Battle hymns

A couple of weeks ago, I auditioned for an excellent choral ensemble here in Barcelona. I always get shaky and nervous during auditions, but fortunately they accepted me, and I am thrilled to be singing once again! I'm looking forward to getting to know a repertoire of Catalan music--my first full concert will be a Catalan sarsuela (zarzuela, in Spanish). One of the conditions of membership is that every singer take voice lessons biweekly, so I will also be returning to individual vocal study for the first time since college.

Last night we had the privilege of singing at the breathtaking Palau de la Música Catalana (click on "Guided Tours" and then "Virtual Tour" for a series of nice videos of the interior and exterior, or "Palau" for its history).


We were squished up in those red velvet seats flanking the organ in order to sing the Catalan national anthem, Els Segadors, at the end of an evening of musical and verbal tributes to Lluís Xirinacs. A long stream of public figures paid honor to Xirinacs' dedication to nonviolence and Catalan independence. Maria del Mar Bonet, a well-loved folk singer whose 1970s Catalan protest songs galvanized a generation, performed, along with many other Catalan musicians. The tenor of the evening, although filled with chants of "A Free Catalonia" and fists pumping in the air, was largely peaceful, given the example of Xirinacs himself.

However. When at last it came time to sing the Catalan anthem (which I had been frantically memorizing over the weekend), it struck me again how violent it is, and how ironic this violence given last night's context. The music itself sounds even more "militant" than the meaning of the words might indicate. People these days don't (usually) sing it in a spirit of violence, but the overall message is violent, and the lyrics were written about the Reapers' War of the 17th century. Like the American national anthem, which also commemorates a battle (from the War of 1812), this anthem links nationhood to a celebration of violent defiance. They are battle hymns.

I won't say much more about this except to lament it. I've long wished the American national anthem were something easier to sing and something a shade less bellicose. National identity, as represented by a song, should ideally be peaceful and pluralist. The Spanish national anthem is wordless, and perhaps this is the best way to go. However, recently a contest was held to add words to the anthem, resulting in some major controversy. For starters, the lyrics begin with "Viva España," inevitably reminding Spaniards (and Catalans, and Basques) of the dictatorship, when those very words represented the often violent oppression of "unacceptable" identities.

This falling

Autumn in Barcelona was bound to be different than in Burlington, or Bloomington, or Brussels. In fact, it is a combination of them all, with the addition of the saturated sun that drenches seaside towns. Although I dearly miss the vivid colors of Vermont and southern Indiana, there are still crunchy leaves and cool nights, that smell in the air of changing weather. We went up into the hills a couple of weekends ago for a friend's wedding, and we shivered in our party dresses (I secretly enjoyed it). And since September and October have been quite rainy, there are hints of the cool gray skies of Brussels.

During the day I can still wear sandals, although in looking around I've noticed that pretty much no one else wears them any more (except for the tourists): it seems that a change of seasons requires a change in wardrobe and footwear, whether or not the temperature is balmy. I always take my jacket with me now, the bright green one that makes me happy. I hope that one of these weekends we'll be able to get out of the city and wade through some fallen leaves.

My favorite autumn poem is Rilke's "Herbst." I may have posted it before, but it is worth savoring again. The "And yet" of the last stanza takes my breath every time.

This poem today is in honor of my grandfather, who is very ill. I pray that he is held "with infinite softness" in God's hands this fall.

Autumn
by Rainer Maria Rilke (tr. Edward Snow)

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far off,
as if in the heavens distant gardens had withered:
they fall with gestures that say “no.”

And in the night the heavy earth falls
from all the stars into loneliness.
We are falling. This hand is falling.
And look at the others: it is in them all.

And yet there is One who holds this falling
with infinite softness in his hands.

15 and 68

We now have internet! It is fast! And it follows me wherever I go in the house!

To mark the occasion, I have yet another summer story, written while internetless and waiting be wired so I could upload.

***

We spent a week in Amsterdam at the tail end of summer holidays so that the Mister could improve his Dutch. His workplace pays for a certain number of days of language instruction, anywhere in Europe, and besides paying for the class itself they provide a small stipend, which covered lodging (since we looked for the most reasonable B&B we could find) and a portion of our food costs each day. So basically, we figured, we had a subsidized vacation! Of course, he had four hours of intensive classes every day, which left him pretty brain-numb by the time we met up again in the afternoon. But I got to spend my mornings in museums, strolling through canal-lined streets, dodging bicycles, and sipping coffees.


For me, many of the highlights of the trip centered around the redeveloped area of the oosterdok, the thin spit of land off the edge of the city, out by the train station. The new city library there is wonderful, rivaling the great modern libraries of American cities like Seattle and San Francisco.

(Portions of the Oosterdok visible in the background.)

We also spent our last night in town in and around the oosterdok, with a meal at Jamie Oliver's restaurant,15, and a concert at the brand-new Musikgebow.

Slightly wary of the celebrity-chef-restaurant phenomenon, and having read some negative reviews of the 15 in London, I wasn't sure the dining experience would be a home run. But I think the principal idea is a great one, teaching disadvantaged kids (15 each year, thus the name) how to cook, serve, and run a top-notch restaurant. Plus, I like Jamie Oliver's style of cooking, at least as it comes through in the books: sturdy, unfussy, fresh flavors.

We had to eat early, because of the concert, so the vast industrial-style restaurant was nearly empty when we came in. The kids who greeted us and explained the menu seemed totally enthusiastic about both their jobs and the food they were serving, even if they tripped over some of the English terms. There is only one option on the menu, the fixed-price four-course meal (although we could choose from two options for two of the courses), and it was entirely Italian, at least on the night we were there.

The verdict? Home run. Nothing overly complicated or hard to figure out--I imagined I could even make some of the dishes myself, if I had time and the right ingredients, and the menu even printed the recipe of one of the simple sauces. But that didn't diminish just how delicious everything was. I was especially enamoured of my silver mullet with braised greens and oyster mushrooms. Silky and hearty at the same time, the dish was so satisfying that I was disappointed to have tucked it away so quickly. The young sommelier paired our courses with some slam-dunks as well. (Sorry about the overuse of sports metaphors. Don't know where that came from.) Altogether a perfect way to end our week in Amsterdam.

Yet, we still had a concert to attend! We licked up the last spoonfuls of white chocolate ice cream and plum tart, then rushed over to the concert hall and scooted into our seats just as the lights fell.


The musikgebow is a sight to behold, with its huge cantilevered overhang, vast glass walls with views of the sea, and several beautiful performance spaces. Earlier in the week, when we had gone to buy our tickets, we happened to catch the tail end of a free afternoon concert in one of the foyer areas. Everyone looked like they had enjoyed it, especially those who snagged the big turquoise pillows out front. A friendly white-haired lady gave us a free CD of the highlights of the last ten years of the summer music festival, of which both the afternoon and evening concerts formed part.

