...halved by light and dark...

Some of My Pozuelo Students

2008-07-20T12:02:00.008+03:00

Me with Germán and Julian

Guillermo, Cristina (Germán´s girlfriend), me, Julian, Germán

We met in La Latina last Sunday evening for drinks and tapas. That part of the city was full of young people relaxing in sidewalk cafés, drinking tinto de verano around wicker tables, soaking up the evening heat.

The View from the Moroccan Streets

2008-07-08T18:37:00.008+03:00

At the train station, a sign in Arabic and French

The Jewish Quarter - most streets are this size or narrower.

Rugs hung near the old palace

Sara, Brynn, and I eating dinner in the market Friday night

A Glimpse of La Medina

2008-06-30T00:34:00.005+03:00

On the second train to Marrakech, broiling in the hallway

My monkey wanted my earring

The royal tombs

Deep inside the market, Saturday night

Willie Wonka Moments

2008-06-24T21:44:00.003+03:00

The tazi brings us into Medina, the old city that comprises the heart of Marrakech, but stopped when the road becomes too narrow for the old tan Mercedes. Shouldering our bags, we set out through the winding nameless alleys, corner piled on dust-orange corner the way the market vendors pile their leather bags and gaudy brass earrings and shoes of every color. It is nearly 9.00 and the sun has just set. Finally, we submit to be led by a child who has been following us, offering to lead us wherever we need to go. This is neither the first nor the last of what Sara calls Willa Wonka moments - from the movie, when Willie Wonka trips going up the stairs and says "Ta-dah!" as if he meant to do that. We are three girls in Morocco for the weekend, and we have many Willie Wonka moments.

La Medina is quite small, and we understand most of it within one day. At least, we understand the more famous parts, the streets surrounding the ancient palace and royal tombs and olive gardens, although the streets of the Jewish quarter remain a mystery. We had a guide in the Jewish quarter, meaning a man who led us to a particular spice shop where we looked at the barrels of cinnamon and anise and tumeric and cadamon, white powdered clay and blocks of ambergris, saffron in a large crumbling red pile. The owner poured us hot weak mint tea, gave us mini facials with the clay, and showed us pictures of his year-old son. We bought clay and ambergris, and the sweet scent of the amber stayed on our arms all through the long afternoon.

All the signs at the palace and tombs are bilingual French and Arabic, and we did not remember to bring the guidebook, so we wander through guessing ages and histories and significance. Brynn takes pictures of cats and I take pictures of flowers, just as we had in Portugal.

During the day, the main plaza is surprisingly empty and small, but in the evening the spaces cover themselves with dried fruit carts and henna-painting women and long skinny steel tables and spice carts and children begging and white-aproned waiters calling for you to come to their restaurants. Our favorites are the orange carts, where for a mere 3 dirham (30 Euro pennies), we can drink a glass of thick freshly-squeezed juice. Three more dirhams buy us a bowl of thick soup which we eat with wooden spoons across a metal table from a changing array of Moroccan families and Korean tourists.

Saturday evening, Brynn and I need to change more Euro so we stopped in a big hotel to ask where we can go. The older men we ask says he can help us, and from his pocket he pulls 500 dirham for Brynn. For my 400 dirham, he unlocks the ice cream chest just inside the door and pays me in frozen bills and coins. Ta dah!

The market spreads out on all sides of the plaza, on all levels and corners. Through a shoe-filled walkway, down three steps or up twelve, turn right or go straight, walk past the beckoning shop keeper´s arm. We are called the Spice Girls and Victoria. It takes a poker face to walk through, and if the men make you laugh they have a chance. Everything is a game - the call and response, the simultaneous flirting and bargaining, the final price. We play the game until we are exhausted and our brains stuffed with sensory impressions and we stumble through the now-familiar alleys to our hostel.

Our plane leaves at 3.10 Sunday afternoon and, since it is a small airline, there is only one flight. The first train gets in at 2.00 and we dash to the street for a taxi, not waiting for the second train. In a mixture of Spanish and English words with French pronunciation, we bed the driver to go quickly. Boarding has just closed when we arrive, but we beg to be let on; passport control lines are agonizingly slow and I must wait for the officer to reqrite my name more legibly; security is mercifully lax and I slip past with my water, perfume, and grapes; we run in slippery flipflops up the ramp and to the right. The plane is not yet there. We collapse panting, grateful, relieved, giggly and shaky from adreneline, surprised. It is our last and greatest Willie Wonka moment - ta dah!

