This week I watched the Eurocup match between Spain and Russia. I am not one for sports of any fashion, but I do appreciate watching futbol matches, especially in places where the entire country gets up in arms about it. I still think the public's ownership of sports francises is a bunch of nonsense, but it's fun to see everyone pour out into the streets with their red and yellow jerseys on and watching the game for a second time that day at the local bar.
That night I ventured out to he local neighborhood bar and had two beers. This is the sort of place you would imagine in Spain. Far away from any tourist destination, the neighborhood I am living in a bustling working class assortment of high rise apartment buildings with a common space in the center, and ours happens to be graced with a bar on the coner. I watched the owner expertly slice off pieces of jamon and cheese and plate them to his friends / customers. I have not been back since that night, but I will remedy this soon.
The day after was another excursion day, this time to the archaeological dig site of the Roman ruins of Segobriga, and the walled cliffside city of Cuenca that still harbors local residents to this day. While both of these sites (please click on the city names to view google images) were fatastic to visit, and it was a full twelve hour day that left me exhausted, what I found most interesting about this day was that in order to get out of Madrid, we had to pass through a blockade of cement trucks on strike and protesting high petrol prices by parking on the freeways. This strike has been going on all week, and what I find fascinating is that truckers of all goods have come together, the grocery stores have no fresh vegetables, goods are not getting in or out of Madrid, and the freeways are a mess, yet the population supports this action, for now. It's fantastic to see a population that shakes off apathy. I can only imagine the grumbling that results from the gas prices back home, but these people have acted as a community at a local level that has affected all of Spain. I am simplifying this process and the cause and effect nature of the argument purposefully. I am not commenting on the politics or the actions taken, I am commenting on the willingness to simply act.
This weekend I will be alone in Madrid as my housemates are traveling to Rome, or Barcelona. Luckily one of the Mississippi folks left his laptop and sanctioned my use of it. Tonight I will return to the area I spent last night drinking. This area seems to be where the local 20 somethings hang out. I passed by a death metal bar last night, perhaps I'll pop my head in there.
Friday, June 13, 2008
A bit more on Julius Winsome
I devoured this novel by Gerard Donovan in two days. Before I send it, certain combinations of words struck me so that I underlined them with a pen, and I wouldto preserve them here:
Such men ... have run out of country they can't live in.
... and it was from hin I learned how to be still.
... a punctuation mark... a crutch for a weak word.
... the cruelty of small towns was so sharp it might be a pencil and you could write with it...
You don't throw a million men away like that.
... walking in and out of the shade like a man in parts...
That was my reading of him...
... because this man was done with shooting ...
I missed my friend.
...the war had bred all the gunnery out of him.
I was of sound mind and an otherwise principled man.
You sit well in that chair, I said.
People come together, people part.
... I lost her in that second.
And she was gone from me.
Perhaps things don't happen for a reason, they happen because people do them.
Sharing my own sadness would not make it less, only double it.
Here, only short sentences and long thoughts can survive...
... the grave is the end of us...
You never say how you feel, but I feel affection everywhere in you.
... people can sometimes come close enough to discover that they are strangers.
... it started with long glances and silence and arrived fully only after she was gone.
They knew me now.
... You came to shoot in the woods, but the woods shot back.
I learned the shape of loss...
... such learning and experience could be switched off like a light.
I was done with shooting.
Such soft skin, such a hard memory.
Such men ... have run out of country they can't live in.
... and it was from hin I learned how to be still.
... a punctuation mark... a crutch for a weak word.
... the cruelty of small towns was so sharp it might be a pencil and you could write with it...
You don't throw a million men away like that.
... walking in and out of the shade like a man in parts...
That was my reading of him...
... because this man was done with shooting ...
I missed my friend.
...the war had bred all the gunnery out of him.
I was of sound mind and an otherwise principled man.
You sit well in that chair, I said.
People come together, people part.
... I lost her in that second.
And she was gone from me.
Perhaps things don't happen for a reason, they happen because people do them.
Sharing my own sadness would not make it less, only double it.
Here, only short sentences and long thoughts can survive...
... the grave is the end of us...
You never say how you feel, but I feel affection everywhere in you.
... people can sometimes come close enough to discover that they are strangers.
... it started with long glances and silence and arrived fully only after she was gone.
They knew me now.
... You came to shoot in the woods, but the woods shot back.
I learned the shape of loss...
... such learning and experience could be switched off like a light.
I was done with shooting.
Such soft skin, such a hard memory.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Prestidigitation
All over Madrid I have seen street performers employing fine skills of sleight of hand. I love it, no one on the trip with me seems to care. I saw a guy doing ball tricks like the ones in Labrynth, and people doing coin or card acts go on ignored in Sol.
It´s nice to see that even if no one cares, Spain has the power. The power of the babe.
It´s nice to see that even if no one cares, Spain has the power. The power of the babe.
