When I'm back in Vermont and I slip into the rhythms of life there, I sometimes forget what it is that makes the days feel so different in this part of the world. Yesterday evening, out for a long walk in the city center, I remembered all over again.
The hours of daylight, for one thing. Right now, darkness doesn't take over here until 7:30, 7:45, the lights of the city and all the life in the street softening the transition, so that the feeling of evening really doesn't settle in until around 8. People don't begin eating dinner until 8:30, nine o'clock. The evening news comes on at 9, television worth watching doesn't crank up until 9:30, 10.
I found myself preparing dinner around 11 last night, the activity at that late hour feeling natural. Got to bed after midnight, stayed there until 9:30, all of it feeling just right.
I can sleep late here, it happens easily. Not generally the case back in Vermont -- during the cold months, there's a stove to get going, I wake early with that awareness, knowing that the hour the heater starts cranking will influence the unfolding of the day in the house. In the warmer months, the sun can't seem to restrain itself from rising at absurdly inappropriate hours -- 4 a.m., 5 a.m., like that. Happens much later here, feels far much more user-friendly to me and my little bod. And of course the local world abets all that, people staying out late, local life getting underway at a later hour of the morning than in Vermont, getting up to speed in more leisurely fashion.
I'm not saying one's better than the other. I adjust to both, there are aspects of both I love. When I'm in one place, I get wrapped up in its spirit and feel, become genuinely reluctant to uproot myself, to leave and adjust to existence in the other locale. This is no cross to bear, I know -- I'm not bitching, I'm certainly not moaning. As quandries go, this one is pretty freakin' wonderful, and it has me counting the mountainous heap of blessings life has strewn around my little world.
And where, I ask myself, am I taking this blather? Maybe nowhere in particular. I've been in a process of reflection about my life since the turn of the year, it's probably linked in part to that. There's more, though. This savoring of the simple facts of my circumstance is, in part, a reaction to events taking place on bigger stages around this planet of ours -- a refusal to climb onto any of several possible attitudinal bandwagons that we from the far side of the Atlantic have become conditioned to accept as normal and reasonable. When I'm stateside, I pretty much ignore the newsmedia (apart from the Daily Show). Here I do that far less, the media being part of my daily language reinforcement. And given the newsmedia's apparent belief that their job is to dig up the worst of what's taking place around the globe and present it as representative of the essence of life on planet Earth, it produces far less fun than, say, the mythical getting poked in the eye with a sharp stick. (On the other hand, the Sunday El País runs Calvin and Hobbes translated into Spanish -- that right there justifies the 1.90€ price tag.)
I've come to feel grateful for this my life of mine in ways that would be difficult to stuff into words. All of it, including the darkest phases, passages my earlier years seemed to be abundant with, or so I believed. I've come to feel differently. Apart from all those past moments combining to bring me to this present moment, they provided amazing experiences, amazing things to watch and learn from, they brought all sorts of people through this existence of mine. An incomparable cast of characters.
I look forward to lots more of all of that.
In the meantime, I look forward to dinner, some time snooping around the web, maybe a bit of entertainment courtesy of Spanish television. Something good to read, a good night's sleep. That'll do for the rest of this day.
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Today's flattery from the Surrealist Compliment Generator:
"Your sweet voice is like the snap of a bra strap upon a sun burnt back."
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Communing with the local wildlife -- la Plaza de Santa Barbara, Madrid:
Madrid, te quiero.
rws 5:31 AM [+]
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