We hadn't understood much about the concert we chose to attend, except that it involved solo arias and names of composers who caught our eyes: Salieri, Czerny, Mozart. Sounded good, right?

The first singer, the mezzo, came out on stage with a big number 11 pinned to her dress. A voice from the darkness starts to ask her questions (in Dutch). Some sort of faux-audition? The audience chuckles. She introduces her song, In questa tomba oscura.

By the time the tenor, the soprano, the bass, and the alto again have come out with different numbers on their chests and sung different versions of the same text, after a short interview, we are able to piece together what's going on: the singers are answering as if they are the composers. There are 68 known settings of this Italian poem, and the concert's sctick is that each composer is "competing" for "best musical setting of In questa tomba oscura," or something like that. (Everything is in Dutch, so it's not that easy to follow.) We have a list in front of us of 68 composers' names, which correspond to the numbers pinned on the singers.

At the first intermission, we were happy to see that there were free drinks for the public. We strolled out to the deck with our wine and watched the light dwindle. But by the second intermission, we were wondering if they were really planning to perform ALL 68 songs? To squeeze them in, they even performed in the lobby during intermissions. Now matter how clever and funny the dialogues (to Dutch speakers, that is), no matter how lovely some of the arias, weren't they nuts to do them all? Seems that they were nuts. And I'm pretty sure the interview gimmick stopped being funny after thirty songs or so, judging by the much-dimished laughter. Three and a half hours in, half the audience had snuck out of the hall. We finally succumbed as well, although as a matter of pride we would normally never ditch a concert. I suppose the thing went on for four hours, but I was glad we didn't stick it out.

68 renditions of In questa tomba oscura is just a few too many for one night. Although in retrospect, the Italian food and the Italian arias made for a harmonious pairing.

(Unrelated shot of a rainbowy Schiphol airport.)

Canyon sunsets

I guess I had some more summer stories in me, after all... I wrote this the other day just after saying that I didn't. (Maybe I did it to prove myself wrong.) The post describes a couple of days in mid-August, after the family gatherings in Iowa and South Dakota.

****

After flying into Las Vegas and spending the night at my uncle's house, the Mister and I threw our suitcases and some borrowed camping equipment into the rental car. Said camping equipment consisted of: a pup tent, two sleeping bags, an air mattress, a flashlight, and a water bottle. (You might say we were betting on good weather and the availability of prepackaged foods.)

We drove merrily to the Grand Canyon, impressed along the way by the Hoover Dam and also slowed down by the traffic at the Hoover Dam. (Only a couple of hours into the nearly 2,500 miles of driving we did was the closest we came to an accident: a pickup behind me, annoyed at the slow pace up the curvy hill, beeping and swerving, decided to pass me on the right just as I decided to let him pass me by pulling off to the right, WITH blinker clearly blinking. Thankfully, with a last-second head-check I saw him zooming by and yanked us back into the lane. And THEN pulled off, to let my pulse get back to normal.)

Hours later, we entered the park and asked the ranger at the booth if there were campsites available. The look she gave us told us we were foolish to arrive at 7 pm during peak season at the GRAND Canyon, for Pete's sake, and expect a campsite, so our hopes were not high as we drove on to the campground. Yet, we were in luck. They still had a spot! Furthermore, in reading the handy park newspaper, we had discovered that sunset was at 7:33. I thought it would be fantastic if our first view of the canyon was during sunset, so campsite secured and tent hurredly set up, we drove as close as we could get, parked, and walked the trail to the edge of the void.

These were my thoughts as we hurried down the quickly-darkening path (it was already 7:45): Isn't it strange that I could drive so close to the edge with no visible sign of... anything? Here I am, walking in a pleasantly flat forest, only meters from one of the natural wonders of the world, and I just can't see it coming. It's not like a mountain, which you can see from miles away, and prepare for. It's a mountain in reverse, it's a gash in the earth, it's...sudden. A drop-off. Why is my heart beating so fast? I am nervous, as though I'm about to pet a wild animal. A very very huge wild animal.

There it was, only dimly visible as vast receding darknesses under the orange border of the dark northern rim. Ungraspable. The crowds of people around us, mostly teenagers, were already dispersing, because they had seen the sunset we had missed. We took a series of pictures in a futile attempt to get the canyon on film (the two days we spent there we were aware of the futility of our picture-taking yet constantly took pictures anyway), gazing at the last glows of sun.


And then we went and had pizza and beer at the dining hall. Among the things I was not prepared to find inside Grand Canyon National Park: a huge grocery store, Amy's organic frozen food, microbrews, pizza (especially not pizza with spinach and goat cheese), fresh baked goods, and delicious coffee.

We spent the next day hiking as much of the rim as we could, and taking many more pictures, because every spot seemed more photogenic than the last. We ate lunch on the trail and dinner at our very own campsite, and then strategically prepared for our second, and last, sunset at the grand canyon.


We wanted a spot that wouldn't be inundated with teenagers, a little more off the beaten track. It had to be nearby, of course, but not right off the Mather campground trail. We decided to drive out to Yaki point, near the second trailhead for descending into the canyon. When we got to the road, however, there was a problem: we couldn't turn onto it; only the shuttle could pass. So we had to drive down the road until we found parking, and then walk back to catch the shuttle. But the shuttle didn't have a stop at the intersection! And time was running out. Calculating hastily, we decided to walk the last stretch out to the point. Waylaid by a cute little deer that wasn't at all disturbed by our camera-snapping (none of those pictures turned out anyway), we ended up half-jogging to get there so we wouldn't miss the sunset again.

We found ourselves completely alone on an outcropping of rock, with spectacular views back over the length of the canyon. The sun descended as if just for us. After a while, a French couple appeared, so we traded photo-ops with them.

Finally, we made ourselves put the camera down, and put our arms around each other instead. Perched on the tiniest portion of the long winding edge of an immense stone basin, we soaked in the last rays of light and that heart-stopping sense of our own human smallness.

Gym

I mentioned the other day that I joined a gym. This for me is a big deal, since I have never actually been a member of a gym and have always thought of such a thing as something other people do, much in the same way I think of basketweaving or hang gliding. Doesn't one have to actually enjoy exercise to make joining a gym worthwhile?

You see, I have never been what you might call an athletic person. I never played organized sports as a kid, although all of my siblings did, and so I have an at least sketchy knowledge of basketball, baseball, soccer, and field hockey. Just enough to know when to cheer.

In college, I lived across the street from the brand-new athletic center for the three years I was on campus. A one-minute walk. Yet, I probably exercised there a total of...eight times? I was busy with other things, like my self-designed double major and minor, and being an RA, and singing in choir, and any of the other gazillion little groups and things I joined.

I didn't notice that I had gotten a wee bit chubby until after I suddenly wasn't, which happened after I left college and moved back home and started hanging out with a guy who--no joke--was an olympic triathlete. This is still amusing to me. Because I found myself climbing mountains, taking thirty-mile bike rides, swimming, and jogging regularly. That summer, I house/dogsat for family friends, and I took their dog for a run almost every day. And liked it!

