Card, credit

Yesterday I finally got my Spanish residency card. It's colorful and iridescent and conveniently fits in my wallet. Hooray! Now I can legally... get started on yet another pile of paperwork that was awaiting my official identification number. Still, it's nice to be official.

Speaking of paperwork, I got a scary loan default letter yesterday, threatening all kinds of dire bad credit issues if I don't cough up the money.

But wait! I have paid off all my college loans! Why am I being bugged for money?

It is because of the folly of youth: in college, I co-signed a loan for a friend. I have not spoken with this person since college, so evidently it was not the kind of friendship that outlasts working together in the resident assistant program. But since she is not paying her loan, I am being hounded (my parents get all kinds of calls as well).

I have tried to find a way to contact this woman, but all I have at the moment is her street address. I guess I'll have to write an old-fashioned letter and ask her indignantly politely to pay her stupid $8.10.

Yes, all of this is over an unpaid eight bucks. Still, it really kind of stinks to be facing bad credit over not a lot of money, and I worry that she will continue to not pay off her loan, especially given the economy, and that this could get a whole lot worse.

Wandering words

I spent some of my morning with the two Paul Celan poems that deal (obliquely, in ciphers) with the Spanish Civil War ("Shibboleth" and "In One"), as well as Jacques Derrida's brilliant essay about them. Even if the poems fall outside of the scope of my thesis, having been written in the 50s and 60s, you better bet that I'll be drawing on both Celan and Derrida in my discussion of the "No pasarán" slogan.

I learned a new word, too. It's always fun to learn a new word, and I guess I didn't look it up the first time I read the Derrida essay, a couple of years ago, during a graduate seminar. The word is "gnomon," and as cute and gnome-like as it sounds, it actually refers to the stick part of a sundial, the horizontal blade that casts a shadow to tell the time.

After reading through the essay, I got sucked into Felstiner's translations of the Celan poems, reminding myself of my favorites and falling in love with others. If it wasn't so long and spread out on the page, I would reproduce "Stretto," an incredible poem and one I used for a course I taught on poetry and music. But I'll content myself with "Speak You Too," a haunting meditation on language.

Speak You Too

Speak you too,
speak as the last,
say out your say.

Speak--
But don't split off No from Yes.
Give your say this meaning too:
give it the shadow.

Give it shadow enough,
give it as much
as you know is spread round you from
midnight to midday and midnight.

Look around:
see how things all come alive--
By death! Alive!
Speaks true who speaks shadow.

But now the place shrinks, where you stand:
Where now, shadow-stripped, where?
Climb. Grope upwards.
Thinner you grow, less knowable, finer!
Finer: a thread
the star wants to descend on:
so as to swim down below, down here
where it sees itself shimmer: in the swell
of wandering words.

~Paul Celan (tr. John Felstiner)

Favas and kohlrabi

February hasn't done much for me by way of blog inspiration. I seem to be stuck in a rut. So sorry!

But the weather has been lovely, springy, sunny and good for my all-around energy levels and productivity (um, other than blogging).

As one more sign of spring in these parts, the fava beans have started to appear in the market. They come in long, knobby pods, and they are the fundamental ingredient in the Catalan dish faves a la catalana. I got to talking with the Mister's grandmother, and she promised to show me how to make them, minus the botifarra (blood sausage) that normally is another fundamental ingredient. (So fundamental, in fact, that when the lady at the market stall where she bought the beans smiled and asked if she was making faves a la catalana, iaia said no. I guess without the sausage, it's not really Catalan.)

Anyway, yesterday I accompanied her to the doctor's office, and after our little excursion it was time to make faves. We shelled the fava beans as well as some peas (she says the peas cut the acidity of the favas), then rinsed them and put them in a pot with a couple of roughly chopped tomatoes, quite a few whole garlic shoots (which also show up at this time of year), a few branches of spearmint (or mint, but spearmint is what she had growing on her terrace), plenty of salt, a pinch of sugar, and a bit of moscatel (she says anis--anise-flavored liqueur--is better if you have it). You don't add any water, as the beans and vegetables produce their own cooking liquid; only add a little bit if it gets dry. Covered, over a low burner, let it "xup-xup" (not sure how to translate that charming expression that evokes "soaking up" the juices; Catalan cooks use it to mean a slow simmer) for a good while, twenty to thirty minutes, I'm guessing.

The end result isn't pretty, but boy is it good. The silken beans are sweet and soft, and I pretty much ate until I was stuffed.

At which point iaia brought out the fish. (Despite my protestations, no meal is considered complete at her house unless there is meat or fish involved.) I ate leftovers for lunch today and they were just as good.

Here is a similar recipe, with pictures that are much better than any I would have taken, if I had had my camera, which I didn't, because the Mister has it, because he's in Bulgaria and promised me some photos.

Now the trick will be to see if I can replicate the deliciousness in my own kitchen.

Before that, though, I have another experiment to perform. Every time I go to the market, I've been trying to come home with one unfamiliar item--usually a vegetable I've never cooked before. Saturday, I spotted a lumpy green round thing that looked sort of like celery root or fennel but wasn't. It had shiny green skin like the stalk of a broccoli, and small stalks coming out of the top. I asked the market lady what it was, and she said it was a cross between a cabbage (col) and a radish (rave). Intrigued, I brought it home and consulted my trusty How to Cook Everything Vegetarian (Mark Bittman). Sure enough, his description of kohlrabi fit the bill. I should have figured it out in the first place, from the Catalan, col-rave : kohl-rabi (from the German, for cabbage-turnip).

I found some suggestions here for what to do with kohlrabi, but I'm not sure which direction to go...

Florid

The gargantuan bouquet of flowers the Mister brought home for me on Saturday was almost too big; it was hard to take it all in. So when the flowers started getting a little droopy and the water needed to be changed, I decided to spread them all around the house, a bit of brightness in every room.

There are gerbera daisies on my desk...


Blue irises in the bedroom...


Roses in the living room...


Lilies on the dining room table...


And on the coffee table, a, um... a lily-winged flying cow.

Off key

There was a time in my life when I didn't have any keys. I had sold my car: no car keys. I had moved out of the House of Love: no front door keys. I had left campus: no office keys or mailroom keys. I was living at my parents' house, and they never lock their door (it's Vermont, after all), so I didn't need keys while I was there. In those few months between moving away from Indiana and getting married, I felt a bit unmoored.

Because keys are like little metal dog tags; they tell you who you are and where you belong. I guess they're a sign of possessions, as well, and not having them might be freeing. But they also do what their shape promises. They unlock, they allow access, they permit you to enter the familiar interiors of your life.

I saw keys in a different way, however, when I watched a beautiful documentary about a young Bulgarian woman working as a cleaning lady in Amsterdam. The camera follows her through her lonely days in empty rooms, communicating with upper-class Dutch families mostly through notes, as she straightens and sweeps and vacuums and scrubs. Speaking to the camera, she says she thinks she is losing herself. She feels like a ghost.

But she also takes pictures. Self portraits of herself in the cleaning closet or the bathtub, surrounded by household cleaners. Empty rooms with rumpled sheets. They could be out of an interior design magazine, but because of the point of view threaded through the whole of the collection, they present a diametrically different message.

To the back of the photograph she pastes the words from those notes, repetitive in their obligatory "how are you" and their demands to sweep the back stairs, wipe out the cabinet, change the laundry, a never-ending to-do list. She hangs these photographs and the notes inside a paper cut-out house, and on the floor of the house, she places her large collection of front door keys, all pointing upwards, a menacing carpet of jagged metal.

For her, the keys mean alienation, entrapment; they are a barrier and a burden. She is permitted to enter everywhere but is denied anything that make a home a home. Far from her family, working illegally, she is stalled and alone. Remarkably, though, she seems genuinely optimistic and her smile is always at the ready.

The woman's name is Hristina Tasheva, and the documentary is called The Houses of Hristina (see the trailer here). You can see many of her photographs here (click on the collection "A better life" for the ones shown in the movie).

By following the story of one woman, listening strictly to her voice, the documentary presents a beautiful meditation on domesticity, immigration, interiority, gender, social class, and art.

I'll never think of keys in the same way again.

Loverly day

I get why some people don't like Valentine's Day, and I agree that it's an over-hyped, commercialized holiday. But it doesn't have to be, and I think it's a great idea to take time to celebrate all of our loved ones, not just our gooshy, swoony, romantic sweethearts, but also our there-for-you friendships, our fierce-hugs and belly-laughs family, the spinning-in-circles nephews and nieces, and our gone-but-deeply-missed grandparents.

If you fall into any of those categories for me: I send my love from Barcelona! I wish I could bake you all a chocolate cake.

As for the gooshy, swoony part, the Mister and I had a fabulous meal last night at this place, and then chocolates and strawberry champagne and candles at home. I woke up this morning to a big bouquet of beautiful flowers.

We decided to celebrate yesterday, since today we'll be at the hospital--actually, the Mister was there (and helping out at his parents' house) all day yesterday, and I was there Thursday--and we were supposed to go hiking with a friend who had an unexpected wisdom tooth removal, so no hiking after all.