Some pictures! (new ones hopefully soon)

2008-05-20T12:34:00.005+03:00

John, Brynn, and Eric in a monastery-turned-pasteleria in Lisbon

Lisbon seen from the Castilo de San Jorge, including the Golden Gate Bridge imitation

The view of Evora, Portugal, from the original castle wall

La Playa de los Muertos

2008-05-06T12:22:00.002+03:00

The current is strong in this small bay, pulling from deep into the Mediterranean Sea. It is named the Beach of the Dead because the current pulls drowned bodies here. The water pulls them, sad and lonely, through its blue and turquoise shades, and lays them on the pebbled shore. Here they lie, perhaps sheltered by the great porous rocks at the southern end of the beach, until a mountain traveller glaces over the cliff edge and spots them far below. At such a height, people are small and the turquoise breakers are a thin strip before the vast hazy blue.

We are here on a much more frivolous errand, having been drawn to the sea by the prospect of sunshine and a long weekend. May 1 is Spain´s Constitution Day, and a large portion of Madrid´s population flocks out of the city on holiday. We are five: John, Leanna, Brynn, Agnieszka, and I, and we snugly fill John´s car.

After Comunidad de Madrid ends, we enter brief farmland and then the mountains, green and winding. Then, coming down onto the rolling land, a desert. They film westerns here, raising wooden store fronts against the mountains, when the southwest U.S. is too far away. Fields of stubby cacti grow straggling out of their rows. The houses are mostly low white stucco, or dusty red to match the hills.

At the very tip of Spain, we stop at Cabo de Gata, joking about Morocco. Can you see land? I think I can, that low shadow in the haze. The beach is littered and narrow, so we move up to San José - small and white built on hills near the curving water. Hippies sell homemade skirts and wooden jewelry along the edge of the beach. One man, crouched near a table, played a wooden recorder. They are skinny, dreadlocked, smiling at the tourists. In the early morning, the sound of their drums floats up from the beach to wake me.

This beach, la Playa de Genovéses, is long and covered with seashell fragments. Agnieszka and I climb the hill at the tip of the beach, and on three sides can watch the sea´s changing shades of blue. At night, we drink wine under the shallow blue sky.

On Saturday, after la Playa de los Muertos, we drive the seven hours back. Back over the desert, the bouldered mountains, the green fields to the city of Madrid, where no picture or description can keep the sound of the waves in our ears.

Early Morning

2008-04-11T10:41:00.001+02:00

I am the sheen of sunshine upon the grass,
I am the depth of the distant train,
The red of the knuckle-rough bricks.
I am the song of the bird you can´t see
In the tree that you can.

Thoughts from the Plaza de Francia, Las Rozas, España

2008-04-04T17:51:00.002+02:00

We have all gotten off the bus, unexpectedly, but without being told. On a hill, the 625A has failed. It will not move forward, only backward, coasting in short slides until the driver slams on the brakes. A line of cars gathers on the hill behind us, easing around one by one into the opposite lane.

The sun is hot. The 629 comes and most people board it. Wherever the 629 goes, it´s not where I need to be. We loiter, a dozen of us strung along in the dappled shade of the budding trees. We are a 40-something woman in capris, a mechanic in navy blue, a teacher in pink. The driver is on the phone. Two police cars pass but do not stop to help, and traffic flows intermittenly around us. The driver is packing his grey backpack, gathering the money, shutting down the ticket machine.

At the top of the hill, a bus stops, the LS line. The drivers confer, explain. The first driver boards the LS bus and we follow, flashing our receipts and bus passes to prove we paid. He is a short man, timid, stoop-shouldered, who accepts each proof with a quiet "Pasa." In starting, the new bus squeals and we hold our breath - will this one die too? But no, everything is well. We continue home.

perhaps now, a sense of place

2008-04-02T13:52:00.005+02:00

The worst part about the house is the stairs. Four flights´ worth, each cut in half with a landing, which forms eight small staircases piled on top of each other. You can judge where a person is in the house by those stairs - six quick steps, a pause to spin 180· on the landing, then six more quick steps to the next floor. The steps are our Morse code, tapping out the steps of each journey.

But that´s not what I meant to say about the stairs; forgive my Shandeism. The worst part is that they´re marble, an ivory shade with faint pinks and greys swirled in. They´re slippery, with hard edges. It hurts to fall on them.