Then I got a job in Austria, and didn't do anything but enjoy living in Austria. Sure, there were walks and bike rides, but nothing intentionally exercisy. (By this time I had met the Mister, and so was quite preoccupied with the bubbly hearts shooting out of my head all of the time.) So I was entirely out of the habit when I moved back to the US and into an apartment with four other women on Boston's north shore. Since exercising with a friend is always motivational, one of my housemates and I went to the gym in the basement of her work a few nights a week, as it was just around the corner. And free. Tacked on the wall was a lurid 80s poster of Schwarzenegger as body builder. His muscles glistened. It made me ill. At some point we took the poster down, an act of vandalism that I still think was entirely justified.

At around that time, three things happened. I became a vegetarian and learned how to cook, I applied to grad school, and I got offered a permanent job in Austria. I turned down the job because of grad school, but they offered me a three-month position anyway. Since Austria was thousands of miles closer to the Mister, and since I hadn't really ever found a proper job in Boston, I accepted. And I was back to the no-exercise-when-living-in-Europe plan, although I did stick to eating well.

Thus it was that when I arrived in Indiana, older and wiser than my undergraduate self, I was determined to at least take advantage of the free gym access on campus. I eventually joined a yoga class, and started swimming for exercise. My housemate and I would go to yoga and then come home and make fun of America's Next Top Model while we ate dinner and avoided reading literary theory.

In an ill-advised fit of athleticism, I also let myself be convinced to join an intramural basketball team, made up of women poets from the creative writing program. Only two of us had any inkling about how to play basketball. I was not one of them. We played against tall midwestern girls (superficially, I looked like them) who had just missed the cutoff for the school's Division-I team (their skills made mine look like dogfood). We lost every game we played that semester. By about fifty points.

And then? Then I moved to Brussels with my new husband, and it seemed that I was succumbing again to the Europe=not exercising equation. But after a while the diet of heavy-duty Belgian beer and things fried and/or covered in sauces, plus the cooking-for-two effect (I overestimate how much to cook, and we eat it anyway), took their toll. I was starting to look like a pillowy version of myself, and didn't like that much either. So I dragged myself a few meters down the road to the local art-deco pool, and did laps every once in a while. I always intended to join a yoga class, but never found one that was close by/reasonably priced/in English.

Which brings me to last week's major coup: the gym membership. I went to yoga for the first time in over two years, and boy have I got some loosening up to do. I also got on the elliptical machine for the first time since that basement gym with the Schwarzenegger poster. It brought back memories (which is why I find myself churning out this blog entry, I suppose). The pool, compared to the one in Brussels, where lanes were a theoretical suggestion and children were likely to launch themselves into the water on top of you, is heaven.

I had checked out a couple of options in our neighborhood: the semi-public mega-complex of glass up the road, and the private, dimmed-lights, warm white towel service place down the street. I was very surprised to discover that the fee for six months was the same for both, and the latter waived my sign-up fee and gave me the rest of September for free. And it comes with several guest passes a month, so the Mister can join me on weekends! And there's free wifi (which is why I am writing this post at the gym), and a restaurant, and a spa, much nicer facilities all around, and did I mention the towels! Plus classes that I am much more likely to go to. The first place didn't even offer yoga. Oooh, also there's a high-tech hand-scanner at the entrance. I am easily impressed.

I'm going to challenge myself to go every day, alternating classes and workouts. Things I have never done before in my life include any kind of aerobics class, dance class, or pilates, so I'm going to try all of the above. Meanwhile, just the step of joining a gym feels very empowering. I slung a white towel over my shoulder this morning and thought, maybe I am one of those people after all.

A visitor

I was watching TV the other night--Chuck in Catalan! (most of the time they choose pretty crappy shows to dub, but this is looking fun)--when an audacious little lizard crawled right across the tile floor. My first impulse, which surprised me even as I lunged, was to grab the little fellow by the tail and bring him outside. But he was too quick for me.

Immediately after that I got grossed out. What is a lizard doing in our house? Still--is this mistaken?--I have the idea that a lizard is a much preferable, much cleaner visitor than any number of bugs I can think of. In fact he may eat any bugs that might be around. I still recollect the utter horror of the cockroach infestation in our apartment in Brussels. I didn't cook for a month. Shudder.

Plus, I have a history of fascination with lizards and snakes. In seventh grade, I actually signed up for an extracurricular herpetology course with Mr. Witmer, who had snakes in cages in the back of the classroom. We took field trips to see other, fancier snakes, and memorized things about salamanders and lizards and frogs and snakes that I no longer remember.

So my questions are several. Did he just get lost and find himself indoors by accident? Will he eventually leave again? Does this mean there are more, or just him? I saw him again a few minutes later, heading for the open balcony door (but then couldn't find him again once he went behind some furniture). Was he leaving of his own accord?

Here's hoping he is a benign and temporary resident chez nous.

Sometimes life...

...bowls you over:

Last night I found out that my grandfather's pre-cancerous ailment has turned into full-blown leukemia. They're going to treat it aggressively, so we'll be praying that his body responds to the treatment, and for my grandparents' serenity in facing it.

And when I woke up, I saw a phone message that my brother and sister-in-law were at the hospital, working on delivering a brand new little baby boy.

Settling in

So I know that I was supposed to be writing subsequent blog entries about our trip this summer but several factors have conspired against me. First, we remain internetless. From time to time, at unpredictable moments of the day, I am able to pick up a neighbor's wifi signal. But this signal is likely to fizzle out after a few minutes and be maddeningly slow. We have signed up for high-speed service, but according to the guy at the store, there's some problem with the "central system" and our request hasn't yet been uploaded. Once that happens, it can take a month to actually be installed.

Second, I have been preoccupied with getting comfortably dug into life here in Barcelona. Summer, as a result, seems like a distant dream. I'm loving--LOVING--being here. As the fourth person in a row complemented me on my Catalan today, I realized how handy it is to actually speak the language of the place where you're trying to settle in. Being my shy self, I probably, if subconsciously, avoided taking as much advantage as I could have of being in Brussels, due to my fledgling French. And the Belgiums, even if I had spoken superb French, don't so much do the complement thing.

The one ongoing disagreement I have with a friend of ours, a Catalan girl, who we met in Brussels and who now lives in Barcelona, is over the relative merits of each city. She pines for Brussels and makes what I think are erroneous claims about how much nicer it is there. Isn't it self evident that sunny boulevards, tree-lined beaches, and tapas are much better than grey, grey, and more grey? For me, there's also the hands-down superiority of a seafood-based cuisine vs. a ham-hock based cuisine. We had a reunion of sorts with her and other friends in Brussels for the Beer Festival two weekends ago, and although it was great fun, and boy they make good beer, it wasn't enough to make me wish to move back there.