But that brings me back to my point, I guess: what better way to spend Valentine's day than being there for family, the ones we love? Actions speak louder than words, but words are pretty darn good, too: Happy Valentine's Day!

Drive on

I haven't written in a few days because of good things and bad things. There was my mom's visit, which was fun and relaxed. It rained almost the entire time, which was bad timing, because that's not what it usually does around here, but we still had a good time and ate yummy food and had fun shopping and chatting and just hanging out.

Then last weekend my father-in-law fell off the roof while he was doing some spring cleaning, and it was very scary for everyone while we waited to hear what the doctors have to say. He will be in the hospital for a few weeks, totally immobilized, while the cracked bones in his pelvis heal, and then the recovery at home will be another couple of months. It will be hard for him to be still for so long, and hard for my mother-in-law in terms of juggling her work and his care and so forth. We'll of course help as much as we can; while he's recovering at home I may take my laptop and work from their house so I can be available to lend a hand.

This unexpected turn of events prompted the Mister and I to think about certain Big Picture things, which brought us around to the rather mundane topic of driver's licenses and cars and if we should get one and if so when. Right now I'm perfectly happy--more than happy, really--to be living without a car. Not only are we saving money by not having the expense of car payments, insurance, gas, maintenance, and parking, but we are doing the environment a good turn by relying on public transportation (and taxis in a pinch). I love that we CAN get everywhere we need to go with the metro, a train, or a bus. And we can always rent a car if we want to take a short weekend trip.

The reason this came up in relation to M's dad is that we do, however, tend to rely on him and his car every once in a while for, say, transporting big items like furniture, and he also did a lot of ushering of M's grandmother back and forth from her apartment (around the corner from us) to their house outside of the city. And that's something we can't pick up the slack on, although it would make sense because we ARE around the corner, because we don't have a car. And even if we could use M's dad's now-unused car, there's the pesky detail of neither of us having a license. (!)

You see, the Mister, who has lived in public-transport-friendly Europe all his life, has just never gotten his, and when I started investigating how to have my American license converted into a Spanish license I learned some pretty depressing things.

First of all, there's no "conversion" process. I have to get my license again, from scratch, just like when I was seventeen and ran a red light during my driving test. (You might imagine that I have no desire to go through THAT again.)

This would not be a problem if getting a license was like in the States--relatively cheap, easy, and painless--because after thirteen years of driving experience I am now unlikely to run a red light during my exam.

But it is not cheap, easy, and painless. It is expensive, hard, and painful.

Here in Spain, the AVERAGE (and now I'm going to get all-caps squealy because I'm outraged) cost of getting a license is 936 euros. NINE HUNDRED THIRTY SIX. That is ALMOST A THOUSAND EUROS, people. You have to pay ridiculous amounts of money to the "autoescuela" to teach you how to get through the ABSURDLY difficult written exam (which you pay also ridiculous amounts of money to take), which asks HORRIBLE questions DESIGNED to trip you up (I read some samples), and then do practice hours with an instructor in a car with dual gearshifts and brakes and then take the exam in one of those same cars. In other words, your hands are TIED because you have to pay the schools for the use of the stupid double-sided car, but they won't let you use their stupid car for the exam unless you sign up with them for a huge sign-up fee and spend a minimum amount of hours in the classes. Oh, and if you fail either exam within three tries (total, for both exams) you have to pay--surprise!--ridiculous amounts of money to take them again.

It's as if the autoescuelas and the department of motor vehicles are in CAHOOTS because they both earn OODLES of money from the whole setup. Harrumph.

You'd think that at least, with such a rigorous examination system, Spain would have good driving safety record. On the contrary. It is, with Portugal, the EU country with the highest highway mortality rates.

So you can understand why the Mister, with all of his traveling and living abroad, has never gotten his license. And you can understand why I am despairing of getting mine.

After learning all of this depressing information, I looked into getting my license in Belgium, because any EU driver's license is valid in all other EU countries. Belgium has an examination system much more like the US--a provisional driver's permit after the written exam, and then a driving exam in your own car, without requiring classes. They even allow you to "convert" your American license, but only within the first six months of living there. Oops. So I may eventually try to find a way to use someone's car for the test? Or buy a car there, when and if we decide to buy one? But then I may not have a legit Belgian ID anymore? Doing it in French would be extremely daunting, to say the least, but it beats boring hours of classes and the nightmare of getting a Spanish license.

I'm hoping a magic fairy will come and tell me something I failed to discover in my research, such as that there's a Vermont-Spain secret treaty and that Spain will recognize my Vermont license and will just stick a little A-OK stamp on it.

Sigh. At least I had lunch in the sun today, soaking up every little particle of warm oozy light that I could.

Chandelierward

Last night the Mister flew in from Brussels bearing a big pile of books I had left there, most of them poetry. Isn't it fun to be reunited with books? Like seeing old friends again.

In honor of my mom's visit, I've chosen a Wislawa Szymborska poem about music (mom is a musician) from out of that stack. It's one that has long impressed me as much for the inventiveness of Szymborska's conception as for the virtuosic translation by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak. I wish I could read the original to get more of a sense of the work they've done, but it comes through quite brilliantly anyway.


**
Coloratura

Poised beneath a twig-wigged tree,
she spills her sparkling vocal powder:
slippery sound slivers, silvery
like spider's spittle, only louder.

Oh yes, she Cares (with a high C)
for Fellow Humans (you and me);
for us she'll twitter nothing bitter;
she'll knit her fitter, sweeter glitter;
her vocal chords mince words for us
and crumble croutons, with crisp crunch
(lunch for her little lambs to munch)
into a cream-filled demitasse.

But hark! It's dark! Oh doom too soon!
She's threatened by the black bassoon!
It's hoarse and coarse, it's grim and gruff,
it calls her dainty voice's bluff -
Basso Profondo, end this terror,
do-re-mi mene tekel et cetera!

You want to silence her, abduct her
to our chilly life behind the scenes?
To our Siberian steppes of stopped-up sinuses,
frogs in all throats, eternal hems and haws,
where we, poor souls, gape soundlessly
like fish? And this is what you wish?

Oh nay! Oh nay! Though doom be nigh,
she'll keep her chin and pitch up high!
Her fate is hanging by a hair
of voice so thin it sounds like air,
but that's enough for her to take
a breath and soar, without a break,

chandelierward; and while she's there,
her vox humana crystal-clears
the whole world up. And we're all ears.

**

Have a wonderful weekend. I know I will!

Dregs

The end of January is a tough part of the year. Christmas is over, the shiny newness of those resolutions has worn off, and it's still winter. I find myself:

Eating a lot of cheese.
Spending too much time asleep.
Battling the dreaded dry skin of winter.
Unmotivated to work.

Fortunately, there are some things that help:

My mom is coming to visit!
The sun is bright and the sky is blue, bearing a hint of promise for an early Spanish spring.
Warm tea and simple soups.
Actually getting the hang of some of those aerobics spins.
Nephews' smiles and laughter.
Good swinging jazz.
Dogged perseverance.

Hah! There are more things on the second list than on the first--take that, winter!

(PS: Happy birthday, sis!)

I heart google (or, why the internet is awesome)

I was hired to translate some poems recently (hurrah! paid to do something I do for fun!), and as I was working, I noticed that I had the following pages open as tabs in my web browser:

1. Google mail, from which I opened the text of the poem
2. Google docs, where I was translating the poem
3. Google search (actually constituting several of the tabs), where I sought out some obscure vocabulary about rocks (the subject of the poem) and an Auden poem to which this poem makes a reference
4. Google books, where I found a Glossary of Geology that was invaluable for finding synonyms for, say, "pebble"
5. Google reader, where I was NOT at the moment actually reading blogs, many of which are about language and translation
6. Google image search, where I WAS, out of curiosity, trying to get a glimpse of the face of the poet I'm translating

If you had caught me at another time, I may also have been perusing Google analytics to check out my blog's site statistics, or Google maps to quickly find that street where we have to meet for rehearsal.

Thrown into the mix were a couple of Wikipedia pages on marble and other stones, three of my trustiest online Catalan dictionaries, and the online OED, accessed through my university library.

All of which leads me to think: Google is taking over the world! (And I probably couldn't live without it.) Also, in the days before the web, translators must have been surrounded by towering piles of dictionaries and other reference books, and must have spent ages in the library looking through, say, the 779 pages of the Glossary of Geology or whatever other specialized vocabulary the text at hand called for. Now, it's all boiled down to a few virtual tabs on a flat color screen. It's dizzying, isn't it?

There but not there

I called my husband and dad on skype yesterday, eager to hear how the inauguration had gone... And it turns out, they didn't even make it inside! They stood in line starting at 8 am, and the line simply didn't move. There were no signs, no authorities, a sea of bodies as far as they could see, and the crush of people made it impossible to go anywhere. Other ticket holders started to protest, it was a chaotic scene, evidently, people clambering over walls, even some arrests after a while, and although they did everything as they were supposed to, they, along with hundreds of other people holding tickets, never got through the gates into the Mall. How disappointing! I'm glad I wasn't along, because I would have been just devastated. My husband, much more able to take these things in stride, was laughing about it already. He flew thousands of miles to attend the biggest event in recent history, only to stand in the cold for a few hours, unable to see or hear any of it! He was interviewed by a reporter and is already in the news, if that's perhaps some consolation. Sigh. He'll just have to watch the inauguration on the internet, like the rest of us poor overseas saps.

