This day dawned gray and overcast, drizzle dampening streets, sidewalks, rooftops. As often happens in this neighborhood, folks were out partying most of the night, me drifting in and out of sleep through a lot of it, coming to with the sensation of having returned from strange, complicated dreams, though with no memory of any. I found myself up at far too reasonable an hour, the day jerking slowly into gear, helped along by a visit to one of the neighborhood caffeine pushers for a shot of wake-up juice and a croissant. Yesterday morning, at that same joint, I stood at the counter reading the rear page of El País, slowly working on a cup of espresso and something to eat, just one of many people doing the same. At some point, I became aware of voices behind me, insistently repeating something -- I turned around to find a 60-something couple asking if I was using a nearby stool. I managed a negative headshake, encouraging them to take it, which they did, dragging it to an empty length of counter a short distance away, next to a second empty perch. They settled in, looking like a couple together so many years, decades, centuries that they'd come to look like each others' counterparts -- short, slim, slightly bent over, noses slightly hooked, hair well into the shift to gray, each sporting a winter coat, the weather having plunged overnight from the milder temperatures Madrid had been enjoying since my return a couple of weeks back. They both ordered a cup of café con leche, each lit up a cigarette, sat happily exhaling smoke and talking in voices that cut through the joint's high noise level as food and caffeine arrived.
This morning was quieter, more sedate, as weekend mornings tend to be. To my right sat a slim 30-something woman, quietly working on café and sweet roll. To my left, an older gentleman finished up, disappeared, three 50ish types came in together and took his place, ordering caffeine and chow, talking among themselves. By the time I stepped out into the cool morning air, the drizzle had become slightly more dense, more people were about. I spent a while going to different markets, picking up bags of food, satisfying two pleasures at the same time. I love going to the markets around here, with all their sounds, colors, movement. And I love a refrigerator amply supplied with food. Don't ask me why. Maybe it goes back to a childhood when, at the end of the summer, before the old man returned to work in New York City schools and the school year's first paycheck was still a week or two away, food supplies got skimpy. Bread, eggs, milk, some canned vegetables. Whatever the reason, it feels satisfying to pull open the refrigerator door and find shelves nicely stocked.
And after all that, I followed an impulse, stopping in at a local bar/cafetería for a caña, where I ound a semi-final match from the Shanghai Masters tournament in progress on one of the place's wall-mounted TV's -- two of the world's best tennis players going at each other in a game so good that I wound up grabbing a small table, ordering lunch, watching until the end. The game so intense -- featuring the current number 1 and number 2 male players in the world, Federer and Nadal -- that around me conversation gradually stopped as people found themselves watching. Nadal, the Spaniard, kept drawing even, but couldn't find the way to pull ahead, until Federer finally shut him down, producing a palpable sense of disappointment in the air around me, leavened with appreciation of the calibre of play we'd just seen. The kind of display of top-flight tennis that could become addictive.
Since then I've been holed up here, spending far too much time online. Far, far too much time. I need to get off my adorable butt, throw together a meal, decide what to do with myself for the rest of the evening.
Later.
España, te quiero.
rws 2:58 PM [+]
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