Three Seasons in Spain

a reflection incomplete

2008-05-31T14:19:00.000-07:00

So, here I am. Nearly the end of my time in Europe. I figured a final blog of sort should probably be written. But, about what? I’ve gone on a few other vacations which I never blogged about. It’s odd how the romanticism of Europe fades. I’ve become jaded I suppose. When I first arrived here everything was so spectacular and unbelievable. But as time went on the sure vagabond and romantic stupification faded and writing about them became harder…Places I’ve gone to and never written about: Barcelona, Andalusia, The Basque Country, and Paris. All were amazingly awesome, all will forever hold places in my heart, but, for whatever reason, writing ten page blogs about them could have never happened. I went to them and they were beautiful and interesting and very different from Madrid. The Basque country is one of the most beautiful places on earth. Small rolling green hills which were covered in green trees and fresh wild grass dominated the landscape. The ocean coast and beaches were of a spectacular beauty I have not seen on the beaches of the west coast USA. Plus, they were nude beaches…unfortunately the topless women were all old. Barcelona is a city of grand urban culture. Hip modern artists and musicians make Barcelona their home and the feel of it is, if one can compare a foreign city to something back home, like Seattle or Portland. And the architecture of Gaudi is unlike any architecture the world has ever seen and will never be seen again. Andalusia is the home of all images of traditional Spain. Flamenco music, sangrias, and bullfights were all born here. All the city streets are lined with orange trees which the government harvests and uses to make wine and candles and all sorts of other orange related products. And Paris, oh sweet Paris. Paris will forever hold a special place in my heart. What an unbelievably romantic city. I went with a friend I met way too late into my stay here. Here name is Christah and she is fellow lover of content moments and knows how to bask blissfully in the silence of awe. Paris is known as the most romantic city in the world, and as the world has changed I’m sure this is less true than it used to be, but still, Paris contains so many quiet corners of beauty that are much harder to find in a city like Madrid. Oh, and…The Eiffel Tower. I really thought this would be a place I went to just to say I’ve been there. But, the Eiffel Tower is amazing, and a huge pork boarders it’s southern front and spending an evening with a bottle of champagne (imagine that, champagne is affordable in France), staring in gawking awe of the golden hue of the industrial wonder that is the Tower is one of the finest evenings I’ve had to date in Europe.
I realize that was a very fast overview of some of the most famous areas in Western Europe. Take me out for a drink, buy me dinner, or met me for coffee when I return and I’ll tell you much more about all of them.

I was told before I left I would not return the same person. That this experience abroad would forever change the person I was. And, I suppose I’m not the best person to make this call, but, I believe this is undoubltedly true. I do not feel like the same person. I do not feel like the naïve wanderer I was when I got here. Something innocent within me has died. I don’t know if this is good thing, though I imagine it happens to every human at some point in their life. But, I feel surer of myself for it. More certain of the person I am, who I want to be, what I want to do with my life. I feel the understanding of what matters in life is far more apparent to me.
Allow me to explain that last one. I was certain upon leaving The States for Spain that I would discover all I hated about America. That seeing how Europe was ran and how the “most intelligent” society in the world lived would forever taint my views of my country. But, this could not be further from the truth. The exact opposite has happened. I have found I am so amazingly proud to be American. To be an ex-mormon from a potato farm in Idaho. This is my heritage. This is who I am. This is where I come from, and I wouldn’t change any of it for all the jamon in spain.
Here, I’ve met so many other Americans who have abandoned their homes in the united states certain of the grandeur of European life and here looking for a better life. They call themselves “ex-patriots.” Really they do. I’ve heard them refer to themselves as thus time and time again. And, I hate them. I can say this, because I haven’t met a single one I thought was a good human being. They are facadical. Attempting so incredibly hard to prove their worth, their intelligence, their superiority over others by living an exciting life abroad. Many have been living abroad for many years, some ten years plus. But, the sad truth I’ve discovered after hours of conversations with a handful of them, is that they are simply always on the run from themselves. In San Sebastian (an important city of the Basque country) I got into a debate with a girl from San Diego, I have already forgotten her name. She (and she is not even remotely the first person I’ve heard to make this argument) said that Americans are ignorant and refuse to leave their comfort zone and that America is a country on the downfall and the government is the most evil on the planet. She said that it’s refreshing to live in the most intelligent society on the planet. This aggravated me very much. I asked her to define intelligence for me, and she simply defined it as education. And, while I will make absolutely no debate for the fact that Europeans are hands down more educated than Americans, I too indeed wish that the United States had an education system like Europe, this is far from the definition of intelligence for me. I didn’t know how to articulate intelligence with an accurate sentence but I was able to defend my case like this…I have not had a single conversation here that I haven’t had in The States. We are all humans, we all have the same brains and interpret information in the exact same manner. The most intelligent conversations I’ve had in The States with my good friends are on the exact par with the amazingly intelligent conversations I’ve had here…some of those are with friends who have never gone to a university a single day in their lives. Europeans are no more intelligent than Americans. This is complete and utter bullshit, a neat thing for ex-patriots to believe in order to feel they are doing something of grand importance with their life. I spoke with my father about this and he gave me that one sentence definition of intelligence that I wish I had that night: “Intelligence is the wise use of knowledge.” I find this to be profoundly true.
Now, I’m not saying living abroad is a bad thing and all people should stay in their homes. Clearly, I’m not. Living abroad has been the best experience of my life. The most fullfiling and thought provoking thing I have ever done. And, in many many many ways I am very sad to go home. I wish I could stay in Europe for another year, or two. But, I am so proud of my country…not my government, nor our poor excuse for education and health care and career driven lives. But, our culture, the people who compose it, the beauty of our nature, our sense of humor I love so much. I am proud to be American, and I am very excited to return to my country.

There are other random thoughts of mine that have changed since coming here. Before leaving I was annoyed that most Americans make no effort to learn a foreign language. And in a lot of ways I still am annoyed by this. I wish we as Americans would put a larger effort into studying a foreign tongue. But, what I’ve discovered is based upon the sheer massive size of the United States learning a foreign language is so much harder for us. Europe is tiny. A European can get into their car and drive six hours and be in a completely different country with completely different language and whole different world of culture. Do this in the states and if you even leave your state, you are in another state with, more or less, the exact same culture and undoubtedly the same language. In Europe, at least in the cities, all day every day you hear a slew of different languages. In Spain I hear French, German, Arabic, Japanese (or some oriental tongue, I really don’t have a reference to distinguish them) and with a little less frequency, Italian. Europe is a nation without borders. Citizens of the EU are free to travel to other countries for short periods of time (I believe a few weeks) without any need for visas. Another reason for Europeans knowing a foreign language is because of their school systems. For me to travel abroad it cost…well…it cost a lot of money. But, for Europeans it costs the same amount of money as their home universities…which cost all of 700 euro for an entire year of school. Europeans just have such a larger opportunity to learn a new language in comparison to the citizens of The United States. Now does this excuse the apathy of wanting to learn a new language…not exactly, not at all…but, it’s much harder to learn a new language when you never have an opportunity to practice it.

These final weeks in Madrid I have been wandering the city seeing the places I’ve been a hundred times before recalling the memories of utter joy that were once felt there. But, now it’s a feeling of sadness. Those people I was with, the friends I’ve made, (the girl I feel for), are gone. They have returned to their home states, most of which are from the east coast and who I will undoubtedly never see again. It is hard. It is very hard. The midnight rose is a hotel in Madrid of utter beauty which at night they light with purple and orange lights and I stood there late one evening with a good friend feeling the healing power of light and the warmth and comfort of a trusted individual. Today I ate dinner in the same plaza and I felt nothing but pain. It’s sad, I know. I accept the fact that I knew this all would end. This alternative reality that I have been living in for the past five months was entered knowing it was temporary. But it does not make it any easier. How I miss the people I’ve met here. This is undoubtedly the hardest part of leaving. I will miss the Spanish lifestyle. The slow lunches eaten in plazas under the cool Spanish spring air, the beer sipped for lunch, the ability to smoke anywhere I like. But, Yelim, Eric, Christah, David, and a few others are what really hurts. I loved all of these people very much, and they have all helped to shape my mind in a new and unexpected direction.

To you my friends, allow us to raise our glasses one symbolic final time. Salud.

Anyway, that’s all I can think to write for now. Maybe more will come. I’m off to Switzerland the day after tomorrow to stay with my grand uncle before returning home to the states. I’m sure more thoughts will come to me once removed from Madrid.

Huzza!
Jake.

A link to good photos.

2008-05-07T13:20:00.000-07:00

i've been really sucking at blogging. so im cheating. here's a link to my friend Christah's blog. she's a phtorgapher who takes excellent pictures. Lots of visual spain to be had.

http://hijacomunista.blogspot.com

huzza!
jake.

A writer on writing

2008-04-24T13:45:00.000-07:00

My life in Madrid for the past month has been incredibly exciting for me, and for others it may not be so exciting, but I’ll write of what I’ve been doing. My friend, Cody Harris, and I have decided to make a movie. Cody is an aspiring film maker who as work on several projects. Some were his own, which he wrote, produced, directed, edited…did the whole thing. He’s also worked with other film makers doing editing work and camera work. He’s no novice.
Before I left Boise, Cody and I were at the Tenth Street Station drinking gin and tonics talking about a story I had been working on. And then the conversation shifted to the latest film Cody had been working on. I had made the comment that he needed a better script, that all stories must have a point, must have a thesis, must have some truth of life that must be exposed. He started telling me of new ideas he had for other short films and when he told me about one, which had already titled, “A Place Called Bliss,” I got very excited because I knew it was a story I could write. A story I wanted to write. He had gotten the idea from a news article he had read somewhere over the years about a girl from London whose car broke down in some back assed town in the western united states. Cody had thought it would make a good story and though Bliss, Idaho would be the perfect city to set it in. And I agreed.
Cody had a rough outline of how he thought the story would go. He had ideas for a good and artistic ending. But, he needed all things in the middle that got the characters from point A to point B. We spent the rest of the night talking non stop about how we could make the movie. What kind of problems the characters were facing. What the characters’ flaws were. We both became incredibly excited and had agreed that when I would return from Madrid we would shoot the movie.
This is where my past month in Madrid begins. I did not work on the movie much when I first arrived in Spain, and the things I did work on were ultimately cut by myself. But, for the past month “A Place Called Bliss,” has consumed my life. It is all I could think about, and all I’ve wanted to do.
I wrote the first draft by hand. I always prefer to write first drafts by hand. Every day after class for two weeks, I’d go to a new part of Madrid that I hadn’t really explored, find a nice café with a nice shaded terrace and work. I’d order café con leche and waters, and smoke cigarettes and write in the beautiful city of Madrid. The weather was perfect for those two weeks too. Every day the sun shone and there was seldom a wind to blow my pages and interrupt my work. Typically, I’d write one scene, or one important exchange of dialogue, which would take me an hour or two, though in movie time it is probably four minutes, and then I’d pay for my café, load up my things and walk around Madrid for a while. It was a very romantic way to live. My soul would be filled with the feeling of beauty that overtakes me when I’m writing something I feel is good, and I’d walk through the narrow streets with tall building of architectural design that I still can only describe as “European.” I’d sit on benches in plazas with fountains and watch children play, old men bicker, young lovers love, and think constantly how all of this related to how Elle and James (the main characters of APCB) were existing in that uncertain and uncompleted moment. Eventually, after wandering through many barrios, I’d find another café where the terrace tables were level and there was a tree shading the terrace perfectly, and I’d sit, order a café and write another passage of dialogue. I did this for two weeks. Everyday after class. It was wonderful, and my soul was fulfilled in a way that only a fellow writer can understand. The creation of people and emotions that do not exist and feeling them as if I were there, as if I were saying the lines of dialogue myself, is a physically draining and emotionally enlightening experience.

the forgotten poet apologizes twice,
repeats,

“I do not exist to the outside world.”