O happy day

Last night, well past midnight, saw me swaying onstage with a crowd of all the evening's performers as the credits rolled, singing "O Happy Day."

I thought it was an auspicious beginning to what is surely a great day in history. Today, Barack Obama will become our president.

During Christmas vacation, the Mister was finishing up an article, and our little nephew came up to ask him to play. M. told him that he just had a few more sentences to write, and then he would come down.

The three-year-old stood there for a moment, and then solemnly said, "Barack Obama is our president."

So when I say today that Barack Obama is our president, it is the little guy's innocent voice I hear, and I think this perfectly fitting. His voice is the voice of the country's future.

Another reason today is a happy day is that this is my 300th blog post! I can't think of a better day to write it, a better reason to celebrate.

Barack's Books

"With the right words everything could change," wrote Barack Obama. An article in today's New York Times describes the books that our new president has read and has loved, and how they influenced him. These include Melville, Marilynne Robinson, Emerson, Shakespeare, the Bible, Reinhold Niebuhr, Toni Morrison, Derek Wolcott, Doris Lessing, Ellison, and of course, Lincoln.

Words do change things. Words have shaped Barack Obama, and in turn, his words have already changed things. I can't wait to see what else will be transformed.

Parlez-moi d'amour

The Mister kissed me goodbye this morning during the pitch-black of the wee hours. He is flying to Washington to attend the inauguration! My dad managed to get a pair of tickets and so they're off on an adventure, my two main men, of battling crowds and traffic and cold to participate in this historic event. I'm a little bit jealous, but then again if I had really wanted to tag along I could have (I'm also a little bit nervous).

Instead, I get to appear on Catalan television Monday night. Wearing a red clown nose.

Our choir will be singing at the Catalan cinema awards show (like the Oscars but... quick, name any Catalan movie!). The noses are part of an elaborate gag that involves a besotted clown, a French love song, and the presenter. There's choreography involved, so this afternoon you will find me at the TV studios practicing a nonchalant walk in my ill-fitting choir garb (I have to borrow from someone else since mine isn't ready yet) and furiously memorizing the French lyrics.

Aside from that, my weekend sans the Mister will be all about work. Me and my laptop are going to have so much fun!

to learn, so much

Here's a favorite poem, by a favorite writer, C.D. Wright. The first line sticks with me, and I find myself saying it, and chuckling over it, from time to time and for no apparent reason. Imperfections and messiness are inevitable in relationships, from the fruit with fire blight and socks that get dingy and don't match, but still there is the river, the wind, the thunder...

Everything Good between Men and Women

has been written in mud and butter
and barbecue sauce. The walls and
the floors used to be gorgeous.
The socks off-white and a near match.
The quince with fire blight
but we get two pints of jelly
in the end. Long walks strengthen
the back. You with a fever blister
and myself with a sty. Eyes
have we and we are forever prey
to each other’s teeth. The torrents
go over us. Thunder has not harmed
anyone we know. The river coursing
through us is dirty and deep. The left
hand protects the rhythm. Watch
your head. No fires should be
unattended. Especially when wind. Each
receives a free swiss army knife.
The first few tongues are clearly
preparatory. The impression
made by yours I carry to my grave. It is
just so sad so creepy so beautiful.
Bless it. We have so little time
to learn, so much... The river
courses dirty and deep. Cover the lettuce.
Call it a night. O soul. Flow on. Instead.

A dilemma

So I did this class at the gym today called 30-30-30, which is supposed to be thirty minutes of cardio, thirty minutes of strength, and thirty minutes of abdominals. Except it's an hour-long class. Which, um, yeah. Maybe math isn't their strong suit.

However. This is a good thing for me because I think if I had to do a half hour of stomach crunches I would die. The 40-10-10 formula we ended up doing was just about perfect. Although I got totally lost in the dancing/aerobic portion, especially on the spins, when I kept turning in the opposite direction of everyone else and nearly running into the more coordinated members of the class, I felt proud of myself for really holding my own in the strength portion. Maybe all the swimming has actually done some good. Who knew?

But that's not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about glasses. Since I'm new at this, I'm trying to watch the teacher like a hawk. But I leave my glasses at home, so that's out of the question. I find myself squinting at her, trying to see which leg is going where, and combined with the fact that it's hard to decipher the Spanish over the thumping music, I have several strikes against me. This happens even in a totally silent room, during yoga class, because the lights are dimmed and the instructor is a native Portuguese speaker so his Spanish comes out lovely and soothing but very hard to interpret.

What do other, non-contact wearing people do? I don't see anyone else wearing glasses, nor do I think it would be advisable (they'd either fly off during a spin or get crunched by the floor or my kneecap during a yoga position). And I can see more or less OK. It's not like I'm running into walls.

I should probably put myself in the front of the room. But that would mean I'd be more visible to other people, other people who, take my word for it, actually know what they're doing.

Is there a solution I'm not thinking of?

Piles of pretty clothes

I went to get my hair cut this morning, and when the stylist offered me a fashion magazine to read, I said, "Nah. It just makes me want to buy stuff." And I realized this statement was true only as it was coming out of my mouth.

Because I have a pile of clothes sitting on my dresser right now that I can't fit into my drawers, and I'm embarrassed to want more, to see pretty, nice, soft things and want to own them. When I already have more than I can even properly put away.

This overflow has a lot to do with Christmas presents, and post-Christmas sales both in Vermont and Barcelona, and also with the facts that winter clothes are bulky and that I don't have an actual closet.

Still. I'm sure it used to be that one had, for example, some winter pajamas and some summer pajamas. They were mended as necessary and replaced only when truly worn out. But now, I have the flannel pajamas that I wear when it's really cold, the new stripey Christmas pajamas, the broken-in pajama pants from college, the sort of sexy pajamas, the lightweight men's style pajamas, not to mention the yoga pants and t-shirts I often sleep in...and so on and so forth. And that's just the winter pjs.

I could make a similar list for sweaters, or pants. When buying, I justify purchases: "But that one's different from that other one! Those black pants are slightly more dressy than these! This gray sweater is much thicker than that gray sweater!"

I have to think: do I really need all of these clothes? No. Do I wear all of these clothes? Mostly. Could I function happily with fewer clothes? Yes. I know I don't own a lot compared to many others in the well-off western world, but I also know that I DO own a lot--embarrassingly too much--compared to many many others.

Anyway, I'm not a compulsive shopper or a fashionista (by any means!), and most of the year goes by without excessive purchases, and I usually wear my clothes until they're practically falling apart. I guess the point is that if I stay out of the stores (especially during the sales! which appeal to my frugal side!), I don't start convincing myself that I really need something. And keeping my nose out of magazines--even on the rare occasion that I might look through them--is one more step towards not longing for things.

Signed and stamped

I think we can say my appointment today was a success, if it is a success to have received a signed and stamped piece of paper that says to bring another slew of documents (most of them repetitions of the papers I brought today) to another office in an entirely different part of the city some fifteen days hence, at which point they will issue the card, which I will be able to pick up a month from then at yet another office. Mostly, I was impressed that I only had to wait about twenty minutes, which from past experience is a short time indeed.

One step further down the yellow brick road....

Off to see the wizard

Today is a big day. I am going to the estrangeria office to submit my petition for Spanish residency. I first asked for this appointment way back in September, and it has taken me four long months just to get assigned a day and time to hand in my papers.

Nobody can see the Great Oz! Not nobody, not nohow!

So I am obsessively checking over my paperwork, because if I know anything about bureaucracy in Spain, it's that whatever official I confront today will be more than gleeful to send me scuttling out the door because some date stamp is in the wrong spot or too recent or too old or I have two copies instead of three of whatever document they ask me for.

The wizard says "go away."

I'm bringing along about TEN copies of everything, and all the originals, and blank versions of the form in case I made a mistake, and stuff they didn't even ask for, just to be sure.

Bring me the broomstick of the wicked witch of the west.

I'm planning on arriving really ahead of time so I don't miss the appointment because I couldn't find the place. It's at an absurdly specific time, 13.35, and the instructions I was sent clearly state that you can't cancel or reschedule: if you miss it, you miss it, and then you have to start all over again ("SUCKAH!" is written in invisible ink just below those instructions.)

I am the great and powerful Oz.

All the same, I'm trying to prepare myself for the fact that SOMEthing will be wrong with my application, because there's always something. Our libro de familia took TWO years of bringing them different versions of documents. (The classic example: they didn't approve of my birth certificate because, get this, the only date on there was 1978! Why, yes, that's the year I was born! They wanted "a more recent date" on it. So I had to order a new copy of my birth certificate to satisfy a Spanish notion of continuous, needless government stamps of approval.)

