Well, Madrid, it's been great.
En vez de "adios," te diré "hasta pronto."
Monday, May 17, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Farewells
Things about this house I will miss:
- Pillowfights with the girls
- Watching Skins with Eva in the kitchen late at night
- Coming home in the late afternoons to coffee, chocolate, cookies and conversation with Olga
- Baking, Spanish-style: "Oh, just add some more olive oil, it'll be fine."
- The realization and subsequent amazement that I followed the entire conversation at dinner
- Explaining slang/pop culture references in the current Top 20 (the Most Perplexing Song Award goes to "Tik Tok" for containing "crunk", "Mick Jagger", etc.)
- Sharing clothes, makeup and fashion advice
- Helping Violeta with math homework (it is totally not the same in every language, but on the other hand now I know how to do simple math in Spanish)
- After-dinner walks around the neighborhood with the girls
It took a while for me to truly adapt to my role here, as sort-of-sister-sort-of-aunt to the girls and sort-of-daughter-sort-of-sister to Olga. At the beginning there was the inevitable over-politeness and tiptoeing around, on both my part and theirs - certainly not unfriendliness, just a cautious acknowledgment that the other has different ideas and preconceived notions of what a "home" is and the attempts to understand the unknown norms that seem foreign and utterly strange to you. In the past few months, however, the politeness has morphed into a teasing familiarity and the warm comfort of security. Even Eva - the oldest daughter and most reserved in the house - has opened up and no longer needs her sister as a buffer. They have all, at this point, told me independently that they don't want me to leave.
Goodbyes are always hard, in any language.
Edit: Completely unrelated, but if you have been following what's been going on in Britain for the past week at all, you'll find this pretty hilarious (or, at least, I did, but then I'm not actually British, so there you go).
- Pillowfights with the girls
- Watching Skins with Eva in the kitchen late at night
- Coming home in the late afternoons to coffee, chocolate, cookies and conversation with Olga
- Baking, Spanish-style: "Oh, just add some more olive oil, it'll be fine."
- The realization and subsequent amazement that I followed the entire conversation at dinner
- Explaining slang/pop culture references in the current Top 20 (the Most Perplexing Song Award goes to "Tik Tok" for containing "crunk", "Mick Jagger", etc.)
- Sharing clothes, makeup and fashion advice
- Helping Violeta with math homework (it is totally not the same in every language, but on the other hand now I know how to do simple math in Spanish)
- After-dinner walks around the neighborhood with the girls
It took a while for me to truly adapt to my role here, as sort-of-sister-sort-of-aunt to the girls and sort-of-daughter-sort-of-sister to Olga. At the beginning there was the inevitable over-politeness and tiptoeing around, on both my part and theirs - certainly not unfriendliness, just a cautious acknowledgment that the other has different ideas and preconceived notions of what a "home" is and the attempts to understand the unknown norms that seem foreign and utterly strange to you. In the past few months, however, the politeness has morphed into a teasing familiarity and the warm comfort of security. Even Eva - the oldest daughter and most reserved in the house - has opened up and no longer needs her sister as a buffer. They have all, at this point, told me independently that they don't want me to leave.
Goodbyes are always hard, in any language.
Edit: Completely unrelated, but if you have been following what's been going on in Britain for the past week at all, you'll find this pretty hilarious (or, at least, I did, but then I'm not actually British, so there you go).
Sunday, May 9, 2010
I'm aware
In response to everyone and their uncle linking me to this article in the Times today, I would just like to state that yes, I have already read it, yes, I agree with it, and I will further link you to this terrifying infographic I stumbled upon yesterday.
And, unrelatedly, re-drawing Europe, which I find endlessly entertaining.
And, unrelatedly, re-drawing Europe, which I find endlessly entertaining.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Stream of consciousness
So we had to write a "Reflection" on our time here in Madrid. Since I had other things to do (and it's not like this would be graded anyway) I just turned in a last-minute, stream-of-consciousness thing. I just re-read it, though, and although it's silly I thought some of you might enjoy it, and it saves me the trouble of having to write a "farewell to Madrid" blog entry.
