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Monday, September 30, 2002 Last night: woke up in the wee hours, as I lay in bed I heard noises downstairs, the kind of noises I've gotten used to hearing in this house: a door closing, the sound of someone moving from one room to another. No one down there, of course -- my guests left yesterday afternoon and since then I've been the only human in the house. Never occurred to me when I bought this place that I'd be picking up a house some might consider to be haunted. And it's not as if whatever goes on here that might justify that label is dramatic or nasty. Low-key is more like it. Episodic, generally polite, with seemingly no concern or awareness re: anyone else in the living space. It's a loaded, sometimes silly word, 'haunted.' Freighted with connotations, from the ridiculous to the fraudulent to the frightening to the awe-intriguing, even awe-inspiring. Whatever one might think about it, it's become a simple fact of daily life here, though daily is too strong a qualifier. Now and then is more like it, whenever it feels like it. "It" (the second of the three 'its' in that last sentence, that is) being whatever produces the sounds, the kinds of noises another person in the house might make off in another room. Sometimes in the next room –- clear, distinct, straightforward. Not threatening, not spooky (apart from the fact that there's no human body producing the sounds -- if one doesn't think about that aspect of it, it's just something that happens in the house, the way the furnace/boiler goes on and off from time to time). I mentioned this to my guests, G. & S., yesterday afternoon as we sat around the dining room table talking, post-lunch. S. then mentioned she thought she'd heard steps, coming from a place she knew none of us were located. Real? Who knows. Depends on who's defining the term 'real.' I can tell you that the sounds I hear are not my imagination, and that's as far as I'll take it. Think what you will. We're now sailing into the season of haunted houses, a phenomenon that's gained steam over the last ten or fifteen years -- places to go for a good scare. Go with friends, scream and laugh at fake spooks, fake monsters, fake ax murderers. Some run by religious groups with a Christian agenda, others run by college or community groups. Some bigger, more organized like Spooky World. Not a kind of entertainment I've had much interest in, though the one time I went to Disneyland, I did the Haunted Mansion twice. That was a while ago –- bet the technology is way better now. Why am I going on about this? The season. I may not be big on the haunted house style entertainment, but I love the atmosphere of the weeks leading up to Halloween. Yeah, it's often cheesy, often silly. I don't care. Something about it feels great –- the change in the way the air feels, the getting dark earlier. Leaves blowing through the air, racing along the ground or down a street before an October breeze. I love that stuff. And we're just about to head into it. My last two Octobers were spent in Madrid, and as much as I love Madrid, it was a different kind of Halloween -- hardly Halloween at all, actually. I'm looking forward to being around the New England version once again. rws 7:12 PM [+] |
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Sunday, September 29, 2002 Written yesterday -- Saturday, September 28: Yesterday morning: I stepped outside around 8 under a slate gray sky. The sheerest drizzle fell, so light, so polite that I wasn't sure it was actually happening till I could see it on the car's windshield. By the time I reached Montpelier and disappeared into the gym, it had asserted itself a bit. Still polite, but more distinct. Within an hour rain began falling for real; by 11, it had lost its manners and become a genuine downpour. It rained the rest of the day and well into the night, mostly coming down so hard that I could hear the rumble of it on the roof. Mist and fog moved in during the afternoon as the rain came down, the area adopting its primeval look: green, wet; large restless banks of fog moving through valley and hollows; hillsides and steeper slopes draped in mist. I had company scheduled to arrive yesterday evening and so spent the afternoon cleaning house. Not my idea of a good time. At all. But necessary 'cause the place had developed a dire need for, bare minimum, a good vacuuming. (If nature abhors a vacuum, why does Hoover remain in business? And why is vacuum spelled 'vacuum' instead of 'vacume'?) I did more than the bare minimum, in the process discovering loads of wood shavings left strewn around the basement level by the electrician who spent a day or two here a few weeks back. Also discovered: many spiders and abundant cobwebs -– as many as I could find got hoovered. At the end of the process, the house looked like a decent place to live and hang out, no longer the flop in which I work, sleep, make meals. And still the rain came down. My friends had said they might start the drive north as early as 5:30, getting them here around 8:30, in ideal conditions. Between traffic and torrential rain, however, ideal conditions did not reign. After 10 p.m., I went to bed and drifted off. Around 10:40, I