I live with a single mother (Cristina, 45) and her two kids (Maria, 14; Miguel, 11). I live here in exchange for speaking English with all three; Cristina´s English is quite fluent, but she´s anxious to make it flawless. The situation is almost an au pair arrangement, but I pretend it´s not. A maid comes once a week to clean, and my only responsibility is to teach the kids English. We watch movies in English, listen to American pop songs, plaster the kitchen with Post-It notes. Toaster, towel, paper towel, fork, tray, spices, broom. Maria goes to school in England next fall and will need these words. Or Miguel and I "race" down the treacherous stairs - he moves a step for every answer he knows, and I move a step for every answer he doesn´t. What is the present simple? What is the past continuous? Ask me a question using "how."

The house itself is very nice; by Spanish standards, wealthy. It´s a four-bedroom rowhouse, the third of six on a quiet cul-de-sac. It faces six identical brick houses. They have varying specimans of ivy, potted trees, dogs. There is no room for grass in front, and a manicured park in place of backyards. My friend John once compared this street, these houses, to a quaint British lane. Inside, the house is a combination of modern and Spanish. The marble floors, the grey and white kitchen with red curtains, the dark spare dining room furniture, skylights in the slanted attic ceiling - all modern. The occasional Moroccan-print rug, the history and philosophy books upstairs, the ironed teeshirts, the bottles of olive oil by the stove - all Spanish.

Paradoxically, the house´s greatest advantage and disadvantage is its distance from the city. Twenty minutes by car if the traffic is good, or half an hour by bus. And this gets me only to the very edge, the NW corner, where I join the crowds of jostled Madrileños (residents of Madrid) on the metro. I suppose that´s the trade-off I get for watching the stars gather strength in the evening over the low mountains.

Semana Santa

2008-03-29T16:52:00.002+02:00

The car is almost as old as we are. It´s a round-shouldered black ´87 Golf, and we name it Suerte, meaning Luck. If she survives until the summer, she will become Dame Suerte. We talk to her a lot, encouraging, praising, patting the dashboard to coax her up the hills.
"We" is composed of three: John, Brynn, and I. Brynn and I met in January and hit it off, and go out together every weekend. John we met a few weeks ago, and the car is his latest purchase. We are all 23, still new enough in the world to feel the scars of university days, still reckless and curious and undecided. We will spend Semana Santa, Holy Week, in Portugal.
Suerte is loaded with bread, sandwich meat, beach towels, coats, magazines, bottled ice tea. The Spanish countryside is flat, and grows increasingly green as we move away from the center of the country; just into Portugal, the landscape becomes hilly. Brynn leans out the window to take pitures of the hills, the sheep, the farmhouses, and all the castles. She takes hundreds of pictures of the castles, and I take nearly as many of the flowers.
Our first stop: Évora. Just inside the Portugal border, the town used to be contained within the massive walls of a fortress; recently, modern apartments and a factory have spilled outside the walls. We see a temple to Diana (presumably, as the guide book tells us, the best preserved temple in Iberia), the edge of a castle, peacocks. When it rains, we duck into a mirror-walled café and order wine, and a nearby shop attendant cheerfully assures us that this is the worst place on earth.
We make it to Lisbon on Monday evening, after 9 hours on the road and €13 in toll money. However, being impetuous, we have not made sleeping arrangements. Rather than paying for an expensive hotel room or crashing in a pay-by-the-hour hotel, we take the car to a campground and sleep there. Not the most comfortable, but it´s safe and the showers are hot.
In Lisbon, Eric is our tour guide. I knew him in college, and he is spending a year abroad for his master´s degree. He is thrilled to show us the city.
The first day: St. George´s castle. Impressively large, with a great view of the city and the bay and the Golden Gate imitation bridge strung across the water. All around the foot of the castle, the city has spread its white-walled houses. We climb steps to the different levels on the ramparts, and wonder at the usage of various stone discs and blocks set in one corner of the large hall. With neither ceiling nor decorations, it´s sometimes hard to picture the castle rooms in their original context.
We see several cathedrals and Brynn, who grew up Catholic, explains some of the rituals. We see the place of the Carnation Revolution, where solders, called up to shoot at the citizens, instead put red carnations into the barrels of their rifles. We see statues of kings on horseback, and a modern art museum, and the tomb of Vasco de Gama, and a watchtower from which priests would bless the outbound ships. We eat fresh cod in a sidewalk café, and cinnamon-crusted pastries in a former monestary. Eric remembers every date, every story, every battle and king.
I love Lisbon. It feels smaller, older, quieter than Madrid. Spain and Portugal lost their dictators at the same time (late 1970s), but thirty years have not been sufficient to restore Portugal´s economy. The nation hasn´t forgotten its peasant roots; the tiled walls and cobblestone streets echo them.
On Wednesday, as it rains, we say goodbye to Eric and drive to Porto Covo, a town along southern Portugal´s coast. John chose it randomly, since it was easily accessible and near the ocean. It was near the ocean - close enough to walk there in five minutes. We rent rooms from an old man who has portioned up his home - bedrooms for the tourists, kitchen for him - and spends the days playing cards with a friend. Both men are wizened, deeply tanned, cheerfully chattering to each other or us in Portuguese. We respond in a mixture of Spanish and English, or smile confusedly.
Mostly, it rains. We play cards and take long naps and read. Thursday morning, in a patch of welcome sunshine, we go to the beach. I wander barefoot along the beach, see a black sandcrab, watch the incoming tide wash away the prints my feet have left between the rocks. When the rain begins again, we take refuge in a wood-beamed restaurant at the top of the hill. The soil is sandy, but plants still grow - rubbery carpets and deep red blooms and green mats of leaves that crawl up the cliff beside the ocean.
On Friday, we leave. Suerte, by this time, is full of bread crumbs and toll receipts and sand. We stop briefly in Merida, a Spanish town that boasts some Roman artifacts: a temple, two theaters, a couple houses. But we are lackadaisical about the town, whether from overload or tiredness or an eagerness to be home. And so we drive on, skimming ahead of the weekend traffic like the foam on the waves we´ve been watching. We reach Madrid in the evening. Tomorrow, and the next day and the next, there will be time enough to look at the pictures.