Later repeats,

I am charged to discover
truth and beauty
alone

This was a really cool way to see more or Madrid as well, and to meet new people. While writing at a doner kebab restaurant (a very popular style of food here…very cheap…) I met Houssan. Houssan was from Iraq. He was very kind to me and, as it seems I always write, he did not speak much English so we talked the best we could in Spanish. Houssan had welcomed me to Spain, told me of schools he knew where I could learn Spanish cheap. I told him I was already paying way too much to learn Spanish at a university. Clearly, with him being from Iraq, the topic of the war arose. I asked him why he left Iraq, and he told it was because of the war. He told me his home was too dangerous to live in anymore, and that he heard Madrid had a good Arabic community (which it does). So he moved here. At this point, I said something which seemed very natural, but afterward left me slightly confused. I told him I was sorry for the war. As though it was a decision I had made. As though I had lead troops in battle and killed his countrymen. He quickly told me it wasn’t my fault, and it wasn’t his fault. It was politics and our governments. Which is true…but…I don’t know. I felt bad. He’s an actual human being, the faceless ghost that the citizens of a country at war choose to imagine does not exist. He is Iraqi. He is my country’s enemy. He is not my enemy, nor am I his enemy. I don’t know. I guess it’s still a big thing I’m trying to understand fully. But, I am sorry. I am sorry he had to leave his home, which he said as soon as his country is safe to live in, he will return to it. I am sorry for something that is not my fault, but I still feel somehow responsible for…

Then, there was my afternoon I spent in Chueca. Chueca is the gay district of Madrid. And I knew this before I chose a café there. And I had been there more than many times, and never had any sort of idea that it was the gay community. But, a funny occurrence arose. I was writing in a very small and posh café, which did not have a terrace, but it was early in the morning and still chilly, because I had decide to skip class that day in order to work, so I didn’t mind sitting inside. I was working away when I heard the man behind me speaking English to the waiter. He was tyring to ask for food. So I leaned my head back and helped him, only to find out the café didn’t serve meals, only pastries. This sparked an hour long conversation with my one time friend (whose name has already left me so we’ll call him….chris). Chris was a forty year old man from Greece. He was gay and very well kept and if I was an old gay guy I would def. be interested in him. The start of our conversation went like this:

“So, how’s Madrid for you, what are you doing here,” asked chris.
“I’m a student studying Spanish…I love this country.”
“Have you met any boys?”
“Boys?”
“You aren’t…” he looked me up and down with a perplexed look, “You aren’t gay?”
“haha, No. I’m not gay. I just like this area of town.”
“Are you sure?”
“yeah, I’m sure.”

Later he apologized to me for thinking I was gay. I said it was nothing, I could care less. And he saw I wasn’t offended in the slightest by it, he told me I looked gay, and if I was gay I’d be bringing in all sorts of boys. It was a nice compliment, and based upon my fairly Spanish girlless existence in Madrid, Spanish boys don’t sound too….jk. I guess I look gay. But, I became aware of that fact after ward and while walking through Chueca I did notice more men looking at me than usual…or was it all in my sick head?
Chris and I talked mostly about Greece. He was from Athens, and he told me oodles of information about it. I asked if I were to travel there, where should I go. And in my notebook he wrote me pages and pages of information about cool historical places and what have you.
At the end of our conversation, when we both said we had to get going (he because he had to meet some friends, and I because for an hour I was half talking to Chris and half thinking of where I left my characters in the story), the waiter, who was a young and strong young lad, fashionable and wore a mullet, brought each of our checks over. The waiter said, “veo que vosotros habeis conocido.” (I see you two have meet each other) And then he looked at me stroked my face with his hand and said, “Eres guapo.” (you’re hot). Then he looked to the old man and told him he was hot too, but he didn’t stoke Chris’s face. Chris tried to tell the waiter I wasn’t gay, but he didn’t know how. I didn’t know the words either so I said, “no me gustan chicos…me gustan chicas. Pero, si me gustan chicos…tu eres guapo!.” (I don’t like boys, I like girls, but if I liked boys….you are hot!). Which made him feel better I think, cause he looked worried as though he may have offended me by touching my face.

After two weeks of writing I sent Cody what I had written so far…after about eight hours of typing it into word…scripts are a pain in the ass…you constantly have to change format…center align this. Right align that. Make this is bold…anyway, it was a long and arduous process. Cody liked what I had written. He was excited and told me the way Elle had played out was exactly how he had imagined it in his head time and time again. He was enthousiastic about what was on the page so far. Which, as a writer, is always a very exciting thing to hear. You get so involved with your writing, and your story, that while writing it you are certain it is great, you are certain you are doing great things. But, afterward, once it settles, and you spend eight hours rereading it and typing it into the computer, you start to think it’s shit. You start to think it’s complete crap and you’ve wasted all your time. I was very relived when I got the positive feedback from Cody…even Lindsey, Cody’s wife sent me an email telling me she thought it was good and was very excited for the long process of making the film play out.
Originally, Cody and I had talked about making a short film, around thirty minutes long. But, the script was already at an hour worth of movie time. I told Cody I had ideas on how to trim it down, but really I was lying to him. I had no idea what so over. I knew more had to be added…but…in the end I knew I could have, I just needed to think about how to do it. But, Cody, with umpf and gust, decided, “let’s go for it, let’s make a full length film.” Which made me a whole lot happier, because it is way more exciting, and I knew adding more would be far easier than cutting the script in half.

Anyway, that’s how the first two weeks of writing the script went. Traveling around, writing it all by hand, finding moments of perfect solitude to work and refind some creativity that I haven’t been tapping often enough while in Spain…not that other parts of my brain haven’t been challenged constantly. The second two weeks are far less romantic and are border line unhealthy. I’ve spent a lot of time in my room working. Sitting with my pink walls and my photos of puppies as my ashtray overflows and empty water bottles and dried cups of tea accumulate into one disgusting mess. This is the part of writing that separates (how to say this without sounding completely arrogant?)…well…want to be writers and writers who will write good things, not saying will be great or ever publish anything grand, just writers who will write whole and complete stories (which generally are the only stories that get published).
After the first draft my secondary main character was highly underdeveloped. I spent a week developing a story for him. Figuring out what his problem was, how would it play out with Elle, how to get his story into the frame I had already created. It wasn’t easy. Intact, one night I had a near breakdown certain it was impossible and if I was going to do it I would need atleast a month to figure it out. But, that’s how I work. I panic. I obsess. And I get back to work for it. By the end of that night I had it figured out. I knew how to work James in. I knew his problem, I knew how it tied in with Elle. And in the next four of five days, I had a new draft ready for Cody, which was damn close to being a completed story.
I’m not sure which is my favorite part of writing, the first draft stage, or the revision stage. I love them both for separate reasons. The first draft stage is always very romantic. It’s falling in love with people you create. It’s writing something completely new, that when you start writing it you have no idea where it is going. But, as each line unfolds you discover that on some subconscious level, your writing is being directed. This happens to me often I’ll write a few lines, read back over them, and see they are going in a direction I had no intention of taking it. And then I just play follow the leader and keep going. I know some writers who I do not believe write like this. They think out every scene before hand, they know exactly what to say. But, I am not like this. I cannot lie in bed and think of every line of dialogue I want. The only way my writing comes out is to write and see where it goes. Which, often leaves me with many errors and holes and underdeveloped things. But, I have the ability of revision, and I can fix all those problems…
So revision. The second stage of writing. This is where I find all those holes and I fix them. For me, writing a story, whether it be a short story or a screenplay, is like putting together a puzzle. I know the whole picture. I know where the characters begin, I know where they end. And I know I have to hole here, a space there…a piece in this hand, a piece in that hand. Revision is simply finding out how to get all of these pieces together in order to have a complete picture, a complete draft. And I love this process. It’s so fun. Because, by the time I reach this point, I know my characters. I know how they think. I know how they would react to any scenario. So putting all the pieces together “is like a mind puzzle, it’s an awesome mind puzzle” (can anyone name where I quoted that from?).

So here I am now. The draft is close. It’s damn close. I know it is. Not to say it’s perfect. I know it isn’t. But, I have just about taken it as far as I know how. I’ve tried a new process of revision that I’ve never tried before. And, trust me, I don’t like it. I’m mass letting people read it. I’m getting all the input I can get from people. I’ve let people I’ve talked to twice in my life read it. And I’m collecting all the feedback and considering it all fully. I’m still assuming I have more authority over writing than that girl I met on the bus and had a conversation with, but I still considered fully if the first kiss did come too soon, and whether or not I should write a cheesy line of dialogue to precede it. I chose not to.

Anyway, that’s what my life has been for the past month. I’m working. I’m working hard on something I have to believe is going to be good.

Cody has started a website at www.aplacecalledbliss.com. As of right now, there isn’t much on it, but we are going to be slowly adding things as new developments come. Storyboards, script pages, blog section, and what not…I’m not really sure. Cody is the brains of the operation. I’m just the poet with the heart.

Huzza!
Jake.

cultural differences part one

2008-04-04T11:37:00.001-07:00

I clearly took a month off from writing on the blog. Not intentionally, I suppose I just didn’t have anything to say. Life in Madrid has become as routing as any other life. I wake up in the morning, I eat breakfast, I got to class till one in the afternoon, I come home, and then sometimes I go to a museum or park or walk in the center…sometimes friends come with me, sometimes not. In the evenings on weekdays I study (a little from text books…really I study all day long), eat dinner with my family and then go to bed. On the weekends there’s always something to do. Point being, life here is routine, so I haven’t really been inspired to write blogs. However, by known I’ve complied a load of observations and culture differences that might be interesting to some. So I’ll do my best to keep some updates going on cultural differences that I find interesting.

The meal schedule in Spain is completely illogical. Truly, it is. It’s not based on the principle that food is consumed for energy. Breakfast everyday is the same. And it’s very light. Toast with marmalade and a café con leche is the standard Spanish breakfast. Each morning I eat a little more. I have a bowl of cornflakes as well. I quit drinking the coffee about a month and a half ago, because I realized my host mom, Merche, has been giving me decaf. Now I have chocolate milk. The milk too, that’s something different. The milk here is super pasteurized and doesn’t need to be refrigerated and lasts for five months unopened. It tastes very different, not fresh at all, with a slight hint of vanilla. Anyway, being a huge milk drinker back home, I just don’t dig the milk. That’s why I add “Coca Coa,” it’s like nesquick. And the Spanish are crazy for it. People order it at the cafes.
Lunch every day is at 2:00 PM and it is huge. And after eating a tiny and very nutrient lacking breakfast, sometimes lunch seems really far away. It’s the largest meal of the day. At every café you can find the menu del dia. It comes with three or four courses and a glass of wine or beer. The first course (Primeros) is traditionally salad, soup, or pallea. The second (segundos) is a meat dish (the Spanish eat a lot of meat…and I’ll get to Ham) with potatoes, and usually not vegetables. The Spanish do not eat a lot of vegetables. And the final course (postre) is a dessert. Usually ice cream, flan, or a fruit. I don’t eat lunch with my family so I’m on my own to find it.

K, Jamon. Ham. The Spanish are fucking crazy for Ham! Every restaurant has cured ham hanging from the walls…Cured ham is pig leg left to age for five years. So whole pig legs faded to brown line the walls of restraunts. I eat some pig product atleast nine times a week. Lomo, chorizo, jamon (both york and iberecia), beicon, bacon, a whole world of sausages, and any other part you can imagine. Cured jamon is the most famous style. It’s like eating raw flesh. It’s chewy and when you bit into it, you have to pull it away from your mouth and it just keeps stretching. They put it on tapas, bocadillas, pulgas. They put it into soups and bake it into pastries. And they just eat it plan. Strips of flesh on a plate. My professor, Sarah, put it best: The Spanish are compulsive consumers of Jamon.

Dinner. Typically the Spanish eat a very healthy sized dinner. But, they eat it at nine PM. This is the meal that kills me the most. Now, I have no problem waiting so late for dinner. But, eating so much so late is just irrational. It literally keeps me up at night because I have way too much energy. Each night Merche cooks us a bastante bien meal. She isn’t a world class cook. But every night is like having moms home cooking. But only Spanish cuisine. Every meal we have an appetizer of soup, salad, corquetas, and bread with chorizo, salami, or melted cheese. We eat a lot of seafood. Fish, of many nature, and shrimp mainly. There’s a lot of pasta happening. Usually potatoes. And sometimes dessert of flan, leche frita, or fruit. Oh, and every meal, and I mean every single meal you ever eat, is served with a basket of bread. But artisan bread, delicious bread. Most Spaniards never eat American style bread.