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

On being a better hostess

We have had house guests for a few days, which is always fun. And it has been a bit of a letting-go process for me, because I have lately come to realize something about myself: I have a bit of a problem when it comes to visitors. I want everyone who comes to Barcelona to love it as much as I do, and furthermore, to have a sense of its history and understand something of Catalan culture. (I don't have high expectations or anything.)

This presents a difficulty because I used to experience a vague dissatisfaction when visitors would (most naturally) compare Barcelona to City X, their personal favorite or current residence. Or when I couldn't transmit a whole history lesson in one walking tour of the city. Or when a guest would rather skip something that I considered absolutely essential, or sleep until noon and miss seeing that museum with the amazing paintings/architecture/history/view.

The first step in solving the problem is (as ever) recognizing it, and although that took a while, it finally dawned on me that it's not up to me to control other people's experience of this city. Everyone has different rhythms, different travel styles, and totally different interests when it comes to sightseeing. It's not about me. No one else is going to have the same exact vision and experience of this place. My job is just to provide friends and family with a home away from home, a jumping-off point for city ventures (or not).

(All of this should be obvious, but I'm a little slow when it comes to these things, tending to believe what my control issues/type A proclivities tell me: i.e., that I am right and everyone should see things just as I do.)

So this time around, I've been as laid-back as possible about advice-giving and tourism suggestions, and not stressed about whether our visitors have seen this city in its best light, or discovered the "right" back streets. The Mister and I explained, as we always do, a bit about the Catalan language and culture, but only to the extent that our guests asked about it.

From there, it's up to them to make their own discoveries. And besides, as I tell them (and myself), they'll have to save something for the next visit!

The Sunday paper

On most weekends, I buy the International Herald Tribune from one of the news kiosks. I always look forward to the ritual of a paper newspaper (now there's a retronym to brighten your Monday morning) with coffee. After I've read all the articles, the crossword puzzle awaits.

However, I have a major gripe with the Herald Tribune, weekend edition. Why are there always several pages dedicated to art auctions, luxury watches, or jewelry collecting? A few weeks ago, there was a whole insert all about the world of fancy watches, in which appeared a reference to a "low-end," 850-euro watch. I won't even mention where the numbers went on the high end.

Does the HT media conglomerate assume that its international readers are all ultra-rich types who regularly buy art and fine jewelry? That's the conclusion I must draw. But I wish they would reduce this sort of article to a once-monthly appearance, at the most. These articles eat up a good chunk of my already too-thin newspaper, and the way the world is going these days, there are plenty of other options to replace cashmere-clouds journalism.

That is all. Gripe over.

At once a voice

Thomas Hardy's New Year's elegy, "The Darkling Thrush" (dated December 31, 1900, the last night of the nineteenth century) can be misread as a "ray of hope" kind of poem, and often is, if I may take my high school experience as representative.

On the contrary, I now (ever since an Oxford trimester during which I read every single one of Hardy's 900-some-odd poems, a depressing undertaking if there ever was one) understand it as a very bleak indictment of the past and a less than hopeful vision of the future. If there is hope, Hardy says, I can't see it. In this view, the trilling of the little bird is naïve, a kind of whistling into the void.

Given my mood right now, I'm not surprised that it's the poem that came to mind. But don't take Hardy's perspective as an accurate indication of what I anticipate for this coming year.

I side with the bird.

***

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

This new year

Today is January 7. Tomorrow the children of Spain return to school. The Kings have come and gone, leaving presents in their wake. If the children have been naughty this year (as most have), they also left coal--sometimes made of sugar, but sometimes the real thing. (Our niece, in a fit of contrariness, insisted that she wanted to eat lumps of real charcoal brisket out of the hefty bag that she so eagerly unwrapped.)

But there's no room for more sweets anyway. Everyone's bellies are stuffed with turró (nougat and custard bars eaten throughout the holiday season) and polvoró (soft, crumbly round sweets) and tortell (the marzipan-filled and fruit-topped ring cake hiding a fava bean and a king figure, eaten on Epiphany), not to mention the stews and soups and meat and fish of the traditional neverending meals.

Barcelona has hit a cold spell, and we even saw snowfall last night. We ran out into the street and tried to catch clumps of the big, wet flakes. There was no driving to be attempted, since a little bit of snow snarls everything. So I spent one more night at my in-laws'. The Mister, meanwhile, was already on a plane to Brussels.

Which, I suppose, means that the holidays really are over. We had such a lovely week in Vermont. It was so hard to say goodbye to everyone again, especially the littlest. No sooner had we landed in Barcelona than it was time to ring in the new year, which once again we did at the Mister's grandmother's. This year, though, our nieces spent the night at our house, which was a fun treat for us and them. Then a big all-family meal on New Year's Day. Then a busy couple of days of shopping and wrapping presents and visiting with dear friends, and then Kings', which is like Christmas all over again. But it had to end sometime.

Today I trundled big bags of new goodies up to our cold apartment, and am now trying to warm it via space heaters. I am still wearing my coat, however, and making good use of my new fingerless gloves with clever mitten flaps, a gift from my sister-in-law. They come in handy for typing when one's hands are blocks of ice.

I feel a bit melancholy, as I always do after the bustle and cheer of the holidays. I feel daunted by the weight of what I want to accomplish this year, the changes I hope to see--from the very small to the impossibly huge--and the lurking fear of not being up to the challenge. Last night I had a hard time falling asleep, thinking of all the things that I want to do, all of the ways that I want to be better, all of wishes I have for our future. My project this evening will be to write them all down, little to big, practical to fanciful, and try to express some of the bigger ones in clear goals and prayers that can be my focus during this year, 2009.

Wow. 2009.

The Magi

Rooting around in my parents' basement, I came across my collection of beloved childhood picture books. I've kept these books with me for many years, usually displayed on the top of a bookcase on their own--necessitated by their size, but also because they are lovely to look at. But when I moved to Europe they stayed, with most of my books, in their boxes in the Vermont basement. It makes me sad to see them languishing here.

One of my favorites is a 1982 edition of O. Henri's The Gift of the Magi, illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger. It's an odd, long size, all the better to fit Zwerger's swooping portraits of Della's hair and Jim's lanky slouch. My parents gave it to me when I was four years old.

Rereading it today, on Christmas Eve--the day the story takes place and thus, the perfect day to read it--I was struck by a few things. Of course I loved the story as a romantic little girl, but now I notice just how this tidily symmetric story is full of the symbolic accoutrements of gender (her glorious hair, his imposing watch), and language like this: "a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat."

But the nugget of the story is a sweet and simple Christmas message: the joy of gift-giving and the beauty of sacrifice for love. Both Jim and Della sell their most beloved possession in order to buy a luxurious gift for the other, gifts that were to have accentuated those now-gone treasures. In the end it is the giving that is important, for their real treasures are one another.

The story ends, "But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi."

Merry Christmas Eve!

And... home

The first--more lengthy--portion of our journey yesterday was a dream. Somehow there were no lines in Barcelona, and we were upgraded to Business class for the long-haul flight. An early Christmas present!

In New York, we got through customs and security with only a minor snafu--the confiscation of our Spanish sausages (as a vegetarian, I never realized that no one would let me take cured meats through US borders...), and with plenty of time to spare until our connection.

That connection, however, was delayed for two hours, and those two hours of waiting took place in an exasperating scrum of travelers whose flights were also delayed, with announcements barely audible and patience wearing thin. All told, however, a smooth flight, no lost bags, and the result at the end was a perfectly snow-covered Vermont, a roaring fire under a long string of stockings, homemade cookies, a tree overflowing with familiar ornaments and shiny gifts, and warm family embraces. What could be better?

Perhaps... the arrival, this morning, of heart-burstingly adorable nephews. To whom I am now going to go devote all of my auntly attentions.

Going home

Here in Barcelona, it's a sunny almost-60 degrees, while in snowy Vermont, thick flurries are blanketing the hills and it's a whopping 5 degrees (granted, it's still early morning there, so the day hasn't had time to, ahem, "warm" up to 18).

Normally, I'd take Barcelona, thank you very much, but four days before Christmas? Give me SNOW, baby! I'm relishing the thought of a snowy New England Christmas...

As long as it doesn't affect our travel! The storm should be mostly over by tomorrow, but I'm still worried that the cancellations and delays will overflow into tomorrow's traffic. At least we have a significant layover margin at JFK, and I'm mentally preparing myself for lines and crabby people and crowds.

In the meantime, we're packing bags and wrapping presents, and planning to carry on as much as they'll allow, to minimize the trauma of lost baggage (i.e., lost presents, like my family's epic experience with Iberia two Christmases ago, which resulted in the loss of all their luggage and all their presents until several days after Christmas and the day before their departure).

Here's to safe and smooth travel for everyone on the road and in the air heading home to be with their families!

Musical magic

We had our first Christmas concert yesterday, up in the hills of the Garrotxa, in a town perched on the edge of a magnificent volcanic basalt cliff. Today we have our second one, this time here in Barcelona, and it will include all the groups of children's choirs associated with our "parent" choir. It will be the kind of thing where little girls tug at their tights and little boys pick their noses while they sing angelic Christmas carols, all the proud parents snap pictures, and everyone oohs and ahs and feels lots of Christmas spirit.