Sure, there are things that are difficult about living in Barcelona too. Red tape and general administrative unhelpfulness abound (see above re: internet), and I'm still getting the hang of how things work. We finally received our libro de familia--the official Spanish document confirming our marriage--over TWO YEARS after our wedding. And now I'll be jumping through all sorts of hoops about residency and health care here. But it feels like putting down roots, so it's worth it, even if it all happens poc a poc.

Plus, I love our neighborhood. Around the corner: the metro stop, the market for fresh fish and fruit and vegetables, the cinema with good movie selections, and a plaza where children swarm over the playground and old folks sit on benches. The demographic seems to be predominantly families with little kids and retirees. Down our street or one over: the video store, my new gym (I just joined yesterday!), my hair salon, the grocery store, the greatest little wine shop ever, and a number of other tiny shops that are perfect for odds and ends. If I need to do more serious shopping, there's a Corte Ingles (Spain's major department store) and a whole fancy mall a ten-minute walk north. Most of the time I don't have to go up there, though. A ten-minute walk south, there's the train station, which can take me to the suburbs, where the Mister's family lives, to the airport, or anywhere else I feel like going!

The Mister's 93-year-old grandmother lives a couple of blocks over, and not only does she invite us over for delectable lunches, and tell me exactly where to go for anything I need, she also explains the history of this neighborhood. Strolling through it with her is like a walking history lesson. Through her eyes, I see this barri when it used to be a town on the outskirts of Barcelona, smell the smell of the chocolate factory that used to be here, hear the tram that used to pass where the four-lane road is now, and see the view of the Tibidabo hill from the fields that used to border the buildings (now, if I lean off our front balcony, I can just see Tibidabo's church lit up at night). Through her eyes, I see how the ladies in their fancy dresses used to gather at the town center for dances. As a little girl, she grew up in the apartment where we live now, and tells us about how she shared our tiny bedroom with a whole bedful of siblings.

Speaking of the house, we're getting it in shape slowly but surely. Still missing are a washer/dryer, a coffee table, and various other odds and ends, and we have yet to put anything up on the walls, but we finally bought a couple of area rugs that I'm really happy with, and I'm enjoying working in the office. I've been doing a much better job of writing for solid stretches of time every day, despite running around to get life in order.

The Mister is in Brussels during the week, but I much prefer having him to myself on the weekend rather than on weekdays. Plus, he's usually able to fly in on Thursday and leave Monday, so that's a nice long stretch. So far, so good. We'll see if I'm still singing the same tune in a few months! In any case, unless the unexpected happens, this arrangement will just be for another year, and then our lives will be one big question mark. Question marks are scary, so for now I'll concentrate on getting settled in here!

Sublime

No one told me just how desolate, just how cliff-hugging, just how hairpin-curvy, or just how beautiful the Big Sur coast road is. I mean, I had read Robinson Jeffers and John Steinbeck, and I knew it was going to be full of sweeping views and water crashing onto craggy stone towers.

But as we drove through the country just north of San Simeon (before the real curves start), I thought: this is what they are talking about! How lovely! No wonder it's famous.

I was getting ahead of myself, because I had no idea what was yet to come.

And we were woefully unprepared. Having no reservation for a campground, we planned to stop "somewhere along the way." I had a quarter tank of gas, which I thought I would be able to replenish, also "somewhere along the way." And it was starting to get dark.

Thus it was that we found ourselves swerving around the tightest of curves, perched upon the highest of cliffs, face-first into the most deliriously blazing of sunsets. I could barely see the road, both because the intense flaming orange filled the windshield and because all I wanted to do was stare down the horizon: undulating cliffs and cascades of clouds falling golden into the sea. But I crept along and hugged the side of the mountain and, alternating with incoherent exclamations about beauty and telling the Mister to take pictures, nervously watched the gas needle plummet as we vainly searched for campground indications.



It occurred to me that this moment would qualify as Sublime, capital S, in the 18th-century, Burkean sense of the word, an experience (usually of the natural world, most particularly the Alps) in which terror and beauty simultaneously overwhelm the beholder. If John Dennis' conception of the sublime was an appreciation of utter beauty "mingled with Horrours, and sometimes almost with despair," well, our drive along the Big Sur coast road sure was sublime.

Because we were starting to despair when at last we reached the little outpost of the outside world called Gorda, and I was grateful--grateful!--to pay $6.25 per gallon of gas. I asked the guy where the next campground was, and he said laconically, "just a ways up the road." We had already stopped at a couple of places that were totally full, and I was past freaking out, already stoically resigning myself to driving those curves in the dark.



"A ways up the road" turned out to be, oh, three miles, but they felt like twenty. We rejoiced at the sight of a sign saying Plaskett Creek campground, but despaired once again when it became quite obvious that most of the first-come, first-served campsites were taken. At last, we spotted a tiny spur off to the side with a postage-stamp campsite, and in the almost pitch dark, we set up our tent. We had to make do with no running water and pit toilets, and for dinner we ate peanut butter sandwiches out the trunk of the car, but we counted ourselves lucky.

Sublime.

Snapshots

It's September. A whole summer of sunsets have gone by. I didn't write any of it down while it was happening, and now trying to find the thread of this blog is a daunting task. The trips we took--to the US for a month, to Amsterdam, to Italy--stand out as a series of images, so I'm going to try to capture just a few of them here over the next few days.

The gist of the summer was this: I flew to Boston, hung out with family there, drove for three days with my parents and siblings and nephews out to Iowa, spent five days in the town of my birth (the Mister arrived while we were all there), and then another five in Yankton, South Dakota for a family reunion. Then the Mister and I flew to Las Vegas and rented a car and spent two weeks exploring the parts of the country we have never seen: Grand Canyon and Zion National Parks, then Los Angeles and up through Santa Barbara, Big Sur, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, then over to Yosemite, Death Valley, and back to Vegas. We camped, stayed with family and friends, and resorted to hotels when we had to. It was the best trip ever. We flew back to Barcelona for just three days, then spent a week in Amsterdam while the Mister studied Dutch. After another week in Barcelona, we flew to Turin for three days, and well, that was two days ago and now I'm here in breezy Barcelona, wondering where the summer went.

Like I said, I'm not sure how to write it all down, so I'll just start snapshot by snapshot, sunset by sunset as it were. They were all so different, but all equally magnificent.

On the docket

Today's focus will be packing bags for my Tuesday departure to the US (since we'll be at the beach for the weekend, returning Monday). I should say "bag" because I'm aiming to cram a month's worth of stuff into one carry-on suitcase. And since our activities range from camping and hiking to city dining and wine tasting, in temperatures ranging from Death Valley Pickle to San Francisco Fickle, I imagine the task will be a bit tricky. I will count on layers, and on laundromats, to make it work. I'll choose the most lightweight things I own. The clunkiest things (tennis shoes, for camping/hiking, and jeans and a sweatshirt) I plan to wear on the plane. So here's hoping for the best!