Household Change

2008-03-04T18:37:00.002+02:00

Nuti quit yesterday. Dropped her keys on the counter, took the €20 Cristina had forgotten to pay her on Friday, and slammed the door. That was at noon. I was sitting at the kitchen table, eating two fried eggs, and very surprised.

Nuti was the maid. Is that politically correct? She was the woman who came five days a week to cook, clean, and do laundry. She was short, with long grey roots in her purple-red hair, and was usually unhappy. She told me there were too many people at her house to feed, and they always needed cigarettes, and there was never money enough; I learned to avoid all conversations that might lead to money. She had moved from Rumenia some ten years ago, seeking a better life. What immigrant doesn´t? Her better life consisted of a three-room apartment, a TV, and a new daughter-in-law, and she had traded dearly to get even these.

So last night, we trooped downstairs, Cristina and Maria and Miguel and I, to be initiated into the mysteries of the laundry room. We had a crash course in sorting clothes, in measuring detergent, in matching socks and folding shirts. Maria was soon bored but Miguel stayed, somehow intrigued. His folded shirts were wrinkly and uneven, but he was proud of them. And afterward, we celebrated with a rousing piggy-back-ride and a wild onion swordfight.

Daily Life

2008-02-21T12:42:00.003+02:00

To my surprise, I have found life in Spain similar to life in the U.S. I am surprised to discover this (I am walking to the supermarket to buy pescadillo and raisins for dinner), and I am, perhaps, pleased.

What I mean by this: life has routines. It´s only a matter of finding them or of making them. I don´t go somewhere new every day; I´m here to live, and that means establishment and familiar faces and routines. Life in Europe isn´t one big sightseeing party, but rather, a growing comfort in different surroundings.

The kid at the photocopy shop knows me. He´s perhaps my age, with dark hair he´s growing mullet-life in the back as the fashion is, and he works every day. I´m beginning to taste a good paëlla from a bad. And I can accurately predict the routes of the four buses I take: the 628, the 625, the 625A, and the 656. The first two take me to the edge of Madrid, to Moncloa, where I catch the metro. Usually I take the yellow line (linea tres), or the brown (linea cuatro) or the light blue (linea uno), and sometimes the grey (linea seis).

Why is this important, these numbers and colors and routes?

Because this knowledge was not won easily. Because this huge part of my routine was at first overwhelming and frustrating. Because I learned through experience that the 625A bus does not go to Madrid even though I need it to, and that if I do not get off the train at Las Rozas, I will be stuck on a deserted concrete pad in a field called Tres Cantos. I can recite all the metro stops on the yellow line from Moncloa to Sol (the radius of the city from the NW corner to the center) only because I sometimes took the wrong metro and sometimes the right metro, and was once stuck at 2.00 AM when the metro closed. This new knowledge, then, is part of my new routine.