Olive oil and salt are served with all meals. The only places that have pepper are touristy places. The Spanish hate spices. Nothing is spicy. When the waiter tells you the dish is spicy, it is so incredible not spicy. They don’t normally eat mustard for this reason as well. I’ve only seen one fruteria that sold Jalapeños. And good luck trying to find anything spicier.
Most of the dinners are fried, as well. They aren’t fried in the sense of fried chicken, but just sautéed in frying oil. It’s a sound I’ve become accustomed to in my home, the sound of boiling oil. But, I’m told this is new Spanish thing. It’s not traditional.

Let’s talk Spanish fashion. Well, one element of Spanish fashion. Mullets are so in right now!!! The hippest actors, the most handsome models, top selling musicians, they all have mullets. Which, of course, means you see mullets in the streets everyday. Mullets of all nature too. Sleek moused mullets. Frizzy unkempt mullets. Mullets on men. Mullets on women. Mullets on children. Mullets with designer perms. But, my favorite mullet so far, is the Rastafarian Mullet. I saw one that was beyond belief. The top of this guys head was shaved very low, and in the back he had dreadlocks that rivaled Bob Marley’s for thickness and filth. Some men, even have the Jedi Padawan cut. Shaved head with one long braid that starts behind their ear…or even worse, the Rat Tail version of the Jedi Padawan. People shave lightning bolts and side steps into their mullets as well. I’m not making this up. This is real.

huzza!
jake.

Semana Santa

2008-04-01T08:36:00.000-07:00

This week was Easter; everyone knows this. In Spain, though, there is no Easter there is Semana Santa, or holy week. An entire week of Easter. There is no school. People don’t have to go to work and even in the capital city nearly all the stores are closed Thursday through Sunday. There are huge parades in the streets every day, especially in the south of Spain. So, naturally, on the holiest Catholic holiday of Spain, I left to an Islamic country to spend Semana Santa. Everyone leaves the country or goes to Andalusia anyway.
This trip was very different in the sense of I really didn’t have great adventures and meet incredible interesting people who willingly spent afternoons with me. I was nearly alone the entire time. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. On the first day of the trip, at the train station, the friends I was supposed to be traveling with, for personal reasons, decided to go their personal ways. Leaving me alone with ten days till I had to be back in Madrid. So, I set out alone into the very foreign country that is Morocco.
My first night was spent in Tangier, which I briefly wrote about in my first blog. Tanger, in other parts of Morocco is known as Danger. The city is full of criminals who pose as friends and confidants but would really do anything to steal from you…which, after traveling through a lot of Morocco, doesn’t seem to far off from an apt description of all Moroccan cities.
That night I was at the beach. Morocco is a filthy country. They have poor public sanitation services and litter is a very large issue (at least to a westerner). The beach was lined with rusted bikes and car tires and god knows what else washed in from the ocean. It had empty beer bottles and broken glass and plastic bags imbedded in the sand. It smelled as though the sewage line of the city dumped directly into the bay, which was a concave and even at night in the far distance one can see the rising mountains of spain. But here, I was invited to sit with a local who was all alone watching the ocean at night. He didn’t speak English and only a bit of Spanish, but we talked as best as we could. I could tell he was bothered. He was quiet and often dropped his head into his hands. He spoke softly as only the loneliest and most solemn humans do. He told me he was a sewer. That was his trade. He made jackets and pants and shirts. But, there was no work for him in morocco. None to be had at all. He was desperate for money and could not support himself. He kept saying, “En Espana mucho trabajo.” He wanted to do as many other Moroccans have done and immigrate to Spain where one can live and support themselves. He joked that he would swim the distance that night for a better life.
This is a problem throughout Morocco. Poor living standards and the lack of work. He was not the only person I met who told me this. But, his sincerity and his broken manner touched me in a way that all heartbreaking stories do. Also, he was the only one who told me this and did not ask me to give him money. He simply wanted an ear and a friend, someone to understand his so frustrating situation. I have no idea how he can ever hope improve his life. Short of moving to Europe. But, it is difficult to do this legally.
I spent the next two nights in the cities of Casablanca and Rabat, which is the capital. Both, of which passed fairly unspectacular. I seeked other travelers who spoke English that I might be able to join for the evenings, but could never find any. So I wondered and saw what I could. In Morocco, every city has a flea market. But, they aren’t markets in the sense of obscurity and neat odds and ends like Rastro in Madrid or The Saturday Market in Portland. In Moroccan markets venders sell basic living needs. There are stands with huge potato sacks full of fresh spices. Some have eggs and butchered lambs hanging on racks. Some are carpets laid on the ground with stacks of shirts and pants and bras and underwear piled on. There are electronic stands which sell lamps and light bulbs. The markets are where people go to shop. Like Wal-Mart in the states. Except nothing like Wal-Mart.
A huge reason these two cities were so unspectacular for me was because I was alone. And not that I can’t find friends alone, I’ve done it time and time again. But, because Morocco is a terrible country to be alone in. Thousands, at the very very least, of people make their living off of begging tourists for money. Children, adults, old men and women, approach you on the street and simply ask you for money. I would say no or go away (I even learned it in French…one of the two national languages) and still the beggars would walk along side you, stride for stride, telling you their sorry tale trying to get pity money from you. Also, there are the people with stores that sale traditional Moroccan goods. Who will approach you very kindly asking you where you are from, and where ever you are from, the vender will have family living there or somewhere near by. “Oh, you are an American! I have a cousin who lives in Sacramento.” Then they will tell you nice things about Morocco, and you will be thinking they are just friendly people, but then they shift and tell you they have a store and they will make you a “student price,” on a fine carpet.
Seems harmless though, right? But, this happens literally ever ten steps. It’s endless, ceaseless. I’d want to go for a walk and see the city, but I’d return to my hostal after half an hour because I’d be worn out from being hassled non stop. This is a problem for all tourists, but, when you are alone, they feel much more comfortable in approaching a single person than a group of four or five. On my last night in Morocco, after eating dinner, I was walking along the ocean boardwalk (not really a boardwalk…just don’t know a better term), and a drunk homeless man with ratted hair and soiled clothes grabbed me by my arm and started dancing with me. I pulled my arm away and he grabbed it again…and again. Finally I got away from him and continued walking when another man, well dressed, walked up beside me and told me he was starving and needed to eat and I told him to leave me alone and I kept walking and he kept on pace with me continuing to beg. After six days of this happening every time I went outside, I had had enough. I went back to my Hostal, and locked myself in my room for the rest of the night. It was only Nine O’clock.

Because I was alone and unable to meet any English speakers, I essentially observed all day long. There were two major things I found curious. The first, I’ll present as a joke, but I mean it in all seriousness: For a country that homosexuality is punishable by death, the men of Morocco sure are gay. I found this very interesting coming with my western (esp. Idaho) mindset. The men are very close, and I mean in proximity. They kiss each other when they meet, and while hanging out they touch each other often (and I mean in the sense of boyfriend pushing hair out of his lovers face). They speak in a very high town which sound to me an awful lot like whining. And physically, the men of morocco are very feminine. They have very sleek and narrow faces, narrow shoulders. I suppose the encounters are this way because of the lack of men and woman submersion. The men hang out with men. The woman hang out with woman. And because of this the men become very close to their friends. Which, as I saw in Chawen, isn’t a bad thing. The friends appear to be very close and loving and trusting. But their means of showing it are very different from western civilization.
Secondly: When thinking of Islamic cultures often the idea of the belittling of women comes to mind. They don’t have the same rights and are hidden by veils and kept within homes to raise the children. But, undoubtedly, the women rule the show in morocco. On many occasions I saw the men cower to the women. Men fear women and their biologically enhanced rage (joke). On the bus from merekech to Errachidad a woman along side of the road waved down the bus, why I have no idea, but she stood in the doorway and started talking to the driver. The driver, at first, spoke loudly and I’m assuming she didn’t have money for the bus and he was trying to kick her off. But, then the woman started yelling and the bus driver literally sunk in his seat and leaned away from her. He lowered his voice and the when he tried to speak the woman spoke louder and he was silenced. In the end, the women left two packages on the bus and we left without her. I have no idea what it was all about.
A second incidence of the woman power, though I saw many (really many) was in Tanger. I saw a marital dispute. I walked up while the woman was screaming at the husband and talking a child from his arms. The man fell to his knees and starting pleading with her. He cried and shouted and gave the universal look of “please forgive me.” A group gathered around them in the busy street and he continued to beg and then the wife turned and started yelling at him more and lowered his butt to rest on his heels as he listened to her yell at him. It was quite bizarre. And with these two instances I’m certain that even though the men run the politics in Morocco, the women rule the real world.

I’ve discovered I love backpacking through countries. The train system in Morocco is awesome. Not in a “it’s super convenient” sort of way. Trains are constantly late, they go very slow, and don’t really connect that much of the country. But, they have compartments which enable comfortable sleeping and it’s a wonderful way to see much of the country. I started in the north which is lush and green, and on the trains (and buses) I saw the land shift from rich mountain regions to dry planes and eventually to vacant Sahara desert.
It was fun to ride a train or bus anywhere from five to thirteen hours (of my eight days in morocco 47 hours were spent on buses and trains), and get off the vehicle with a heavy pack. My legs would be weak and my body tired from sitting still for so long, and the last thing I’d want to do is hump a pack for a few hours trying to find the center of the city and a good priced hostal. But, once you get walking for a bit with the heavy pack it begins to feel very good. Your body is well rested, and you can walk quickly and seeing the new cities this way is very cool…again, minus the beggars.

My main goal was to make it to the Sahara desert which proved to be very difficult. Just traveling there took much longer than I had expected. I took an eleven hour train to Merekech from Tanger. Then a thirteen hour hour bus ride to Errachidad, which was incredibly cramped--my knees where smashed into the seat in front of me, the aisles were full of people standing, and the bus itself was incredibly dirty. The bus broke down as well. We stopped along side the road in the middle of nowhere. I sat far from the main group in a field eating an orange and a local man came up to me and starting talking to me in English. He too told me about the poor living in Morocco and how he couldn’t find a job. Then he asked where I was from. I lied and said England. Then, he repeated himself and his questions. And then he repeated them again. He was definitely drugged and out of his head. I asked him if he was on the bus and he said no. I have absolutely no idea how the hell he got out into the middle of nowhere, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to talk to him any longer. When I stood up to walk back towards the group, he asked if he could have my phone number in Europe so when he moved there he could call me. I told him, again, I wasn’t European and I couldn’t help him in EU. Then he just asked for money. I gave him a cigarette.
The scenery changed completely on the last hours of the ride to Errachidad. Trees became scarce and the dead grass ground turned to red clay earth. The buildings we passed too were all red. At the time I didn’t realize why all the buildings were read, I just thought the cities where themed. But, after reaching the Sahara in the daylight, and seeing the red sand which composed it’s gigantic dunes, I realized the buildings were all made from the only material available in the desert…sand stone. Which made me think about how man can survive on whatever resources are available to him. Like the Eskimos in there ice igloos or the Indians in their wooden and buffalo hide homes. A very power sentiment to me, it was. The adaptability of man.
Once in Errachidad I had my first encounters with the Southern Berbers who I have so much distrust against. But, at the same time have so much respect for. Their culture, like so much of Morocco, I find beautiful. In quiet moments there was always friendly conversations with the Berbers of the south. Their religion and culture teaches them to be very open and accepting people. They accept the differences in all humans and want to find the good in all people. Which, after spending the prior three days alone, was very welcome to have friendly conversations. But, they are the sketchiest and seediest businessmen on the planet and I am certain they would make the best used car salesmen in the world. They tell you exactly what you want to hear no matter how much of a lie they are telling you. It is really a soulless way to do business. I covet honesty. I just want the truth. I can deal with the consequences, whatever they may be.
Isma, whose family (again a Berber family, which has nothing to do with blood but a communal living) set up guided trips to the Sahara, met me once I got off the bus. We went back to his families’ hotel where we talked business. The planned trip seemed great and they spoke wonderfully of their services. I genuinely trusted them like I trust the Berbers in Chefchaouen (but there is no place in Morocco like Chawen). Business in Morocco never has set prices. It’s a country where one must haggle, because the Berbers want all the money they can get out of you. I knew the price for a guided trip was 300-600 Durhams (about 45-80 dollars) a night, which included everything one needs. I told them I knew the price and then I was told to write on a piece of paper what I could afford and that they understood I was a student and would make it happen. I wrote down 450 drhm, and they looked me and said they could not take me for that price. I wrote another and they said they couldn’t do that either. Finally they told me since I was alone they would have to charge me 600 drhm. I said fine, okay. I just want to go and we had been haggling for far too long. I was slightly annoyed by the dishonesty already, and when I gave them 1200 Drhm for two nights in the desert, they told me we had agreed on 60 euro which is about 660 dhrm. And they wanted more money. Clearly, I tried to plead my case, but when I started talking they just starting talking faster and louder. I couldn’t possibly get a word in. It was soooo shaddy. I gave them the extra 120. Then, they asked me about the money for the taxi to get to the desert. We were still two hours from the dunes and no buses traveled any further. However, in our haggling on what I was paying for we had agreed that the taxi ride out there was included in the price. Which, of course, now it wasn’t. Again, I tried to call their bullshit, which turned out completely useless and ended up having to pay 100 dhrm for the two hour cab ride.
Along with me four Spanish girls from the Basque country had paid for the services of the Berbers. They were very nice girls and the five of us plus the diver and our guide crammed into a four door sedan and headed for the dunes. The wind became very strong on the drive. Sand drifted across the road and looked exactly like snow drifting in the wind in Idaho. It was very beautiful. To reach the Dunes, we turned off the main road and drove directly on the sand. At points, the wind would gust so heavily that the nothing could be seen. Only red sand tossed in front of us to the point of near blackout. The path to the hotel stationed in the desert was market by red posts planted in the sand. When the strong winds would pick up and eventually die, all in the car would search desperately for the posts, which sometimes would be 300 ft away.
Clearly, with the terrible weather it wasn’t possible to head out to the desert that afternoon like we had discussed, which I would have been okay with; however once at the hotel I was shown I room where I could sleep that night and then asked if I wanted to pay for a half board or full board. I told the keeper I had already paid for lodging and food and my expenses were covered. I was wrong. I had paid for the tent and food in the desert not the food and room in the hotel. I don’t think I can write now how angry I was. I’m over it and dealing like this are just part of traveling in Morocco. But, imagine how angry I was. I refused to pay, confronted my guide and told him I wanted a full refund for the services I paid for and would not be receiving. In the kindest manner, he empathized with me and told me it wasn’t possible to refund me because we had already reserved a spot in the tents and reserved a camel. And the bad weather was a part of Morocco. I told him he needed to pay for all my expenses at the hotel with the money I had given him. And he responded, so very kindly, about how that wasn’t possible and listed a line of bullshit and ended up telling me they would make me a very good price to stay in the hotel and for the food. Which, to their worthless credit and feeble word, they did make me a good deal. 100 dhrm for a night stay and three meals (dinner that night, breakfast the next morning and breakfast on the day I returned from the desert). Which, all of that normally would cost 500 drhm, because the hotel was nice and the food, as bitterly as I ate it, was wonderful.

