Something happened to me during the course of this last weekend, and I have yet to figure out what the hell it was. Don't know if it actually has to do with the weekend, with all its concentrated input, or if it's more a result of other things fermenting in this life of mine with the deceptive intensity of the fast 48 hours in Barcelona functioning as a kind of psychic juicer, squeezing out the bad-humored essence of whatever's been in process. (You'll pardon, I hope, the pungent, labored allegory.) Whatever the case, it's felt strange.
(I can identify one component: I'm in the process of changing where and how images for this journal are stored and linked -- if you've done any nosing around this last autumn and winter's entries, you've noticed that numerous photo posts have not been behaving nicely. There will be more of that for a while as the changeover continues -- it'll pass eventually. In the meantime, it means a bunch of work being shoehorned in among writing, friends visiting, classes and the rest of life's general brouhaha.)
My friend S., in Barcelona, spent a major chunk of Saturday afternoon with me working to resolve problems I've run into with the photo changeover, the two of us perched at a table in an apartment belonging to two friendly, generous women from the States -- in Barcelona studying in the same Masters program as S. His second home, apparently, that flat, where he gets to flop after long nights out if driving to his squat off to the north from the city center is not a good idea.
I apparently got fairly intense at one or two points, when he was trying to explain things I wasn't getting, intense enough that he commented on it. (Oops.) I can do that, get intense now and then. Probably not much fun to experience. (On the other hand, in this case it balanced out some intensity of his from the night before when he corrected me re: the names of two adjoining barrios.)
S. spent quite a bit of time
As strange as anything I've ever seen.
I paid my 8 euros to get in, wandered about, stared, took pix, pondered the site's goofy grandeur. Considered paying the additional 2 euros to take the elevator up into the church towers until I saw the folks waiting to go up, a line that snaked out the door, around the building. Wandered some more, took further pix, enjoyed a spectacular sunset. Then caught the Metro, headed back downtown to find a cybercafé.
Today, here in Madrid -- clouds and mid-April sun trading off overhead, shadows and pools of light racing along the sidewalks below -- I passed through the plaza down the street midafternoon, where a lone musician stood near the newspaper kiosk, pumping away on an accordion, playing to the amplified accompaniment of a small stereo set-up strapped onto a handtruck. Continued on, down into the Metro. Boarded a train where I found an accordion player serenading a captive audience, pumping earnestly away on his instrument. There are plenty of musicians to be found on the streets and in the Metro here, but I don't often come across this kind of back to back accordion-fest.
Which reminded me of one of the stranger aspects of my brief stay in Barcelona: every single Metro ride featured at least one performance by a street musician. Every one. Sometimes one individual would finish up, get out at a station, another would immediately replace them, often launching into "Those Were The Days." (If I had a euro for every time I've heard a busker play "Those Were The Freakin' Days," I'd have enough money to bribe at least one of the bastards to learn something else.)
[continued in entry of 4/22]
Madrid, te quiero.
rws 7:15 AM [+]