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Monday, January 07, 2002 The year so far (continued from entry of Jan. 3): A fine fireworks display, 15-20 minutes long, with a properly energetic climax. Light, color, whistling sounds, explosions. After which the town quieted right down. Groups of people moved off down dark streets. Others straggled into City Hall where indoors activities were underway. The light machine on the City Hall tower continued projecting streams of light bubbles on nearby concrete and brick surfaces. And apart from the line filing patiently into Ben & Jerry's, Montpelier lay nearly still. At nine o'clock, New Year's Eve. They're a weird bunch, those Vermonters. I shuffled my way back up the hill to the B&B for further communing with Rod Serling, drifting nicely off to sleep until 3 a.m. or so, which was about it for the night, snoozingwise. My body never seemed to adjust to the change in time zones during these last couple of Stateside visits, rousing me between 3 and 4 a.m., rarely letting me sink back into unconsciousness. Soon as I return to Madrid, I sleep later. Much later. As if I settle right into the local rhythm, naturally, without effort. Hmmmm. Next morning: January 1st. Sunshine. A bit of fresh snow on the ground. Crisp winter air. Breakfast, a few people already eating when I materialized in the dining room, all Canadians. A nice couple from Stratford, Ontario, and a grandmother/mother/daughter team from Québec, also nice, their conversation moving easily from French to English to French. The woman I know at the B&B produced plates of food. She and the proprietor, Betsy, asked what I've been doing in Spain for the last year and a half, I gave the brief answer: writing. Not being evasive, just not wanting to dig too deeply into personal history before I'd fully woken up. Most mornings I need time to become fully functional, though I try to put up a good front. Went back to my room, packed. Found the proprietor, paid up. Took off for the bus station. At 11:30 on the nose, the Montréal-Boston bus pulled in, nearly at capacity with mostly younger folk who appeared to have done serious partying the night before, leaving them silent, nearly comatose. A young German woman sprawled across two seats got up to sit next to her traveling companion, leaving me a perfect window perch with no one next to me. An hour later, the bus pulled into the Station in White River Junction for a half hour lunch break. Lots of passengers retrieved luggage and disembarked, making for points unknown. I committed the error of going to a nearby McDonald's for a chicken sandwich, something I hadn't done in a long, long time. Bleah. Got back on the bus, once again in a nearly full vehicle with a perfect window seat, no one next to me. Found myself at Logan Airport in Boston shortly after 4 p.m. where I discovered I'd left the B&B with my room keys. (^%#$*!!) Couldn't do anything about it until I got back to Madrid; I prayed Betsy had back-up keys for the room. While waiting to check in, met a nice woman who works for the Food Service at Harvard University, bound for French wine country with four work companions. A work-related jaunt. A Boston-area native with an accent so thick it could easily be used as mortar to lay bricks. We entertained each other until our turns came, me telling her we might have to take our shoes off when we went through the security checkpoint in the wake of the nitwit with the plastic-explosive in his sneakers a few weeks back. I'd seen shots on televison news of travelers at Logan doing just that. No one even glanced in the general direction of my boots when I went through. Probably because I radiate trustworthiness. Waiting. Hours of waiting. The plane lifted off 60 minutes behind schedule, its incoming flight arriving late because of delays related to a luggage-handlers strike in Paris. Onboard, I found myself next to an interesting, attractive, late-30's French woman. A bit reticent, a bit sad-seeming, but also intelligent, a bit flirtatious. Reading a copy of Foreign Affairs, the journal of international matters read and written by very smart people, many of whom work in government/diplomatic service. She didn't work in government or diplomacy. She wrote software, a skill she cobbled together while living out in Silicon Valley working as a private teacher for wealthy folks' offspring. Finding herself there during the boom, she picked up a couple of books, taught herself a lucrative skill, found work. When the valley began cooling off, she relocated to the Boston area, working there until it too cooled off. After which she lined up work in Paris, commuting back to the States once a month to see friends. A quirky woman, with a nice way of pursing her lips when putting together replies to questions of mine. When she decided to take a nap, she got out an inflatable neck pillow, put it on and wrapped her scarf around her head, mummy-like, to cut out the light. Made quite a picture. She seemed unhappily preoccupied with something, her energy directed toward me at times, at other times most definitely directed somewhere inward and private, so that I didn't push conversation too deeply. There's nothing quite like arriving in a European city in the early morning after a foreshortened night of minimal rest. The world on that side of the Atlantic is fresh-faced, showered, crisply-dressed, ready to meet the day, while the traveler feels spindled, folded, wrinkled, creased, oddly out of sync with just about everything, deprived of anything more than fitful sleep -- certainly of REM sleep -- and expected to carry on like a fully-functioning human. A question: why have the French stopped stamping passports? I've gone through Paris several times now in the last year and a half -- each time they give my name/photo a cursory glance, hand it back, wave me on. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that they don't, say, drag me off to a security dungeon and perform a full-body search, cavities and all, but they literally do nothing beyond the bare minimum. How am I supposed to accumulate passport stamps? Their absence can have consequences [see journal entry for 7 Nov. 2001]. (And now that I think about it, the U.S. customs agents also seem to have stopped stamping passports -– my last two times returning to the States, they did more or less the same as their French counterparts, saying, "Welcome home," then ignoring me. Strange. Of the several countries whose borders I've crossed in the past seven months, England's the only one that's actually applied stamp to paper.) Possibly due to the strike, it took an hour for luggage to get from the plane to the pick-up carousel. Once suitcases and such began appearing, my monster wheeled duffel materialized almost immediately, I grabbed it and took off. The French woman made a point of giving me a nice good-bye, I responded in kind. Found my way to a shuttle, then to a different terminal, where I checked into a flight to Madrid. Made my way up to the waiting area, fell asleep for a while. That flight also took off an hour late, maybe just for the symmetry of it. By 2 p.m., local time, I was back in Madrid. By 2:45, the bus from the airport spat me out at La Plaza de Colón. Into a rainy, gray Madrid afternoon. It rained on and off for the next 48 hours, me adjusting to existence in this time zone. By the time the clouds parted late Friday afternoon, I'd begun to catch up on sleep, rest and life as a high-functioning homo sapien. The holidays remained underway here, the transition to the euro the major news story. Think I'll stay put for a while. It's nice to wake up in the same bed after a night of genuine sleep. rws 1:38 PM [+] |