Time Zones

Here I am, about 10 pm, and really ready to sleep, partially because the cold I've been doing battle with since Sunday has a bit of the upper hand tonight, and mostly because we've been on the go for three weeks. Travel is exquisite and delightful and every synapse is firing all the time. Our poor brains cannot depend upon any familiarity to tune out, zone out or do-by-rote, and thus in the act of all that creative neuron activity, the poor body simply cannot keep up, no matter how many tapas are ingested.

However, Spain outside our windows,is just gearing up for the dinner hour, the few more hours of gestation and conversation. Thankfully, the apartment has fabulous double-paned windows, the like of which we need for our Pipe Creek winter norther howling winds (where does one buy these, we ask?). Xevi has told us he rarely sleeps before midnight, and that those with jobs do show up at 8' but, yes, most businesses close from 2 to 4 or 5 and then work resumes til 8, when it's time for tapas.

It is perhaps emblematic that the morning TV show goes on until 2 pm. (at least) with a cooking show segment so slow, relaxed and with every step done in real time, that I watcher for an hour without one dish being completed.

Frankly, we are still not certain that anyone in Spain does actually sleep. Or that anyone is not actually eating all of the time. Why this country rather than the US doesn't have weight issues is a mystery to me.... Between chocolate and churros, tortillas Espanola, jamon, quesos, patisseries three to the block, three courses at lunch, tapas and wine then dinner, another 3 or so courses, maybe liquor and cafe....Well... Who knows, except that all that eating, shopping and talking means that one is moving all the time, and basically for most without the benefit of the automobile. And shops there are, each a tiny jewel box of enterprise, with it's own customers and passerbys. From organic bread to olives, to truly functional mini "supermercados" the size of large shoeboxes, there is an energy around the doing of daily chores that is so human scaled.

Of all the curses I think we Americans must own up to, our cities and lives designed around automobiles rankle me the most. At least in our southwestern sprawl, We don't have real neighborhoods where old ladies can meet with their dogs, where kids of all colors can shoot hoops, where there is something to do and watch and care about that is not on a little screen of some kind. Bravo Barcelona, may we really take to heart your urban lessons. I love my country life, but I realize that someday it will all be too much for me, too far to drive, too much house, too isolated from others. I hope other kinds of neighborhoods and communities will prosper, moRe European in impulse, less individualistic, perhaps.

Picasso Plate

Just a few sketches from the visit to the Picasso Museum yesterday:

The Textile That Is Barcelona

Never have I seen a city that is more like fabric, or specifically, like art cloth. Shimmering with light and sparkle, layered with pattern upon pattern. Of course, much of that is due to the master, Antoni Gaudi, architect magician, who somehow imprinted much of the city with his spirit, an influence that lasts to this very moment of street graffiti and orange and black taxis that zip around like shiny beetles through the otherwise reserved for pedestrians streets of Born, the old Gothic city where we are staying.

From street patterns to walls, to layers upon layers of light, color and texture, I think no textile artist could leave this city of wrinkles and weaves without a trunk of ideas and inspirations. Much of the iconography is itself inspired by nature, a string strand in the work of Gaudi and his collaborators and disciples.

Then add to the mix the many stalls and storelets selling trinkets and beads, baubles and tiles, Indian gauzes and cotton pareas, Thai pantaloons and touristic renditions of shawls and fans and polka dotted flamenco shoes. And then in a twinkle of the eye, you come across a solemn plaza of stone and citadel, or make a turn onto the human river of La Rambla, walled with flower stalls and cafe chairs.

Crowning the entire affair is, no doubt, Park Guell, Gaudi's home garden project for 20 years. Here are the tiles and mosaics, "practice" columns (I think) for Sagrada Familia, and layered gardens that flow in bands of color and texture as far as the eye can see.

Sacred Segrada

Sitting in the Segrada Familia I feel like I experienced a soul-touch that I never felt in any church before; perhaps my inner spirit speaks modernist more fluently than Gothic.

I have been inspired to awe in churches around the world, the soaring spaces of Notre Dame, the somber beauty of the church of Santa Maria del la Mar here, near our home away from home, the confectionary delight of the altars and retablos of the Mexican colonial cathedrals. But something clicked in me upon walking into this amazing space, a feeling that no photograph or drawing can capture, the scale and layers of light and space are simply too complex -- and too simple, too.

The scalloped shapes and pointed rays have a dance going on. The detail and contrast of the work of all the artisans and workmen, carvers and ironworkers still working from Antoni Gaudi's vision and plans are the closest I will come to that experience many must have had over the ages as those Gothic Cathedrals were constructed. So the sounds of chisels and cranes mingle with the recorded organ music, making a counterpoint of time and sound in the vast parabolas of space.

As we have settled here out of the heat to watch and write, the angle of the sun outside has changed and the space with it, reflected greens from the window above us show up with purple hues on the columns, the families of columns, each clan a different stone and a different shade of grey/pink/taupe, ever changing. The timelessness and the temporal, the infinity of patterns, this space is like looking into a mirror reflecting another mirror.

The feeling for me truly is that of a forest, perhaps one sent from another planet. I wish all the people here would really take the silence please signs to heart, but that is too much to hope for. I think we will try to come back for mass one evening.