I have noticed that
all of the books that I have brought with me are stories of travel and adventure.
The Golden Compass has sucked me in completely, as I have become obssessed with the concept of NORTH as of late, and here is this little book, recommemded to me a year before it was turned into a poorly made film, about a little girl´s journey to the North Pole. Phillip Pullman details his fascination with science and magic similarly to Tim Powers, and I was hooked into this tale right away.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Undr the Sea is certainly a tale of exploration and adventure, and while I don´t know the exact subject of the Tim Powers novel that I brought along, I have yet to read any of his work that doesn´t revolve around magic, science and transformation so I´m sure that fits in. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur´s Court is a novel of time travel and scientific innovation.
I realized all of this after I had purchased an additional book in Madrid. I had never heard of the author, an Irtishman named Gerard Donovan. The novel is entitled "Julius Winsome". I stared at the picture on the front, a single set of footprints in the snow, leading to a wooden cabin in a snow-filled clearing in the woods and realized, this is a destination. At that moment I realized that all of my otehr readings were about the journey, and here was the stark contrast, once you wind up in a place like that pictured on the cover, the journey is over, at least for me, and that instantly terrified me.
And it hit me all at once that I have not stayed in one place because I was content, or because I didn´t feel the pull of the journey, but because I was terrified of the destination, which for me feels like isolation. So I tear into Julius Winsome, whom I believe to be at the end of his journey, and I read half of it the first day, being yesterday. What it´s about doesn´t matter so much here (but it matters to me), all I can say is that I am consuming it like I´ve done to no work of fiction in a long time.
I started the trip by finishing a novel about time travel (not the above mentioned time travel novel, a different one). I wrote in the inside cover the city and date that it was finished in, and I left it on a seat in the Phillidelphia Airport. I will leave the Golden Compass in Madrid, and whatever other books I can wherever I finish them. Perhaps they will travel on. But Julius Winsome, that is going to get sent to someone special before it can travel on.
The Golden Compass has sucked me in completely, as I have become obssessed with the concept of NORTH as of late, and here is this little book, recommemded to me a year before it was turned into a poorly made film, about a little girl´s journey to the North Pole. Phillip Pullman details his fascination with science and magic similarly to Tim Powers, and I was hooked into this tale right away.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Undr the Sea is certainly a tale of exploration and adventure, and while I don´t know the exact subject of the Tim Powers novel that I brought along, I have yet to read any of his work that doesn´t revolve around magic, science and transformation so I´m sure that fits in. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur´s Court is a novel of time travel and scientific innovation.
I realized all of this after I had purchased an additional book in Madrid. I had never heard of the author, an Irtishman named Gerard Donovan. The novel is entitled "Julius Winsome". I stared at the picture on the front, a single set of footprints in the snow, leading to a wooden cabin in a snow-filled clearing in the woods and realized, this is a destination. At that moment I realized that all of my otehr readings were about the journey, and here was the stark contrast, once you wind up in a place like that pictured on the cover, the journey is over, at least for me, and that instantly terrified me.
And it hit me all at once that I have not stayed in one place because I was content, or because I didn´t feel the pull of the journey, but because I was terrified of the destination, which for me feels like isolation. So I tear into Julius Winsome, whom I believe to be at the end of his journey, and I read half of it the first day, being yesterday. What it´s about doesn´t matter so much here (but it matters to me), all I can say is that I am consuming it like I´ve done to no work of fiction in a long time.
I started the trip by finishing a novel about time travel (not the above mentioned time travel novel, a different one). I wrote in the inside cover the city and date that it was finished in, and I left it on a seat in the Phillidelphia Airport. I will leave the Golden Compass in Madrid, and whatever other books I can wherever I finish them. Perhaps they will travel on. But Julius Winsome, that is going to get sent to someone special before it can travel on.
Best Moneymaking Scheme EVER!
The center of Madrid is known as SOL, and it´s sort of like Times Square before it became lame, but I think it´s on its way there. Here you cannot walk 2 feet without running into something to eat, or a street performer. Today I saw the best attempt to take my money.
A dude sits on a cardboard box and reads. You would assume (and you would be correct) that this tactic does not inspire folks to throw money into his cigar box. BUT, you add a little dog, and a KITTEN into the mix, and the dude is raking money in hand over fist.
So this dude reads, and the kitten crawls all over him, then the dog plays with the kitten; picking it up by the scruff of the neck which pisses the kitten off and then she attacks him and they wrestle on teh ground until the kitten runs for cover between said dudes legs. At this point he picks up the kitten and grins at it with a mouth full of empty tooth holes and kisses the kitten and rubs it all over his face. The sheer joy that the man shows for just a second before putting his little fury moneymaker back on teh ground for it to waggle its tail and pounce on the dog makes me feel connected to my home.
I think that if I were homeless, I could probably make money off of my ridiculous love of sniffing my kitten´s belly or throwing a blanket over her to hear her make alien squeaky noises.
