Cold Summer

I came home from Amsterdam in a rush and went to Nice, France to join my love Justin and his family.

Colin is doing better, thank you so much to everyone for their loving support and emails.

Here are some pictures of Amsterdam. It was an amazing place. I got to hang out the whole time with my friend Ben Cerveny. The best way to describe Ben is a philosopher. He's the creative director of a video-sharing service called Revver, his design will be online... uh, at some point. We went to a museum about the history of Amsterdam; I have never seen such a well-planned city. It's quite amazing. There are tons of artists, writers, and thinkers who live there. Though you have to put up with the foreigners carousing they mostly stay within a two block radius. Amsterdam is the first place I've been this summer where I could imagine living.

I also met a 20 year-old named Nadya who works at a new media arts organisation called MediaMatic and her boyfriend Andy Smith who'd just returned from programming "some cool Python thingy" for the US military in Hanover when I met them. They were both very smart (Nadya studies artificial intelligence and fine art) and fun. I haven't met young people in the states who are intellectually involving themselves in the subject matter that I am. They were surprised when I told them this and said that most of the young people they knew in Amsterdam were just like them. I guess my peer group has been in Holland this whole time. This is a guy named Tom who works for Yahoo, Andy, and Nadya:

On my last night, Andy and I went to a rock club where we drank beer and talked about the internet, our partners, and California (among other things). It was lots of fun.

Now I'm in Nice. Yesterday, before Colin woke from his drug-induced coma (YAY!!!), we drove out to a small church where Mother Mary has been appearing for a long time. Joan Hall and the Rhone's secretary Nadine lit a candle for Colin under the St. Bernadette statue.

The church walls were covered in Merci paintings: art made the for the Virgin Mary to thank her for appearing and helping them.

There were also numerous plaques there.

Justin and I found a statue of Saint Joan of Arc, and Justin lit a candle under her.

Here are Joan and George in the waiting room in Nice.

And Justin and me.

Love to you all.

Posted by Merci Victoria Grace at 09:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What a crazy life this is. I feel overwhelmed and not sure what to say to y'all about this trip right now. Paris was beautiful, wow. When we were in Russia we found out that a French architect designed a lot of the buildings, and I realized in Paris that the Russian buildings looked like bigger, tougher, less delicate versions of the same buildings. That struck me as an observation better got through travel than art history classes. And art history classes are dull as dust.

And that the Eiffel Tower really is huge. Like, gigantic.

I went to Notre Dame and there was a mass going on. Only a handful of people were worshipping. Most people were walking around, talking rather loudly, taking pictures, chastising their children, and buying from the giftshop.

I greatly enjoyed the Paris Metro system. It was easy to use and spread thoroughly out.

The food was so good that I nearly cried. But through my tears, I managed to eat. My hotel was in a great area of town, Tuilleries, comfortable and pretty.

I didn't go into the Lourve or any other museum, but I did find an art gallery filled with the original paintings and drawings of comic books where I spent an hour blowing my mind out. On my last night I went to an area I hadn't been before that turned out to be pretty rundown looking. I ate there anyway. The people in the neighborhood all acted like a big family, playing with each others' kids. A seven or eight year-old boy bought me a string of flowers and then hid behind a man, stared at me, and occasionally shouted "I love you!" in English at me. It was adorable. The older men were very amused and one gave me a glass of champagne. People sometimes told me how cool LA is. I saved the string of flowers and wore them home.

I bought a dress that I really like. Paris is full of shockingly beautiful people of every ethnicity. There were a ton of really gorgeous African girls, very tall and thin. It's nice to sit in a cafe and listen to the soft indecipherableness that is my understanding of French. One night at dinner two English-speaking guys sat behind me and talked loudly about girls they were sleeping with. They either didn't know or care that people around them could understand what they were saying. One of the guys referred to a girl he was dating, but who is apparently too in love with him, as a chicken that's been cooked too long. Ignorance is bliss.

Now I'm back in Scotland, obviously, and working at New Media Scotland. On the Research tab of my menu I'm posting my work on hacklabs and new media if you'd like to read it. I'm leaving for Amsterdam on Thursday. A few days after that, Justin arrives, then he leaves, Miriam comes, and then we both come HOME. I'm as excited about coming home as I am about going to Amsterdam. Maybe more.

I'll be in the Fresno/Reedley region the day I get back I believe. I need to pick up my car from Joy and eat Mexican food with my family. I'll probably be there around 8 or 9pm on the night of August 19, a Friday. I'll probably head back to LA on Saturday night or Sunday morning. I start my last semester at USC EVER on Monday the 21st.

Love to you all.