woke to the thump of luggage being brought in to the downstairs guest room, me having left the doors open for them to enter whenever they pulled in. They started to unwind, I cranked up the satellite TV, found Run, Lola, Run playing (yee-ha!). We settled down and watched until it wrapped up around midnight, when everyone retired to their respective bedrooms. And outside the rain continued. ********** Written today, Sunday, 9/28: My guests took off a couple of hours ago, I'm back in this space on my own once more, the vibe a bit different due to the injection of energy from the last couple of days. Lots of talk, laughter, food prep and time spent around the dining room table. The autumn in these parts has so far been slow and gentle, the colors turning gradually, in muted hues. When I got up this morning the thermometer outside the dining room windows read 32 on the nose, but because of fog and overcast there was no frost -– flowers still abound, crickets and their ilk continue to whirr and chirp away in the grass. When I raised the shades in the living room, I found a visible difference in the colors around the valley from yesterday's display -– between the rain of two days ago and last night's plunging mercury, the autumn display got a major goosing. I've had a long window box of marigolds out on the back stoop -- a stopping place for bees, mostly bumblebees in recent days, as the smaller variety seems to have disappeared with the advent of shorter daylight hours. Earlier, out in the yard, I caught sight of a small-sized bumble bee flying from one marigold blossom to another, alighting on one, walking around the closely-set petals, then making the short flight to the next blossom for the same drill. Absorbed in its task. I stopped to watch, and as I stood there the bee seemed to notice me, stopped what it was doing, turned to face me, apparently checking me out. A handsome little bugger, looking more like an oversized honey bee than a slightly diminutive bumble bee, wings surprisingly small for its body, multi-eyed visual organs appearing heart-shaped. After a moment, it apparently had enough of me, returning to its work. I came back into the house. I went outside a short time ago to bring the window box inside for the night, rustling the marigolds around before picking it up to dislodge critters hanging out in the greenery. The plants seemed to be free of insect life, I brought the box in, set it on the kitchen counter. A few minutes ago I noticed something flying around the dining room, discovered what looked like the same bumble bee, having made the trip inside with the flowers where it found itself in a world it didn't seem to be crazy about. It headed toward the picture window in the living room and landed on the glass, trying to figure out why it couldn't keep going to the big world it could see out there. I put a drinking glass over it, slid a piece of paper underneath the glass, trapping the bee inside, transported it outdoors where I removed the paper, holding the glass up into the air. The bee climbed to the rim of the glass and took off, heading in a leisurely way to the nearest flowers. Back to work. We all go about our business, thinking our concerns are the defining parameters of existence. We forget we share this planet with creatures far smaller and far bigger, with concerns just as fundamental, just as abiding. We're all travelers, riding this living globe through space. It's Sunday evening, the end of September. The days stream by, life rolls on. rws 6:21 PM [+] |
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Sunday, September 22, 2002 The weather continues its return to more normal patterns after a dry, beautiful summer -- rain's fallen on and off since yesterday evening, the sky gray, the air soft, the temperature mild. Mist drifts slowly down the valley, wisps trailing up toward the overcast sky. The leaves continue their slow turning. J. stopped by earlier in the day, bringing her dog, a three or four-year-old Australian shepherd. There are plenty of critters around here, but none are sanctioned to live in the space with me apart from the occasional spider. The sudden presence of a substantial-sized animal -- bright, friendly, inquisitive -– changed the feel of the space completely. Plus, there's now extra padding on the furniture in the form of dog hair -- a small price to pay for the entertainment provided by the hair donor. She's a classic dog -– fundamentally happy, living right in the moment, chasing tossed balls with unstoppable joy and enthusiasm (and when her teeth punctured one, she had just as much fun carrying around its deflated corpse, shaking it, chewing on it), wanting to be right in the middle of whatever activity's taking place. A superb role model in terms of demonstrating how to enjoy life minute by minute. Good, clean fun. I've also continued getting to know my new computer, to this point a largely trouble-free process. It's begun sinking in that I can play DVDs on the bugger, which today led me to inflict the first 45 or so minutes of The Matrix on J. This is a film I've seen far too many times (never in the theater, I'm sorry to say -- always on DVD), especially certain sequences. During my time in Madrid, as part