And that’s the last I’ll bitch about Morocco. I’ve accepted that’s jut how Morocco works. It’s just a huge pain in the ass, and I have a huge humanistic problem with being lied to and manipulated oh so many times. Because, despite this blog and my focus on the negative, it really is wonderful country.

That night the winds did not stop until nearly midnight. I, the four Basque Girls, and Isma, sat on comfortable couches which lined the large main room where all the guests sat and talked. We had good conversations and told parts of our life stories and made jokes and laughed a lot. Once the winds died we finally went outside and sat on the patio of the hotel. The camels groaned like distressed lions (I had no idea camels were so loud and angry) and the towering dunes shown in the moonlight. The desert at night is still very bright. At midnight one could see the distant horizon still and the stars shown in multitudes high above. I talked mostly with Mireia (who was renamed Fatima by the Berbers, and that is really what I think her name is). We talked a lot about the cultural differences of America and Spain. They were surprised to find out America wasn’t the finest place on earth to live, and I was surprised they thought it was. I told them how expensive college and health care was for us. She goes to a good university in San Sebastiani and pays 700 euro a year…health care is free for all citizens. Of course this is the difference in the amount of taxes the citizens pay, but when you look at what you pay in taxes versus what you pay for university and health care, the more financially wise decision is apparent…socialism is a very good system in my opinion.

The next morning after breakfast of toast with honey, olives, orange juice, and coffee it was time for me to finally head out into the desert. The girls had only paid for one night in the desert and would not be coming with me. And, I found out that morning that my “guide” isma, was not a guide at all just a chauffer, and Omar, would be taking me to the desert. I was very glad to hear this because I had had just about all I could handle of his family and their crooked dealings just would not sit easily with me. I mounted my camel that morning and we set off into the sand dunes which from the hotel were only mountains in the distance. I did not ride the camel long. Maybe fifteen minutes before I had an incredible ugre to climb down from him and feel the stain of hiking in the sand and the hot sun reflecting up on me. Plus, camels are not very pleasant to ride. One sits on the front half of the hump and the vertebrae of the animal digs into ones crotchal area. I told Omar this, and he gave a command to the camel in Arabic, and the camel slowly lowered its front legs to its knees and then his back legs to their knees and then the whole body to the sand. I climbed off, stretched large, and even in the early morning, around ten AM, the sun was hot on my skin. I began to walk and omar said, “es major sin zapatos.” So, I took off my shoes, which never returned to my feet until the next day after returning to the hotel and talking a shower.
The sand of the Sahara is not like the sand of any beech I have felt. It is like silk, in every sense imaginable. There are no course grains in it and every step in the desert is like stepping onto 100 layers of silk tapestries. Also, the sand is red. Red like the color of fading brick. For miles it was the only dominant color aside from the brilliant blue of such clean skies. Along the walk Omar would point out trails of small insects in the deserts. We would track them to their ends and find dung beetles hidden in the shade of desert shrubs, which are a sickly green fading into brown and very scarce. He showed me a distinctive trail which looked like none of the others. The center of the trail looked as though it was of a snake which moved directly without slithering, and on either side the small indentations of tiny feet. We followed the trail, which stopped in the middle of a dune, and Omar said, “Mira (look)” and he plunged his hand into the sand and he came back out with a lizard in his hand. The lizard was the same red of the sand and buried underneath it for protection from predators and the scorching sun. Along the side of the lizard were six black marks spaced evenly apart with about a half inch in between each, which Omar explained to me marked the years of the lizard.
We continued walking and I wish I had more to say but really there is not much. This is the power of the desert. It is vacancy, utter desolation, which, for me, was the same state of my mind and I was able to forget entirely about the berbers who had annoyed me so much and the hectic days which had preceded my arrival. Mostly I admired the dunes, which some were as large as the “small” mountains of southwestern Idaho.
It only took two and a half hours to reach our camp, which was in a basin of the dunes. We climbed a final series of hills and in the flat valley I could see camps set up of tents built from high center poles and lower edge poles wrapped entirely in the woven blankets of the berbers. There was a well there as well. When I asked at the hotel where they got there water, I was told, “It may not look like it, but there is lots of water in the desert, just far beneath the ground.” This well was nothing more than a dug out hole with a plastic lined interior and a simple plastic cover with a bucket tied to a rope that was dipped into the earth.
Once arriving, Omar cleared our tent of sand the best he could and then went into the kitchen (there was a separate tent for cooking), and with a propane stove with a single burner made berber tea. I watched him make the tea of ingredients I was not familiar with, save for sugar and mint, but there was also two other roots and a flower which he added. Then he began to make lunch which was a typical Moroccan course, infact it what I ate for three meals straight, but I can’t recall the name now….
Sorry, I suck.
But it was delicious. It is made of chicken placed in the center of a pan. Around it is stacked carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, and onions. Garlic and other seasonings are added and then water and oil are poured over the top. A coned cover with a ventilation hole is placed over the pan and the entire thing sits and cooks for a few hours until the chicken is ready.
After lunch I sat and wrote simple five word poems in the sand. I took short naps and was relieved when a slight breeze would pick up and cool the sweat on my forehead. I heard the strangest bird who song was like a creaking door.
Once my food had settled I went hiking in the dunes. There was a gigantic dune with a very steep face that back dropped the camp. I tried to climb it and after a half hour of starting and climbing thirty seconds before utter exhaustion; stopping and resting; and then climbing again; I decided I would never make it to the top. So I turned back and walked towards the smaller dunes which piled one ontop of the other. I climbed them for nearly an hour. A steep incline and then a level plateau and then another steep incline and the segue to another dune. It was truly wonderful. The sky in the desert is unlike anything I have ever seen. It is the deepest blue and when I wrote about it in my journal I realized it was the same color of my blue Bic pen. The simplicity of the desert is the best part about it. There are only three colors to be seen. The red of the sand, the blue of the sky, and the earthly green of the desert shrubs. These are the only colors to be seen. But, depending on how the sun is striking the sand, at what angle, where the shadows of the dunes fall, and if you are facing the sun or not, there is an endless amazement of new combinations of light and colors to be seen. Sometimes, when the sun would hide behind the dunes, the distant dunes looked white, or a very light yellow. But definitely not red as they truly are.
When I nearly reached the summit of the original dune I was trying to climb, I came across a wonder of nature. Two dunes came nearly together but were separated by, what I can best describe as, a pit. It was like a cone, as though the two dunes had been hallowed out at their point of meeting. The hole was very deep and the edges very steep. If one was to fall in…well…getting out would be possible, but very very difficult.
The tops of the highest dunes were amazing themselves too. Not for their vistas, were I could see dunes rolling into each other for miles and miles and could see nothing else but dunes, but for their simple peaks. The dunes come to a perfect triangular point on their tops, which run for however long the dune itself is. They are formed by the wind and at their highest point the blows over them and then descends down the other side, forming this long running peaks.
From the top I sat and looked. And I wish there was more to say, but like I said earlier, there was hardly a thought in my mind while in the desert. I just observed. Like a simple beast or primitive main without cognitive abilities. I was simply awed by the spectacle I was taking in. Which, now, it seems like maybe the birds and foxes of the world are truly the more evolved specie (heretical to say, I know, but it was just so blissful in the desert).

And that sums up to the best of my ability my experience in the desert. I did not write about the night in the desert, but it was nearly the same as the day, except without light. I hiked more after dinner, wrote more poems, both in the sand and in my notebook, and sat with the stillness of mind that does not come over take me often enough.

The next day might as well mark the end of my time in Morocco. I spent the next 24 hours either waiting for a bus or train, or sitting on a bus or train, until I arrived back to the north of morocco, in Tanger, where I stayed one night, which, after coming from the desert and escaping the mayhem of a cities in a third world country, I hid in my room and went to bed early to catch the morning ferry back to Spain and my home in Madrid.