The rehearsal yesterday morning, kids piled everywhere and spilling onto the floor, reminded me intensely of the annual all-school Christmas chapel at the private school I attended from kindergarten through ninth grade. It was the only chapel of the year where all age groups were gathered in the big high school gym, all the choirs sang, and each class recited a portion of the Luke chapter 2 Christmas story, everyone dressed up in their holiday best.

I vividly remember a musical epiphany I experienced at one of these Christmas chapels. As a wee girl, cross-legged on the gymnasium floor (the bigger kids got to sit on the bleachers), I puzzled over what made the high school concert choir sound so beautiful, that thing in all the music they sang making me ache somewhere inside. I wanted to be one of those big kids someday, and I wanted to be able to create those sounds. I knew there was something different in their music, something more then the simple melodies that we sang. And suddenly (in the same way that "suddenly a great company of the heavenly host" appear in the shepherds' sky), I "saw" how two lines of melody were happening at the same time, or three, or four. Even though they were all singing the same words, they were singing different sounds.

I heard harmony, and understood it, and was thunderstruck.

That awe hasn't ever quite left me. Every time I sing in a choir, I still feel wrapped up in the magic of voices in harmony. It's why I like to sit next to the tenors or the sopranos, why I get a kind of concert high, why music moves me. Because so much more than those two or four or eight lines is created when they are brought together.

I hope some little girl who sings melodies today will have the same sudden understanding, will unravel the the sonorous threads that create harmony, as if opening a beribboned box on Christmas day.

A little list

Things making me happy today (placed in alphabetical order after I wrote them down and noticed irresistible alliteration):

Bircher muesli, prepared last night and delicious for breakfast
Christmas lights glowing in our windows
Clementines, the sweet-tart ones
Lunch with the Mister, because when he's in town, the office is so close he can come home for lunch
My new desk chair, 100% more comfortable, and spinny
Packing for the holidays!
Poinsettias and our advent candle
Winter sunshine tinged with pink
Werther's originals, smooth toffee yum
Work accomplished, words written
Wool socks, keeping my feet toasty
Wrapping paper to wrap things in

Shop hopping

It's a pity that Christmas "spirit" is largely accumulated through the ritual of shopping, crazed buying, urgent purchasing. But there are some elements of Christmas shopping that I really enjoy: the lights, the window displays, the decorations, the wrapping paper and ribbons.

So far this year most of my shopping has been stress-free and online (thanks to timely Christmas lists from my family), but yesterday I ventured downtown to see if I could finish off my USA purchases--but not without deciding, first, that I would try to concentrate solely on independent shops and boutiques instead of the big department stores (even if I did stop to admire the huge lighting display on the facade of El Corte Inglés!), and second, that I would try not to feel any pressure to buy gifts. If I don't find something I like, no biggy. We'll figure it out.

The first goal was more easily accomplished. In the end, I did feel urgency, an urgency tinged by a desire to buy something in one of these local stores instead of, say, at the airport or on Christmas Eve. And it is a more time-consuming and frustrating way to shop: you're never sure what you'll find or where.

But I had a fantastic time wandering around the little shops of the Barri Gótic, especially Carrer Avinyó and the back streets of the Born. I saw a ton of bright, fun, Barcelona-style handmade or locally made clothes, lots of great little crafts and designy items, and a good selection of books, second-hand/vintage jewelry, and funky art. I ate my favorite falafel, bought coffee beans and spices at Casa Gispert, tucked away on the stone flank of Santa Maria del Mar (while drooling over their foodie gift baskets), considered some great vintage furniture at Gotham (we still need a coffee table!), found some bird ornaments too adorable to pass by at the gift shop of the Textile Museum, and at last, bought my Christmas gifts, nicely wrapped up by two French girls.

All the stores here do gift-wrapping as a matter of course, which I find very charming, but it always presents me with a dilemma. I love wrapping gifts myself--in fact I carried wrapping paper from Brussels to Barcelona for that purpose--but variety is nice too, and some of the stores do a lovely job. To find out, though, if the job will be lovely or crummy, they need to wrap it first... and then I feel bad undoing an already-wrapped gift! Plus, it's hard to show the Mister what the gifts we're giving look like ahead of time.

Anyway, now that these Christmas gifts are (almost) done--still a few details to be gathered once in the US--there remains another round of presents, for the Mister's family for Kings on January 6! The fun never ends...

Autopsychography

Less than ten days to Christmas. I wish I were in Vermont already! I have to make it to Monday before that happens, and a slew of rehearsals and Christmas concerts, which at least will make the time fly and sound like Christmas along the way (albeit a Catalan one; think lots of "fum, fum, fum").

In the meantime, I have been newly amused by the fantastic multiple poetic personalities of the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa. He created no less than four fully-fledged authors of varying ages and backgrounds, with distinct literary styles and obsessions, each with his own history, publishing under their names as well as his own. It's so deliciously postmodern, but all of it was written in the early twentieth century (he died in 1935). I bought my copy of the selected poems at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco this summer, which was thrilling enough in itself.

Anyway, I came across this little poem, one of his most famous, called "Autopsychography." It's a nice little set of three quatrains about the relationship between artifice and artistry, fiction and feeling, logic and emotion.

Here it is in Portuguese:

O poeta é um fingidor.
Finge tão completamente
Que chega a fingir que é dor
A dor que deveras sente.

E os que lêem o que escreve
Na dor lida sentem bem,
Não as duas que ele teve,
Mas só a que els eles não têm.

E assim nas calhas de roda
Gira, a entreter a razão
Esse comboio de corda
Que se chama o coração.

Here it is in the Honig-Brown translation. I like the use of the word "faker" to translate "fingidor," but I'm missing the tight abab rhyme of the original, which I think heightens the sense of "craft" in this poem that is all about "craftiness." It also contains one of my poetic pet peeves, which is overuse of the -ing verb/gerund ending.

The poet is a faker. He
Fakes it so completely,
He even fakes he's suffering
The pain he's really feeling.

And they who read his writing
Fully feel while reading
Not that pain of his that's double,
But theirs, completely fictional.

So on its tracks goes round and round,
To entertain the reason,
That wound-up little train
We call the heart of man.

Since the translators, in their footnotes, invite the reader to try her hand at translating this poem, I took them up on the offer. Now, obviously I don't speak Portuguese, but armed with the translation above, a Portuguese dictionary, and my familiarity with Catalan, Spanish, Italian and French, I decided to give it a go. It amused me for a while, anyway! I'm still not completely satisfied, especially with the second stanza--what translation is ever finished?--but here it goes:

The poet is a con man,
His make-believe so real
That even pain becomes a sham
When it's what he really feels.

Those who read the words he feigns
will feel truly as they read
not the poet's two-faced pain
but their own, though it mislead.

Thus on wheels, around and around
--all to amuse the reason--darts
that tiny train so tightly wound,
a toy they call the human heart.

Away and back again

So, remember that idea of mine where I was going to continue to write every day for the month of December, just like I (almost) did for the month of November?

Ha! So do I. Unfortunately, it remains in the realm of idea rather than fact, because I have rather spectacularly--although not on purpose--abandoned that plan.

First there was last weekend, which as weekends will, ended up being rather stuffed full of going-out-and-about activities. Then we spent the week in Brussels, and I discovered that four days (more like two and a half, once travel on Monday evening and Thursday morning is factored in) was way too little time to have lunch OR dinner OR coffee OR a beer with every person I haven't seen in three months, AND buy secret santa presents for the Mister's work Christmas party, AND clean the neglected apartment (the Mister is hardly ever there any more, and it shows...) AND pack my bags full of the winter clothes and books I would need in Brussels.

The advantage of having to buy the secret santa presents was that I got to roam the city and peruse most of my favorite shops, but the disadvantage was actually having to buy them. Every year they refuse to set a price guideline, and every year that leaves us in a pickle. Everything seems either too inexpensive or too expensive for the gift exchange.

In addition to the above, I did see a bit of snow, which was cheery and Christmasy, and I did enjoy the brisk temperatures and the Christmas festival and the Grand Place full of a beautiful light-and-sound display.

Things I neglected: the blog, and remembering to bring any Christmas decorations back down South. So when this afternoon the Mister and I finally were able to "put up the Christmas decorations," I found myself peering into an empty box much more quickly than I would have wished. We have two lovely wool stockings from the Mister's mother store, now hung by the [dining room buffet] with care, a few ornaments hanging off of doorknobs and houseplants, an advent candle, a little creche scene, and a poinsettia, but that's about it. We searched high and low for the lights we thought we had somewhere, but no luck.

Ah well. Listen to enough Messiah and Bing Crosby, and Christmas is conjured out of thin air.

Bicing

I don't have a bike.

I used to wish I had a bike.

But now I don't need a bike! Because I have Bicing.

Bicing is--well, might as well get this out of the way first--stupidly named in a wrongheaded attempt to Anglicize a word by adding an -ing ending. See: Vueling (low cost airline) and "footing" for jogging. The French love to do this as well.