Posted by Merci Victoria Grace at 06:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've recently learned that now on Wednesdays I'll be working at this environmental community organisation in Glasgow called Radius instead of working at New Media Scotland. The girl, Hannah, who runs the place seems very grounded and cool. New Media and Radius had an event at the Radius office (oh it's around the corner from my flat, by the way) on Saturday. I videoed some it that I'll be editing tomorrow and I took a lot of still photographs as well. Most of the stills are of the ten or so children that were sitting drawing pictures and being generally adorable. I met a couple at the event, Shona and Adam, who were very nice and invited me to coffee. Adam is a bigger nerd than Shona and I'm going bring my computer over to their flat so that Adam and I can swap software. I mean buy software from legitimate business people. I found out that Rob, the other part-timer at New Media and Radius, lives around the corner from me. Pollockshields, hell yeah.

I finished my work for Nokia. If you'd like to watch the videos (they're just people talking about interesting ideas) please go here.

Also, the video festival I'm in (the piece is here on my website) is being written up in Res Magazine and in The Wire Magazine this coming month. The Wire is a UK magazine so I'll buy a copy over here and send clippings. If that's not too obnoxious. The festival, called SLOMO Video, is being shown at the Hammer Museum in mid-August.

Also on Saturday: I got a massage, after walking with a lot of pain for that last month. Andrew, the masseur, was really great. I'd signed myself up for a "remedial" massage and he asked me if I wanted to relax or if I wanted to be fixed. Fixed! I've been waking up (from nightmares) with headaches for the few weeks and for the last while or more my right hip has been half-dislocating as I walk. Pop. Pop. Pop. Though this has been happening off and on since high school, lately it's been really freaking me out because it hasn't gone away like it used to and I have a lot of back pain.

What followed was sort of like an calculus problem: My spine is twisted, and is either twisted because I was born that way or is twisted because of the lack of attention I pay to my body and the amount of travel and heavy bag carrying I've done in the last two months. My spine is twisted, therefore my sacrum sits at an angle. My sacrum sits at an angle, therefore my hips are uneven. My hips are uneven, therefore my legs in the struggle to walk are hitting the ground at different lengths. My legs are different lengths, therefore the tendons that join my leg to my hip have been worn down. My tendons are worn, therefore my hip pops out when I walk.

In a sub-equation: My spine is twisted and my hips are uneven, therefore in order to stop me from falling over from all this imbalance my spine twists more but can't fully compensate. My spine twists more, therefore my back and shoulders are also malformed. My body is a corkscrew, therefore I am in a lot of pain.

But! I feel so much better after being sorted out a little more. And now that I know more what not to do, I can avoid harming myself further and work towards a healthier posture. Last night was the first night in about a month that I haven't had a nightmare. I woke up so relieved! I think it probably has something to do with not dealing with a great deal of physical pain anymore.

I am very excited about going to Paris on Thursday. I saw this French movie yesterday called District 13. It's very actiony and has sort of a pedestrian plot but the photography is great. In addition to looking cool, the fighting is all mixed with urban gymnastics called parcour. Watching this much high quality footage of parcour is worth 10 bucks. The lead gymnast dude looks so much like Justus it's sort of uncanny. It reminded me that a lot of our genetic background comes from France. Between Irreversible and District 13 I now feel prepared for Paris. Just kidding.

I'm glad that I have a place to stay already booked. I don't feel particularly safe traveling by myself in any case though I'm getting used to it. But being desensitized to danger doesn't mean it's not there. I'm still a young woman alone in a foreign country; it's best not to wander from hostel to hostel looking for a spare bed.

I feel like I'm getting more and more used to living here and accustomed to spending most of my time alone. I suppose that's inevitable. Every once in a while I'll realize with a start that I'm living in Scotland. It's like, "Whoa, here I am. I can't believe that worked." I guess true appreciation comes after unhappiness, culture shock, and separation anxiety start to fade.

Posted by Merci Victoria Grace at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I booked a ticket to Amsterdam too. I'll be there from the 20th through the 24th of July. July just got a lot more interesting. Here are some more pictures of Russia and stuff:

This is the outside of the coolest place I've ever seen:

And this is the remarkable inside:

Here is some more of Rome:

Posted by Merci Victoria Grace at 09:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Berlin was about $700 from Glasgow, but Paris was less than $300. I guess the French win again! I'll be in Paris from the 13th of July (Joy's birthday!) to the 17th of July. That is very exciting.

Posted by Merci Victoria Grace at 07:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So here is a picture of my bedroom, very lovely:

And the view from my window into the garden:

Here is Sara and me inside the Coliseum:

Me inside of St. Peter's in the Vatican City:

So yeah! Yay for pictures. I have time to go to one or two more places in Europe before I leave. I think that those will be Berlin and Amsterdam but I'm open to suggestions. Also if there's something that you'd like me to pick you up in Amsterdam or Berlin please let me know.

I have a new address in Glasgow if you would like to send me any love letters or jalepenos: 40 Kier Street g/r; Glasgow, United Kingdom; G41 2LA. If you would like to send love letters written in tacos, that would be even better because I'm going crazy over here without Mexican food.

Posted by Merci Victoria Grace at 05:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)