of my preparation for a stage acting gig, I bought a DVD player to study three or four examples of a certain actor's work. DVDs, it turns out, are tailor-made for that kind of thing. No rewind, no fast-forward, at least not like with VHS -- the ability to move forward or back in a film, or to pause/re-run a certain sequence, is nearly miraculous. This is old news, I know -- I'm just appreciating it all over again. Bear with me. I sold my DVD player just before I left Madrid in April, though I hung on to two or three DVDs, which made the trip back with me from Spain. Until I picked up this 'puter, I had nothing to play them on. Now it's time to party once more. The single weird note in the day came from reading through documents being prepared for a mid-October court hearing, a matter that's been in process for four years and now seems to be moving toward its wind-up. The kind of matter that inspired Dickens to write Bleak House, one whose conclusion and disappearance will feel very good. At the commencement of this brouhaha, around 3-1/2 years ago, I functioned as the liaison between our attorney and the various parties on our side of the issue -– my brother and three of our cousins. At some point along the way, probably just before I left for Madrid in the summer of 2000, my brother took as the point-person. Man, it was a joy to release that bugger to someone else. I'm not sure I realized I needed to be liberated, but once I was I felt the difference immediately and never looked back. The matter became something that only intruded on my existence now and then until just recently, with this hearing coming up. I look forward to waving a happy good-bye to it all. I'm alone in the house as I write this, no lights of any sort visible through the windows -- just darkness. The only sound I can hear apart from the clicking of my fingers on the computer keyboard is the music of crickets and their compatriots in the grass and bushes outside. A nice kind of solitude which will only be interrupted by a phone call or two. At least until 9 o'clock, when the mayhem of the Sopranos will break the quiet. Then on to the coming week. rws 7:58 PM [+] |
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Thursday, September 19, 2002 Seen on the way into Montpelier today: expanses of pumpkins at farm stands, swaths of orange standing out against the grass and the browns of nearby buildings. Also, on a roadside mailbox, perfectly located at a slight swell of land next to a busy Route 14: the season's first Halloween decoration –- a smiling jack-o-lantern's face, trailing ribbons of different shades of orange that rippled in the breeze. Cheerful, sunny stuff, on a cheerful, sunny September day. Found myself thinking about Madrid quite a bit today, starting with the realization that a year ago I'd moved into my second Madrid piso, had begun exploring my new barrio, made two excursions to Ikea out in one of the 'burbs to the northwest of the city. Right after that, the mail brought a cassette tape of news and information from Spain, a quarterly audio magazine put together by an outfit called Puerta del Sol, I assume named after the plaza/crossroads in the heart of Madrid -– Madrid's Times Square, a combination of beautiful old architecture, centuries of history, modern commerce and touristy sleaze. A vortex of people and energy, and the place where I first realized I was smitten with the city. I drove into Montpelier listening to the tape, the first story about "el botellón," the amazing display of public drinking by Madrid's teens and 20-somethings that took place every Friday and Saturday night in certain areas around the city until recently. Madrid has a reputation as party central anyway -– between that and the fact that the parents raising children in the post-Franco years (the first period of genuine freedom and well-established, relative affluence in decades) didn't want to deny their kids anything, it led to a wide-open, anything-goes atmosphere, a time in which the kids were given free reign. They're good kids, the Spanish kids -– smart, attractive, well-educated, well-intentioned, fun to be around, fun to watch. It was strange to observe the explosion of outdoors partying they created every weekend. So extravagant, so in-your-face. Never ill-behaved, really, that I saw, apart from the massive night-long public consumption of cheap booze and the piles of garbage left in its wake -- but so wildly excessive that it was just a matter of time before the rest of the citizenry reached the limit of their tolerance. A few deaths from the taking of ecstasy at two or three large raves in the south of Spain early this year added fuel to the fire, and just before I returned to the States in April, the government decided the time had arrived to try and eliminate el botellón. When I reached Montpelier, I parked my car and sat listening to the tape, wondering what the one or two passersby thought about the stream of loud Spanish coming out the windows. Then went to the gym, forgot about all that. Stopped in at the local supermarket afterward, walked in the door, found two women speaking loud, animated Spanish. Montpelier is way the hell up north -- there's not much around in the way of things