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Monday, March 14, 2005 Before my return to the States in February, my neighbor here in Madrid, Esperanza -- she whose extensive, crumbling flat functioned as a semi-clandestine youth hostel -- had begun moving out of the flat she'd been renting across the hall. I expected she'd be long gone by the time I returned four weeks later. Silly me. Since my return, I've heard comings and goings, have seen boxes and bags left out on the landing that quickly disappeared. At times I heard the sound of someone in the kitchen, heard her radio, her television blabbering away. The few times I stopped by, rapping on the door produced no response. Until this last Friday night, when I thought I heard her as I came up the stairs, paused to hit her buzzer once or twice. That time the door opened revealing Herself in all her zoftig glory. After a fast minute or two catching up, she asked if I were doing anything, inquired if I wanted to walk over and see her new place. Given my natural nosiness, I'm always ready for a peek into someone else's personal refuge -- a half-hour later we were squeezing into one of the smallest elevators I've ever had the pleasure of sharing with an attractive Spanish female, taking the ride up to her lovely new sprawling attic flat. A multi-room (huge terrace included) space spread out beneath the slanting roof of the building she's going to be managing in exchange for free rent. I swanned about, admiring. We wandered out to the terrace, took in the looming view of the art nouveau Telefónica building over on Grand Vía. Esperanza paused to smell the exhaust from the downstairs Cuban restaurant's chimney, making some astute-sounding guesses about the evening's featured dinners. We sat around inside, Esperanza talking about travels in the south of Spain, which led to a discussion of Walt Disney's supposed birth in Mojacar. Given how long she'd been moving things out of her old flat, there wasn't much to show for it in the new place -- little furniture, few possessions scattered about, nothing stored in any visible shelves/closets. Seemed kind of mysterious, given that her old flat appeared to be fairly empty -- she'd moved her bed into the small room off the kitchen, adroitly kept me from wandering off into the rest of the, presumably, empty space. She mentioned that the following day was to be the official move, I offered to help if it was needed. A kind of impulse I may need to rethink in future times. Because came the next a.m., when I joined up with the friends of Esperanza's who'd shown to empty out her old dive, I realized how many mountains of stuff remained in the old place waiting to be carted down the four flights of stairs in our elevatorless building, stuffed into a van, dragged out of the van at the other end, stuffed into the teeny elevator then dragged up the final long flight of stairs to the new home. So many mountains that at 2 p.m., four hours into the process, it became clear the work was far from being done, that it would likely stretch well into the evening. Not only that, but what had been boxed in advance was long gone, everything else was being tossed into boxes and garbage baggies immediately before being hauled away.* *Which got me remembering the one and only move of mine in that vein, the clearing out of a teensy one-bedroom cockroach haven on Mass. Ave. in Cambridge, Mass. -- a dive moved into as a port-in-a-storm style refuge after a love relationship crumbled in explosive fashion, becoming home for eight strange years, still a personal record for the longest amount of time continuously spent in a living space. Just across the street from the back door to the Plough and Stars, a popular, compact Irish bar producing music so nerve-shreddingly loud on the weekends that earplugs in combination with an industrial-sized fan going full blast had no effect on it whatsoever. In a building filled with colorful characters -- my neighbor on one side: an entertaining, affable heavy metal drummer with a notorious porn collection; to the other side, a nice woman in a tumultuous relationship with a guy who yelled, slammed doors, seeming to be on the verge of imploding when he wasn't on the verge of exploding -- whose front stoop and vestibule often hosted street drunks partying hard, whose back stairway was often infested with fleas during the warm season. When the time arrived to vacate, the friends who showed to help gradually realized that I was nowhere near prepared, found themselves reaching for boxes and bags that I was still desperately shoving possessions into. [continued in next entry, though it may not seem like it] Madrid, te quiero. rws 3:32 PM [+]
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