Sometimes behave so strangely

This last week has likely been the hardest week yet this summer. I cannot exactly determine the exact perimeters of the difficulty, nor can I map its whereabouts. It’s like dark matter… exerting a pull of gravity and affecting my life but invisible and wholly unknown.
The best explanation comes from a small but frightening incidence the other day. I’m in Alemeda, a large open rectangular forum lined with large trees but open to the sky in the center. I walk under one of the gigantic trees and make my way across the square. Standing in the center of the square, I suddenly hear a crack. Then a crash in the place I had stood only twenty seconds before. A gigantic limb of one of these trees fell right where I had been walking.
Yes, this could be construed as lucky, and in all likelihood it was. However, it’s as if I’ve been in a race against catastrophe. It’s always twenty seconds behind be, leaving constantly anxious, perennially paranoid, and emotionally out of sorts.
Set within this mental stage of insecurity and ill omens, I’ll relate to you a most interesting Thursday and Friday.
(**)

I am with Elise as usual. Elise, an economics-industrial engineering major from Penn State, has become my day to day companion frequenting all adventures and most dull afternoons. We get a call from a group of friends inviting us to a concert “near to the Futbol Stadium”. With nothing else to do, Elise and I plan to get dinner then head out.

After a delicious tapas meal and a glass of tinto, we’re ready for the concert. We were in for disastrously long journey. Near the Futbol Stadium was either an outright exaggeration or complete lie. We walked and walked, and got lost, and walked and nearly cried and got lost some more. Hours later (and I am absolutely not exaggerating when I say hours), we arrived. I myself had walked at minimum 3.

Imagine walking, enormously fatigued, and suddenly finding yourself in a Franco designed industrial wasteland of a suburb. Then, after a few more turns, you are in a bustling commercial center, however this is no ordinary retail strip. The entire place used to be self storage units. You must pass first through a security gateway patrolled by a uniformed rent-a-cop. Then passing a wired fence and a few boxy cement walls, there is a graffiti city of music venues and cheap bizarre restaurants.
Dazed, we met our friends at a tapas bar with a clown motif, populated by children and old men. We drank lemonade-beer, a close kin to mikes hard lemonade in spain… We wandered an alleyway filed with brown boxes slept in by stray dogs. All this, under fatigue in duress at 11 o’clock at night in a dimly lit industrial self-storage cement mess…
It was a simultaneously haunting and magical place. The concert was a blend of flamenco, Arabic music, and Seu Jorge (the Brazilian singer). It touched on just about every genre and then twisted it into a danceable emotive rhythm. Needless to say, it was worth the journey….

***)





Its Friday, I had received a call from my intercambio (local exchange language partner). He wanted to meet the next day. He asked me to invite a few friends and their intercambios.
This was a bad weekend for get-to-gathers… everyone took weekend trips to Portugal, Madrid, and the coast. Because of some of my bad luck, Elise and I were left in the city. So it ended up being Elise, the intercambio, and I sipping tea at a local coffee shop and catching dinner.
Brawny but short (like most Spainyards), he dressed every-bit preppy American. I, on the other hand, was dressed top to bottom in clothes I had bought in Spain… It was as if he were from America and I from Spain.
It was a good time, though my Spanish was aweful. As of late, my abilities have been diminishing rapidly. Elise commented to him that my Spanish was typically much much better… I think its part of my general unease I’ve had of late. My temperament has without a doubt effected my Spanish and in many ways effected even my English. He was completely gracious and wonderfully nice, but being with him put me in the most depressed of moods. Then again, I think it wasn’t him. It was more a trigger. My sudden meeting exacerbated my paranoia… my malaise worse than it previously had been…
To counter this, Elise and I went to the “Clam”… our usual hang out in Alemeda and drank our favorite coffee-alcohol mix drink topped with nata (whip cream) and butter cookies. Still not relieved… we made an oath instead to stay out all night….
Equiped with whiskey, we went into the forum of Alemeda where on weekend nights youth and hippies drink, smoke, dance, and jam in the streets. Tonight, unexpectedly, it was busier than we had ever seen it. Apparently the weekend was a gay-pride weekend in Sevilla and this was the first party of the weekend. A live band had set up stage and people were doing congo-lines through the streets. Beer was 75 centimos and there was kissing and dancing for all. We, of course, joined in, and soon were having a splendid time… meeting people, mixing it up. Despite my malaise I felt a bit better… I felt like “it was like the 60s, only with less hope”…
The worst hour was between five and six. Alemeda was emptying out and the all-nighters were headed to overly priced clubs…. We contented ourselves to people watching on park benches and street corners… That hours was perhaps the longest hour of my life…. As the sun started to creep up out of the clouds we made our ways to a churro breakfast place… a reward for our patience..
We dipped the crispy benet-like goodness into a thick warm chocolate and smiled. We parted ways content with our all night decision… I climbed to my little boat on the roof. Green key got me inside. Red key up the stairs on to the roof. And yellow in my room. I looked out on the city, the sun finally truly revealing itself, closed my eyes and breathed in the new morning….