My old routine was comprised of gas stations, soup lunches, Riggs spelling rules, oil changes, Sunday dinners with my family, coffee on the front porch. This new routine is comprised of cold mornings at the bus stop, beggars in the metro, walks to the photocopy shop, classes taught in an office that smells of fresh bread every morning, and Friday noons at my favorite café. Sometimes, walks to the supermarket to buy carne pecade de terner (ground beef) or to the churreria (a churro is a pastry that you dip in hot chocolate). Sometimes, hot tea on the brick patio in the warm south sunshine, where I can hear birds and the buses, and watch the trees turning faintly green.

Are there differences then? But of course.
The section of books at the library that I can actually read is sadly small. I read newspaper articles badly. I rely on strawberry jam for my sugar intake, and on CNN for my English intake. Lunch at 3.00 and dinner at 10.00 feels odd. And I still can´t pronounce the word ¨churreria.

A list of accomplishments

2008-02-09T17:11:00.000+02:00

Every interaction in Spanish, even the shortest conversation, is a success, and achievement, a fiesta. Forget mere speech: every bus caught and every new action is an accomplishment.

For example: walking into the Caja Madrid Bank. The lobby is a tiny glass-walled room with lockers on the left. Step forward through two sliding panels with a blue arros on one, and wait for the panels to close. I am in a one-person elevator-like glass box, and a machine on the left scans my clothes and bag. If a woman´s recorded voices comes on saying ... I don´t know what. Here my accomplishments fail me. If so, step back into the lobby to leave the offending object, usually a coat, in a locker. If not, step forward through another pair of sliding panels into the bank itself. The same process is repeated when leaving, only on the other side of the scanner.

Once inside, the banker and I piece our languages together to answer my questions about opening an account and transferring money. We each speak slowly and repeat and laugh. She apologies for being older and not knowing English, but it´s ok. Two accomplishments.

A third success comes in the papeleria, the paper-and-pencils store where I ask for a photocopier and understand her directions to the copying shop. A fourth accomplishment when I ask for and receive three copies, although I struggle to understand the price. It costs ¨cince,¨ pronounced ¨keen-thay¨ following the Spanish rules of pronunciation. Fifteen cents. I count out the nickels and lay them on the counter with a sharp sound, snapping their edges against the wood.

As I trudge uphill through the alley toward 37 Antigona, where I live, I think of what I should have told the banker: Comprendo tu pero no puedo contestar en aspañol. Accomplishment #6.

484 Hours, 21 Days, 3 Weeks

2008-02-06T20:37:00.000+02:00

Today marks three weeks that I stepped onto the plane in Denver; after two layovers and 26 hours by the clock, I stepped off in Madrid. As my boss Jake tells me, I´m a spounge at this point, soaking in everything because everything is still new. Any reflections? Yes, and this one is perhaps the biggest SuperSoaker in my life right now: the language.

Slowly, ever so gradually, I am learning how to communicate. I can ask, albeit in broken Spanish, whether the lottery kiosk has stamps. (They don´t, only the tobacco kiosks do.) I can give directions to the metro stop Opera. And I can ask the busdriver if his route goes to the Las Matas train station. In the early morning, however, as I wait for the 625A bus, I do not have an answer for the boy who asks ¨¿Tiene cines?¨

Later, I ask my class what this means. As usual, with the few Spanish questions I bring them, it does not make sense. I thought perhaps the kid was asking for a cigarette, but the sentence that I remember means ¨Do you have cinemas?¨ The last sentence I brought them was a headline for racing dogs: ¨a precioso de oro.¨ When translated, this means ¨at/for precious of gold.¨

On the train, I open ¨Que!¨, the most liberal of the three papers shoved at every morning commuter at every train station. I scan the short entertainment clips. Heath´s body was buried in Australia, Britney´s back in rehab, and Lindsey would prefer to go out at night with her friends than join Britney. Hmmm, I guess they print trash in Spanish news too.

Later, with the help of the Bantam New College Dictionary, I puzzle out other articles. The check on apartments has closed 40% of real estate. The politician Gallardón wants ´to bury´ 12,000 cars in Madrid. The French are not allowed to attack their trucks. ¿¿Que??

The village turned suburb

2008-02-02T13:06:00.000+02:00

The village of Pozuelo does have a soul, and I am determined to ferret it out, mixing caution with curiosity, as a child who ventures where he knows he might not be welcome. The soul of the town lives in the tiny things: moss growing between paving stones in an alley; crooked shutters opening to an iron-fenced balcony; the chipped stucco along the corner of a yellowed building; the great, old ivy along a wall of white stones; winding lines of stone walks that lead from one neighborhood to another. These stones were here long before the marching rows of brown brick houses.