Chaouen

2008-02-28T14:19:00.000-08:00

The story of Chefchaouen is hard to tell. It may have begun in the beeches of Southern Spain, where I watched the sun set behind dark rain clouds, and I ran along the coast barefoot, singing songs to myself and the dark, and I let the cold Atlantic ocean wash up to my ankles. Or, it may have begun before that, when I was in Seville and thinking that Spain is Spain and though Seville is nothing like Madrid it is at the same time exactly like Madrid. Or, it may have begun once actually in Morocco, after taking a ferry across the Gibraltar straight and standing on a vessel for my first time which was tossed with the torpid seas and rose and crashed and if I was not holding on to something or sitting securely, I was tossed like drunkard from side to side, which took me to Tangier where locals make livings by swindling tourists into giving them too much money for too easy of tasks and where I was prompted to pay 800 Durham for a taxi ride which, if I spoke Arabic, I would have gotten for 60. But, I didn’t take the cab, I like to think I have more common sense than that. But, for sake of narration, and finding a starting point for three days which have completely altered my mind and my thoughts of what it means to be alive and what it means to be human, this narration, will begin half way through the three hour bus ride from Tangier to Chefchaouen, Morocco, Africa.
The Bus itself was not an old bus. It was fairly modern but judging the actually year it was created was difficult because it was just so dirty. When choosing my seat it came down to which one did not have a layer of dust, or which one did not have a pool of stale water at the foot. And I do not mean this in a western sense of, “it was so disgusting,” but, it’s Morocco, wear things are dirty, and the importances of life are slightly different. The bus was entirely full of individuals heading south from Tangier, the doorway to Africa the locals call it, into the Rif mountains. Some of the peoples were conservative and traditional Muslims. Women where the head shalls and men wore the Gelops (I’m not certain how to spell it, but the white frocks). Others, wore old jeans and faded shirts. And a few, dressed modernly, very European in fashion. Looking out the window was a beautiful spectical. Along the roads were small villages with houses made of concrete and possibly slabs of plastic lashed together to form walls all lining dirt roads which lead into the mountains. The Rif mountains themselves are some of the most beautiful nature I have ever seen. They are not like mountains in the western US with green foliage and trees and shrubs forming an undefined façade. But, they are massive rock formations, very similar to what I’ve seen in Spain, except that they were the most lush green I have ever seen. Even in February. They had a vibrant glow to them in these winter months. And the land around them seemed unspoiled. The southern road from Tangier to Chefchaouen was nearly naked. If life was seen out the windows, it was a rancher herding sheep to another part of the land or possibly a car broken down along the side of the road.
At the first stop I was not sure if I was already in Chefchaouen, so I turned to the man behind me and asked, “esta Chefchaouen?” However, he did not speak Spanish and I did not pronounce the city name correct so he looked at me with utter confusion and I asked if he spoke Spanish or English. He said no, and he called forward on the bus, to where a girl, about my age, dressed in peacoat and scarf—a general European style, stood in the aisle reaching above to the luggage rack, and asked her, in Arabic, if she spoke English or Spanish. She spoke both.
Her name was Siham Ferfess. She asked me where I was going and I told her Chefchaouen, to which she responded, “Chaouen. Locals call it Chaouen.” She told me that was where she was headed, for that is where her parents lived and where she grew up, and that I should sit with her and she’d make sure I made it there safely. So I did. And I had a wonderful conversation with her. I must have sounded like the silliest uneducated foreigner, because I’d ask her basic questions about the muslim religion, or about the gov’t of Morocco, and she’d look back at me with a look of, “really, you don’t know that?” But, she was very kind and after a snicker or two she’d answer all my questions honestly. One thing I recall very well was our discussion of flying carpets in ancient Arabic cultures. She fully believed in them. Obviously, with my western rational mind I asked how, and essentially she defended them as such, “How did Christ heal the blind?”
“It was a miracle, a gift from god, I guess,” I responded.
“Flying carpets and magic were also a gift from god.”
And, to me, it made total sense. If I am going to allow and accept the ideas of Christ as a miracle worker it would be entirely hypocritical of me to say that flying carpets could not have existed. We talked more about Islamic religion and how most Muslims are middle ground Muslims. Like Siham herself. In the united States, I had the stereotypical view of all msulims wearing the head scarves and the robes and having huge burly beards. But, this is not true, as Siham explained to me, and as my own investigations proved to disprove. The muslim religion is no different, aside from theology (and really they do have a lot in common), in the sense of christanity. Most Muslims are “normal” people, who dress “normal,” listen to pop music, goes to movies. They are western in many ways that we are western. And the stereotypical Islamic individual I had in my head proved to be very false.
The bus ride seemed over far too quickly. I enjoyed my time with Siham and the discussions we had. And the seemingly close connection we seemed to make fairly promptly. Two minds, very far apart in orgin, which both lust and analyze the views of the other. Her stop came before mine, and she said she was taking the 3pm bus back to Tangier on Sunday. I said I was taking the Six am one. To which we she said, maybe I’ll see you at ten, and then we kissed (European kisses one on both check…not doing this when I get home will be odd…I even do it with my American friends) and she said, “Welcome to Chaouen,” as she walked away.
The next stop was the city center stop. The only road in Chaouen. When I got off I was immediately greeted by two men, one wearing a leather jacket and one wearing a gelop and holding an umbrella. Abdul, the man in the leather jacket, approached me and asked which hotel I was staying at. I told him I did not have one yet. He told me his family had on in the old part of town and I could see it if I liked, and that unlike Tangier, no one in Chaouen was going to force me to do anything I didn’t want to do. He would take me there if I like and if I did not like the room I could freely go about my way.
The walk to the old part of town was a very foreign walk. Mohamed, the old man in the gelop, held the umbrella over my head the entire way. We walked along a dirt road passed old brick building with poor masonry work and some with ceilings and walls that were collapsing. We passed a stretch of modern white brick building with restaurants and tourist souvenir shops that Abdul told me was the “new part of town.” But the buildings were old and dirty and I was surprised to hear the term “new” and curious to know what the “old” part of town looked like. I was uneasy to trust Abdul, having just come from the criminals in Tangier, but he seemed honest, I can’t explain why, but I even with my doubts, I seemed to trust him. Along the walk he said he could tell I didn’t trust him, and that was okay, but that I’d discover soon enough he was a good man. He said that good and bad people existed everywhere, and good people attracted other good people. He told me, if I like, he’d take me to have a cup of tea once I checked into the hotel and show me around the town.
The old part of town was quite amazing. Tiny narrow streets paved with rock…but the rock was simply implanted into the clay earth. There was not cement bonding them. Just deep into the earth. The buildings too where brick and cement. And the masonary work on these buildings was even worse. The stacked bricks were uneven and potruted at different lengths and intervals. Everything was painted a light blue which mirrored the sky and white. Everything. Along the packed streets small vendors sold their wares. Some huts had house products like soap and air fresheners. Some sold clothes—modern and traditional. Some sold cigarettes and sodas and candy bars. Some sold bread and meats. And there were even some people sitting in chairs on a corner, not in a store at all, selling things like olives and bread and necklaces they had grown or made themselves. Children ran through the crowded streets, unsupervised, and played and laughed. Along the walls were drinking fountains, with mold and moss growing inside of them, where local children were drinking or local woman were filling buckets of water to clean their homes. The roads were not made for cars. Not in any fashion. There were no cars in the old part of town. The roads were steep and turned ended with no predictable patters. Sometimes a series of long stairs, painted blue, would appear, and sometimes the rock paved path would cease and one would have to walk through mud for twenty feet until the path started again. The streets were noisy and people called out in Arabic and spoke to the neighbors or the shopkeepers across the way.
We reached the hotel, Hotel Bab Lain. I saw my room, which could not be considered clean under any western view. The room smelled of sewage leaking from the bathroom. And the floors and walls looked filthy. And the shower was nothing more than a head protruding from the wall next to the toilet. Not tub or special area. You stood next to the toilet, soaked the toilet and the mirror and the sink when you showered…if you showered. There was no soap or toilet paper or towels offered in the room. But, I was eager to get along with the adventure and knew Abdul was waiting for me downstairs. So I took the room, paid six euro a night for it, and before heading down I had a moment where I asked myself I trusted Abdul, if I really wanted to follow him to god knows where, in a country that I knew shit about, other than Tangier is a place where people get fucked for trusting another human too quickly. But, the bus ride went well, and I had no other options for an in to the city. So I went downstairs and left with Abdul.
He led me through a labyrinth of city streets to what he called his families home. Walking into the home I knew I was in a completely different world. Abdul’s family, was a family of Berbers, and I quickly discovered family was used in a different sense. They were a communal family that lived in a traditional manner. They were all brothers, but not from the same mother. Their craft was weaving. They made blankets, carpets, sweaters, gelops, scarves, and many other traditional items of the Berber legacy.
They brought me into the house, which had two main rooms down stairs and a terrace upstairs. The walls of the room were lined with thousands of neatly folded blankets and carpets. On the walls ceiling they had hung their art over every square inch, which was later explained to me that was also tradition…in the mountains where there village was the blankets were used to insulate their homes. If a small section of wall was exposed it too was painted the same blue of Chaouen.
Once entering the room, they invited me to sit on one of the two long benches which lined the walls and was covered with one of their pieces. We began to talk and an old man named Abdulo, wearing a blue gelop (which at this point I still found very foreign and strange), told me about their family history. They were Berbers, decedents of the first tribes to inhabit northern Morocco, who have a great deal to do with Spanish history, and that his Berber tribe, there are 50 tribes still living traditionally in northern Africa, lived 30km from Chaouen and had a village in the mountains. They were self sustaining in the village. Each family had livestock and grew their own grains and vegetables. And each family depended heavily upon the other families in the village. He, lived in Chaouen, where he ran the store I was sitting in. At this point a man came in with a tray of tea and they asked if I would like one. Of course I said yes. It was wonderful tea, called Berber tea. It was made from some mix of roots and flowers that I had never heard of and after the tea was boiled they placed a handful of fresh mint into each glass and poured the tea on top of the mint. When ever my glass was empty, the same man who brought me my first glass took it away, went up to the terrace, and returned with a fresh glass of tea. This was his role in the commune. He cleaned the house and prepared tea for guests. Abdul told me they were very welcoming people, as I could already see, and that they had friends from all over the world. He showed me guest book travelers wrote comments in about their stay in, what I have started calling, “the Berber house.” He said to me, “if you are happy, than I am happy.”
After a while of conversation, he told Anis, another member of the family, who dressed very modernly in a brown sweater with a brown undershirt with brown corduroy jeans, began to remove blankets from the stacks and lay them out on the floor. Abdulo explained them to me. He told me that for many generations the Berbers did not have a written language and they used images to tell stories. He explained to me what the images on the blankets meant. Some where the tattoo of his tribe. Some where images of rivers and mountains where his tribe lived. Some of the blankets where traded with a Berber tribe from the Sahara and he explained to me the rolling images were representative of the sand dunes of the desert. Before I knew it, I was telling him which blankets I liked and which ones I didn’t like by saying, “Ishma” for I didn’t like it, and “Halla” for I did like it. The stack disappeared and three rugs laid before me and on a piece of paper Abdula wrote the price of each one. I had no intention of buying anything when I went in, but I was so fascinated with the hospitality, the communal living, the history of each other rugs that I genuinely wanted one. The price he wrote was very high. Which, I didn’t not have a problem with, the craftsmanship was very high, and I’m certain if sold in the states the rugs would bring a much higher price. But, I simply could not afford it. The process started all over with cheaper blankets and rugs and a fresh cup of Berber Tea and in the end I purchased rug and a blanket.
And that was the sale. That is why they escorted me from the bus and took me to a hotel and served me tea and told me their history. But, not entirely. After I had paid and my goods were all packed they invited me to come to the backroom and relax with them. I spent the entire evening there. And it was amazing. A group of guys my age from Barcelona came to visit the Berbers and we sat in the back room and made jokes and drank tea and watched television. A man from croatia came in who spoke English and he and i talked for a few hours and this summer I am going to go and stay with him. Members of the commune would get up at random points to do their work. Which, surprisingly to me, they never ever seemed upset about. Anis would rise and display blankets and then fold them up with precision and restack them along the walls. Yussef, the “house made” would clean the table of sunflower shells and empty water bottles and return with a wash rag and wipe the table down. Abdulo would get up and sell blankets. Everyone had a role. And everyone was very pleased to do their share of the work.
I learned a valuable lesson about tradition that night when meeting a younger Berber named Abdul (yes, there were three). He was 28 and weaver in the commune. He wore a traditional gelop, but underneath it he wore modern clothes and if I saw him in the streets I would be certain he was American. But he was not. He very much believed in the practices of his family and was very happy with his lifestyle. He asked me to tell him American jokes and told me the ones he knew. WE talked about pop culture and music. But, he was wearing a Gelop, right? This is tradition, and something we do not have in the united states. We are far too young of a nation. Before when looking at a traditional Arabic outfit I would have a distant feeling. A feeling of them being foreign and absolutely unrelatable to me. But this is false false false. They were what they were because they are proud of who they are. But, they are people IDENTICAL to me. The conversations were fluid and easy and relaxed. I can’t express fully how profound this discovery was to me. I came this far to discover nothing really. There is no grand difference, sure there are idealistic differences, but at the core humans are humans. Period.
The night passed well and I sat content. At points anis or abdul or Yussef would turn to me and ask, “are you happy?”
“Yes, I am very happy,” I would respond. “Then we are happy.”
And they meant it. They truly did. Being hospitable. Welcoming people into their homes truly made them happy. I know this. Because after I bought what I bought they no longer tried to sell me anything. I was their guest and they were proud to have me.
Later, Anis explained to me that they saw all people as equals. Which, is a fundamental belief of the Islamic religion. Muslims do believe their god is the one true god, like any other religion, but written in their Koran, it tells them to love and respect all people of all religions. And this is something they truly uphold. Anis also explained to me that they respected Americans more than any other nationality. Which, to me, made no sense, but be it what it was, I was very very very happy to have such friendly people being so friendly to me.
That night I rose at one point and said I was hungry and I was going to go and find some dinner. Everyone around me made a motion for me to sit. The young Abdul said, “tanquillo.” In Chaouen there is never a rush to do anything. It is the most relaxing environment on the planet. Abdul said that I could join them for dinner, I just needed to pitch in on the food, which I was more than glad to do. I paid them 20 Durhams, Two Euro and had one of the best meals of my life…partly because of the experience.
After I gave one fellow whose roll it was to shop and prepare the meals, I don’t recall his name, unfortunately, my money we sat longer and after an hour or so the food was brought down. It was a stewish concoction. With Chicken, tomato, rice, cilantro, and cheese. It was prepared and served in a large iron skillet. The Skillet was place on the coffee table of the back room and bread was broken and past around the table. We all gathered around the table and we did not have forks or knives or plates. We simply took the bread and dipped it directly into the iron skillet and ate in that manner. It was awesome. An experience like no other. A water bottle was placed on the table as well and when thirsty you took a drink directly from it. In Chaouen it is truly communal living. Everything for everyone and nothing for yourself.
After dinner I put my pack of cigarettes on the table and Anis poured me a rum and coke. The rum was a gift from another traveler who had poured the liquor into an empty water bottle for them. My cigarettes were open to everyone and we smoked and drank and again and again they’d ask me, “are you happy? Then we are happy.”
That night, when I was ready to return home, it was raining heavily out. And Yussef followed me to my hotel holding an umbrella over my head ensuring me that I would not get wet.