A dude sits on a cardboard box and reads. You would assume (and you would be correct) that this tactic does not inspire folks to throw money into his cigar box. BUT, you add a little dog, and a KITTEN into the mix, and the dude is raking money in hand over fist.
So this dude reads, and the kitten crawls all over him, then the dog plays with the kitten; picking it up by the scruff of the neck which pisses the kitten off and then she attacks him and they wrestle on teh ground until the kitten runs for cover between said dudes legs. At this point he picks up the kitten and grins at it with a mouth full of empty tooth holes and kisses the kitten and rubs it all over his face. The sheer joy that the man shows for just a second before putting his little fury moneymaker back on teh ground for it to waggle its tail and pounce on the dog makes me feel connected to my home.
I think that if I were homeless, I could probably make money off of my ridiculous love of sniffing my kitten´s belly or throwing a blanket over her to hear her make alien squeaky noises.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Perhaps too literal a translation
I had my first hambrguesa in Spain today. It came with a beef patty, a slice of deli ham and a slice of cheese. It was as if the word hamburger was broken down into its parts of ham+ burger and reassembled; perhaps thousands of years in the future the words were rediscovered and scientists decided to regrow the mighty beast from the DNA of its word origin.
Still, as I am sure we will come to find out with wooly mammoth steaks, the ham + burger was pretty tasty.
Still, as I am sure we will come to find out with wooly mammoth steaks, the ham + burger was pretty tasty.
Monday, June 2, 2008
And so it goes...
After three days in Madrid I have had my fill of jamon.
I seem to attract the people who want to either drunkenly ramble to me in Spanish on the street, or even better, the young lads who want to express their distaste of tourists. It all comes from traveling around like a herd of cattle on any school-sponsored excursion. I might as well wear blackface to a klan meeting.
The young citizens of Madrid have a style that I find very appealing. People wear jeans and dark sweaters with almost militaristic button up jackets. It's like the old Warsaw style of the late 70's, but updated. Minimalist and functional, yet sleek and well put together.
The metro here is needlessly clean. Not that I don't appreciate it, but Madrid seems to be somewhat of a utopia in that there are city employees who have the job of "cleaner" and who do nothing but clean up the city. I imagine this happened sometime after curing cancer and solving all other problems in Madrid.
An international school is the safest feeling place here, with everyone having English in common. I had good conversations with German and Chinese women today.
I find that my musical taste is taking me back to previous European trips; Fireside, U2, Kent, Radiohead, etc. There's a new dimension of my soundtrack that I can't fully explain, but Paul Simon and Seals and Crofts have been inspiring in me great emotional responses. I may elaborate on Paul Simon later, as I feel that this connection is worth exploring.
Last night we went out to a bar called "Dubliners", an "Irish" pub. The staff spoke English and they didn't serve Guinness. It was neither Spanish nor Irish, and 100% bullshit, apparent from all of the American students around the age of 19 getting trashed and dancing uproariously with each other when the Offspring comes on the sound system. Bourdain probably felt a quick pain in his chest and his right arm went numb for a second out of solidarity.
The grocery store is like heaven. I have never seen such a seafood counter, and the meat department had whole, skinned rabbits. I want to cook a meal here more than anything else.
I seem to attract the people who want to either drunkenly ramble to me in Spanish on the street, or even better, the young lads who want to express their distaste of tourists. It all comes from traveling around like a herd of cattle on any school-sponsored excursion. I might as well wear blackface to a klan meeting.
The young citizens of Madrid have a style that I find very appealing. People wear jeans and dark sweaters with almost militaristic button up jackets. It's like the old Warsaw style of the late 70's, but updated. Minimalist and functional, yet sleek and well put together.
The metro here is needlessly clean. Not that I don't appreciate it, but Madrid seems to be somewhat of a utopia in that there are city employees who have the job of "cleaner" and who do nothing but clean up the city. I imagine this happened sometime after curing cancer and solving all other problems in Madrid.
An international school is the safest feeling place here, with everyone having English in common. I had good conversations with German and Chinese women today.
I find that my musical taste is taking me back to previous European trips; Fireside, U2, Kent, Radiohead, etc. There's a new dimension of my soundtrack that I can't fully explain, but Paul Simon and Seals and Crofts have been inspiring in me great emotional responses. I may elaborate on Paul Simon later, as I feel that this connection is worth exploring.
Last night we went out to a bar called "Dubliners", an "Irish" pub. The staff spoke English and they didn't serve Guinness. It was neither Spanish nor Irish, and 100% bullshit, apparent from all of the American students around the age of 19 getting trashed and dancing uproariously with each other when the Offspring comes on the sound system. Bourdain probably felt a quick pain in his chest and his right arm went numb for a second out of solidarity.
The grocery store is like heaven. I have never seen such a seafood counter, and the meat department had whole, skinned rabbits. I want to cook a meal here more than anything else.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)