Sometimes, there is a sudden un-hiding of the soul. Perhaps an open gate, and then I am in the back alley of a music school. Moss grows along the stones here too, to the edge of the iron-wound windows. A single tree along the left. From a curtained window on my right comes the sound of piano etudes, and then the chaos of both hands pressed flat on the keyboard. Farther on, the sound of a violin. There is a posted notice about a concert series at the Museo de la Reina Sofia, which I have just missed. I wonder how the great composers sound through the lens of a Spanish soul, until I ruefully remember that they are foreign voices even in my native country.

Another treasure: an open door to an apartment building. The building is shaped like a crooked figure eight, and harbors two tiny courtyards among its rooms. Both are open to the sky, and weeds and potted plants alike lift their heads to the drizzling rain. The hallways here are in poor repair, despite the new layer of shiny brown paint on the windowsills of the second floor. The blue walls are chipped, the marble steps worn, the banister spindles approaching rust. The wide wooden doors are losing their varnish in patches, and hold only a knob in their center; like most doors here, a key is needed to turn the lock and open them. The place is dirty, and the only light comes from the windows onto the courtyards. On the way out, I read the paper labels on the rusting mailboxes: Jesus, Sergio, Maria Carmen.

To Grandpa

2008-02-01T21:18:00.000+02:00

Happy birthday! I wish I were on the other side of the ocean, celebrating with you and your lovely wife. We´re all thankful for the years God has given you, and pray for many more. Love you!

Bus 625 to Monte Rozas

2008-01-23T20:17:00.000+02:00

This is the bus I take back to my house from the Moncloa bus station at the edge of Madrid. This afternoon, I sat watching the buses go past: the 631 to Torrelodones, the 627 to Brunete, and the 656 to Pozuelo. I use that bus too, when I go to class.

I have classes at two different businesses, one in Pozuelo outside of Madrid, and one near the center of the city. In Pozuelo, we gather in a meeting room at the end of the hall, and the sun reflects off the windows into our eyes. We debate the topics they are working on (right now, a project called Public Eye), and they ask me to enunciate the pronunciation differences between ¨lunch,¨ ¨launch,¨ and ¨lounge.¨ They are a good class, Charo and Guillermo and Abraham, and ready to learn.

In Madrid, we find a room that is not being used by interviewers (they are an HR consulting company). The internal walls of the office are sheets of glass, and the decorations are minimal. We review and I try get a sense of where they are. They are learning the differences between adjectives and adverbs, and how to change one to another depending on the sentence.

Then the bus to my house, about half an hour away. I have no idea how many kilometers. Eric and Amy are leaving tomorrow, so I may run back to see them tonight or early tomorrow morning. Until then, I enjoy a warmly lit attic with a sloping roof, red armchairs, and many books. And at bedtime, a thick new don comforter! The joys in my life are small and many.

Got a job!

2008-01-16T17:00:00.000+02:00

Hooray and happiness!

The specifics: 16 hours a week, mostly in the afternoons, teaching English in a business language school. The boss and I are equally excited for me to work there, and there´s a good possibility for adding classes in the near future.

This more than makes up for the fact that Amy is not coming in today, as I had thought, but tomorrow. Good thing I like anticipation.

More Sights

2008-01-15T21:46:00.002+02:00

Obviously, I´m not working and have all day to wander the city. Consider this a continuation of the previous list.

5. Heels are definitely in (watch the sidewalk grates), as are rain boots. Tennis shoes, Berkinstocks, and fuzzy pink flipflops are out.
6. Just because a man is a smooth-talking tango dancer from Argentina doesn´t mean he´ll pay for your lunch.
7. If they want to, shopkeepers will treat you badly. I guess it´s retaliation for the way I speak their language.
8. People make out everywhere - sidewalk, bus, metro, even their car as they´re waiting for the light to change. Do not be surprised.
9. Rebajas = fabulous. Think Old Navy on a 50% off day, but with better clothes.
10. Do not ride the metro from Banco de España to Sol at 19.00. Or from Santo Domingo to Aguelles. In fact, wait until 21.00 or 22.00 when all decent people are at home eating dinner, and then ride the metro.