Latino apart from a pseudo Mexican restaurant on State Street, a block or two away from the state house. I've never heard it spoken around town before. All of a sudden it's making multiple appearance in my day. On the ride back from town, a number of roadsters passed going in the opposite direction. Beautiful vehicles, vintage coupes from the 30s, perfectly cared for, painted eye-catching colors. Front ends low to the ground, looking like they'd be fun to drive. Seven or eight of them in all, randomly placed in traffic, not riding together. Must be an event of some sort going on in the area. And more pumpkins, especially at the farm stand just a couple of miles from here. Nicely arranged in formations that spread out across the grass, extending out from the building in the warm sunlight. Looking festive, not like a harbinger of bare trees, cold weather, short days. Like autumn eye candy. ****************** Something I've mentioned before that bears repeating: the posts here are almost always first draft. My first drafts tend to be a bit sloppy. (Sometimes more than a bit.) I usually get back sometime the next day to clean 'em up, maybe refine 'em a bit. So it's not a bad idea to give these spewings a day or two to ferment. Unless you're impatient, in which case you should do whatever you want. rws 8:18 PM [+] |
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Wednesday, September 18, 2002 My new copy of The Secret Guide To Computers (28th edition) arrived today. This makes the fourth time I've bought a copy of the bugger -- each time a different edition -- in part because, not being the world's most technically-minded individual, I need a good, basic, understandable, reasonably comprehensive computer reference manual. The Secret Guide is all that, in addition to being a genuinely wacky piece of low-budget art in its own way. Its author, Russ Walter, has attitude to burn, most of it droll (example, from the first page of the book: "I hate this book. I wish this book didn't have to exist. I wish computer companies would create pleasant hardware, software, and manuals; but until they do, scribes like me are doomed to spend our lives explaining the computer industry's mistakes."). The writing is not dry and it sure as hell isn't written like a tech manual. This is good, as my teeny little brain sometimes shuts right down as soon as I try reading technical writing. Sometimes it shuts down if I even think about reading technical writing, so that when I actually have to read some of that stuff I need to sneak up on my brain, make like I'm actually thinking about doing something altogether different and then ambush it with reading material that makes it want to scream and curl up in fetal position. But I digress. Russ Walter not only has comic attitude, he is endearingly unattached to making huge sums of money, selling the book at discounts that quickly become steeper the more copies you buy (give them to friends! use them as conversation pieces or to prop up the short leg on that wobbly dining table!) and encouraging people to make and distribute reprints of "as many pages as you like," asking only for the insertion of a notice at the beginning of the reprint. He even includes his home phone number encouraging calls at whatever hour of the day or night. This is not to say he's a saint. I've actually called him on two or three occasions, experiences that were a bit less than wonderful. On the other hand, someone else I know called him and had a fine experience, so what do I know? The book is easily worth checking out. Educational, and good goofy fun. ************************** The leaves have been turning in this area (this area being northern Vermont, about 15 miles northeast of Montpelier -- just outside the Northeast Kingdom), but sparingly. Here and there a tree will be well along, but for the most part the color green still abounds. The equinox is coming on fast, the evening shadows stretch out across the ground earlier and earlier -- the only thing about this time of year I'm less than crazy about. The weather these last couple of months has been sensational -- warm and dry through July and August, shifting to a more normal cycle of sun and rain during September. The last three days have all started off with fog, giving way late morning to blue, blue skies and rising temperatures. The air is clear, the ridges stretching up from the floor of the valley sharply vivid. It's beautiful, in a way that almost leaves me speechless (and wouldn't that be a nice change?). The temperature sails up into 70s during the day -- near 80 today -- then as soon as the sun moves down behind the trees to the west, the mercury coasts precipitously down, the air developing a chilly edge with surprising speed. One minute you're out there in a t-shirt, warm (almost too warm in direct sunlight), the next you've got gooseflesh and a cool breeze sends you inside the house in search of a flannel shirt. I stepped outside at dusk tonight, shortly after the nearly-full moon had hauled itself up from the ridges across the valley. Several stars shone above, the cold air had the beginning of some bite – a gentle bite, but a bite. Insects sang in the grass all around the yard. A few chickadees still came and went at the bird feeders that hang by the dining room windows, their flight a series of swoops as they made their way back and forth between feeders and the fir trees that stand in a curving line off this end of the house. Autumn will assert itself more forcefully in the coming weeks. Montpelier and the local highways will grow busy with carloads of leaf peepers. Trees will grow starkly bare. Leaves will blow before chilly winds. I intend to enjoy these warm days while they're around. Later. rws 10:39 PM [+] |