“Keep in touch,” I was instructed. “I want to live vicariously through you, I want to know everything. Start a blog, write me postcards, keep a journal, tell me your stories!” Friends, family, family of friends, friends of family, strangers I barely knew - the people changed, but the requests didn’t. Share it with me. So I downloaded Skype, I quadrupled my Facebook use, I started running four chat programs simultaneously and updated my address book all with the intention of sharing this experience that, as I was promised over and over in countless iterations, would change my life and how I see the world forever.
And I wrote the emails, the blog entries and the postcards and I sent them out into the world, carrying snippets of a story here, unfinished adventures there, half-remembered and even less described. But I felt guilty clicking “post,” I rued the bland and unseasoned words I scrawled on the back of a picture of some nameless cathedral. My descriptions were inadequate - how to explain the echo of my footfalls through room after room full of cool marble and gilt mirrors, the dust and the dappled sun and the damp grass under the shade of an anonymous statue? How to convey the history that hides in every dark stairwell and through every gate, lurking in the corners of cathedrals and behind the frames of masterpieces? They follow you home - the whispers, the reminders and the nods to century upon century of history, of greatness and glory and war, the shivery brush of the ghosts of saints, crusaders and martyrs who slip through fences and out windows, chasing shadows and nipping at your heels. They’re benign but still dangerous, enticing and ever-present; they seep into your pores and tangle in your hair, and at this point I’m not sure if they’re something I can wash away with New York tap water or bleach out with California sunshine.
What I do know is that the stories I don’t tell are the ones I’ll jealously guard, years later, stories so everyday and commonplace they verge on unremarkable, not worth the energy it would take to write them down. They are non-stories, really: listening to a street performer in a dusky plaza with the fragile stem of a wineglass cool between my fingers and olive pits folded into my napkin, or standing at a corner as the sun sets and long shadows fall like distance markers across a crowded street, or eavesdropping on the one-sided conversation between two teenagers riding the night bus home from Bilbao, he cocky and laconic with too much hairgel and too little personality, she vibrantly edged with plastic jewelry and lacquered turquoise nails, eyes lined and lips painted. Among all the tapas and metro tickets and single-serving packets of sugar, what will I remember? Will I close my eyes and slip through time with a whiff of electrically-charged air, the feeling of lingering thunderheads damply suspended above me, heavy on the back of my neck - will I glide through and find my memories vibrant and unclouded, with a tangible weight and texture? Or will I sit and softly turn the whole experience over as a faded and blurry photograph? Will these memories be the ones that rest, quietly and neatly contained in a wooden frame, set upon a bookshelf to look at, occasionally, to talk about at dinner parties and dust off for family members, but ones I eventually let slide into the shadows?
When you travel, tripping up stairs and flirting with museums, you see the world; later, you take elements of what you see and you build on them, you update your blurry perceptions of reality into enhanced and overexposed snapshots until they’re vibrantly distracting and more real than the life you left back home. When you travel and then you stay, however, you lose little pieces of yourself, the parts you aren’t careful with or think you don’t care about. I abandoned my harried and frantic New York walk - head down, don’t look at the faces, dodge the cigarette, blend into these grey sidewalks and grey buildings punctuated with shots of graffiti, those rhythmic tattoos of harshly misted color - somewhere along the wide open Paseo del Prado; I left my Californian pseudo-vegetarianism perched on an empty barstool in Café Segre. Over these past four months I have peeled away layer upon thin layer of my New York shell and left it scattered and blown across this city, crinkly and translucent like fragile curls of onion skin, twisted and dry. I hadn’t thought it would be so easy, shedding my skin, leaving myself unnaturally open and defenseless, but Madrid is not as acridly harsh and does not require it.
I’m keeping the maps hidden in the palms of my hands, though, the life lines and heart lines that once traced Broadway, Avenue A, Houston, Amsterdam painted over by Alcalá, Jerónimo, Fuencarral, the concentric circles and spirals etched on my fingertips that stood for Madison Square, Battery Park, Turtle Pond now marking Recoletos, Santa Ana, Cibeles. I know that new skin will grow over these, in a thin film of reintegration at first, and then in thicker layers of time, blurry and clouded with new information and memories like frosted glass. I know that eventually Madrid will hide under my skin, buried within my palms next to Paris, Manhattan and San Francisco. For now, though, I hoard the soft, comforting gusts of security and familiarity that blow my way in this city as I wait for my bus to carry me down streets with names that are second nature to me, now, names that slide easily over on my tongue and linger like feathery pastry. It’s not something I can keep, or adequately convey across an ocean or even replicate in any other place, but for now it’s mine, it’s Madrid and it’s more real here than anything else.