Almost a year ago was the disastrous pre-trip where I discovered that our paid-for tickets did not exist. So another task today will be thorough confirmations of all plane tickets.

There are still a million details to figure out for the Las Vegas/Grand Canyon/California driving tour, but I figure I can do a little bit of that while I'm in Boston, and that we can also just go with the flow and find places to sleep on the fly. Is that a bad idea? It being high season and all?

Last but not least, tonight we're going to see a Madeleine Peyroux concert at the beautiful Palau de la Música Catalana. Yippee! M's birthday gift from his parents were concert tickets, and we got to choose which concert (limited by the fact that it had to be, um, today, the only day M. is in town before our trip and without prior commitments). Lucky for us, this concert is happening today, and lucky for me, the birthday boy is sharing his present with yours truly.

Reader

Last night a friend came over, a friend we haven't seen in months, and part of his news concerned a business venture/harebrained scheme that involves selling ebook readers to the European market. He wanted our two cents as to whether this is a good idea. In the US, the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle have made some waves, but here there are few to zero places to buy such devices, and publishers are correspondingly slow to format new books in European languages. Anyway, whatever he decides to do, the best part is that he had a Reader with him. And he left it with us for a couple of days to try out!

I will defend and champion the old fashioned, ink-and-paper book as long as I have breath, but I have to admit I jumped up and down like the geek that I am when the Reader come out of its box. I've been loosely following the news on these things but hadn't yet held one in my hands, much less used one to read a book.

So last night before falling asleep I curled up in bed with a Ken Follett e-ink novel (pre-loaded, it was pretty much my only option longer than a twenty-page excerpt) instead of my ink-ink James Baldwin novel. I am rather surprised about this, but I loved it (not the novel--blech, the experience)! "Turning" pages didn't involve anything more challenging than a slight pressure of my thumb, which in bed with a husband who is bound to bolt upright and look about him as if an intruder had just catapulted through the window when I make too much noise, is an advantage.

I'm enthusiastic about the e-ink, which really is easy to read and easy on the eyes, in bright light or in low light (although there is no internal light source, so in the dark, I still needed a lamp). The device is a pleasure to hold, weighty without being heavy, and is a perfect compact size; I could slip it in my purse and easily bring it on the metro or on the plane.

And for sure, what made me interested in the thing in the first place are the implications for travel. I routinely lug around piles of novels to read while I'm in the air and wherever I'm going. Imagine no more heavy knapsacks! Imagine being able to refer to books that I needed for research without bringing the book along! Hundreds of books in one!

Which brings me to the drawbacks. As a literary scholar, I see great potential for this thing but have a feeling the realization is going to be long in coming. The titles available are bound to be best-sellers and standard classics, with not much in between. Poetry? Literary theory? History? Literature in other languages? (Which is the challenge our friend is facing.) Plus, it would be absolutely essential to be able to mark and annotate pages for future reference. The Reader has a "bookmark" feature, but it only enables you to "dogear" a particular page, with no way to distinguish why you did so. If you want to refer to your bookmarks, you get a random (the top?) line of text for the page, which doesn't help if you were interested in something further along. And your only option for deleting bookmarks is all or nothing. Plus, unless they come up with some very good interactive indexes and tables of contents, reference books will be as good as useless.

The menu interface leaves a lot to be desired, and can sometimes be slow. Even turning pages is annoyingly slow; there's a sort of black and white "flash" each time you do it. You can look at pictures and book covers but they're very slow in loading and only in black and white. It plays music, and you can stick headphones into it to listen while you read (not a feature I'd use, I don't think, since I don't like music piped directly into my head while my head is immersed in the world of a book).

I understand the Kindle does have internet connectivity, and does include newspaper and magazine reading capability. For me that would be useful, since a reader like this is the perfect distance between a laptop (on which I normally read the paper, but only at home or somewhere with internet) and a fancy phone (which I imagine is too small to really read a mag or paper), and would be perfect for commutes and travel--while saving oodles of one-use paper trash. The Reader, without these features, probably can't compete with the Kindle.

There are also looming questions about copyright, the price of books, digital vs. analog. Would I want both versions of the same book, if it's one I want to own and keep?

And the big question, the question our friend is asking us: Is it worth it? Would I buy it? For 300 bucks, I'd wait until they come out with better and cheaper versions before I'd buy. I'm thinking it's still not the moment to jump on this particular bandwagon. Hopefully someday the clever and cool folks at Apple will come up with a design that puts all the others to shame.

Resume

How has it happened that several whole weeks have gone by since last I wrote anything here? It was kind of not my fault, because of the lack of internet in Barcelona, although it is kind of my fault because I can usually get a neighbor's signal if I sit on or near one of the balconies. Plus, we were in Brussels this past weekend for a wedding, and there was internet. But again! Not so much my fault! Because we had guests staying with us and you know how it is with having guests: you end up running around doing stuff and not so much bloggity blogging.

So, enough excuses. Since I've dropped off the face of the earth (no skype either, not since the Great Computer Failure of June 08), I should just briefly--but chronologically, as I am unfortunately linear in my thinking--summarize what we've been up to since I came to Barcelona with intent to live. (You see, strangely enough, after all of this time visiting Barcelona on summers and vacations and weekends, and even after we bought an apartment here, I've never truly thought of us "living" here. And now I do, because we are. It feels good.)

Hold on, first another (non-linear, parenthetical) note: I just typed the word "resume" instead of "summarize." Even as I pressed the delete button I was dumbly trying to process: why isn't resume right? why on earth did I think it was resume? what's the right word anyway? My fingers, typing faster than my brain, typed resume because in Catalan, you say "resumir" to mean "sum up," "go over," "summarize." Can it be that Catalan has so infiltrated my thinking that I am using reverse false cognates?

Anyhoo. The first week here was a madness of getting the apartment in shape for the Mister's birthday party and for guests who were to spend the following weekend with us. It was grimy from disuse and lack of time, on prior whirlwind weekends, to clean. I finally was able to convince the electrician to come and install all of our lights, which was a relief because it meant that our restored original lighting is now in place, instead of naked lightbulbs. The weather was sultry hot, humid, sunny. I didn't sleep properly for days, because of the heat, and the noise from the street through the open windows. But it was better than Brussels, where jackets are still necessary.

We had a fun family-and-friends birthday party; everybody had just left the house around midnight when our weekend guests arrived--the same Italian friends whose wedding we attended in Sardinia. We went to the beach for the first time this year, we ate lots of good food, we trudged around the city in the heat, we watched Spain win the European football championship. Our Italian friend (a big football fan himself) was a little puzzled, I think, as to why the Catalans were rather lackluster on the cheering front, until we pointed out the Franco-era flags waving in the stands and listened to frenzied radio commentary about the "raza superior": it's amazing how football in Europe can be so...political, so closely tied to ultra-nationalism.