My life approached the sheer fabulous this afternoon. After reading and taking a siesta, I wandered to the kitchen, where the grandmother was cooking paella, a traditional Spanish dish of rice, vegetables, and meat (in this case, rabbit. But not one I had known personally). She loves Louis Armstrong, and we listened to him while we practiced each other´s languages. Her English is improving, and I like to think the same about my Spanish. The windows of the small, warmly-lit kitchen were foggy with the heat of cooking, and outside the clouds were letting down mists in tiny gusts. The dog slept on the wooden floor just outside the kitchen. We talked about jazz, dancing, Colorado, her education with Irish nuns in Seville, and the nature of saffron. Given a choice, I would do exactly the same thing tomorrow afternoon!

Life in the Gran Via

2008-01-14T15:28:00.000+02:00

My new favorite place in the world. Last night I browsed Rebajas, went to Mass, and listened to a good string quintet - all in the same little bit of street. Plaza de España is also good, but beware the old men who want to talk philosophy. Today I got up early by Spanish standards (10.00, a good 3 hours earlier than necessary) and came into the city. A job interview at 18.00, about 3 hours away, and all of the city to occupy me.

A word to the wise about dining: even if the bartender says the food you want is callo (sp?), don´t believe him - it´s only menudo.

Second day?

2008-01-12T13:16:00.000+02:00

I´m a little confused what day it is. I think it´s Saturday, which actually makes it the third day since I arrived. Here are some observations since arriving:

1. Spaniards look at your shoes before anything else
2. Little dogs abound, and the women put on lipstick to walk them in the park
3. Old ladies like good coats and heels
4. Some people will persist in talking to you, even when they know you don´t understand. And they don´t like to speak ¨mas despacio¨

Well, that´s about it. Shallow observations, yes. It´s all I got right now. Today I´m exploring the older part of town, looking for museums and strange sights. So far I´ve seen a lot of Rebaja, which means ¨huge sale after Christmas that lasts only until March.¨ I don´t yet know what tomorrow holds (one day at a time is all I can handle), but Monday hopefully holds a job interview or two. (!)

Adios!
Eva

Arrived!

2008-01-10T21:49:00.000+02:00

Safely, after several long flights. On the way to Copenhagen, I fell asleep just before they began serving breakfast. And on the way to Madrid, I woke at one point to find that the stewardess had left a sandwich for me on the empty tray table. Classy of me, I know, to sleep through lunch. I´ve gotten lost already, once in the Madrid airport and once on the metro, but have bested both. I have another job lead (the girl I´m staying with teaches English and her school is hiring), and hope tomorrow will be productive. After I sleep, that is. We´re off to prepare a multiple course meal in the Italian style (and it´s not even 10!).

A New Year!

2008-01-06T08:18:00.000+02:00

Only one resolution for 2008:

1. Move to Madrid

I think I might make it this year.

D7280 Multi-color kids bunk bed w/ slide

2006-06-22T19:34:00.001+03:00

I sold my first piece of furniture last night. A kids' bunk bed, metal tubing painted red and yellow and blue and white. I thought it was ugly, but the couple liked it for their kids and I didn't mind selling it. The man used to be stationed in Great Falls, MT, near where my mom grew up and he had been to the Helena Valley, possibly one of the prettiest places in the U.S. How can you feel you know someone just because you can picture where he lived ten years ago? It's like Hannah in The English Patient - "Where you come from becomes important."

My boss called to say I could leave early and I was excited because the people on my block were having a neighborhood block party. One of those things the city encourages to keep the small-town feel and that way you can at least meet your neighbors. But I pretty much missed the party and mom said "next year," but next year here won't matter, so I left again. "Maybe I can meet them later," meaning "probably not."

One inch. Four hours.

2006-05-13T03:56:00.000+03:00

Evidently, this is sufficient for one man, acting without a judicial panel and within the short space of three hours, to decide that I am unfit for leadership at this institution.

I am speechless.

At the risk of revealing my bitterness by saying things I should not, I stop here. Things can get worse, and I think they will.

Highlighter Skies

2006-05-05T04:17:00.000+03:00

Every day we watch for highlighter blue
That steals palely up the eastern hill,
Covering the gold-rimmed sky
With hints of coming blue, dark blue, dark.
We must not name it too soon, for fear
It is only blue, and not highlighter.

The supper table where we sit
Draws a line up to the sky
Dividing our highlighter darkness from
The hazy orange of the glowing mountains.
Her little hand grasps her fork, pausing
Above the wooden tabletop,
Waiting for the moment of brightness.

At first the highlighter is fading, old,
We are almost ready to throw it away –
This means we must be patient.
We are amazed each evening at its depth,
Brightness, beautiful enough to write with.
The mountains flame up and we are
Caught between two horizons of light.
This moment is brief – we watch, breathless,
Searing the color of blue in our eyes.

