Though summer has taken control here, it's still the season's early version, still gentle. With afternoons far too user-friendly to spend in a dark movie theater, like I sometimes do during winter and high summer. Meaning that when the movie-urge hit two days ago, I wound up at a later showing. 8-something. Like a normal person.
Except that all the normal people were out enjoying a beautiful day turning into a beautiful evening, leaving the theater to a handful of individuals like me. Everyone, including the cinema employees, looking relaxed, tranquil. It was the folks on-screen who weren't so tranquil.
The movie: 'The Mother.' A family film, though probably not one you'll want to bring the kids to. A bit too provocative, I suspect. With plenty of action, though not the kind everyone will know what to do with. Getting underway at its own speed, low-key, evolving a thoughtful step at a time, until it gets so strangely complicated that it felt akin to watching a car crash in slow-mo. Poking at some big questions, without flinching from the untidy results of all the poking.
And by the time it was over, I was ready to return to the local version of reality.
It stays light here now until well after 10 p.m., the sidewalks busy with couples and groups of friends walking. The city is well into its warm-weather mode, lots of people about enjoying it. Producing lots of human-type noise and visuals -- sounds of dining drifting out from the open doors of restaurants, of food being served and dishes being collected. Conversation everywhere. Music. Cold-weather clothes long gone, warm-weather duds showing off bodies with deepening tans. Balconies thick with flowering plants.
All of it feeling just fine, though the noise level sometimes gets intense.
In two weeks, I'll be in northern Vermont, in some ways the polar opposite of Madrid. A change I'm thinking about as little as possible 'cause from here the contrast feels a teeny bit mind-boggling. And my teeny little mind doesn't need to deal with that kind of major shift just yet. Not just yet.
Madrid, te quiero.
rws 8:23 AM [+]
Comments:
Post a Comment