Our friends left last Monday, and I finally had a rather calm few days to myself here. I got some work done, explored the neighborhood, did a little sales shopping. (In Europe--well, at least in Spain and Belgium--the sales are restricted to post-Christmas and late summer. Other times of the year, it's rare to find anything on sale, and so during these sale months everyone goes crazy, and it makes the news, sort of like Black Friday. I myself rather prefer NOT to shop during these times, as formerly orderly shops become bargain-basement jumbles of clothes, and formerly solicitous salespeople become surly and snappy. But I went to buy some items I had my eyes on earlier, and snagged them on sale on July 1.) I also finalized our rather complex set of plane tickets from Barcelona to Boston (me) and Brussels to Sioux Falls (him), then Sioux Falls (me) and Omaha (him; yeah, don't ask) to Las Vegas, then Las Vegas to Barcelona. It'll be his first trip to my midwestern birthplace, and I haven't been in years. We'll be in Iowa/South Dakota for a family reunion, and then we're taking two weeks to drive around California. I have never been (less surprisingly, he hasn't either) to Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. So those are all on the list, and I have a feeling two weeks is going to start seeming awfully short.

I also got a haircut! I got a very short cut--a pageboy?--with long straight-across bangs. I've never had bangs like this and I'm still adjusting to them, but I think I like it. It looks kind of retro, kind of flapper-ish, and it went well with the beaded dress I wore to the wedding this weekend.

I had a bit of a misadventure when I flew to Brussels last Thursday. Somehow in setting the alarm I changed the time as well, so that when I thought I was waking up at 5:30 in the morning it was really 3:30 in the morning, and I had in reality only slept for two hours. Not until I was wheeling my little suitcase down the dark, deserted street did it occur to me to wonder why there were so few people and why it was so dark at 6 am. I showed up at the train station at 4:15 in the morning, and had to wait for it to open at 4:30. The first train to the airport was at 5:30, so I kind-of-slept for an hour, dragged myself to the airport and through check-in and security, and then kind-of-slept for another two and half hours because--Murphy's law!--the plane was delayed for two hours.

Upon arrival in Brussels, I had to rush home--shivering, because the skirt and tank top that had seemed so smart in boiling Barcelona did not quite cut it in chilly, rainy Brussels--change, and meet my Mister at a super swanky delicious restaurant called BonBon to celebrate our two years of weddedness. It was worth it though, because the meal was a memorable one and the travel stress melted away under the influence of a nice wine recommended by the sommelier and the handsome face across the table.

Unfortunately the glamor could last only for so long, because we had to clean the house in preparation for the guests who would be with us for the wedding, arriving later that night. The weekend was full of wedding flurry, inevitably. The bride and groom and many of the guests were a group of friends who had studied with the Mister at the Johns Hopkins International School in Bologna, a fun mix of Americans and Europeans of all stripes, and I got to meet some of them for the first time. The wedding itself was a civil ceremony that took place at the very grand town hall in the very grand Grand Place, and drinks afterwards were Belgian brews at a nearby brasserie. We danced and mingled until four o'clock in the morning, and the next day we were plied with the famous fries at Chez Antoine in Place Jourdain. I flew back to Barcelona late last night (the Mister had flown to Madrid for a conference) and well, here I am.

Here I am, that is, until a week from tomorrow, which is when the whole American adventure starts. I'm super excited to see family and celebrate and lolligag in cabins by the lake, but I'm really quite beside myself that we're finally going to take a driving trip around the west coast. Even if I end up feeling like foreigner in my own country.

Homebody

Somehow I managed to wake up an hour early, without realizing it. So at eight o'clock on a Sunday morning, I am already dressed, my suitcase is packed, and I'm ready to leave for Barcelona. It's like someone just handed me an hourglass and all of those grains of sand are available for me to do with as I will.

I'm glad I have the chance to do a quick update here, because once I'm in Barcelona I won't have internet. We will alert Telefonica that we would like their services as soon as humanly possible, but we are resigned to the fact that Telefonica will not in turn provide us with their services as soon as humanly possible. In fact, they will probably wait as long as humanly possible to give our home an on-ramp to the information highway.

It has been quite stressful to contemplate leaving Brussels. Even though I know I'll be back here often, and I can use my husband to ferry any object I wish from one city to the other, I feel like I'm abandoning this little home I have created here, and all of my favorite things that make it feel like home. It's not so much a question of the stuff as it is a way to ground myself. I worry that I'll feel divided; I'm such a homebody that I need that extra reassurance of place, like a dog circling round and round before being able to settle down with a snuffly sigh.

Oh, one detail that I should not forget to mention is that the princess of Belgium came to our concert at the Cathedral on Friday! Even if I do say so myself, the concert was quite beautiful, fit for a princess, though during the event itself I hadn't figured out who in the crowd was Her (maybe my angle wasn't good). But we happened to be standing by the front entrance when she was escorted out, and the funny thing about the princess is that she totally looked like a princess. She wore a bright yellow dress of some stiff, tapestry-like material with a matching coat that flared at the knees. Her hair, in a shoulder-length bob, flipped out on the bottom. She carried a little matching bouquet of yellow flowers. As we stood there gaping, she was walked to the car, someone holding a huge umbrella over her head. Then, as her car pulled away from the curb, our friend decided to wave to her, and she waved back! We decided that's what she does for a living, so she should wave, shouldn't she?

A few more grains of sand...

Too sweet times two

It occurred to me after this weekend that I made the same mistake twice, once in Paris and once in Florence: I wasn't choosy enough about my street food.

The day we arrived in Paris, I was jonesing for a good crêpe. Dinner had been eaten, and I still hadn't had one; the situation was getting desperate. We were strolling the Champs-Elysées in the evening, and I decided to go for one of the little stands to the side of the avenue, even though I had my doubts when I saw that the crêpes were pre-made. Overcoming my doubts, I thought: it's Paris--all the crêpes are good, right? But sure enough, my lemon-sugar version was so terrible that I had to throw it away without finishing (which, if you know me, means that it had to have been really really bad): gummy re-heated pancake, too much sugar, not enough lemon to cut the sweetness. It was like eating pure, chewy, sugar.

By the time we had to leave, the next evening, I realized I still hadn't had a good crêpe. So as we headed back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and get a taxi to the airport, I stopped at a place near Saint-Michel, dangerously at the heart of the touristy area near Notre-Dame. But there was a line (not always a good indicator, especially if they're tourists, but still a positive sign) and the guy was making crêpes to order. Plus, the chocolate was pure dark chocolate, a bar broken up and melted onto the pancake, so I knew my favorite, the banana-chocolate version, would likely be good. It was better than good, it was delicious, a perfect harmony of fruit, bitter dark chocolate, and warm crêpe.