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Tuesday, September 17, 2002 Yesterday, 7:15 a.m. -– I found myself outside the house digging a trench. The electrician who spent the previous Thursday here was due to show up around 7:30 or 8 (meaning around 8:20) to finish up the work that needed to be done. One item in that list was a major cleaning up of wiring inside and outside the house -– the trench would be the new home of the cable to the water pump for the well, which until yesterday exited the house through the south wall into the fresh air, then meandered earthward until it hit the dirt about three feet away from the building and went underground. It rained during most of the previous 24 hours, stopping around 7 a.m., just in time for me to run out there and get to work before the guy arrived. There's been quite a bit of precipitation here over the last few days, nature beginning to balance out this summer's miserly rainfall. The grass is looking happier, less brown and crispy, and the earth beneath it looks darker, more substantial. The rivers and lakes are rising back toward their normal levels, creeks and waterfalls are flowing the way they more normally do, swelling with the inflow of water. The electrician showed up at the stroke of 8:20, getting right to work, maintaining a brisker tempo than his leisurely pace of last Thursday. I get the feeling he showed up that day intending to spend the entire day here and therefore settled in for a full eight-hour shift, working at a relaxed – occasionally very relaxed – speed. Yesterday, he clearly had somewhere else to go once he'd knocked off the remaining work here, and wasted far less time going about it. There is something deeply satisfying about watching house details that need attention being taken care of one by one as the days roll by. Sunday, two days ago, I attached the pontoons to my car and drove through pouring rain down to the central part of the state for some fun with a friend. Spent part of the afternoon in Woodstock, an attractive, affluent town that does a booming tourist trade. It was actually in between tourist seasons – that time between Labor Day and when the autumn colors crank up in earnest – which was just fine with me. Parking could be found, traffic was manageable, the main drag was not overwhelmed with folks from other places looking to soak up some New England atmosphere and air out their credit cards in the local stores/restaurants. Had lunch in a place called, I think, the Bentley – a restaurant/tavern in an old building that apparently housed a hotel in earlier times. Good food, personable staff, the space abundant in dark wood and potted palms, prices not too elevated. Afterwards, as I spent a few minutes in the dark of the single toilet stall in the men's room (up a steep flight of stairs, around two corners), two men entered -- one from California, one from North Carolina -- and struck up a conversation with each other comparing tourist notes. It was nice to sit there out of sight listening to these guys striking up a passing friendship, talking about their home regions and where they'd been traveling, as they emptied the ballast, washed up and headed back out into the day. Guys in restrooms can be such a study. Sometimes they stand at adjoining urinals talking away (I think the protocol is that one generally doesn't look the other in the eye at times like that). More often, though, men at urinals just stand quietly, looking up, down or straight ahead. Not to the side, generally, unless one side or the other is free of other peeing males. I've stood at urinals where men not only keep their faces averted from other men, they angle their bodies away as completely as they can manage. And afterward? Some wash their hands, some don't. Of the ones who don't, a healthy percentage not only waste no time getting out of there, they literally seem to bolt. We're a strange bunch, we humans. So yesterday, maybe twenty minutes after the electrician drove away, a UPS truck brought me a brand spanking new computer. Getting that running and transferring programs/documents from my old, tired laptop has kept me well occupied. (This is, in fact, my inaugural journal entry on the new machine.) In the process, I encountered an error message that necessitated a call to tech support. I call, we're talking, it turns out to be a bit complicated, the whole process takes some time. The fella dealing with me had a heavy Indian accent, heavy enough that I had to ask him to repeat some things he'd said. During one moment of silence, as we're waiting for this new computer to re-boot, I asked him where the facility he worked in was located. Turned out he was in a city in southern India – someone halfway around the planet was helping me iron out the kinks in this new machine of mine. And it occurred to me how many miles our voices were traveling. All those words, inflections, tones of voice -- streaming through the lines in the form or electrical impulses, through thousands of miles of cable, until they reached an instrument which reinterpreted them into the conversation we were creating together. All to persuade my new toy to play nice. Which it finally did. We take so many amazing things for granted. This world around us is filled with miracles, some 'mundane,' some 'extraordinary,' but amazing nonetheless. At least I think so. But then I'm easily smitten by life. rws 10:10 PM [+] |
