught, to appreciate the beauty. so hard to get up and go to do to see to live and breath in the beauty of the environment and world around me.

its as if ive got no control over who i am or what i do. its like a puppet master is at the strings. and i the puppet dance along, glumly, with no hope of surfacing from thedarkness.

rar.

with love

d

still squatting. im happy as hell to be away from the group for this little amount of time. to be around people who share my ideas and values and smiles and love for the wolrd.

its a good way to end my time here.

and a good thing to take with me. inspirational. moving. invigorating.

im feeling better. not a hundred percent. not superman, not perfect, but much much better and with a beach and a day boat coming up; the horizion has beautiful things on it.

beautiful things.

solidarity to all of us.

things are changing i can feel it.

with love

d

rar.

a squat in iraklion.

an action squat. for the thessaloniki 7.

im pretty fucking happy.

right?
wrong?
suffering?
manipulation?

with love
d

gah.

crete

mycenea

the beach

ancient minoan culture

beautiful purple flowers

i feel awash with soem sort of apathy that can only be fended off with physical addictions
food, caffiene, or adrenaline

fuck.

i am worthless today.

aye. we are in crete until friday and all i want to do is keep moving but to where?

the street corner isnt satisfying, nor is the cafe, my room bland, and the sitting area in the hostel looks like a prison.

im losing passion by the fistful and ive got three shitty ass assignments coming up that must be done.

im just going to do them, and not worry about it. once done they are done with and then there is no more, right?

right.

its 909pm on the island of crete in the mediterrarean sea. the sun has gone down and my soul is tired. i feel infinitely worthless. maybe its echoing through the group, we are all tired, the jig is running down and the game may have been exposed, we know there is under twenty days left and it shows. ive got to get that work done so i dont think about it. and can enjoy the beautiful scenery, i think tomorrow ill buy that camera that mom wants me to buy or maybe ill switch the film in the holga. maybe i wont. i wont. its going to stay as it is, im going to empty the holga of its roll and switch those, and then finish with that, fucking around wont help me any. i dont want to do the camera thang, so i wont.

tomorrow is changing the plane ticket time. yay. reality interacts with me as i interact with reality.

fun.

with love

d

aye

greece

athens, patras, delphi

beauty

gentile folds of mountains ripping softly through the tactile fog which lays like a blanket.

its stunning here. peaceful, and powerful, congested and sexy, ancient and modern, authoritarian and anarchist, free and caged. like me.

and they are playing "please dont go" at the cafe downstairs. i love it.

im scared.

instability has spread from iraq to saudi arabia and turkey, not to mention afgahnistan which was never really stable to begin with. sick sense of vindication. overwhelming sense of fear and apphrension about the future, something unfelt before. not knowing has been a favorite of mine. and now, its a fear of mine.

joy. 300,000 in london(on a weekday) and protests across the United Kingdom, 20,000 unionists in Miami supported by an unkown number of anti-capitalists(around 10,000), uprisings in South America, Bolivia, Argentina. Joy.

Confusion. this is a time of change. change which forces people to choose and i feel like im not doing anything that is worthwile. am i moving forward? i dont know. i am. im moving from country to country in europe, learning, exploring, opening passages in my mind and in the world, laying the ground work for the future.

but not doing what i want to be doing.

warning: rant below

and now, because of fear, we are not going to istanbul as a group. i decided today that i am still going. i will not not go to turkey because some assholes are trying to punish the people of turkey for having contact with the west. I will not allow some other assholes to limit peoples views of who i am. I am myself. and i could give a flying ratshit about my nationality cause that is not who i am. my identity comes from my actions and my words not from my place of birth. im an american, im a yankee, im an imperialist murder by default. i have no choice but to accept that that is part of who i am. fine. accepted. but i can change, grow, move on, rise above that filth. my history, the history of the united states only speaks for those who accept it. i do not. i refuse to believe that my life can be dictated or directed by others. my life is just that. my fucking life. i will make the rules and take the chances, i will ascend to levels above and beyond america, yankee, westerner, imperialist. internationalism: yes. globalization: fuck no.

you cant make the rules for me, so dont even try.

notice: rant over, proceed with caution.

apprehension. joy. confusion.

the feeelings that mix and mingle in my head. gah. i dont know.

mike just got arrested in miami. not to mention tazed and probably beaten.

fuck.

that makes me angry and makes me laugh. makes me want to be there all the more.

i dont know what to feel. im going to check out the occupation of the athens university when im done here.

with love and, more importantly, hope.

d

man man man

woman woman woman

as much as i would love and hate for someone to be reading this, i want to know, so if you are let me know. dmarcoul at ramapo dot edu

im not going to india in the spring. fuck fuck fuck.

i wanted that real bad. and i knew it wasnt going to happen. so its a spring at the po. not to bad. im sure ill survive and ahve time to reflect and think ove my current journey.

im going to write a paper and address this depression as it slowly sets in.

