Happens a lot that I hardly sleep the night before a major trip. No big surprise then, Sunday night brought restless hours, me only skimming the surface of sleep, waking frequently, images from the past months drifting through my half-conscious thoughts (a group of college-age Goths in the plaza down the street, one a young woman, tattoed, pierced, dressed entirely in black, including black-leather knee-high platform boots and a knapsack in the shape of a small coffin; a group of gay men passing through the plaza, all dressed as nuns). Finally drifted off to the real deal a little after three. The alarm jerked me awake at four, me talking aloud as my eyes opened: "Okay," I heard myself babble, "okay, okay, I'm awake. I'm awake, I'm awake." One of a handful of times I've ever come to consciousness talking.
(The only other time I remember clearly: the beginning of my second semester at college -- one of the low points in this little life of mine, that period, me lost, drug-addled, flailing cluelessly. I'd moved in with a new roommate, a guy I hardly knew -- a match-up so disastrous that when the guy went away for a couple of days at the end of our second week, I found a room on the other side of campus, packed up, moved out. One morning during that brief, purgatorial two weeks, an early-a.m. phone call roused me, dragging me up out of deep sleep, barely conscious, desperate to stop the insistent clanging of the old-style, non-electronic phone. My hand grabbed the Kleenex box -- on my bedtable next to the phone -- I held it to my ear, calling, "HELLO? HELLO?" Getting no response, not understanding why the ringing wouldn't stop, close to desperate, stunned tears.)
(And then there was the time I woke up screaming. But that's a story for another entry.)
Don't know who I addressed this last Monday morn. The alarm clock? The cosmic management? My blinkered, nearly-sleepless self? No idea.
Got up, managed to get done what needed to be done. Stepped out of the building with my two bags just around 5:30, the sky overhead still dark, the air cool, a chilly breeze blowing. The neighborhood had quieted down during the night, leaving me the only person walking along my street -- a rarity -- heading toward la Calle de Hortaleza, one of the local main drags, to flag down a taxi.
On Hortaleza, I passed two members of a city street-cleaning crew, talking quietly, paying me absolutely no attention. I moved along, their voices faded, replaced by windchimes, the only sound apart from my footsteps and the wheels of my big duffel moving along the sidewalk.
I rounded up a taxi soon after, found myself being driven through deserted city streets, a thin, sharply-drawn crescent moon hanging low over the eastern sky.
Flight from Madrid to Paris. Transfer. Flight from Paris to Boston. Transfer. Bus from Boston to Montpelier, Vt. Everything going well, both flights arriving on time, the one-hour transfer window in DeGaulle Airport more than enough. The ride from Boston to Montpelier featured the only real transit screw-up, getting me in 30 minutes late. Nothing really, considering the day's total distance travelled.
Boston: gray, cool, spritzing rain, a damp wind blowing. I sat inside the terminal awaiting the bus. Outside, an airport employee glided past, wearing short-sleeved work shirt, shorts, roller skates.
The sky began clearing during the ride north. A rest stop in White River Junction, just inside the Vermont border, the bus station sharing a building with a buffet-style Chinese food restaurant. A startling number of overweight, pasty-skinned folks paraded by as I ate.
Back outside, post-faux-Chinese-chow: the sky had cleared, the temperature shooting up into the low 80s. Abundant greenery rippled in a warm breeze. New England, summer stopping by to say hello.
And not long after that I was off the bus in Montpelier, into my car (left by a friend at what passes for a bus station here -- dirt parking lot, trailer posing as office), making my way in this direction along country roads. Wiped out, yet wired, not wanting to go to sleep. Unpacking, listening to music, turning on the TV (is LAW & ORDER now on 24 hours a day?). Not heading toward the bedroom until my head kept dropping, my eyes closing.
Three hours later, around 3 a.m., woke suddenly. My body had moved around in the bed so that the window -- off the foot of the mattress to one side -- appeared to be directly off the foot of the bed, like my bedroom window in Madrid, moonlight coming in with surprising brightness. My eyes opened, I thought I was back in Spain. My head jerked up off the pillow in confusion, I heard myself say aloud, "Whoa!" Gradually realized where I was, relaxed. But never made it back to sleep that night. Two nights in a row, three hours of shuteye.
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The view from here:
Madrid, te echo de menos.
rws 9:36 PM [+]
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