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Thursday, September 12, 2002 Moments from Madrid jotted down in a notebook I just came across: My last full day there this last July, I'm walking down el Paseo del Prado on the way to a museum. A beautiful, warm July morning, around 10:15 -- early for a Sunday in Madrid. The streets were quiet until I emerged at the intersection of Gran Vía and la Calle de Alcalá, where people walked, cars passed. El Paseo del Prado is one section of a wide avenue that runs along the eastern flank of the city center, north to south. Three lanes in either direction at this part of the avenue, with a wide island in the middle containing a walkway, grass, tall old trees, some benches. Lots of shade. A nice way to cover some ground, traffic passing on either side. I head over to el Paseo del Prado, walk along the path beneath the trees in the boulevard's green center section. Ahead of me is a couple, Japanese 20-somethings, wearing sports-type outfits -– sneakers, fanny packs, nice sweatpant-style bottoms, identical t-shirts reading "Superstar Exercise Unit." They stop by a bench, confer with each other, and as I pass by they begin doing calisthenics together. Later that same day, at la Reina Sofia, I go into a men's room, step up to the row of five urinals and notice that (a) the two Spanish males already there have arranged themselves so that any third party coming to take a pee would have no choice but to stand next to one of them, while at the same time they (b) make a big show of looking up at the ceiling or in the opposite direction when I take a berth, even angling their bodies away so there will be absolutely no chance of eye contact, much less a fleeting glimpse of bare pipe. It jogs a memory of my first foray into a public restroom in London in 1986, a lavatory of extravagant opulence at the Barbicon theater complex. The urinal: a long, gleaming slab of marble spread along one wall, well-dressed men stepping up to it, whipping out their genitalia to relieve themselves, talking, relaxed, seemingly unconcerned with restroom modesty. The polar opposite of these two guys in la Reina Sofía. Afterward, I wander into an exhibit of photography by Elliott Erwitt. Black and white photos from the 40's through the 90's -- large, beautiful shots, some somber or poignant, some witty, all the work of a hugely accomplished artist. I find myself standing in front of a photo taken in Moscow in 1957, a shot of two boys, one in his late teens, the other maybe 10 years younger, standing by a truck. A sad, evocative image. A man appears next to me, checking out the photo. After a moment, he sees his reflection in the glass covering the print and takes a moment to slick down his hair (thin and combed sideways across the top of his head to cover a large bald spot). A perfect moment of self-absorption, juxtaposed over the quietly emotional moment in the photo. I had to move off before my smile grew too large. Later, at a restaurant near the museum, a joint of long standing called el 7 -– good food at reasonable prices, usually busy during meal hours with a combination of tourists and local folk, often with a line that stretches to the door. I get there, all the tables in the main dining space are taken. I wait a couple of minutes, an older waiter grabs me and seats me in a small, windowless back room containing five or six tables, all occupied save one, which he aims me at. I sit down, he drops a menu in front of me and takes off, I realize I've been dumped at a table from which I can only see the wall, arranged so that I can't even really watch the other diners in this little gastronomic dungeon. For the first time in my life I begin experiencing what I can only describe as claustrophobia, and the prospect of spending an entire meal that way becomes unacceptable. I go back out into the main room, petition the head waiter for a different table. In another ten minutes, a table in the main space opens up, they seat me there. The two waiters who service that area are covering something like 16 tables between them and are in the zone, moving quickly around the space, carting drinks and plates of food, shmoozing with customers, carrying on loud comic patter. A great scene. There are families, couples in their 60s and 70s, younger folks with backpacks. And the waiters thread their way through it all, working hard, dishing out blue collar entertainment. As I'm eating, an elderly couples finishes up, passes my table on their way out. The husband gives me a nice smile, saying, "¡Que aproveche!" -- literally, may you take advantage of it, may you use it well. Sort of a combo 'bon appetit' and 'good health.' When my meal's done, the bill arrives, I hand bunch of euros to one of the waiters, including a 10% tip, unusually generous in Madrid. I tell him that should take care of everything, he sees the fistful of cash I've given him, his eyes widen a bit, he says, "¡Hombre, sí!", and heads off repeating, "¡Hombre, sí! ¡Hombre, sí!" Madrid. There’s no place like it. rws 4:38 PM [+] |
