Last night: started back with Spanish classes. Advanced level, taught by an instructor I had last spring. A hellaciously good teacher -- smart, sophisticated. The kind that pushes and pushes. The kind of class in which I have to work and pay attention to keep up. The kind of class that reminds me I don't actually speak advanced Castellano, but inspires the hope that I may eventually come close. A bit of a shock, all this scrambling around intellectually, after 3+ weeks away from classroom life. It's got my teeny little brain working overtime to absorb a whole lot of stuff. (IthinkIcanIthinkIcanIthinkIcan)
So I spent today at home being a good boy: studying, writing, all that. Pretending to be Mr. Productive.
Meanwhile, outside, construction work is running rampant. The building-in-progress across the street keeps getting taller. They've constructed all the floors they're allowed to, they thrown together end dormers and sections of slanted roof that will eventually get covered with semicircular tiles in the local style. Now they're putting up a wall up around much of the roof. With every new brick, a bit of sky disappears. (Sniffle.)
Down at street level, where renovations are being done on the neighboring building, someone with too much authority handed a hammer drill to an overenthusiastic workman and the guy's been having hyperactive fun with it ever since. Five or six hours' worth now, serenading us with the kind of intense, sustained noise that can -- even up here, a few stories away -- loosen tooth fillings. Every once in a while (maybe when the guy's lost enough feeling in his arms that he drops the tool) the racket stops, leaving a sudden eerie silence. An abrupt, disorienting lack of sound. Then I remember that that's what life felt used to feel like -- tranquil, comparatively peaceful -- back before someone handed a weapon of mass destruction to an individual with far too much energy and instructed him to alter the neighborhood's reality for a while.
It's been a day of gray skies, wan sunshine pushing through now and then. The fifth or sixth gray day out of the last eight or nine calendar entries. Monday night I sat in a tapas restaurant with a friend for a couple of hours -- Tracy, a woman from central California, having a hard time with lack of sun, lack of warm temperatures. Add to the mix the fact that daylight doesn't really get going until after 8 a.m. at this time of year, "Makes me feel like why get up?" she said. Which got me to sit quietly for a moment, thinking, stifling my usual impulse to spout cheery, Madrid-boosting propaganda. After winter in northern Vermont -- where it's dark before 4 p.m. in deep winter, where gray skies and overabundant snow or rain are often the norm -- the wintertime climate here seems soft and benign to me. Gentle, good-natured, benevolent. So that when I hear someone complain about the local weather, part of me is ready is to dismiss their comment, whatever it is. All experience is relative, though. It's good to be reminded of that every now and then.
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A brief addendum to the last entry [Jan. 13], re: self-talkers.
The morning after posting that bit, I headed down into the Metro. A train pulled up, I stepped into a crowded car, eyeballing a bit of nearby wall space, big enough for one person. Someone else pushed into it ahead of me. I glanced around, spotted an open seat. No one seemed interested in it, I parked myself, pulled out a book. At the next stop, two-thirds of the passengers emptied out, leaving one person standing alone at the end of the car, next to where I would have been. A hulking figure, wearing glasses, thick black shoes, well-worn khaki pants, a cold weather jacket. Facing into the corner talking to himself, quietly enough to foil attempts to decipher what came out, loud enough that it was impossible to ignore. Didn't look like a happy individual -- shoulders hunched, head moving a bit as he muttered, the words coming fast, voice rising and falling. Two other people sat near me. We all listened, looking over at the guy at times, then at each other. The train gets moving, the guy shifts from the corner to stand in front of the door, talking the entire time, his reflection in the windows showing a face in shadow. Next stop, the door opens, he hops out, motors quickly away, his physical aspect suddenly changed, now looking like a happy bear trying to skip down the platform. The guy across from me smiles, looks back down at his book.
We are quite a bunch, we humans.
rws 12:01 PM [+]