In the end, despite all anxiety, ignoring all bad temperament, I was for a moment at peace.

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers

Sunday, June 17, 2007

I feel drained. So much and little has happened this weekend. Everything is a haze of hookah smoke, embellishment, and loss. We left for Granada on Saturday morning… I threw my bag under the bus – stopping momentarily to take out my wallet and journal – and we took a three hour journey to Granada.
When I arrived in Granada, my bag was mysteriously missing. There was no explaining it. People claimed to have seen it under the bus, the drivers claimed that they had stood guard. Whatever the case, my bag – along with its contents disappeared. My only real losses were my tarot cards and my camera… I refused to be upset by it though. I was in Granada, I was in Spain, and I wouldn’t let bad luck destroy the weekend.
Granada. Awash with hippies and Moroccans. A city of artists and craftsman. Of life, and youth. It felt… like Austin. Where Sevilla is my District of Columbia, Granada is my Austin. The night was spent quietly bonding with people amidst hookah smoke, Arabic tea, and shwarmas…. Oh dear god the shwarmas. They were among the best I’ve ever had in my life and the people the most friendly. Fitting for the second largest college town in Spain, the city of an intellectual, free spirited, crazy adventure. Perhaps my bad luck of loosing my bag granted me good luck in areas of my life.



I was given gifts of falafel by street venders, baklava by bakers, tea by tea sellers. People were stopping me in the street asking me if I was from Granada. My Spanish was excellent. My Arabic was reemerging. My social skills blossoming. The trip was a reprieve from reality. It was as if I was fasting, pardoned from material things – clothes, a clean shave, contacts.
And again… the city. I cannot even begin to explain how much I loved this university town nestled in the mountains. Streets taken from Arabian nights. Ancient tea houses smelling of Arabic philosophers. A populace awash with youthful energy. Cheap and delicious food. It was an oasis.
Granada in Spanish means pomegranate. Like this delectable fruit, the city was sweet and juicy. It was exotic and a luxury. It was filled with a thousand pits of lost bags and bad luck but sugarcoated with a personality that made all pessimism vanish.
Above all places I have visited in Spain, in Granada I could live forever.

Of plums and beaches

Wednesday, June 13, 2007-06-13

As I promised, I’ll relate the story of Cadiz (pronounced Cadi-th) as well as a peculiar coincidence concerning plums. So what of Cadiz?
The city smelt of brine and rosemary: an addictive aroma fitting for a place supposed to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in Europe. As we wandered along its ancient pathways, we stumbled upon a cobblestone street covered with rosemary and lined with garland. A gigantic crowd of people lumbered towards us as if bewitched by the melodic and mournful songs emanating from a marching band. It was Corpus Crisiti in Cadiz, and a religious procession was underway celebrating the body of Christ. The rosemary procession was something incredible that made me wish America wasn’t so tradition less. It connected everyone in the town to this 3,000 year history, to ancient memories, Visigoths and Moors, to the Phoenicians and Romans, and farther back, more ancient… more remote. Antiquity blended with the present. All there is, all there was, happened now.