Tomorrow it might not come.

As the westbound orange fades to a line of yellow,
The highlighter deepens, pulling out the stars,
Setting them atop its darkness.

~Me

Going home (?)

2006-04-20T02:30:00.000+02:00

As I'm telling everyone lately, I'm going home after graduation. At least temporarily. I add the last part because I realize that home is not "home" as I've known it, and that I don't quite fit there anymore. I'm not supposed to. That's fine, I accept that fact that my family's changing and so is my role in it. But now what? I have an idea of what I want home to be, but how do I build it, and will I be able to? And what about this [horrible] transition period when I've outgrown my parents' home and don't have space to build my own?

In the spirit of such confusion (and my DRW project), I offer this gem from "Garden State." I feel this.

Andrew Largeman:You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone.
Sam: I still feel at home in my house.
Andrew: You'll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for you kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.

heart

2006-04-04T02:11:00.000+02:00

And I hold a record for being patient
With your kind of hesitation.....

permeating the world

2006-03-30T02:39:00.000+02:00

On the plane yesterday I read Sylvia Plath for a long time and I loved it. She has the power to express herself beautifully. So now I have to share two terrific paragraphs, one from Jan 1956 and the other from Feb.

it would be easy to say I would fight for you, or steal or lie; I have a great deal of that desire to use myself to the hilt, and where, for men, fighting is a cause, for women, fighting is for men. in a crisis, it is easy to say: I will arise and be with thee. but what I would do too is the hardest thing for me, with my absurd streak of idealism and perfectionism: I do believe I would sit around with you and feed you and wait with you through all the necessary realms of tables and kingdoms of chairs and cabbage for those fantastic few moments when we are angels, and we are growing angels (which the angels in heaven never can be) and when we together make the world love itself and incandesce. I would sit around and read and write and brush my teeth, knowing in you there were the seeds of an angel, my kind of angel, with fire and swords and blazing power. why is it I find out so slowly what women are made for? it comes nudging and urging up in me like tulip bulbs in april.

I long to permeate the matter of this world: to become anchored to life by laundry and lilacs, daily bread and fried eggs, and a man, the dark-eyed stranger, who eats my food and my body and my love and goes around the world all day and comes back to find solace with me at night.

hiding in used book stores

2006-03-23T06:03:00.000+02:00

Applying for jobs is bad. I am depressed every time I check the "full-time" box when asked what kind of job I'm looking for. Of course, that's been only once because jobs in northern Colorado publishing houses are harder to get than were previously thought. People think tacking the name "Rocky Mountain Publishing" onto their garage makes them a reputable publishing house, I guess. Although it was funny when the guy came out in red flannel pants to tell me he's not hiring.

So. Now contemplating tutoring alongside a possible part-time job at coffeeshop or used bookstore. Yes? No? Also, being told I should start my own used book store, although I'm not sure I want that kind of commitment. Open to suggestions for anything except what my dad so affectionately calls McDogfood.

Until then, I'm hiding out in used bookstores. Practicing for a future part-time career, right? I had a thrill today spending my clothes money on Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Joseph Conrad, Jack Kerouac, Camus, Woolf, Flannery O'Connor, Steinbeck, George Sand, and Doestoyevsky. Perhaps too much for one day, but I can't ever apologize for buying books. Who needs new summer clothes, anyway?

skittles

2006-03-16T06:49:00.000+02:00

A job that includes eating Skittles, playing checkers, and crawling in through the window is a great job. I tutor Alison four days a week, and this is what we do in between quizzing for Latin (tell me the SID SPACE ablatives) and scientific water cycles (constipation! consolation! conversation! condemnation! condensation!). She has trouble with the water cycle. She loves Smoothies Skittles, and we share them while she studies and I sit cross-legged on the big desk and journal. We trade sometimes because she prefers the yellow ones and I prefer the purple ones. And late every afternoon, we watch for the highlighter sky, which is our term for the particularly bright blue moment over the eastern hill just before the sun sets in the west. She tells me that in the morning, the highlighter sky is also yellow and pink and green. Every day we watch until the sky is bright enough to write with, and then we dream of all the things we could color with that much vivid blue.

the first

2006-03-02T17:15:00.000+02:00

So.... I finally broke down and got one of these. Here's another attempt at the great phenomenon called Being Connected. I refuse to post tons of pictures or apologize for not posting. That said, here goes nothing....