But I did not learn from my mistake. In Florence, after having dropped my luggage at the hotel, I was supposed to go find the Mister, mid-presentation, at the Palazzio Vecchio. But first I had to eat lunch. I ordered a slice of pizza just so I wouldn't feel guilty about eating only ice cream for my meal, because what I really wanted was a good gelato. I again made the mistake of choosing the first place that I saw, on the corner of the piazza in front of the palace, despite my misgivings about the gelato's rather insipid look. It's Italy, right? All the gelato should be good.

The coconut and melon flavors that I chose weren't horrible enough to throw away, but they weren't that great either. My idea of a good gelato is pure, intense, condensed flavor. It should bowl you over. But these were just overly sweet ice creams with a hint of coconut, a hint of melon. The coconut too pillowy, the melon too grainy, neither the texture nor the flavor made it special.

Fast-forward a day and a half. I still hadn't eaten a good gelato (although, thanks to the generosity of the conference organizers, I had eaten a delectable meal at Rossini). We were heading home from dinner, and in the morning we would be catching the bus to the airport, and I didn't think 8 o'clock in the morning would be a socially acceptable time to eat ice cream. So it was then or never, but my hopes were dim, since it was nearly midnight. Yet, we saw a glimmer in the dark, the warm colors of an ice cream parlour across the street from the Ponte Santa Trinita, and a line of Italians waiting to order their cones. A good sign indeed.

I ordered a small dish of the pear gelato, and it was heaven. Like eating a perfectly ripe pear, an explosion of fruit in the mouth, the cool, dense texture of ice cream. I could leave the city a satisfied gelato-eater.

So I hope my lesson is learned, next time I want to eat a city's signature sweet without trusting my better judgment. Go where there's a line of locals, where it's made to order, where the flavors are home-made.

Your brain to bubble cool

For my birthday last month my parents sent me a lovely package, including a book of Emily Dickinson's poems and letters written to her friend, sister-in-law and next-door neighbor, Susan Huntington Dickinson. I've loved reading through it, not only because it offers a perspective of Dickinson that quite shatters the fragile, secluded spinster myth, but also because of the tenderness and spontaneity of their correspondence.

Here's a poem I especially enjoyed, one that expands on the idea, contained in a (later I think?) Dickinson line, "slipping is crash's law."

80

He fumbles at your Soul
As Players at the Keys
Before they drop full
Music on --
He stuns you by degrees --
Prepares your brittle Nature
For the Etherial Blow
By fainter Hammers --
further heard --
Then nearer -- Then so slow
Your Breath has time to
straighten --
Your Brain -- to bubble Cool --
Deals -- One -- imperial --
Thunder bolt --
That scalps your
naked Soul --

When Winds take Forests
in their Paws --
The Universe -- is still --

Interlinking links

It turns out that the internet was neither invented by Al Gore, nor first developed in the 90s by a crack international team of programmers, but was dreamed up in 1934, right here in Belgium.

Today's New York Times contains a fascinating account of Paul Otlet, a Belgian librarian who conceived of a vast interlinked network of information, which one could access through a screen. From one's desk, one would summon text, images, audio, and film, and the screen could be divided into multiple "pages" to view documents simultaneously. This "bibliothèque irradiée" (radiated library) would serve to make humanity's thoughts available to all. He called his central storehouse of knowledge the Mundaneum, and today one can visit the Mundaneum in its incarnation as a museum in Mons, Belgium. Which I will have to do one of these days.

As I read the article, from my screen with its multiple pages, which came from a link in my electronic mailbox, and watched video within the newspaper article, and then googled a snippet of French from a visual of one of Otlet's manuscripts that I had glimpsed at the end of the video, and then read more articles about the same subject, I was floored all over again by the mere existence of the web, and its vast complexity. (And was all the more impressed by Otlet's prescience.) Even in the misery of an information crisis, the breakdown of my hard drive, the interconnectedness of digital knowledge is pretty mind-blowing.

Then again, there's of course something to be said for the tactile, the hands-on, the ink-and-paper world of knowledge. As a book lover, both of the world of language they contain and of the bound pages that form a beautiful object, I can't forget the generous sense of discovery afforded by the physical archive. There's a lot out there that's not online. In that spirit, a short editorial laments the disappearance of the copy editor's position in journalism.

Also, speaking of text and tactile, here's a charming story about an architect who designed an apartment as a chamber of secrets. The owners, after a year of living in the house, were sent a clue that sent them on a treasure hunt in their own home, in part directed by a book of stories that they soon found behind a false wall. Hidden panels, complex word games, cranks, keys, puzzles...I love how the physical space and the materials of the home's construction were fitted together in new ways to send them on a journey. Even better: the final "reveal" of the whole elaborate game is a poem written by the father and hidden in the walls of the family room, right under their noses the whole time.

And speaking of homes: this weekend we're making the "move" to Barcelona. As of Friday, I'll be done with French (oral exam was today), and will have sung in my final choir concert (we're premiering a new work, at the Cathedral). So off to Barcelona we go, in a summer experiment to transition our lives from based-in-Brussels to based-in-Barcelona. The Mister will still be in Brussels Monday pm-Thursday am, and I might come along from time to time. Hard to tell how it will all pan out. Of course I have not done any "packing" whatsoever, and have barely had time to contemplate what I should do to prepare for such a (semi-)move. I have no doubt that the transition will be slow and that bits and pieces of my life will remain in between the two places for quite a long time. I know it's the right decision, though, because the thought of leaving Belgium isn't at all making me mournful (yet?). I will miss choir, and the few good friends we've made here, and the swimming pool across the street. And I'll definitely miss my spacious kitchen and the living room that we've only just managed to furnish how we wanted it.

But in Barcelona there's an empty bookshelf, waiting for us to fill it with our beloved books. I know that then we'll feel like we're really settling in, building our own secrets into the walls.

Broken

I return to my little home on the internet after what seems to me like aeons, but what in reality was only a few days.

My computer (the professor) died, you see. The hard drive just gave up and petered out. According to Philippe, the dude at the place where I brought it for a second opinion, it was broken in several places. I now have a new hard drive, but it is of course entirely devoid of everything that makes my computer my computer.

And of course, I hadn't backed up in a looong time. I lost all of my pictures, all of my music (although I'm going to try to reinstate what was on my ipod), archived emails, translation work, poetry, and my thesis. Yes, my thesis. I have some piecemeal versions of things stored on a little flash drive, and everything dating before last summer is on the external hard drive. But, but, but... I'm mourning even the loss of my web browser bookmarks, because I had a lot of research discoveries stored in that list.

Last Wednesday and Thursday were spent in horror and denial. I felt very very alone, not only because I was without my computer (my source of pretty much all connection with the outside world, plus all entertainment--movies and music), but also because in this country of PC's, I didn't know where to turn, and my husband was out of town. I called my brother, international cell charges notwithstanding, ostensibly to get his advice on some attempts at resuscitation (I initially thought it was just a question of a too-full hard drive) but really just to hear his voice.