But aside from the name, it's really darn cool. You sign up for an account for just 24 euros for a year, and then you get a card which allows you to take a bike from any of the many stands around the city. You hold the card up to the little screen, it tells you to take bike no. X, and you go take the newly unlocked bike. You can ride around for a half hour for free (in which time you can get almost anywhere), and then it's a WHOPPING 30 cents per half hour after that, up to two hours. To return the bike, you just drop it into any slot. If there aren't any bikes to pick up or the stand is full when you want to return the bike, the screen tells you where to go (I've never had to walk more than five minutes to find another bike; and you can also locate the available bikes before leaving the house). Granted, I'm not a heavy user, and don't frequent what I imagine are the most in-demand bike stands, but I've never had a problem.

The downside is that some of Barcelona's streets are spectacularly bad for bike riding. Yesterday I got stuck going the wrong way on a long stretch of one-way road with a skinny little sidewalk, and got yelled at by a pedestrian.

Another downside is that everybody rides without helmets, and I'm kind of a scaredy cat when it comes to bikes, so I don't like the idea of riding on the busy streets.

But when you know where to go--the wide boulevards that have special bike paths right in the middle of them--the going is good. Today I took a bike from the stand around the corner from our apartment, and whizzed down the whole length of the Diagonal until I got to Passeig de Gràcia to meet the Mister. On days like this (don't hate me, but it was a sunny 65 today, and I didn't wear a coat) it's so much preferable to move through the city above ground instead of below ground (and I was sick of the metro, having forgotten the keys that I needed to get into the downtown apartment, which required an additional two rides).

Lately I've been using the metro to arrive at my destination, especially one in an unfamiliar part of the city, and then taking a bike back. I just start walking towards home, and at the first bike station I see, I grab a bike and continue on. I might get a little lost (like yesterday's misadventure), but I also get to know the city and its streets (which might come in handy someday if I actually have to drive around here).

I like Bicing for so many reasons, and have been really impressed with the city for this transportation initiative, because they've really done it right. The bikes are really sturdy and ride well, with easily adjustable seats and space for cargo in the front, and fitted with bells and lights. If there's any problem with the bike--the brakes aren't great, the seat won't adjust--it's super easy to swap it for another one. Almost every week I see a Bicing van towing a trailer full of new bikes, so I know they do a good job of replacing and refurbishing them.

It's also perfect for getting from a metro stop to a place further afield--somewhere not quite far enough to make switching metro lines several times worth it, but far enough to make walking a pain.

And everybody's into it! You can't walk five paces in this city without a red-and-white bike whizzing by. I might be riding one of them...

Aubergine

I have always loved the idea of eggplants--the glossy, deep purple skin, the pleasing shape, the heft of one in your hand. But I wasn't so much of a fan of them in practice, especially when they remain somewhat uncooked and you get that styrofoamy texture that I find so unpleasant. I had never been really successful in cooking them myself, not for lack of trying.

But caponata has changed my mind. I tried making it the other day, because I bought an eggplant (see above re: seduction of eggplant in the marketplace) and had all the other ingredients on hand (except vinegar, and the result when I substituted the brine from some good olives was so delicious that I will always make it that way). The Mister and I swooned over it. And I made it again today, even with a slightly unripe eggplant, and it still cooked down into this delicious soft yet sturdy concoction that I could eat it every day for a week. Now I am emboldened to learn how to make samfaina, which is a Catalan dish of eggplant and peppers that is very similar, also something between a sauce and a side dish.

It also made me think about the word eggplant, which is somewhat inelegant and prosaic, and how I prefer the British term aubergine, so rounded and soft sounding, like the vegetable itself. In fact, the word comes from the Catalan albergínia, via French, and the Catalans got the word from Arabic (go here to learn more about the word). It's a very mediterranean word for a very mediterranean vegetable.

Tintin

While living in Belgium, I enjoyed exploring the endless varieties of its greatest cultural exports, including chocolate, beer, frites, and gaufres--oh, and believe you me, I have the extra curvy hips to prove my anthropological thoroughness--but I had until not long ago been largely ignorant of another great Belgian phenomenon: the bande-dessinée. (Also known as BD, or, for those anglophones among us, the comic book.)

The crown jewels of Belgian BD are the beloved characters Tintin, the intrepid boy reporter, and Milou, his fluffy white sidekick. I was vaguely aware of these personages--living there it's not easy to remain completely in the dark--but had never read a Tintin comic, nor ever had much desire to do so. Having lived in Europe for some time and in various countries, I was also aware that Tintin was a pan-European figure, universally adored, and whose books are more or less required reading for all European children. Created by Georges Remi, aka Hergé, Tintin might be compared most closely to a comic-book version of Hardy Boys, especially because of his retro knickerbockers and crime-solving skills, but he and his clever dog sidekick invite comparisons to Timmy and Lassie, or Shaggy and Scooby-Doo, or Dorothy and Toto.

So for my birthday last May, when I was given a charming small-format version of episode number 7 in Tintin's adventures, "Le sceptre d'Ottokar," or Ottokar's scepter, I decided to take the plunge into the world of Belgian comic books. Tintin travels to Moldavia, an invented Eastern European country, where he of course saves the day from an attempted coup. I have since purchased "Tintin in America" as I was curious to see what happens to the poor guy when he gets mixed up with gangsters, and also to see exactly what myths of Americana would be pulled out of Hergé's hat.

It's a great way to practice my French (yes, back to picture-book stage, especially useful for learning action verbs!) and get on the cultural bandwagon so I'm not in the dark when it comes to European conversations. I will probably have to read and/or watch some Asterix and Obelix, as well.

During the summer I visited the Comic Book Museum, of which a portion is dedicated to the mythology and creation of Tintin, and the comic books are a fascinating look into the sociology and geopolitics of Europe (sort of in the same way that the bad guys in James Bond movies changed before and after the Cold War, Tintin's adventures around the world always have an implied political slant). Indeed, comic books are taken rather seriously by French scholars and are considered "le neuvième art," the ninth art. As wikipedia points out, "It is not insignificant that the French term contains no indication of subject matter, unlike the American terms "comics" and "funnies", which imply an art form not to be taken seriously."

Although there's a comic-book store every five paces in Brussels, I've never been attracted visually to the more dense and quite "adult" series that are most prevalent. Tintin suits me just fine; I like the bright colors and sturdy forms, the linear adventures that pause with a cliffhanger every couple of pages.

All of this is to say: on my (long) list of things to bring back with me from Brussels when I visit next week, another installment (or two) of those cute small-format Tintin books is at the top.

Gondoliers eating breakfast in flooded Venice

(I'm taking a break from words today.)

Daily in December

December 1. I can't believe it's already here. Christmas around the corner, all the great stuff about the season and all the stressful stuff too. I have a love-hate relationship with gift buying and gift wrapping, because the harried last-minute realities of it often don't mesh with my ideal of perfectly chosen, beautifully wrapped presents. Nothing beats, however, the fact that we'll be in Vermont for Christmas, for the first time in three years.

In preparation, I am looking forward to doing a little decorating. The Mister thought it was a bit early, but the street and department store decorations are glowing nightly and our neighbors across the way already have lights up, so I think we're justified in going for it. One slight hitch: our tree is in Brussels, and it's not like we can pack a person-sized fake fir in our suitcases, so I might just have to settle for enjoying it only during the three days I will be in Brussels next week. Half the fun is setting it up and decorating, anyway.

But there is no restraint on Christmas carols, now that Thanksgiving is over. I'll be learning a whole slew of Catalan and Spanish Christmas carols for our Christmas concert, and I will immediately start playing through my iTunes library of Christmas music. First in the lineup: Empire Brass playing Angels We Have Heard on High, then Bing Crosby singing Silent Night.

After the almost-achieved thirty-day blog posting challenge, I thought I'd try to keep up the blogging momentum and post every day that I can in December. Looking for ways to get myself going, I hit upon the idea of answering the daily questions up at Carrie and Danielle. Today's question asks what gifts I am looking forward to giving this year.

Like every year, I look forward to giving stocking stuffers. It might seem silly, but it's a fun tradition that we started when I was in high school, I think: each of us buys one stocking stuffer for everybody else. That way we have stockings full of fun little gifts, without our parents being responsible for finding and buying all the tchotchkes for what has expanded from seven to fourteen people! I also like it because I am generally fond of pint-sized objects, so whether it's the small-format books I gave last year or tiny kitchen implements or ornaments or what-have-you, stocking stuffers are a joy both to give and to receive.

Thirty days

Twenty-nine days of faithful daily posting, and I blew it at the last minute! This has been a busy weekend, busy in the good sense. Still, I feel kind of bummed that I missed posting yesterday (and right under the wire today).

Friday night the Thanksgiving dinner was fantastic, even if I do say so myself. The turkey was SO scrumptious, and cooked in an hour flat (!) due to this ridiculous convection oven, and everybody loved the meal. (And yes, I ate the turkey. Am eating the turkey, present tense, since leftovers have featured heavily in this weekend's diet.) My only complaint was that some items made it to the table a little lukewarm rather than piping hot. For cooks with much more experience than me, how on earth do you keep everything hot?

