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Thursday, March 06, 2003 12:30 p.m., a beautiful Madrid Thursday. Sunshine coming down with springlike strength, the sky nicely blue, the occasional fair weather cloud drifting by. Got to bed around 1 a.m., found myself awake just before 7, the kind of awake that I could tell would not lead me back to sleep. Got up, went to the gym. Came home afterward, got groceries. Was in the kitchen unpacking them, a Maria Jimenez CD playing ("Canta Por Sabina"), the room alight with sunshine, and I realized how good it felt to be back here. A smile spread itself across my silly face, my little heart did some cartwheels in my chest. As if I were home and feeling it. And maybe I am home, racket from construction across the street and all. Could be I am. Some parting snapshots from Rome: -- Two evenings ago: walking down a narrow backstreet, a couple passed, going into a restaurant. Him: completely done up in black, from his extravagant pompador, to his fringed, silver-studded leather jacket, to his vinyl pants (way shiny, way baggy), to his standard-issue black footwear. One black-clad son-of-a-bitch. -- Yesterday a.m. Sitting at a table on the sunny side of la Piazza Barberini, watching the constant stream of traffic and pedestrians flowing by. In sitting there, I broke my own rule about never patronizing a bar/restaurant that advertises itself as American. But it was the only place around the entire goddamn piazza with tables/chairs. If I wanted to spend time enjoying sun and spring-like temperatures, I had to bite the bullet. In so doing, I bought the single most expensive cuppa cappucino I've ever sipped (three and a half euros). Which reinforced my theory about bars/restaurants of that ilk: they're tourist traps. Avoid 'em -- unless they have well-situated tables/chairs and there's no other option. -- I sat watching people, reminded all over again about certain crimes being currently committed in the name of fashion. In this case, I refer to the faux cowboy-boot look that's in here this winter/spring. They're all over the place and they're mighty silly. Using the basic cowboy-boot template, then exaggerating the look in one way or another -– huge, high heels or pointy boot-toe that goes on and on and on, as if the footwear originally belonged to a cowboy clown, or wildly exaggerated angles, flaring outward from the heel to the balls of the foot, then sharply inward toward the toe. You get the idea. Many, many women in Rome and Florence wore 'em, as do many women here, along with many Spanish men. Not many Italian men that I saw had taken the 'this is stylish' bait. My pointy-toed boots -- black w/ soft leather uppers, little shiny mental curlicues on either side of the toe -- are nice buggers, bought back in the States, probably way more comfortable than the euro-imitations. -- Took a bus route I'd never been on before to the train station, doing it during the morning as a dry run, a rehearsal for later in the day when I'd be weighted down with luggage and not wanting to encounter any unexpected surprises. On the way back, the driver, perhaps post-one-too-many-espressos, went as fast as possible -- stopping and starting sharply, rattling around sharp corners at serious velocity, showing no quarter to other traffic. As he neared la Piazza Barbieri, threading his way down a narrow street, he clipped a truck, his side mirror coming off with a loud noise, flying up into the air, landing hard on the sidewalk, everyone in the bus watching with eyes large as dinner plates. He pulled over at the next bus stop, sat there for a few moments before finally getting out and heading back to retrieve the pieces. Many passengers (including me) took the opportunity to exit the vehicle and slink quickly away. -- Thirty or forty minutes later, sitting at my little table in la Piazza Barberini, the noise of a collision directly in front of where I sat announced another mishap, this one between a bus and a small blue car. The bus stopped where it was (traffic behind it honking indignantly), the car pulled over in front of the bus. The larger vehicle probably suffered little damage. The car's right rear corner, on the other hand, had been drastically altered. Both drivers got out, conferred. The woman studied her little blue buggy, apparently decided the damage had been her fault, got back in the car and drove off. All the passersby who had stopped to watch moved on, some looking a bit disappointed. -- Four Brits sat at the table to my right, immediately stripping down to t-shirt and milk-white skin. Most of the Romans who walked by kept their winter togs on and zipped up, looking as if the idea of removing them would be an act of lunacy. -- Went trawling for a likely lunch joint. Not a trattoria this time as my flight schedule didn't allow for the hour or so that would involve. Looked around my hotel's neighborhood, found a hole-in-the-wall that dispensed cafeteria-style lunch food, took a chance. Ordered a sandwich, then asked about the pasta. The counterman conducted me to the other end of the shop where he shoveled a mountain of linguini in cream sauce and lemon onto a plate for me. Not bad, as it turned out, leading to some serious hoovering action on my part. -- On the nearly-empty train out to the airport, two young-20s Chinese women carried on a loud, animated conversation, punctuated by near-constant laughter. One received a phone call, talking enthusiastically to whoever called, the other finding most everything she said hilarious. -- Leaving the city, the train passed apartment buildings whose roofs bristled with concentrations of television antennas, all sitting atop long, high masts. Also, bridges covered in colorful graffiti and patches of dense greenery, including stands of urban lemon trees. -- Checking in at the airport, the counter person told me the flight was already delayed by an hour. We found out why when we were finally in the air and nearing Madrid: major storms had swept through the area, were moving on east as we began to descend so that we moved between huge, rolling white mountains of clouds, passing through vast airborne canyons, an amazing display. As we rounded one thick, towering bank of thunderheads, I could see long trailing streamers extended down toward the shadowed land below from the bottom of a cluster of dark clouds To the west, Madrid glistened in evening sunlight, streets and sidewalks drying out. And speaking of Madrid -- seen here on the Metro: a young woman reading a translation of "I, Claudius." The title in Spanish? "Yo, Claudio." Yo! Claudio! Down wit' da homies in ancient Rome. Later. rws 1:32 PM [+] |