After a long observation of the procession, we entered one of two Cathedrals in the city and sprinted to the peak of highest tower. The entire city lay before us. Most of the businesses of the city were closed because of the feast day but, the beach never shut its’ doors.
We walked through a few more sights in town, none too noteworthy, and found our way to the shore. The entire day was spent half underwater with salt in my ears catching waves and half on a sandy beach towel emblazoned with “George Washington University” where I napped or read or daydreamed of possibility.
The day had no epiphanies, no drama, there was no beginnings or endings, and in all likelihood it will one day fade from my memory. The day was sunshine and quiet thoughts that pulsed like the waves that massaged this ancient seaport. It was meditative. It was beautiful.

* * * * *
A few of you – namely Z and Amy – know of the miraculous nature of the family plum tree. Years ago, my father and I planted a sapling plum. Over the years, it had grown dramatically, blossomed awesomely, but had stubbornly refused to yield any fruit. Completely forgotten, it was not until the day I left that anyone noticed the tree was awash with plums. Ironically, in a year noted for the plague killing of the bees, the plums decide to blossom.
My mom sent pictures of baskets filled to the brim. As usual, I have a theory. This was the only summer I have been absent from home since the tree has been transplanted. Sensing this, the genius of a tree furiously bore fruit, as if to lure me home. It wanted me back. To a degree, its attempt at yearning worked. The images and letters about this phenomenon of produce did make me nostalgic for home. In fact, I complained to my mother, I complained to my friends here, and I daydreamed about plums. Maybe it was the daily e-mails about plums sent to me, maybe it was because I hadn’t even tasted a plum in years… but those plums sounded like the greatest food in the world.
The next time I talked to my Senora, I told her of the beach, my weekend, and most importantly of plums (or ciruelas). She listened, she smiled, and excitedly ran to the kitchen revealing a basket full of plums. Apparently that very weekend, as she visited a friend in the countryside, a plum tree was miraculously producing more plums than it ever had before. Her friend was so awash with plums that she offered them to my Senora to take home.
So perhaps the plum tree in Texas, telepathically communicating with the plum trees of the world, pompously told of its ability to withhold fruit from its cultivator. Maybe, other plums felt bad for this person and felt it necessary to make equally magnificent plums. Maybe, this person was me and I got a taste of Texas in those plums.
Then again, another theory. Maybe because there were two cultivators for this tree – my father and I – this had some effect. Maybe, it’s mandated in some lawbook of nature that other plum trees must supplement the loss when the cultivator is absent or the the tree in question will die . Maybe, as the Alchemist says, “when you want something bad enough, the entire universe conspires to help you.”

Maybe, I got my plums after all.

Where to begin? The Finest Chocolate in the World and catered cocktails in a Moorish patio of a historic Palace? A sun-blistered beach in Cadiz (pronounced Ca-di-th by the lisping Spaniards) or a night with a time traveling Welsh-American? What of the Rosemary Procession and the ageless French students? Perhaps the beginning is the best… To those of you questioning, all reservations about Sevilla have checked out. I utterly adore this place. It took three weeks for me to become accustomed and now, my time left seems tragically short.
Beginnings. Thursday. The Palacio, our place of study that was once a fanciful palace found in the historic Jewish quarter of Sevilla. A cool summer evening, the building has been transformed in lieu of several “3 week-ers” departure. The gates open, fountains are running, caterers are catering. The bar tender freely pours wine and beer to our hearts content. Teachers stumble drunkenly, students are singing. Everyone is dressed in their finest. There are pictures and tears of farewell. First round of hour d’ervs, second, third, fourth and… now desert is hurriedly dispensed. Tiny, minuscule squares of dark fragrant happiness. The Finest Chocolate in the World. A tiny nibble leads to a gasp for air so as to dilute its finery. We – the Americans – gather around completely mesmerized by the indescribably light yet rich velvety goodness of the stuff. We questioned its origin (Swiss? Belgian?), we demanded explanations (Homemade? How expensive?) but, none seemed satisfactory. We contented ourselves with the mysterious experience of having tasted the Philospher’s Stone of chocolate, the holy grail of desert divinity.