Friday I flew to Italy to meet up with the Mister for a quick visit to Florence, where he had presented at a conference. It was my only chance to see him during a long stretch of his travels, so at the last minute I had purchased tickets. Although when Friday rolled around I wasn't very much in the mood to leave town, it was a good thing I did because I could somewhat escape my computer woes (and, not incidentally, escape the frigid air and incessant rain that this country seems to think is acceptable weather for June).

Philippe called when we were standing in front of the beautiful Santa Maria Novella, only to inform me that it was impossible to rescue the hard drive. If sackcloth and ashes had been available, I would have been wearing them, accompanied by garment-rending and gnashing of teeth.

Dragging my feet, because I knew it would be depressing, I went to pick up the computer today. And indeed, it is depressing. I don't know where to start to make the machine feel like mine again.

More Sardinia

It's been a rainy, cold, rainy, gray, rainy week in Brussels. The kind of week that makes me want to hibernate. My mind protests--it's June!--but my body shrinks in on itself, my eyelids droop, and I am uncapable of tackling that sinkful of dirty dishes.

As an avoidance measure and a dose of escapism, I'll allow myself to revisit Sardinia for a while, to travel back to its stark landscape and think of the sun... (For part I, go here. For musical accompaniment, go here.)

***

The morning after the wedding we managed to tag along with our friends from Naples for a bit of sightseeing in Alghero. She: a petite but formidable Italian political science professor. He: a French professor originally from the Congo, who always wears fabulous powder-blue suits. They've been married for thirty-eight years--yet another example of the many multicultural couples we meet in Europe. For me, the best part was that we could speak in French; thus, at least while we were with them, I didn't have the frustration of understanding much of what was going on while not being able to muster complete sentences in response (as with Italian).

En route, we found out that it was his birthday that day, and that the main goal would be to find a great place to eat seafood for lunch. Besides a momentary pang of worry that we were intruding on their celebration, I was delighted with the plan. And the pang quickly disappeared as they insisted that the celebration would be even better with us along.

Alghero is a beautiful seaside fortress town (most of the fortresses having been built by the Catalans) and that day it its sandy stone walls were sun-drenched, the water glittering. After a brief stroll at the port, our friend spotted a restaurant terrace with perfect balcony views of the sea. We were shown to a table perched on a little bridge crowning an arch of the city wall, and thus we had views in two directions: the boats and water portside, and the stone alleyways leading into the town. We committed ourselves into the restaurant's care, telling them to bring an assortment of antipasti and the freshest fish of the day. What issued forth: a huge array of delectable plates of seafood. I especially remember a fish that was paired with fresh peaches, and another version of the octopus and potato salad we had eaten the day before. And the main dish, a magnificent spigola (sea bass) was just what we had been looking for: delicious, fresh, simply prepared.

We asked our waitress about Catalan speakers in Alghero, curious to see if we would find any. She herself didn't speak Catalan, and told us we would have a hard time finding someone. Nevertheless, as we strolled the city after our long lunch (a stroll that was enhanced by refreshing homemade gelato), we saw signs everywhere that Catalan was actively spoken and promoted: all street names and tourist information signs were in both Catalan and Italian, and many shops sported stickers indicating that "Aqui es parla Català" (Catalan spoken here).

Soon it was time to re-traverse the island to somewhere in the vicinity of Tula, a tiny town smack in the middle of Sardinia, for a party at the bride's sister's farmhouse. Earlier that morning, I had mused aloud as to whether we would see any of the nuraghi, prehistoric conical towers whose ruins dot the landscape. These towers are over three milennia old, and still are among the most prominent man-made constructions to be seen outside of Sardinia's cities. Despite a lot of driving, we hadn't glimpsed any, but as we followed the ribbons tied on the corner of country roads leading us to the party, suddenly looming up out of the hill was an impressive nuraghe, which the bride's nephew later told us was one of the most well-preserved examples.

Thus cheered and awed by the sight of such a formidable piece of history (mysterious, too; they don't know for sure what they were for), we drove into the farmyard. Inside a walled courtyard the family was busy setting up snacks, including homemade wine (in big soda bottles, labeled either AM--which somehow meant fruity/sweet--or secco), cheese made from the family's goats, and fresh olives, plus leftovers from the reception the day before. We admired the sweeping views, watched as the sheep were herded out to a far pasture, the shepherd accompanied by four dogs of amusingly different shapes. One of the little nephews found a scorpion somewhere, put it in a jam jar, and delighted in waving it under the nose of all the women. We went to see the goats and pigs, and visited the milking room and watched the sister (they couldn't stop work even when the party was at their house!) and brother-in-law wrangle 150 goats into the milking machines.

Sometime before the steaming plates of pasta were brought out of the cavernous barn of a kitchen, Stefano the guitarist showed up and someone got out an accordion, a harmonica, and a tambourine. As dusk fell, they traded Sardinian songs and Neopolitan songs, and little kids danced around them. At about this time, I found myself sitting next to the bride's mother, and even though my Italian was rather more like pidgin Spanish with an Italian accent, we had a long conversation about the house that she and her husband had built, what it was like to have six children, to give birth in a house with no running water...

Here are a couple of videos of the music, including glimpses of the matriarchs of the clan:


Sardinia accordion from Robin from Cant d'ocell on Vimeo.


Sardinia harmonica from Robin from Cant d'ocell on Vimeo.

When finally it was time to drive to Olbia, where we were staying before flying out the next morning, we made the rounds to say goodbye and give our thanks to our hosts. That's the thing about Italians: by then we were sent on our way as warmly as family, even though we had known most of them just for a short weekend. When I told the bride how beautiful her family was (that was a sentence I could muster in Italian), she impulsively squeezed me tight in her joy that I had seen it too.

Whirling

Where to start? My head is whirling a bit. Maybe the varnish has gone to my head. I just spent the last two days staining and varnishing our wall-to-wall bookshelves in Barcelona (we wanted a grayish color and I think it came out sort of blue and I'm not super happy with it, but since I was never really happy with most of the colors in the house [we chose them over the internet {in case it's not obvious, choosing paint colors over the internet is not a good idea}] the bookshelves can just be part and parcel of the strange pastel palette we had already established).

And that was after a quick overnight stay in Paris that felt so much more than quick. It felt ample and romantic, as trips to Paris should.

I was sad to miss the funeral of our friend in Vermont over the weekend, but I am even more grateful than ever for the contact afforded by modern communication: this blog, photos, e-mails, cell phones. Though it can't be denied that a wired world has sometimes changed our lives for the worse, in this respect it is reassuringly good. Living so far away from family and friends in the states would be so so much harder if letters or even just phone calls were all I had.

Also I want to write more about Sardinia, as promised, and that already seems like so long ago. I will need to write about it soon lest it all dissolve into hazy memory. Soon!