“Keep in touch,” I was instructed. “I want to live vicariously through you, I want to know everything. Start a blog, write me postcards, keep a journal, tell me your stories!” Friends, family, family of friends, friends of family, strangers I barely knew - the people changed, but the requests didn’t. Share it with me. So I downloaded Skype, I quadrupled my Facebook use, I started running four chat programs simultaneously and updated my address book all with the intention of sharing this experience that, as I was promised over and over in countless iterations, would change my life and how I see the world forever.
And I wrote the emails, the blog entries and the postcards and I sent them out into the world, carrying snippets of a story here, unfinished adventures there, half-remembered and even less described. But I felt guilty clicking “post,” I rued the bland and unseasoned words I scrawled on the back of a picture of some nameless cathedral. My descriptions were inadequate - how to explain the echo of my footfalls through room after room full of cool marble and gilt mirrors, the dust and the dappled sun and the damp grass under the shade of an anonymous statue? How to convey the history that hides in every dark stairwell and through every gate, lurking in the corners of cathedrals and behind the frames of masterpieces? They follow you home - the whispers, the reminders and the nods to century upon century of history, of greatness and glory and war, the shivery brush of the ghosts of saints, crusaders and martyrs who slip through fences and out windows, chasing shadows and nipping at your heels. They’re benign but still dangerous, enticing and ever-present; they seep into your pores and tangle in your hair, and at this point I’m not sure if they’re something I can wash away with New York tap water or bleach out with California sunshine.
What I do know is that the stories I don’t tell are the ones I’ll jealously guard, years later, stories so everyday and commonplace they verge on unremarkable, not worth the energy it would take to write them down. They are non-stories, really: listening to a street performer in a dusky plaza with the fragile stem of a wineglass cool between my fingers and olive pits folded into my napkin, or standing at a corner as the sun sets and long shadows fall like distance markers across a crowded street, or eavesdropping on the one-sided conversation between two teenagers riding the night bus home from Bilbao, he cocky and laconic with too much hairgel and too little personality, she vibrantly edged with plastic jewelry and lacquered turquoise nails, eyes lined and lips painted. Among all the tapas and metro tickets and single-serving packets of sugar, what will I remember? Will I close my eyes and slip through time with a whiff of electrically-charged air, the feeling of lingering thunderheads damply suspended above me, heavy on the back of my neck - will I glide through and find my memories vibrant and unclouded, with a tangible weight and texture? Or will I sit and softly turn the whole experience over as a faded and blurry photograph? Will these memories be the ones that rest, quietly and neatly contained in a wooden frame, set upon a bookshelf to look at, occasionally, to talk about at dinner parties and dust off for family members, but ones I eventually let slide into the shadows?
When you travel, tripping up stairs and flirting with museums, you see the world; later, you take elements of what you see and you build on them, you update your blurry perceptions of reality into enhanced and overexposed snapshots until they’re vibrantly distracting and more real than the life you left back home. When you travel and then you stay, however, you lose little pieces of yourself, the parts you aren’t careful with or think you don’t care about. I abandoned my harried and frantic New York walk - head down, don’t look at the faces, dodge the cigarette, blend into these grey sidewalks and grey buildings punctuated with shots of graffiti, those rhythmic tattoos of harshly misted color - somewhere along the wide open Paseo del Prado; I left my Californian pseudo-vegetarianism perched on an empty barstool in Café Segre. Over these past four months I have peeled away layer upon thin layer of my New York shell and left it scattered and blown across this city, crinkly and translucent like fragile curls of onion skin, twisted and dry. I hadn’t thought it would be so easy, shedding my skin, leaving myself unnaturally open and defenseless, but Madrid is not as acridly harsh and does not require it.