And that’s day one.

Day two began wonderfully and ended wonderfully. I started the day writing in my journal while eating breakfast, toast with marmalade, café con leche, and freshly squeezed orange juice, in the dinning room of the hotel. Afterward I went to the main tourist attraction of Chaouen. At one point in history, long ago, the entire water supply of Chaouen was sourced from the streams that flow down the mountain and were channeled throughout the city. Now, at the base of the mountain where the river meets the valley, there are two huts made that were/are used for cleaning clothes. The huts channel water off the river and the water flows directly through the houses and through a series of wash basins with wooden rivets used to scrub clothes, rugs, and whatever house hold items need cleaned. I had to hike through the city, up steep streets, still through narrow streets with many ends and beginnings, until I happened upon the area. There is a lovely waterfall there as well and the lush green Rif mountains surrounded the area. Woman were in the huts scrubbing their clothes with natural soap along the rivets of the flowing river.
At this location there is a trail that leads up into the mountains which I, of course, had to hike up. The trail at first was paved like the rest of the city, rocks embedded deep into the clay, and had a short stone wall with mud for mortar that ran along side it. The trail did not last long and soon I was hiking on a muddy trail. It rose steeply and soon I was high above the entire city and could see the blue and whites of Chaouen, and the steep incline of the city built within a gorge very clearly. I stopped at a place where two mountains met and formed a passageway that lead deep into the wilderness. The two mountains nearly formed a passageway or a gate, which looked so inviting. I hike up the narrow trail between the two mountains as far as I could. But, it had been raining and the mud and stone was very slick and I reached a point where it became too steep to go any further. Here, I stopped and wrote more. And I sat high and again was awed by the beauty of the Rif mountains and the lush green hills of Africa. The city was so high up that clouds formed above the houses. Not fog, actually clouds. It was bizarre. I could see lines of clouds sporadically throughout the valley. I wish I would have taken a picture from my perch before the more clouds rolled in, but I did not, and while I was writing, a cold breeze blew through and in moments I was in a white haze of clouds and could no longer see through the mountain gateway which I had sat admiring for some time before. I knew that if it began to ran it would be dangerous climbing down so I packed up my things and began the hike down.
Once back on the trail and headed for the city, I crossed a group of five boys, my age, sitting on the rock wall that lined the paved trail. Their names were, Houssam, Larbi, Mohamed, Omar, and Khalil. They were playing guitar. I did not initially try to stop but nodded at them as I passed and once my back was to them one, Houssam) shouted out, “Guetentag.” I turned and told them I was American and not German and then asked, with a series of hand motions if I could join them and listen to them play guitar. They were more than welcoming and I sat at the end of the line and listened to Larbi play traditional Moroccan songs on a nylon string guitar. The music was wonderful, and had American pop elements of verse and chorus and hook, but used different chords and transitions I was not accustomed to. While Larbi played, the other boys all sang the words to the songs together. It was awesome. The rain had just started at this point, and the air was so fresh and clean and crisp and the view of the valley mixed with the beautiful songs was nearly overwhelming. I was very happy. I sat and smoked cigarettes and I began to beat rhythms with my hands upon my legs.
After a some time of all the boys singing songs to Larbi’s playing, Khalil rose and began to take pictures with his cellphone. At this point Houssam said, “Friend, come.” And he pated with his hand the open space next to him. I sat next to him and he looked me in the eye and smiled. I was certain of his honesty, and after the prior evening I was nearly certain of all in the city.
Larbi quit playing after some time and they gestured the guitar towards me, in the manner of asking, “do you play.” I took the guitar and began to strum the songs I know and then Larbi said with very poor English, “sing in English.” I told them I don’t sing well in Spanish and Houssam understood and told me it didn’t matter. So, I sat, again in the beautiful setting of nearly pristine Africa, high in the mountains on a rock wall in the freshening rain, and began to sing the songs I knew. It was transcendent to say the very least. A beautiful feeling and I had no self awareness. It was me and the guitar and new friends. After each song they’d pat me on the back and clap their hands. It was fucking bizarre. They were very kind and very sincere people.
They invited me to have coffee with them afterward. I followed them back down the mountain and Houssam and I spoke in Spanish. Though, Spanish is hard enough for me already, but an Arabic fellow speaking Spanish with an accent so bizarre, made I nearly impossible for me to understand. But, like the berbers the night before. He had so much patience. When I would say, “no entiendo,” he would stop and think of a new way to explain it and speak slower and clearer until I understood. It was awesome. He had no frustration what so ever. And our conversation was pleasant. It was basic getting to know you stuff. All five of the guys worked one day a week in Tangier at a VW plant as electricians. One day a week is all they needed to live happily in Chaouen. I repeat, in Chaouen, there is only simplicity, and never a rush or worry.
The café was splendid. We sat under the covered terrace and the rain began to fall very hard. And, all five of us sat in silence and watched it. And after a awhile Khalil simply said, “es bonita.” True words had never been spoken.
I asked Houssam to order me something good to eat and he did and soon I had a Moroccan salad which was sliced onions, peppers, tomatoes, with cilantro that I scooped onto a piece of bread. And for my main course I had kebabs of steak and chicken. We drank Berber tea and when I asked how to say mint in Arabic, Houssam rose and went inside the café and returned with a sprig of mint and said, “Nah Nah,” (def. not the correct spelling), and handed me the mint. Later, Larbi took out the guitar again and he played songs and no one sang and we all listened to the guitar and watched the rain.
I explained to them about Sahim, and how I needed to call her but my mobile didn’t work in chaouen and asked how I could call her. They told me I could easily buy a sim card for my mobile in the city. I rose as though I would go and do it then, and all of them, just like the Berbers, motioned for me to sit down and Khalil looked at me and said, “tranquillo.” Like I said, there is never a rush in Chaouen.
We played more songs on the guitar. And Larbi played old American pop songs by the beatles and the eagles and asked me to sing them. So I quietly sang hotel California and let it be. And the others hummed and mimicked the English words to the songs they knew but did not understand.
Around five a melodic and hypnotic prayer rang throughout the city. It was the daily prayer that one elder of the city gave into a microphone which was connected to old speakers that stood ontop of a building. Larbi quit playing the guitar. The people in the streets and cafes quit talking. The entire city went silent and for a few minutes we all listened to the prayer. It was beautiful. The voice of the man reminded me of something dying unnaturally. He wailed and the prayer had a very melodic ring to it that one could not ignore, that entered into the body and filled me with a feeling of grand spirituality. It was very much unlike anything I had ever experienced.
Afterward Houssam began to talk about religion with me. He asked what faith I belong to, and when I told him none, he did not understand. The same thing happened with the berbers the night before. Not having a religion is very odd to them, and nearly uncomprehendable. The American agnostic is more rare than I had thought…even in spain nearly everyone still claims to be catholic, whether they go to church or not. Houssam told me there is only one god and one day I would want to get in touch with him. It was really quite funny to me. Because they way he handled talking to me about religion reminded me so much of how the Christians of my childhood would talk about faith with me. But I tried to explain to him that I had my own spirituality and that what I had seen of the Islamic religion I liked very much and that they seemed to be the nicest people I had ever met. This satisfied him and the conversation died and we all went back to watching the rain.
After some time Houssam asked me if I still needed the card for my phone and I said yes. He and Khalil rose and so I rose as well, and once again, all five of them motioned for me to sit and once again I was told, “tranquillo.” Larbi looked at me and smiled and he pulled out the guitar and he began to play hotel California for a second time. I smiled and told the others thank and I watched them depart in the rain.
When they returned they handed me the card and I began to pull out my wallet and all five, in unison again, said “no no no no.” They refused to let me pay. I insisted and they said no and I could see, that just like the Berbers, it made them endlessly happy to make me happy. I thanked them as sincere as I could, which was incredibly sincere and accepted the gift. Then, when the check came, Omar grabbed it immidetely and handed the waiter a 100 durhams and when I said I needed to get change to pay my share they again told me no. I did not try to fit with them. I accepted the gift humbly. And was absolutely dumfounded with what had just happened. They had to have known I had much more money then them. An American studying in Spain on vacation in Africa. And them, five boys who lived together and worked one day a week. They knew, and yet it did not matter to them at all.
After the café they were headed back to Tangier. Of course, they invited me with them. When I told them I wanted to stay in Chaouen they actually nearly begged me to come. Not beg in the sense of pleading, but just a sincere desire to continue hanging out. But, I was not ready to leave Chaouen and I was already certain I would be returning and I told them I would return soon, which made them very happy. I walked with them down to the main road where they were to catch a cab and we all got together and took a photo. One on my camera, and one on Khalil’s phone. We exchanged numbers and email addresses and I am certain I will see them again.
That evening I went back to the berber house, drank more tea, stood on the terrace in the rain, and had a wonderful dinner of mashed potatoes seasoned with salt and cumin and olive oil substituted for milk. When I told them in the states we use milk they all concurred that olive oil tasted better. We ate with our hands from the dish in the center of the room. I told them the story of houssam and friends and showed them the picture. Anis looked at it and said he could tell that they were good people and that I found them because good people find good people. That night when I went to leave it was still raining and Yussef followed me out the front door with an umbrella and I told him I wanted to walk in the rain and he smiled and we shook hands and I walked back to the hotel in the cool African rain.

I met Sahim at the bus station the next morning. And we had a wonderful ride back to tangier together. I had a million questions to ask her about the muslims, the berbers, the lifestyles, and the utter friendliness of all I encountered. When I told her that after I parted from Houssam and his friends I still had my wallet and passport and nothing was missing she confusedly asked, “you expected them to steal from you.” And in a subtle western mindset I had expected them to steal from me. No one is that friendly without expecting something in return, right? But no, people in the world that friendly do exist. And they exist in a small village in morocco.
I asked her about the lack of woman in the streets. And she explained to me the culture of the muslims and that the woman were in the homes doing house work and raising families and that they were truly happy doing it and one day she wanted to do it as well. We talked more about her life. She is the only girl studying engineering in her entire university, which many of her friends do not agree with. She speak four languages and two of them, English and Spanish, she taught herself via the internet. And she spoke each very well. We debated briefly over the rationality of having Islamic woman cover their bodies. She said it was logical because it came them pure. And I said it was illogical because sex is a basic human instinct and hiding it is illogical. We did not come to an agreement but we both clearly understood the different mindsets of being raised in such foreign environments and we both respected the other very much. AT times we quite talking and simply watched the beautiful countryside out the window of the bus. We became close and our legs were intertwined and we relaxed into each others bodies and took very lazy naps.
The bus ride ended far too soon and I would have been glad to stay on it all the way across the Gibraltar straight and all the way back to Madrid. But, clearly, that isn’t how things work. Once off the bus she offered to take me to the port and when we got to the line of taxis we both wanted to walk some more so we continued walking, both with luggage towards the port. At one point when we passed another line of taxis and she asked if I wanted to keep walking, she said to me in Spanish, “Quiero ser contigo.” Which, because of her accent and my terrible Spanish, I didn’t understand and had to ask her three times to repeat herself, which completely ruined a very romantic sentiment.
Eventually we made it to the port and we said goodbye, temporarily, and she invited me back to morocco anytime, which I will undoubtedly take her up on.
Once out to sea, standing on the observation deck, I let the strong winds blow into my hair. And I leaned back into the winds which supported my weight and nearly toppled me forward. And I let the salty ocean mist collide with and sting into my face. And I contemplated, from the highest mast head, my time spent in Africa.

huzza!
jake.

feria de san blas

2008-02-11T13:38:00.000-08:00

disclaimer. this turned out epic. In word it is 12 pages double spaced. longer than any essay i've had to write for college in quite awhile. it's not really all that coherent. So, if you dare, dive into the mind of jake. take it in sessions if you are really intersted. Otherwise, i enjoyed writing for only myself.