Buzzed by more than just chocolate, someone yelled for after party celebrations. And, we found ourselves at the fateful, always American, ex patriot cervezerias and bodegas of Calle Betis in Triana. Despite the picturesque cobble stones and breathtaking old world waterfront view, one might has well been in Adams Morgan or Uptown Dallas. We proceeded to do the second most popular sport in America – next to American football of course – and bar crawl. From the Pirate bar with its red white and blue seaside aethetics to Big Bend, with its endearing Texan charm, we toasted on 1 euro beers and cheap chupitos of tequila.
Now, much more amiable, I befriended bouncers and barmaids and, most importantly, the two ageless Frenchies. Adrian and Mikel, two youths from around Paris, studying in Spanish in Sevilla for 3 months… Their appearance? Gangly boys with shining youthful eyes, completely Agreeable and more than a little bit crazy. We joked, we bought each other shots, and partied the night away. Why ageless? They appeared to be not a day above 15. However, they insisted they were their 20s. Was it just us? No. They got carded (something unimaginable in Spain) at the door of a bar. Whatever their number of years, the ambiguously aged Frenchies have been making reoccurring appearances at my nightly sojourns into the city.

***
The following day, was Cadiz? No. The sunburns on my face have blistered my memory as well. Was it Friday? No We met the ageless French on Friday… Saturday then… Yes, Saturday. Saturday was the day of we met the time traveling Welsh-American. I met up with the Frenchies at Big Bend with my dearest friend here Elise. After perhaps one tequila shot and a beer (it was a deal a beer + a shot for 1.50). The Welsh-American decided it was time to be spirited away to another time. As I was to find out, time traveling is a tiring feat to all involved. We escaped big bend and rushed beside the waterside, across bridges, through narrow streets, getting lost, finding ourselves again, frustrated French cursing, bummed cigarettes, urination on public sidewalks, and finally a gleaming club called “Jackson’s”. The ageless French, put out and exhausted by now, almost hesitate to go in. Elise and I, annoyed by the Welsh-American’s eccentricities nearly leave them for other adventures. Unmoved, the strange Welsh-American convinces us that we have indeed time traveled and inside is our final destination – the mid to late 1970s. We laugh, and go inside.
Flower prints assault us. The French are dumbfounded. Hippie print skirts, 70s disco-funk accompanied by groovy girls and black guys with afros. We saw a long haired man who could only have been Jesus and elderly people who surely were hippies themselves. These refugees from a bygone age danced as the walls of this tiny boxy bar-club spoke of free love turned 70s disco nights. And for a minimum of 30 minutes, we all stood awkwardly dumbfounded at the fact that it seemed we had indeed time traveled. After recovering from our initial shock, we proceeded to dance and drink and dance and drink and dance some more. The Frenchies went nuts. The Welsh-American creepily did an old man dance. Elise got over her fright and grooved a bit. And then it was over, 4 am and a bus to catch at 8. Elise and I had to go. Cadiz (pronounced Cadith) was tomorrow.



***
Sunday. A hour and half bus ride to the oldest continuously inhabited city in Europe. Cadiz stood broken against the seashore now, the most poverty ridden capital of the most impoverished providence in Spain. Despite this, it shown with blistering admiration for its past and how the cathedral shined and how the waves tasted of salt. All afternoon was spent bodysurfing the waves and foot races along the sea shore. Watching the tide slide into the ocean and children gossip and play. Cadiz was, well, paradise in a shining cove. Oh…. Its lunch time soon. The pictures will hopefully convey you the beauty of that place. I still have the Rosemary Procession, Plums, and the Clam to discuss, I’ll finish Cadiz another time.
Ciao.