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Saturday, September 07, 2002 Can you believe how I went on about coal in that last entry? Must not be enough going on in this little life of mine. It's 11:30 on a classically beautiful September morning. The first Saturday a.m. of September 2002. I've been up since just after seven working around the house. When I pulled myself out of bed and shuffled into the kitchen, the temperature outside stood at 40 degrees. Since then it has eased itself confidently up to 76 and continues climbing. There's been little rain in recent weeks, so the ground is dry, the grass sparse in spots, but the insects that carry on their lives in the grass and bushes are in full voice, singing twenty-four hours a day. Clothes hang on the line that stretches from the barn to the utility pole out in the yard, billowing slightly in the occasional breeze. Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me plays on the radio in the living room, a show that just seems to get funnier with the passing weeks (either that or I'm getting much easier to please). Radio: one of the few things about life in the States that I missed during my time in Madrid -- specifically, a few NPR shows (WWDTM, Car Talk, Only A Game, Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz, now and then A Prairie Home Companion or Fresh Air), along with the general output of a few college stations from the Boston area. Humor, a wide range of music, no commercials. Not that Madrid lacks radio. On the contrary, cruise the dial there, you'll find a loud, lively overabundance of music, etc., but only a few outlets held my interest – one unpredictable college station right down at the bottom of the dial; Radio 3 (a government station playing a broad, progressive spectrum of music); Radio 5 (a government all-news station, great for language practice); an eccentric, wide-ranging station at 100.4 FM, owned and run by El Circulo de Bellas Artes, an arts organization which owns a large, beautiful building in the center of the city. That edifice houses one of the most beautiful cafés I've ever seen, much less spent time in, a large, sweeping space with high ceilings and high windows looking out on la Calle de Alcalá, right where Gran Vía branches off and stretches away toward Callao and La Plaza de España. Lots of motion and activity passing by, loads to watch. There is also -– one last Madrid radio note -– a strange station that calls itself Radio Olé, whose programming consists of a bizarre mix of fascinating, flamenco-based Spanish music and treacly, sentimental Spanish pop warblings (heavy on the syrupy violins). I've never heard anything quite like it. In a short while, I'm going to be stuffing my bike into the back of my car and heading off to do some back-country riding on a long dirt trail that cuts through miles of largely untraveled country, about fifteen minutes from here. The trail used to be the bed of a local branch railroad which went out of service 40 or 50 years back. At some point the tracks were pulled up, the bed began a new life as a back-country track, a route now used by bicyclists, folks out for an easy hike, and the occasional car, truck or ATV. Easy passage through some truly beautiful, mostly empty country, beginning in the town of Marshfield and stretching away for miles and miles, through the Groton State Forest, just down from a small mountain called Owl's Head. This will be second attempt to give my bicycling muscles some exercise in the last week, the first attempt having been foiled by what I'll call technical difficulties, meaning I loaded the bike into the car with the lock still on the front wheel but neglected to bring the key. (Bugger.) I went riding at this same spot one weekend in May a couple of years back when friends (Steve & Naomi) were up for a weekend. Steve drove us there, our bikes standing at attention on his rooftop rack. We parked by a teeny hunting shack in as beautiful and green a location as you could ask for. After an hour or two of biking fun, we returned to the car, began loading the bikes back up on the rack, at which time clouds of ravenous mosquitoes and blackflies began an assault of such intensity that I finally stopped helping with the racking work to take on the role of arm-flailing bug killer as S&N attempted to finish with the bikes. My bug-slapping frenzy had little effect on the overall blood loss, and the drive home featured continued bug slaughter as numerous winged plasma-sippers managed to find their way into the car before we took off. One more nice thing about bike riding: you're generally moving too quickly to become fast food for the insect world. But enough blabber. Later. rws 1:52 PM [+] |