I’m way past due for an online journal entry, aka, a blog. But, it’s been a few weeks of transition. A few weeks of finding my place in Madrid. Of finding what it means to survive in a city of six million were you never see a familiar face in the streets even when you take the same train every day at the same time. But, I assure you I am finding it, and even may jump the gun and say have found it. While, it isn’t as I had imagined, it’s certainly not with Spanish friends, the language barrier sees to that, but currently it is with other foreigners like myself. Others who have run to Madrid from their home countries all for the sake of finding whatever is to be found when removed from a comfort zone, removed from familiar culture. Some of them are world travelers. My friend Lindy has spent the past two years moving from country to country. She’s as much of a vagabond as they come. She embraces the fact that she’s spent many winter nights sleeping in the streets and finding dinner in the dumpster. Embraces the fact that friends are the highest form of love and that one can never expect more than a good conversation and a shared solitude in the warm sun. Of the group, I believe I’m the only first timer. Most are experienced travelers. Been to many places, used to existing on the outside. It’s a very accepting culture. One that recognizes the individual worth of all peoples. All peoples have talents hopes dreams even when they are the simplest forms.
My intention of this blog is to write about the Feria de Sans Blas, and the effect bullfights have had on my mind, that I went to this weekend in Valdemorrila, a very small pueblo (village or small town) 40km north of Madrid. The experience was phenomenal and it was hands down the best three days I’ve spent in Spain to date. But my mind is wondering and I’ll get there eventually. First though I feel I must give some thoughts on Madrid to fully understand the grandeur of my fin de semana en Valdemorrila.
Madrid is a city of jaded individuals. It’s comparable to that of New York City, or I’m told, seeing how I’ve never been. But I imagine all huge cities must be this way. When every face you see is a face of a stranger. When one cannot leave the house and go anywhere outside of their barrio (neighborhood) and possibly recognize anyone. In this circumstance one always has a feeling of insignificance and irrelevance. Whether they realize it or not. Locals I imagine do not. In order to feel like one matter in a city of strangers one must rely on one self. One must put credence, and too often in Madrid it is an overwhelming belief of self, in order to feel like they do matter. When I go to cafes, and not just me, it’s locals as well, the camereras (bartenders or waiter, there is no distinction between the two, verbally anyway) are short. They spit out, “digame” which roughly means “talk to me.” It’s short and curt and they expect a short and curt response. Do not try to be polite in Madrid, you’ll only piss people off. And, being an American who is learning Spanish pissing people off is what I do often. Though it’s occurring less as my knowledge of the language grows. But still, this is a city with an influxed ideal of self worth. But, that’s okay. That’s how it exists. That how the people here survive the feelings of insignificance. And it’s becoming very beautiful to me.
In order to survive in Madrid one must have a niche. All people have them. It occurs in the barrios. Do not expect to come to Madrid and make friends with the camerero on a first visit. Do not expect to go to Sol or Plaza Mayor or Chueca and befriend anyone. These are the cosmopolitan areas. These are the areas where self worth swells the highest. But in your barrio, the place you dwell and shop and spend a few hours in the plazas you’ll begin to be accepted. It’s happening for me. It’s how the locals survive. When walking down the calle (street) at six pm and looking through the windows of store fronts I see the same faces in the same bars each night. It’s really beautiful. The bars and cafes and restaurants—there is hardly a difference in any of them, bars are places for families, not like in the states—are filled with friends who joke and laugh with the staff and joke and laugh with each other. I frequent a café called Obador where I like the café and the pasterillas (pastries, which are nothing like American pastries, super sweet things here hardly exist) and the camerara talked with an old couple at the bar and they laughed together. And tonight must have been my seventh time going there and for the first time one camerera spoke English to me. She’s waited on me many times allowed me to look foolish and now she speaks English! This is Madrid in a nutshell. Once accepted, once becoming a part of a community, then one can really begin to feel like they are at home. I’m glad I’m settling. The first month, as noted in one blog, was very hard. But my niche and settling has begun. Even in Madrid, a city far from my ideals of what makes humanity humane.
So Madrid, gave me a sour taste for Spain initially. Culture shock my grand uncle Maurice would call it. And he’s right, definitely culture shock. But (now we are getting there), Valdemorilla has shown me a side of Spain I love. I absolutely love. The Spain of Hemingway romances. It was a weekend where I lived as though I was a character from a Kerouac novel, or under the ideals of Thoreau and Whitman and Emerson. It was a weekend that reminded me of who I am. What I love. And if I could live like this eternally I’d be a very happy man. But, realistically it does not seem plausible. Even Lindy, the closest person I’ve ever met to existing like a beatnik in true from has to have a job for a year at a time. She has had many hardships and scary instances and times of desperate poverty. Which, all are romantic. All are life. All are a part of an accepted existence. One, I am not sure I could give up my schooling for. But, one day would love to try.
Feria Sans Blas. The week long festival of the patron saint of Valdemorilla, whose population is nearly 8,000. Where to begin? Chronologically? Grouping events? Or just pick a moment and write? That seems good.
I feel in “love” with my first Spanish woman. Obviously lover here is used as about as loosely as it can be. But, my lord, what a beautiful and kind woman. When I first exited the bus west of the city center on the outskirts, not sure of where to go, or where I was, I walked north towards the buildings, it seemed logical. I found a hostel near a very old inglesia (catholic church…well, church, but all churches are catholic here…nearly). I walked into the hostel expecting the same struggles I deal with in Madrid but found such a warm welcoming. My Spanish beauty smiled immediately and stood up from the bar where she was reading book and said “beinvenidos,” and I requested a room. The hostel was owned and operated by one family, who were sitting across the room gathered at a table eating dinner and drinking wine. Quickly the girl, whose name I never learned, realized I didn’t speak Spanish too well and she began to speak to me in English, though her English is on a par with my Spanish. We talked briefly, but warmly, and she escorted me to my room and opened the door and asked if she could do anything else. I removed the few non essential items from my bag, a pair of underwear, a change of socks, and school text book, and went back down to the bar. I ordered a glass of wine and when the daughter, my Spanish queen (haha), went to pour me a glass from the bottle behind the bar, her father shouted from the table and she put the bottle back on the backbar and walked over to the table and took the bottle the family was drinking from. She told me it was a better wine and the father wanted me to have some. It was so awesome. The act that is. The wine was good too. And then her and I sat and talked for an hour, her in English, I in Spanish (we both seized the opportunity to practice a foreign tongue). It was a simple conversation, but it was so pleasant. They had two bulldogs and one had a cone one its head and bandage on its leg. And she told me he was too fat and his knee was giving out and he had to have an operation. We both laughed at the fat thing sitting crumpled upon itself looking helplessly around the room. She told me about the fiesta and what was occurring and the events that would take place. At point in our conversation she would say excuse me, and turn from the bar and yell, I mean really yell (“mama!”) to her family across the room about me and what I just told her about myself and they would laugh or nod their heads, and she would turn back and tell me what they had said. Then I left, went and explored. But, when I returned, every time, the family, be it the brother the sister or either of the two parents, I was always greeted with, “Que tal?” and they expected, no were generally interested in a response. It was great. Absolutely great.
Now what? Hmmm…let’s continue with the niceties of the peoples in Valdemorilla. The streets of the small pueblo were lined with booths and vendors selling all sorts of random things. Children’s toys. Hand made leather bags and wallets and bracelets. T-shirts. Spanish souvenirs. Tons of food, comparable to food at the state carnival, only Spanish. And walking along the calle and looking at merchandise the proprietor would nearly always asked “de donde eres?” (where are you from). Which in Madrid is unheard of, people don’t care. And we’d tell them we were from the states (here the we is lindy and I, and I’ll have to take a whole section to write about the awesome time I had with her) and people were receptive to it. Again, unlike Madrid.
Another example (I have two more I’ll type though I could go on and on) of incredibly friendliness of the Spanish: We were at a café, El Fronton (which has amazingly huge and delicious plates for super cheap) and I wanted a wineskin (you know those leather bags that you put wine in and are commonly passed around at a bullfight…and yes they were passed around at the bullfights) and I didn’t know the word for one and I didn’t know where to buy one. So I asked our camerero as best I could where I could get one. It took some creativity, “Sabes donde yo puedo comprar un…uh…bolso para vino…” and then some hand actions, and then, “son de piel.” Eventually we got there. He began to draw me a map before throwing it away and grabbing me by the arm and saying, “Vienes (you come).” He led me out the store down the street and to a store which sold them. He picked one out for me said, “esta bein?” and smiling and saying he’d see me back at the café. It was so incredibly nice. I loved it. Really really did. I tipped him five euro, which is unheard of here…tips aren’t common in Spain, and five percent is a huge tip.
Finally, at the end of our adventure while lindy and I were waiting for the bus back to Madrid, a man approached us and said, “tienes fuego (do you have a light)?” we started talking to him and, obviously, he asked where we were from and why we had come to such a small and untouristic destination (valdemorillo has no grand historical relevance, just a small village). We told him we had come for the bullfights and he immediately assumed, as we were American, we had found the event grotesque. But once we told him how much we enjoyed it, how much fun we had, a whole line of dialogue was opened. Angel, the Spaniard, was an older retired man. And his thing, as all retired peoples have a thing, was he traveled city to city during the bullfighting season and ran with the bulls (I was unaware that there are fifty pueblos in Spain that have a running, valdemorillo included…I’ll get there…). He said he runs 120 times a year. The runnings usually occur during the pueblos ferias (festivals celebrating patron saints) and they usually have three or four during the week. And he runs at many. He told us the basics, what was expected, how well the best runners could do. Nobody runs start to finish in one go…the best runners (yes there’s a whole league of people who travel and run at all the cities) can run 150-200 meters at a time (they release one or two or three bulls at a time, each being set off with a loud firework shot into the air, and there is about five sessions to try and make it all the way to the plaza). Anyway, point being, cool man very friendly. We exchanged numbers with him, and he told me to call him in the middle of march, for that is when the season truly begins, valdemorilla begins very early, and we are going to give us information on all the runnings in all the cities, and, hopefully, we are going to meet him in some pueblo, somewhere, and run with him and then go to the fights with him. It was a very cool experience and one I’m very glad occurred.
K, lets give credence to the romantic side of the weekend with Lindy. And not romantic like boy girl kissy kissy…tiene un novio, so there was none of that. But, romantic in the sense of Whitman and Snyder. Romantic in the sense of aimless wonderings which fill the soul with such joyous pleasure of the simplicity man seems to forget. Lindy and I did nothing spectacular in the sense of my other adventures here. It wasn’t possible, there’s nothing grand to see in Voldemorillo. The basis of our weekend was drinking wine, which costs all of two dollars for entire day!, and walking and enjoying nothing but observations and awesome conversations. At one point, after desayunar (breakfast), I asked her what she wanted to do, and she said let’s go nap in the park. Which is one of the best times I had in the pueblo. We laid down between the shadows of the tree in the sun whose rays were warming and mixed perfectly with the wine in our bellies. There was a light breeze which swayed the grass gently and on blew onto my face like the feeling of soft felt embracing my skin. We fell asleep in the sun and occasionally one would stir and then the other would stir and we’d both know the other was awake, and someone would ask a quiet question and the other would respond and when the conversation had settled and had been finished we would close our eyes without any transition and fall back asleep until one would stir and repeat the whole process. We laid in the park for four hours. With no anxiety or desire to anything but simply exist. At points I’d pull out my journal and write a poem or make an entry and she’d wonder and pick a flower and investigate the trees, and then we’d return lie back down and enjoy the solitude which each of us has learned to embrace in our lives, learned to fully love, and also, embrace the perfect shared solitude. The understanding of silence and allowing ones self to feel the emotion the world creates if one is willing to perceive it.
On the last night we were there we snuck onto a roof of building under construction. We watched the stars and she told me tales of her travels and her life of wondering. And I shared stories of my domestic life, which the morals one pulls from each are the exact same but the experiences are different. We drank more wine and smoked cigarettes and could see the lights and rooftops of the entire pueblo. We played harmonica, though neither really know how, and the songs from each sounded perfectly sorrowful and full of the beauty of solitude. After leaving the roof we headed back to the park and we stopped at a frutaria, and I bought an orange and she bought some pickles. And we sat in same place and talked more, and smoked more, and drank more, and I ate the finest orange I’ve ever ever had. Oh god, to live like this always would be the pinnacle of my existence. To be so happy with so little. For one weekend I was Japhy Ryder, I was a dharma bum, and I did not need anything more than shared solitude with another who understands it so finely and an orange and some wine and tobacco.
Now what? There was the church, where I accidentally walked in on a funeral and did not know it was a funeral until the grand doors to rear were swung open and line of pallbearers walked forward and picked up the casket hidden from my view and the funeral line that proceeded past me while I knelt and prayed hoping they wouldn’t think I was a complete asshole for crashing their funeral, hoping they’d think I was a devote catholic weary from travel finding sanctuary in the chapel, which isn’t entirely false, but certainly not based upon the catholic notions. There was the church itself constructed long ago of solely stone and mortar, and the ground too was paved with old granite stone. And there was its high arched roof which hung omnisciently 100 meters above our heads and the fine paintings from artists that hung on the walls. There was the pastors voice who spoke through a microphone and his voice through the speakers echoed off the walls and returned and reverberated in such a manner that I could not tell where the voice was coming from, it only seemed to come from up high, from god himself and the feeling the huge church and the pastors voice like god’s, which was a feeling of punity and irrelevance, which to me was amazing a feeling which inspired self–reliance and the recognition that when I die I will die and be forgotten within a few generations, granting I do have children and they have children. And the only solution to this is to live each day and moment and enjoy all the world has to offer. There was the graveyard the meditation on death that one must go through in order to fully understand a bullfight. And the Spanish views of death which are far from Americans. Death is not ignored. The dead are buried in sarcophaguses above the ground where the dead’s bones rest right in front of you, not hidden deep within the ground. Death here is something accepted, as far as I can tell. And I went to the catacombs of a monastery where all the kings of spain are buried with the usac group a few weeks ago. Most of them were very uneasy being so close to the dead. Knowing their bodies lay hidden but their caskets fully visible. This is a difference of Spain. Death is something confronted, feared still, but confronted, which is the true meaning of a bullfight. The bull symbolized death and the matador man kind. The even is not a barbaric one. It is not cruel. It is no more cruel than in nature when mother bear eats her cubs, or when I pack of dogs gang up on another dog. Cruelty is a notion created by man, for man, based upon their own insecurities and the feeling of uneasiness created by a bullfight. A Bullfight is man striking back at mortality. For one afternoon a group of mortals come to feel vicariously immortal through the bravery (if the fight is good) of the matador. Bullfights are rich in tradition which still exist to this day. They are far from cruel, if one is willing to realize that man is an animal of nature just like the bull and that we have the ability to separate ourselves from nature as though we are not apart of it. Carlos Fuentes said of bullfights, “Spain rips off the mask of our puritanical hypocrisy in relation to nature.” The bull is our brother, the spainards know this. When a bull is killed cowardly they boo the matador and comment on the unjustness of the death of the bull. These events are not for the simple minded. Sure, simple minded people do attend, but they do not understand the brilliance of what they are seeing. A bullfight, when truly amazing, leave all who witnessed it sure of the inner power, sure that they are alive, that they do matter, that their life is no apology, but a feat and triumphant victory. Man is an animal, which has evolved, to its place of power but still recognizes its utter weakness. Through bullfights, for one afternoon, everyone feels alive.
I guess I really have nothing more to say of a bullfight. It’s pointless to try and explain the stages, I read them before I went, I read Hemingway’s memoir on them, and still I could not comprehend them until I saw them. And if Hemingway can’t make me understand than I cannot make you all understand either. It’s a very complicated event. With three stages, and any one of the stages that does not go perfectly can ruin the rest of the fight. I saw it happen nearly every time. Hemingway said one in ever twenty fights you see will be mundane and will not give an individual a true understanding of what bullfight can be, or should be. And this proved to be true. I saw eighteen fights total. One was unbelievably brilliant. Unbelievably. I had witnessed fourteen fights before seeing a brilliant fight. And I had a notion of what a bullfight could be from the prior fourteen. I had a glimpse into the feeling of immortality, into the artistic genius of matadors. But once seeing Daniel Loque fight, I was overwhelmed with a feeling indescribable. It was powerful, beautiful. Bullfighting is an art. It truly is. And it takes an artist, with inherit artistic talent to create the event as art. There are many good bullfighters who are not artists, who are athletes. And these fights are the ones that become mundane. But bullfighting is an art, if you see a bullfight with an open mind, you will understand how true this statement is.
I will give slight homage to Daniel Loque. He is seventeen, incredibly young for a matador, and he faced the bravest bull I had seen that night. The way to judge a bull is not by how fierce he is while entering the ring, but by how well he handles the first wound he receives. If when first picked the bull fights back he is brave. This bull immediately went after the banderillos and showed amazing bravery throughout the entire fight. And do not kid yourself, that bullfights are a science and a simple minded event where a man calmly tricks a bull. Matadors and members of the cuadrillo die every year. They are facing a very dangerous animal. The matadors have great fear. I saw them sweat with anxiety, I saw them run from the bull, I saw them hurt the bull cheaply out of fear. There is a very real danger in bullfighting, and the best matadors are the bravest ones. Or the ones who are able to control their fear the most. Daniel was ambitiously, possibly naively brave. He worked so close to the bull he was covered in the bull’s blood, which is not that common. He hypnotized the bull with his muleta (the scarlet cape), and he did not allow the picadors or banderillos to hurt the bull in the way other matadors do. He wanted the bull strong. He wanted the bull healthy. And this is precisely how he faced the bull. And, he showed no fear. His proximity to the bull was outstanding, his calm and collective presence is unbelievable considering the circumstances. He killed the bull very soon too. Long before the other matadors would have. He did not tire the bull to the point of exhaustion. He killed the bull when the bull was very likely to do much damage to him. Witnessing all of this was unlike anything I have ever seen. And I will look for Daniel to fight in las ventas (the Madrid plaza de toros) while I’m here. I will travel to see him again. He was truly an artist who has no fear. However, of characters such as himself, Hemingway says there are many. Many young and ambitious matadors will fight brilliantly for a season, and maybe two, until they receive their first coranado (gorging) and then they have fear, and then they work far from the bull. But, I’m glad to have seen him with his youth and his bravery intact.

