|
Sunday, February 02, 2003 My last two or three nights of sleep have been filled with amazing dreams -- dreams brimming over with close friends, sweet romances, adventures, fun, joyful events. The kind of stuff that stays with me during my waking hours, gets me smiling whenever I think about it. This morning they propelled me up from sleep and out the door to the gym, a place I hadn't been to in, er, let's see, how many days? (Mumble, mumble... carry the 3... er, hmm, never mind.) The gyms are one place where the rhythm of life in Madrid is clearly visible. There's no getting up at ungodly hours to engage in rigorous exercise. During the week they open at 8 a.m., Saturdays and Sundays mornings they open at 10. On the weekends, morning attendance is sparse until after 11 a.m., and even then people tend not to show up in any real numbers until noon or thereabouts. Similar to what you'll find out in the streets at that hour: few people, little traffic. Everyone's home recovering from Saturday night or beginning their day in slow, gentle fashion. Got back home around noon, picked up a copy of a Sunday paper and walked through still-tranquil streets to el restaurante Vivares, my preferred local dispenser of a.m. café. And as is usually the case, walking in the front door there meant stepping from quiet Sunday morning Madrid into the major contrast of concentrated sounds, smells, movement. An empty stool – the only empty stool at the crowded counter -- waited for me a few steps inside the door, I planted myself on it. The camarero wandered down to the near end of the counter, searching for something in the various cabinets and storage space back there. He said hello, I said hello. I asked for a café cortado, he wandered off, I began nosing my through the paper's Sunday magazine. After a few minutes, a saucer and spoon appeared in front of me, followed shortly after by a cup of espresso. Took a moment to inhale the first mouthful (Mmmmmmmmm!), then began absorbing the scene around me. The counter in this place runs from one end to the other of the front room, on top of it sit two long, refrigerated glass display units, each containing several trays of tapas-style food. On top of the near one sat two trays heaped with fresh croissants. On the far one sat one huge tray piled high with fruit: clementines, bananas, pears. Bright orange, bright yellow, a subdued pale green. All along the counter people stood and sat, drinking coffee or a morning aperitif, reading the paper, talking, maybe smoking a cigarette, while the camarero moved back and forth behind the counter. At tables around the space, groups of people sat ingesting high-test, talking. The television broadcast a soccer game, the voices of the commentators floated above all the rest of the hubbub. The restaurant has two machines that are the local version of a one-armed bandit, both about six feet high, the flashing lights from both of them twinkled away. People wandered in and out in a near-steady stream, those leaving calling out "¡Hasta luego! (Not pronounced the way it's spelled, BTW. More like "¡‘Sta logo!" I've discovered that I love sitting in the middle of this kind of thing while I eat lunch or sip at a cup of brew. I ate lunch at this joint yesterday – when I arrived, there were no tables in the front room, which meant I had to walk down a long hall to the back room, which has a bunch of tables and little sensory input. No windows, minimal traffic coming and going, nowhere near as much to look at and soak up. Although at one point yesterday a 60ish couple entered, walking slowly – by necessity, I think – saying hello to each and every one of the three or four diners already there, and wishing us all "¡Qué aproveche!" (Essentially, "May you use it well!") That was fun. I'm finding more and more that if I get seated in a back room, without windows, without motion, activity, energy, it feels like I'm in a sensory-deprivation chamber, and I really don't care for it. I went out to lunch today at a different local joint, a restaurant/bar on la Calle de Fuencarral called El Valle, located in a busy area, where the street narrows down to one lane's width, flanked by two wide sidewalks, both sides of the street lined with stores, restaurants, all sorts of funky shops. The sole table by the front window was unoccupied, I immediately claimed it (after making a show of gentility by asking the wait staff first) instead of letting myself get herded into the back room where most of the diners get corralled. Much more fun. Loads of pedestrian traffic out on the sidewalk to watch, buses occasionally swinging past on their way out to Gran Vía, autumn-style sunlight, the shadows slowly sliding across the street toward the restaurant as the minutes slipped by. If I hadn't been positioned there, I wouldn't have witnessed the moment when one of the wait staff accompanied an elderly blind woman from the back room, through the restaurant and out the door, disappearing with her off to the right, their arms linked, him entertaining her the entire way. As they passed through the room, it was clear that a number of the people there all knew each other, and one of the men standing at the bar – a tall, husky, good-natured type – called out as the camarero strode slowly past with the woman, "¡Hombre, no puedes dejar salir aquella mujer guapa! ¡No puedes!" On and on he went with this good-natured blarney as the pair walked by, the waiter talking to the woman at the same time, a smile on her face as she put up with it all. Now that's entertainment. Later, walking along Fuencarral, I saw a 30-something woman conducting a transaction at an ATM machine, a three or four-year-old boy at her side, both of them standing in a wedge of late afternoon light. She finished at the keypad, took the boy up in her arms and held him close, telling him how wonderful he was, him enjoying it shyly. As I walked past, I saw that he sported a Spiderman mask, the plastic face tipped up on the top of his head, the elastic that ran around the back of his head bunching up his dark hair just the tiniest bit. It's now evening. February has just begun, it already stays light here until after 7 p.m., the illumination in the western sky lingering later and later. The days have been slipping by at what sometimes feels, perhaps appropriately, like light speed. Despite the larger, human-generated dramas taking place in the world, the days here have felt golden, packed with vibrant life. Like my dreams of late. Don't know what it all means, but I'm enjoying it. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Got something to say? Rent his chest! rws 1:46 PM [+]
Comments:
Post a Comment
|