Rosemary, Plums. The Clam

Dark nights and lonely days (Part one)

(A forewarning, the next two entries are an interconnected long rant that is way too personal. I almost didn’t publish it but then I realized that I really don’t hide anything from any of the readers here anyways, and I needed to get it off my chest. I also have put these in chronological order so as to better understand them)

Thursday, June 8, 2007

Where to begin? Over the last few days I have become a mute, befriended the Cretans, and battled heartlessly against technology. I suppose it began Wednesday night. Elise, Allison, and I wandered the streets talking of NPR and waterfront fiestas for hours. Though we never found a satisfactory bar, it was seemingly a good night. That is, until we went to Alfalfa. At approximately three in the morning, we united with a tiny legion of drunken and high guys from the program.
I suppose, there was nothing outwardly wrong with this encounter. They smiled. We laughed. They commented on life, we pounded fists, they did the ¨¨we’re wasted thing¨, and we parted ways. Underneath this thin veneer of civility, my mind was racing.
I realize now I hate my mind. I’m either caught up in situations so much I loose connection with who I am. When I wander the streets of Sevilla, sometimes I forget I am a corporeal entity and nearly bump into passer-byers. I feels as if I´m a silent observer floating above situations so much so, that at times I loose touch with my sense of self. I have this odd out-of-body experiences daily.
Other times, I completely become self absorbed, garnering the , rapidly analyzing ever inflection, and most importantly making fast paced theories. I am completely immersed in my relationship, my corporeal existence, and posture, I become – in effect – the hands-on director and unwilling actor of my life. Hands-on because I´m completely focused on what the next course of action should be. Unwilling, because my body moves slower and less adeptly than my mind envisions.
In any case, the entire day I was half in a out of body mood. At the moment we ran into the boys, my body analyized absolutely everything about the situation. It felt of tension. I´m not sure why, my theories pointed to me. I have always been uneasy around guys in general. At he beginning of my time here, this crew were typical drinking buddies of mine. I had run away from their friendship for long walks through the city and NPR. I say run away, because I typically refuse to get too close to guys – straight, gay, or otherwise. You have to live or grow up with me, to have any semblense of me opening up. It’s a defence mechanism I´ve known about for a long time, but it made me so angry at that instant.
In any case, I went to bed that night berating myself for the messes I put myself in. This inner monologue, took its hold the next day with almost disasterous results.

Part two

Friday, June 9, 2007
I suppose, going to be in a grumpy mood leads to angry and hate filled dreams which forces one to wake up with a general loathing of life itself. At least, this was my observation on Thursday.
I was going to go to ¨los hippies¨ or the festival of corpus cristi that morning but because of my hate, all I did was lay in bed for hours. Eventually, I forced myself to get up and get dressed. To try to cheer myself up, I attempted to wander the city however it was devoid of people. Being a festival-holy day in Spain, means absolutely all stores or places of interest are closed. I eventually found a tiny café and silently ordered churros y chocolate (which can be vaguely described as a blend of benet´s and hot chocolate). The chocolate didn´t cheer me up, but it did put me in a middle-of-the-road mood.
When I ventured outside, the sun and humidity nearly killed me. I stumbled back to my sailboat on the roof and attempted to work the air conditioner to no avail. I was really tired at this conjecture and despite (or perhaps because of) the 95 degree heat… I passed out on my bed.
When I awoke hours later it was late in the afternoon. I gathered my laptop and ventured to the clam bar… (Its actually called Republica but at night its completely white walls just look sooo pearly). In any case, I proceeded to write, write, write and read, read, read for the entire day. It helped alleviate some of my ills but later that day I was to have an almost-break down.
I went back to my place, silently ordered dinner on the way, and studied for a test the following day. Those who have lived with me (and perhaps others too) are accustomed to the fact that I talk to myself. Its strange, sometimes I worry I´m going schizophrenic because when I´m alone for too long, I literally do talk to myself and argue and laugh and have a time as if it was with another person.
The entire day talking to myself, had put me on edge. Around 11:00 Me and I started arguing and by midnight our dialogue had reached alto to crescendo at a realization. The only conversations I had had all day had been with myself. This might have not bothered me but Me and I at this point in one of the worst fights we’ve ever been in. We brought up the silliness from the night before. We attacked our past actions and in the end, we had to escape each other. We nearly brought each other to tears. We had thrown things across the room. I needed to get out for air. For something.
I dropped by a random bar named Plateau lined with Marilyn Monroe posters and tea kettles. I, unused to real comprehensible conversation, had extreme issues asking for a cup of tea. Two dark haired beauties sitting next to me interceded and ordered me a pot of red tea (decaffeinated, thank you very much). Both were Cretan students living in Sevilla for the next few months. The boy, Alexandre, a dark haired, pragmatic and serious mathematician, who constantly avoided homework in order to practice Spanish. The girl, Eftihia, a dance teacher in training who had come to Sevilla to train in flamenco and Argentinean tango. We talked for hours. They were convinced I couldn’t speak Spanish to English became our lingua franca.
As we proceeded to leave the bar at 1:30 we were harassed by a bouncy sprite of a Hungarian and her blonde German art form of a boyfriend. They bought us beers and we sat down, once again conversing in English. We talked for at least an hour about everything from the varying international methods of trash collection to the politics of the EU. Afterwards we retreated to an indy rock bar around the corner that conspicuously resembled the black cat. It was exactly what I needed.
Though that night I had severe insomnia and only slept for an hour, it was a fair trade of for what could have been a very lonely day indeed.