and the british girl blew me off, or she overbooked herself. shit happens i guess.

love
d

man man man

woman woman woman

today i felt that no one has been appreciating me as a sexual being. i wonder if thats true.

dejected, lonely, tossed aside, ugly, un wanted, unloved, uncared for, unimportant, un special, use less and just fucking like shit. i was seriously self-depriciating today. just railing into my self for being for being ugly and stupid and silly and useless and finding solace in nothing but my mind which conversely gives me the most shit for being who i am. the most criticism and the most painful biting cuts into my soft underbelly of delusional self protection.

fucking poop shoot.

ive got class now.

and i meet a girl today named tamsin, im calling her later, and we are probably going to chill.

excellent

maybe someone has been appreciating me sexually, or maybe someone will.

blog blog blog ive got 5 minutes left and im going to say some things to no one in particular.

man. normal shit. normal boring life shitt that trivial crap which amounts to so muc stress and pressure just drives me nuts, registering for class being social with these fuckwits so that they dont think im a maniac and generally just trying to not kill people when they get annoying and meeting my mother fucking responsibilities and desiring mad amounts of things. sigh. fuckwit sigh.

man why am i complaining life is so grand. i mean so grand. no ampersands needed here no bullshit or backwards crap necessary in this revolution. i spent friday night cooking with a huge squat in florence meeting a travelling bicycle circus and having a blast, also walking so much and chasing down sunsets over bridges in venice just wondering if i will ever get to any of these places again. i wonder. i never seem to know. ive done such fun fun fun fun things. and i feel worthless not to mention so alone, so constantly alone. fuck. that is such crap. i fucking hate feeling alone. i just want love who wants to love me? anybody?

aye to add more cause its important knowledge and the like.

Every day, 14,000 people become HIV positive, most of them in developing countries. In the past five years the number of new cases among women has increased by 40 per cent. - oxfam

It claims approximately 8,000 lives every day in some of the poorest countries. - oxfam

Commentary
The Truth About George Bush's Anti-AIDS Push

Kenneth Davidson, The Age (centrist), Melbourne, Australia, Feb. 10, 2003

The president is returning a favor from the big U.S. pharmaceutical companies. Those who pay the piper call the tune. In campaigning for the 2002 U.S. congressional elections, the Republicans spent US$650 million (compared with $458 million for the Democrats) and $145 million of the total was raised personally by President George Bush.

According to Public Campaign, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group campaigning for electoral reform in the United States, many of Bush’s State of the Union proposals to Congress last month were designed to satisfy the desires of his largest campaign contributors. Thus, more than half the benefits of the $1.35 trillion in income-tax cuts over 10 years will go to Americans earning more than $104,000 a year. And they make the bulk of personal contributions of $1,000 or more, which have totaled $1.8 billion since 1999.

HIV/AIDS is an enormous development crisis. It has reduced life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa from 62 years to 47 years.- oxfam

HIV/AIDS currently claims more than one million lives each year in heavily indebted countries. Apart from the immediate suffering of the people themselves, HIV/AIDS is devastating education systems, placing new demands on already over-stretched health sectors, increasing time demands on women, jeopardising the future of orphaned children, and reducing economic growth by almost two per cent a year in some cases. - oxfam

Notwithstanding a $1bn ‘top-up’ at the Kananaskis G8 summit, rich countries have consistently failed to respond to the inadequacies of the Enhanced HIPC Initiative. No attempt has been made to revise debt sustainability indicators in light of the financing requirements for addressing the HIV/AIDS crisis and achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Meanwhile, many countries are being forced back into acute debt unsustainability by a protracted decline in commodity prices, weak aid flows, and wildly over-optimistic export-growth projections by IMF-World Bank staff. -oxfam

so, im inmunich,andno one readsthis soits greattohave.

and the space bar dont work all that well.
as you can tell.
and they and z switch up on medepending on what programmeim using.

ivetogive and an oralpresentation on aidsHIV and how treatment of them is affected by global trade.

fun no?

itis

and ive got todo it by rome which is like nov 15, which is like 13 days not horrible, 2 weeks, good amount of time and i have some research already and today is for getting more. no big. so im a bit stuckand i figuredsome free time on myblog would help.

goals: compile a list of sources, 5 plus, and work theminto my thesis with in 2 hours. under thattimewould be great being that todayisone ofmy free days andive got a bunch of other shit todo for school. ai carumba.

though

life is good

and im not a big complainer well i am im some ways less complain more critical to avoid silly complacment. so i guess it comes as no shock, but the challenges are challenging, im moving off to italy tomorrow and ive got some plans for when i get home - job, NCOR, some travel, maybe some volunteer workat mayday or bluestockings in NYC and BANout the waz cause the group seems to struggling a bit and want to offer to help but that would involve me being online more than i want to so no to that, self first, i can do it.


aids research

that one is infuriating.

mmmm

research istaking over my time right now, along with a conversation with lil so im way too excited distracted and busy for this.

with love.

d