I’m keeping the maps hidden in the palms of my hands, though, the life lines and heart lines that once traced Broadway, Avenue A, Houston, Amsterdam painted over by Alcalá, Jerónimo, Fuencarral, the concentric circles and spirals etched on my fingertips that stood for Madison Square, Battery Park, Turtle Pond now marking Recoletos, Santa Ana, Cibeles. I know that new skin will grow over these, in a thin film of reintegration at first, and then in thicker layers of time, blurry and clouded with new information and memories like frosted glass. I know that eventually Madrid will hide under my skin, buried within my palms next to Paris, Manhattan and San Francisco. For now, though, I hoard the soft, comforting gusts of security and familiarity that blow my way in this city as I wait for my bus to carry me down streets with names that are second nature to me, now, names that slide easily over on my tongue and linger like feathery pastry. It’s not something I can keep, or adequately convey across an ocean or even replicate in any other place, but for now it’s mine, it’s Madrid and it’s more real here than anything else.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Yes, it has gotten this bad
For my own personal reference, I guess.
Things I am going to consume immediately upon my arrival in the Bay Area (excluding the obvious, like fresh salads and fruits and grilled fish):
- Cold-brewed iced coffee from Peet's
- Shrimp tempura rolls, tekkamaki, California rolls with real crab, sashimi, miso soup and edamame from Serika
- Every single type of food I can get my hands on at the Oakland Greek Festival
- Some form of chocolate-coconut drink from Bittersweet
- Tamales, mole and horchata from Papalote
- Panini from A.G. Ferrari
- In-N-Out. Just, yes.
- Semifreddi's sourdough baguettes (sourdough bread in general, actually...)
- Stuffed Mediterranean pizza from Zachary's
- Chicken tikka masala from House of Curries/Naan and Curry
- Any salad from Mixt Greens
- Mochi from Trader Joe's
- Small-original-with-blueberries-and-strawberries from Pinkberry
- Pollo con mole rojo tacos from Cactus
- Boba from just about anywhere
And in New York:
- Falafel from Mamoun's
- Green shrimp curry from ThaiNY
- Portobello burger and onion rings from Shake Shack
- Coffee from the coffee cart guy who parks every day in front of Meyer
- Fried plantains prepared lovingly by my former suitemate Carla after I guilt her into it
- Lamb burger, lamingtons and a whinging pom from Sunburnt Cow on Avenue C, in a tradition we have kept up since freshman year (three+ years is totally a tradition, right?)
- Coffee from the Mud Truck in Astor Place
- Cheeseburger and fries from Five Guys in the West Village
- Brunch, in any form, from Hudson Diner (Blake Lively sightings optional, but only if your name isn't Roxanne)
- Moroccan hummus plate (balsamic pomegranate reduction!?) or the challah BLT from the Cornelia Street Cafe
- Aloo paratha and dal from any Indian place on Lexington between 26th and 30th
- Medium-black-daily-roast-and-an-orange-currant-scone-for-here-please from Think Coffee (my last two months in NY in December I noticed that for the past three weeks I had charged the exact same amount at Think every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday because that what I, without fail, ordered...)
- Gyros, spanakopita and baklava from Astoria
- Cheese pizza from 2 Bros in St. Mark's
- Any sandwich from Peanut Butter & Co. (except that one with bananas, or the one with marshmallow fluff)
- Country omelette or apple pancakes with coffee and home fries from Friend of a Farmer
- La Mulata arepas from Caracas Arepas
- Fries with pomegranate teriyaki sauce and Vietnamese pineapple sauce from Pommes Frites
- Gluten-free risotto from Risotteria on Bleecker
- Cajun or masala macaroni and cheese with breadcrumbs from S'mac
That list just grew from "hey, I miss sushi!" into a monster. I think I should just stop, now.
Things I am going to consume immediately upon my arrival in the Bay Area (excluding the obvious, like fresh salads and fruits and grilled fish):
- Cold-brewed iced coffee from Peet's
- Shrimp tempura rolls, tekkamaki, California rolls with real crab, sashimi, miso soup and edamame from Serika
- Every single type of food I can get my hands on at the Oakland Greek Festival
- Some form of chocolate-coconut drink from Bittersweet
- Tamales, mole and horchata from Papalote
- Panini from A.G. Ferrari
- In-N-Out. Just, yes.
- Semifreddi's sourdough baguettes (sourdough bread in general, actually...)