The writing on the walls....

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Sevilla, as I have thus described, is a strange place indeed. To add to its list of oddities, is the curious nature of its graffiti. The stuff is everywhere. Its leaves no surface untouched – glass windows of buses, park benches, historic monuments, and resturaunts of the well-to-do.
While the standard abstract calligraphy of the street occasionally surfaces in Sevilla, more often than not the lingua of the alleyways is nothing more than pure genius. This (oftentimes multi-lingual) script calls for political and social movements, offers advice, attacks modern tourism, and speaks of love. These commentaries about existence and life itself have become my daily horoscopes. Every new one I find, are my inspiration, warning, or contemplation for the day. “Never trust a hippie”, I avoid the street markets where x-hippies sell their wares, opting for commercial venues instead. “I have died only for the salvation of tourists?” The churches in Sevilla are now more filled with tourists than sevillanos… social commentary at its finest. And on and on and on.
You all know me well, I am a theorist above all other things. And I have a theory for this. Sevilla is a city built on a rich multilayered history. True. Baroque – that art period defined by glorification, ostentation, and sharp contrasts between dark and light – is one such history. Another past is that of Moors, who brought with them the art of Arabic calligraphy which in itself was a highly spiritual process. Another, those medieval priests rewriting the Bible on carefully illuminated manuscripts. More recent? With Franco persecution and with the European Union modern changes. These sevillano graffitists are undoubtedly the forbearers of mind boggling labyrinth of history. Bitter now, with no work for calligraphists or illuminated manuscripts, they inscribe on the city itself, which they blame for their fate.
What do they write? Drawing from their baroque past it is undoubtedly highly contrasting and emotional – one artist writes a deep black HardxCore one day and a yellow ode to love the next. Why not of religion if they are born out of monks and mullahs? In Spain, the language of politics and social causes and individuality has replaced religion completely. Indeed, religion itself is a social movement, part of the politics of modern life, by attacking the tourist attraction that city cathedrals have become.

You doubt me I suspect, however I have a bit of photographic evidence to back it up. Conspicuously during siesta as other sevillanos were napping or lounging at cafeterias, I transcribed a few notations of these everyday epiphanies with the lens of my camera. The following is a tiny sampling of my photographic evidence; hopefully I will accumulate more as my stay here continues.




“Precariously she burns me hot, precariously she is going to burn.”



“Never trust a hippie”



“Jose is the color of my dreams”



“Have you died only for the salvation of tourists?”


Others with no picture as of yet:
“Stop speculation of old homes”
“Vote or die” (Wasn’t this also a chant of the American Revolution?”)
"I have no home"