Saturday I woke up very late for a choir recording session--my alarm hadn't gone off--and hopped into my clothes and then into a taxi. I spent the morning in recording sessions (which is kind of fun and kind of exhausting), joined the Mister at our friends' house for lunch (which, being where we are, lasted until 7 pm) and then we went home and bought plane tickets for Christmas--a stressful but ultimately successful endeavor. And then we watched a movie. So I don't have much of a good excuse for not posting.

Except---I think thanksgiving leftovers, cuddling with the Mister, and watching a movie is good enough excuse. I'm thankful for that.

Day after

It's funny to do Thanksgiving the day after Thanksgiving. I woke up with mixed emotions, related to a dream of a vacation gone awry--fun time, missed plane--that I'm sure in turn is related to the holiday that is not a holiday. Yesterday is was Thanksgiving over there, but not here, and today it is Thanksgiving because I'm making Thanksgiving dinner but otherwise isn't. Does this make any sense at all?

Anyway, dinner is in T-minus-three-hours, and while I'm loving the wafts of stuffing and I think my squash turned out great and the rolls are delicious (we had some for lunch), I still have yet to face The Turkey. I'm a bit nervous about that whole process--the trussing, the basting, the gravy-making. The Mister is out buying wine, so hopefully when he gets back he'll help me wrestle the butterball and get it into the oven.

I made some pretty leaf-wrapped candle holders, and the table looks nice and festive, so I'm hoping this will overall serve as an especially nice First Thanksgiving for all of my in-laws.

A recipe for Ashley

Cran-Apple-Pear Relish

3 cups unsweetened cranberries (1 bag)
2 apples, peeled, cored and diced
2 pears, peeled, cored, and diced
1/2 cup orange juice
1 tsp freshly grated orange peel
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup water

Combine all ingredients in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil. Then lower the heat, and simmer, uncovered, stirring often, until the relish has thickened and the fruit is soft (about 30 minutes). Remove from the heat and cool. Cover and chill completely in the refrigerator. Serve cold or at room temperature.

(Hope it's not too late, and Happy Thanksgiving!)

Happy Thanksgiving!

There is so much to be thankful for. But I will keep the list relatively short, since I have fennel roasting in the oven and pies that need to be made.

I'm thankful... for my husband, who is cleaning the house from top to bottom and running supermarket errands like a champ, even though this holiday is not one written into his cultural DNA.

For my family, who are all gathered together and boisterous and smiling and take turns talking to us on skype, and my nephews who are too scrumptious for us to be this far away from them.

For my husband's family, who are willing to try new traditions, and who always try to make me feel home in this strange city.

For this strange city, the streets and corners and places I've come to know and the ones I've yet to discover.

For this house full of warm smells and music and tasty food. For God's goodness. For love.

To market

Not to buy a fat pig, although tomorrow I will go to pick up my turkey, marking the first time ever that I will purchase a whole bird. Even before I started eating vegetarian, I never really bought much meat or poultry. And that period of my life lasted for just a few months, so even though I feel like a pretty experienced cook in some respects, I'm floundering when it comes to the Bird. I can't find a roasting rack in the stores, and I don't have the right pan. Internet consensus seems to indicate that I can place the turkey on top of root vegetables in lieu of the rack, but the dilemma of the pan remains. I'm not sure if I can just place it on the slightly-deeper-than-baking-sheet-depth pan that comes with the oven. Or will the juices overflow it?

Anyway, today is market day for all the fruits and vegetables. The Mister returned from Brussels yesterday, his coat pockets stuffed with bags of cranberries (can't find them here), which he bought for me at the last minute before dashing towards the airport. (His suitcase was also stuffed with many of my baking implements that were still in Brussels, including a rolling pin, potato masher, spices, and immersion blender. The security guys probably did a double-take on that screen shot!) So I can make my mom's cran-apple-pear relish today. Last night I made pie crusts, dough for the rolls, and spiced mixed nuts for pre-dinner nibbles. (It's internet recipes all the way this year, since most of my cookbooks are still in Brussels.) I also want to bake the squash, and roll and par-bake the pie crusts. I'm still up in the air about which green side dish to prepare. Beans? Brussels sprouts? Broccoli? Salad? It might come down to what looks the best today at market.

So I better get going. The excursion always takes a little while, especially because the ladies love to chat, and I spend ages wandering around the stalls and staring at all the fish and produce and olives and nuts and other goodies before I make up my mind where to make my purchases.

Although I might just wait a few minutes: Copland is on the radio right now, Appalachian Spring, and I want to hear it through to the end. Simple Gifts is such a perfect melody. Somehow just right for this American girl on this pre-Thanksgiving day.

Today I'm thankful for simple gifts: the colors and smells and shapes of fresh fruits and vegetables, and the colors and sounds and shapes of great music.

Street magic

I walked out the door last night on my way to choir, and suddenly Barcelona was glittered up for Christmas. Bones festes in swoopy white lights hangs over our street, and trees are lined with soft blue.

And as I headed down into the metro, a square piece of paper on the sidewalk at my feet caught my eye. It caught my eye...because it looked familiar. The handwriting looked familiar: it was mine.

I know there is a logical explanation here--I threw that little scrap away last week after jotting down some translation notes, and it must have fluttered out of the bag when we brought down the recycling, then fluttered along the sidewalk towards the metro.

But discovering my own words on the ground, muddied and splotched and stepped on, but still mine... seemed kind of magical, fitting with the sudden transformation of the street into one lit by Christmas glow.

I'm thankful for Christmas lights and the feeling of magic.

Fixed

So, we have our phone back. They sent us a replacement power cord for the router, which I was highly skeptical about. It was identical to the old (new) power cord, and anyway, lack of power was never the problem (flashing lights were on, and internet worked, just not the phone). Yet, after plugging the power cord in and while waiting for the router to initialize, the Mister picked up the phone and wiggled the phone cord.

And the phone turned on. Now, it seems that the wiggling is what did the trick, but I wiggled it and uplugged it and plugged it in again a million times when the problem first occurred, with no result. So, did the (seemingly pointless) new router power cord have an effect? Or am I a doofus and the phone cord just needed a better wiggle than I ever gave it?

As the Mister said, somewhat solemnly and dramatically: We'll never know.

Anyway, today I am thankful for renewed contact with the outside world... via old-fashioned phone lines, that is.

Catalan word of the day: blocaire

I have been puzzled for some time over the correct way to write "blog" in Catalan. I have seen it with equal frequency as "blog" and as "bloc." At first I thought the latter was just a misspelling of blog, the -c and -g ending sounding similar in Catalan, and because the word "bloc" can mean notepad, which makes sense in the context of a journal-like web page. But it seems the Gran diccionari de la llengua catalana gives preference to the latter, because under the entry for "bloc" the webpage definition appears, while "blog" isn't listed at all. I haven't been able to find either of them in any other dictionary.

So "bloc" it is, although the word might always look funny to my eyes. I was even more surprised to find that a derivative appears as well: "blocaire," which is a blogger. Upon further investigation, I see that the Catalan wikipedia page also mentions bloguistes, blogaires and bloguers as possible translations of "bloggers."

But I'll stick with blocaire. I like it because I have a soft spot for the catalan -aire ending, which tacked on to a noun, is likely to refer to a person who engages in an activity related to that thing, but somehow less...highbrow and more old-fashioned sounding (the more standard -er, -or, and -ant endings work like the English -er: baker (forner), banker (banquer), etc.). Street or outdoor jobs are often given -aire ending. Some examples:

cant, song > cantaire, singer (vs. cantant, a professional singer; in choir they refer to us as cantaires, but our voice teachers are cantants)
drap, rag > drapaire, rag-and-bone man, junk dealer (vs. draper, which means dry goods seller)
escombra, broom > escombraire, street sweeper (vs. escombrador, sweeper)
fira, fair > firataire, someone who keeps a stall at a fair
cigró, chickpea > cigronaire, chickpea seller
cinta, ribbon > cintaire, ribbon maker or seller
bolet, mushroom > boletaire, mushroom hunter (there is a popular program on Catalan TV called "Boletaires," which is a reality show about mushroom hunters [yes, television is pretty exciting stuff 'round here])
ou, egg > ouataire, egg dealer (I buy my eggs at the market from an ouataire)

I like how the -aire ending sounds, sort of an ah-ee-r-uh sound (like an English speaker might pronounce Aïda, the opera). It makes the word quite airy, if you will. And I like being in the company of people whose tasks are so clearly defined and hands-on. Sell chickpeas. Make ribbon. Hunt mushrooms. Write blog.

Vacation days

As one of America's major holidays draws near, I thought I'd post this little graphic I saw the other day. I'll let you come to your own conclusions.

What else? We went to see Burn After Reading. The Coen brothers are pretty genius, and Brad Pitt's character had me in fits of giggling even when no one else in the theater was laughing. I found all of acting in the movie quite stellar.

And I made this for dessert. I bought persimmons on impulse, so am cooking them for the first time in my life. My first attempt was a persimmon tabouleh salad, which I didn't care for too much. But persimmons soaked in rum and topped with coconut cream? Yes.

Sorry for the slacker post. 23 days in, I'm finding it hard to maintain the ganas for daily writing... and thought I'd take a semi-break before this week, which will be food-focused I'm sure, as I prepare for turkey day!