- Stuffed Mediterranean pizza from Zachary's
- Chicken tikka masala from House of Curries/Naan and Curry
- Any salad from Mixt Greens
- Mochi from Trader Joe's
- Small-original-with-blueberries-and-strawberries from Pinkberry
- Pollo con mole rojo tacos from Cactus
- Boba from just about anywhere
And in New York:
- Falafel from Mamoun's
- Green shrimp curry from ThaiNY
- Portobello burger and onion rings from Shake Shack
- Coffee from the coffee cart guy who parks every day in front of Meyer
- Fried plantains prepared lovingly by my former suitemate Carla after I guilt her into it
- Lamb burger, lamingtons and a whinging pom from Sunburnt Cow on Avenue C, in a tradition we have kept up since freshman year (three+ years is totally a tradition, right?)
- Coffee from the Mud Truck in Astor Place
- Cheeseburger and fries from Five Guys in the West Village
- Brunch, in any form, from Hudson Diner (Blake Lively sightings optional, but only if your name isn't Roxanne)
- Moroccan hummus plate (balsamic pomegranate reduction!?) or the challah BLT from the Cornelia Street Cafe
- Aloo paratha and dal from any Indian place on Lexington between 26th and 30th
- Medium-black-daily-roast-and-an-orange-currant-scone-for-here-please from Think Coffee (my last two months in NY in December I noticed that for the past three weeks I had charged the exact same amount at Think every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday because that what I, without fail, ordered...)
- Gyros, spanakopita and baklava from Astoria
- Cheese pizza from 2 Bros in St. Mark's
- Any sandwich from Peanut Butter & Co. (except that one with bananas, or the one with marshmallow fluff)
- Country omelette or apple pancakes with coffee and home fries from Friend of a Farmer
- La Mulata arepas from Caracas Arepas
- Fries with pomegranate teriyaki sauce and Vietnamese pineapple sauce from Pommes Frites
- Gluten-free risotto from Risotteria on Bleecker
- Cajun or masala macaroni and cheese with breadcrumbs from S'mac
That list just grew from "hey, I miss sushi!" into a monster. I think I should just stop, now.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Random
I have hit a new slacking low. Instead of writing an original paper for my grammar class, I am translating and updating a paper that I wrote over three years ago.
The best part is that my original paper? Is not even in English. It's in French. We'll see how this French to Spanish translation process goes. On the other hand, the hardest part for me is getting my ideas out in the first place without getting distracted by Spanish verb tenses or vocabulary, so maybe it'll work out.
Also, today I asked my señora if she had stain remover that would remove the ink blot I managed to drip on my sweater the other day. "No," she said, "we should put milk on it instead." I thought I had heard her wrong, but no, she took a shallow bowl, put my sweater in it and poured whole milk all over the stain. I am supposed to let it sit overnight and then we'll see what happens.
Spain is sometimes a very strange place.
The best part is that my original paper? Is not even in English. It's in French. We'll see how this French to Spanish translation process goes. On the other hand, the hardest part for me is getting my ideas out in the first place without getting distracted by Spanish verb tenses or vocabulary, so maybe it'll work out.
Also, today I asked my señora if she had stain remover that would remove the ink blot I managed to drip on my sweater the other day. "No," she said, "we should put milk on it instead." I thought I had heard her wrong, but no, she took a shallow bowl, put my sweater in it and poured whole milk all over the stain. I am supposed to let it sit overnight and then we'll see what happens.
Spain is sometimes a very strange place.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Not my day
Today:
1. I was in a bus crash on the way to the Marseille airport. (Unhurt, but it was quite scary.)
2. My flight from Marseille to Madrid was delayed five hours. Thank you, Ryanair.
3. Apparently someone tried to blow up Times Square. My god. (As an aside, I can now access the NY Times without a proxy server. Yay?)
I am not going to leave the house for the rest of the day.
More about Marseille later...
1. I was in a bus crash on the way to the Marseille airport. (Unhurt, but it was quite scary.)
2. My flight from Marseille to Madrid was delayed five hours. Thank you, Ryanair.
3. Apparently someone tried to blow up Times Square. My god. (As an aside, I can now access the NY Times without a proxy server. Yay?)
I am not going to leave the house for the rest of the day.
More about Marseille later...
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