Floor to ceiling

We spent the day cleaning out the rental apartment, post-obras, which was more of a task than I thought it was going to be. The walls are freshly painted and the lovely wooden beams and new electric installation shine above, but below, months of dust and paint splatters and plaster and sticky stuff are congealed onto every surface. The refrigerator was a smelly mess (the workers left it unplugged and closed). We carted out bags and bags of trash, cleaned all the dishes and all the furniture, bemoaning the horrible treatment it received at the hands of the workers (for starters, they left all our chairs and pieces from our antique bedroom set, the one with gorgeous inlaid wood and marble tops, sitting outside over a very rainy weekend) and brought more antiques back to this apartment (which is, believe me, the last thing we need). We installed new kitchen drawers, rearranged furniture, and made many trips up and down the six flights of stairs. Ugh.

I never will understand the system of numbering floors here. That apartment is technically a fourth-floor apartment, but since there is an "entresol" and "principal" before even getting to the first floor, the flights of stairs really add up. Same thing goes for our apartment here; second floor by name, it's really four floors' worth of stairs. In both apartments, all the building's neighbors have agreed to pay for and put in elevators (a verrry expensive proposition, especially when it's times two), but given the pace things move around here, we won't be riding our elevator until we've already schlepped years' worth of groceries and possibly infants and strollers and whatnot up and down these dadgum stairs.

Now we are dusty and sore in the lower back. The Mister's allergies have kicked into high gear in from all that dust. The rest of our Saturday night is, I have a feeling, going to be spent sprawled out on the sofa with a newspaper and possibly a movie. We like to live large.

Today I am thankful about the apartments. As much of a headache as owning is, we were very lucky to have stumbled into two amazing fixer-uppers, giving us a lovely place to live as well as a welcome stream of rental income.

Odds and ends

Today November sun slants through the window onto the bookshelf. It's a little chilly in the house.

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I am researching how to roast a turkey in a convection oven. It's confusing. I don't have a roasting pan and am wondering if I need to buy one. I probably need to buy a thermometer so I don't get everyone sick with an undercooked bird.

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My voice teacher told me my voice is "too angelic." She says I'm hiding my real sound behind a church choir warble. She made me sound like a lady with blue hair. So my task this week in practicing is to let out a deep, belly-mellifluous "hey!", like someone I don't know just patted my rear end, before every warm-up scale. I wonder what the neighbors think.

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The Mister's saint day present was: framing. We've had some things sitting around for a long time now that we wanted to get framed. One is a big 1950s Spanish poster of the United States, published by the State Department, and found in a chest of drawers made by the Mister's great-grandfather. Serendipitous. We love it. Each state has little pictures of its major exports or vacation spots, so it's full of great tiny details, like the kneesocks-clad Vermont hiker, or the one carrying sap buckets right next to the words "arabe de arce" (maple syrup), or the Iowa guy hoeing a cornfield over the words "maiz gigante" (giant corn). I'll take a picture as soon as we take the final step and get it actually hung on the walls.

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The other poster was purchased from Tiny Showcase (you can see it here). I am so ridiculously tickled by this print: it's a "guide to fifty nine fields." It's a field guide! Get it?! Plus, I love the colors and the shapes, how it looks like an alphabet or something from a distance, and the captions for each field, like "beside the ghost houses," "eight makes the chorus," "forgotten things," "summer swallows learning," "wherewithal"... I could go on; they're all awesome. It makes me look at fields differently when I fly, studying their odd shapes and sizes from above.

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We are not having many bites for the ad we put up to rent the other apartment, now that it's fixed up again. This is worrisome, because it's been empty for two months now. Subtract rental income and add expensive renovation fees--not ideal. It's always gone like hotcakes before, and now it should be even better, due to brand-new wiring, newly exposed beams, and a complete paint job. Maybe it's the wrong season; I guess not many people are looking for an apartment in Barcelona in December. Anyway, if you have found your way here and are in need of an apartment in Barcelona (2 br, long-term, i.e., not vacation rental), leave a comment.

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I have just three words for you: Pumpkin. Bread. Pudding. Go make this. I made it because I needed to use up some leftover pumpkin I was afraid would go bad, thinking I would freeze the dessert for a later date. Um, nope. I singlehandedly ate a good third of it yesterday, it was that delicious. And quite ridiculously easy. I left out the Bourbon, but it would probably be an awesome addition.

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That is all.

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Except for this: I am thankful for pumpkin bread pudding, and November sun, and books and breath.

Saint Robin

Everyone here in Spain gets to have a dia del sant, or Saint Day, the day on which their namesake saint is celebrated. By extension, somehow, the person bearing that name is also celebrated, complete with presents from the family, so that you have sort of a second birthday. It's really amazing how everyone walks around with a holy days calendar in their head. People who know your name--neighbors, shopkeepers, relatives--will call you on the phone or call out their felicitats! as you pass, because while they might not know your birthday, your name corresponds to the saint, so it's a built in reminder. Anyone who regularly attends mass is given, on the full parroquial (parochial newsletter), a list of that week's saint days. Even those who don't go to church know the saint days of most common names, since they probably have a Josep/Josefina, Pau/Paula, a Maria or Pere or Anna or Marc in their family.

We celebrated the Mister's saint day this month with his family, complete with presents. In fact, I'm curled up in one of them now, a cozy fleece blanket. One of my failings as a partner is that thus far I have never remembered his saint day until it is nearly upon us, and even then the importance of it somehow escapes me, so that I fail to get a gift. Not this year, though! I knew just what to get him--because he, um, told me what he wanted--but... it's not ready yet. Still at the shop. Hey, at least I got him a gift!

Then there's me. As far as I knew, there was no Saint Robin. But the Mister and I were talking about names, and we did a little digging on the internet, and found a bizarrely-named page in French ("Call Back Me It" for a birthday and saint day reminder service? sounds like some Babelfish translation at work), which says that Saint Robin's day is April 30! I have a day! Too bad it's only 9 days before my birthday. Would have been nice to spread it out a bit. But wait! Another page, this one in Spanish, says that it's September 17! Much better. I can't for the life of me find any info on who "Saint Robin" was, or if they're just making this up, but I'll take it. Presents? Sign me up!

One tidbit I did manage to find is a poem by Sir Edmund William Gosse about "Saint Robin." Even if this is just poetic fancy, I'll be happy to think of the "saint of flowers" who has birds for a choir and a nimbus of daffodils on his head. (Which would, come to think of it, put the logical date for celebration closer to April 30 than September 17...)

With a Copy of Herrick

Fresh with all airs of woodland brooks
And scents of showers,
Take to your haunt of holy books
This saint of flowers.

When meadows burn with budding May,
And heaven is blue,
Before his shrine our prayers we say,--
Saint Robin true.

Love crowned with thorns is on his staff,--
Thorns of sweet briar;
His benediction is a laugh,
Birds are his choir.

His sacred robe of white and red
Unction distils;
He hath a nimbus round his head
Of daffodils.

Around the bend

Being in England got me in the Christmas spirit already--the brisk cold, and so many cozy shops smelling of cinnamon and selling rustic wooden ornaments and berry wreaths--but we haven't even had Thanksgiving yet!

I'm sad to be missing my family's celebrations this year. My sister is hosting for the first time and oh how I wish I could be there to hang with everyone, especially the adorable nephews, who are all three at various stages that make you want to monch on them. The oldest showed me a paper plate turkey that he made yesterday, complete with feathers. Which he then proceeded to pull off and pile on top of his head, with the most winningly sweet smile you ever did see.

But I too will be making a Thanksgiving dinner (a day later), to introduce the Mister's family to this concept. I already know they will find certain things strange: mixing all of the dishes on the same plate! sweet foods next to savory foods! sweet-sour cranberries! pumpkin pie! But I'm hoping they'll like it nonetheless. We don't have enough chairs for everybody, and we'll have to use those antique plates that came with the house and that are kind of small, but we'll make it work. By the way, I love how Thanksgiving is translated here: acció de gràcies, or "action of thanks," which is so lovably literal.

I have an appointment with the Mister's grandmother to go down to the Boqueria and order a gall d'indi ("Indian rooster," i.e, turkey), which I plan to make even if I don't eat it myself. Maybe I will. We'll see. The last time I was involved in preparing a turkey without my mother around was with my housemates in Oxford. The seven of us put on a Thanksgiving meal for some British friends, and I only vaguely remember how it all came together, although I do remember the good feeling after everybody ate and we were all splayed out on the couches.

And I'm still mulling over the menu, unsure of how much I can prepare ahead of time and how it will all come together logistically in my wee kitchen, and how much to make (it'll be in the evening, so I don't want to overdo it), but in any case I know it will be strictly traditional. For one's first Thanksgiving, one should eat: turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, cranberry, squash or sweet potatoes, green beans, rolls, and pumpkin pie with whipped cream. Right? It's just a question of which recipes to use, where to get the ingredients (the Mister may have to bring me cranberries from Brussels), and how to bring it all together. I'm smacking my lips already.

Today I'm thankful for the coming holidays, for food and family on two sides of the ocean.