Huzza!
Jake.

life lessons

2008-01-31T07:20:00.000-08:00

I’ve been wronged and cheated! Been played the fool and made a foolish victim. OH! jake, you thought you were strong, you thought you could survive in this inner city life, where crooks and criminals sleep along the streets. And men of confidence used as a guise in order to pick your back pocket. Oh foul world what have I done to deserve such harsh and unretractable lessons. Give me a second chance fate. I beg you, allow me to start again. I will not look the other way and leave my world unguarded free to be snatched by the hands of soulless mischief.
I’ve read too many books, and believed in Walt Whitman to soundly. Why Walt? Why must you live in a world that is not consistent with the reality that surrounds us?!! Why Walt, oh please! Tell me why?!! I put faith in you and my trust that all men are good and righteous. And I believed you when you said we are brothers and there is an inherent connection which bonds us all. But, oh, the sting it does create. To put faith in my fellow humans. To believe so inaccurately that my brothers would protect me as I would protect them. It would have been better if a hawk or a condor or if the fabled griffin himself had swooped down from the sky to snatch my satchel, then to feel the cold blade of betrayal turned diagonally in my unsuspecting back. I feel like ceaser, with trust in my brutus, only to be overthrown in the name of foolish antics such as simple commerce. Had you asked, oh man with veiled face, I would have given you a sandwich, would have fed you, my brother in darkness, till thy belly was full and no longer did evil intentions propel your existence. Death be thy name and I have seen ye in the face. Seen your cruel resemblance to the devil waking in the crowded streets, preying on the innocent man enjoying a pepsi in the plaza. Inner city life, I will no longer be so vein. I will no longer live in my dreams and the books that seem so foolish to me now. Trust I have not. Confidence I have lost. Inner city, I watch thee as ye walk away!

K, so my bag got stolen today. Son of a bitch, right!? I find it kinda funny. Kinda. In the sort of way that whoever stole it didn’t get his troubles worth. I was sitting in front of the riena sofia museum enjoying a pepsi and a cig before going into the museum, when one finely dressed man (who im not sure if he was related in the heist) was talking on his phone and started talking to me very quickly and asking which metro stop it was, then he ran off very hurriedly, I turned watched him run, then looked back the opposite way and shrugged my shoulders. At this point, I felt my bag slip, I thought it had shifted off the bench, because the movement was so light, but when I reached down to grab it….it wasn’t there. Nor was it anywhere near by. I looked all around, ran out in the the street, and saw absolutely nothing. Sneaky bastard. Hope he enjoys books on Spanish level one. Although, blocking complete merriment from me, is the fact that there were three artifacts in the bag. And I shall list them in order of importance.
1. My journal. The first thing I thought of when I asked myself, what the shit was in my bag? My memories, my inner most thoughts. My journal which has acted as a friend and confident for the past month. My journal who never judges and is there for me to work my head into a linear and sensical device. My journal. My beloved. My alleged keepsake of my time in Europe, good bye. I wish the well. Cause I know you’re in a garbage can in some shitty ally in Madrid. What an unjust fate.

2. The confidence man by Herman Melville. This was a gift from a very good friend. I’m very pissed because, A) I love getting books for gifts, and it’s one of the first I’ve received without having to ask. B) I was half way through. Damnit. And I was just starting to figure out what the hell was going on. Which, ironically. The confidence man is about crooks who steal from people by gaining their trust first. Oh, Melville, had I read quicker, maybe your truths would have saved this catastrophe.

3. Hank, my mp3 player. I list this last because it was the last thing I realized. It’s material, and I will not miss the awesome technology, though it was freaking cool. However, one month into spain, and I already miss the shit out of American music. Music in spain and Europe is not like American music. So, now, I’m really going to miss my American tunes. So long modest mouse. I will be alone down here without you. So long Rilo kiley, You were fucking beautiful. So long flaming lips. I’m afraid the robots have won. So long phosphorescent. And, no, I don’t think it will not be so hard to see you around.

La Pedriza

2008-01-30T06:50:00.000-08:00

La Pedriza, Spanish wilderness. The area is amazingly beautiful. And conveniently close to Madrid. Only a one hour bus ride, which drops you off in the pueblo nearest to the park--Manazarnes. I had to walk two miles along the roadside to reach the entrance to the park. The park itself consists of grand mountains made out of granite. The landscape is similar to that of Toledo, with large hills and giant boulders protruding from the sides. Only, in La Pedriza, there is a whole lot more rock action. Walking along the trail nearly every step is cluttered with smaller rocks, some the size of apples and some the size of bowling balls. Sometimes the trail will just stop at the base of a row of rocks, and one has to climb the rocks to find the trail alive on the other side. And sometimes huge slabs of granite lie slanted and flat across the trail, and one has to walk very carefully across them to not slip and slide off the edge to a long fall. Simply walking the trails is so much fun. At times I had to jump from boulder to boulder, or climb over large rocks. In pedriza the trails, at least the ones I found, are not simple and clear trails to observe the wilderness, but they are littered with obstacles, and require some extra physical exertion to tread. And, along the trail runs a stream/river. Not a large enough to be a river. Not small enough to be a stream. I think technically it is a river, but a small one. Regardless. Given the rocky environment, the river bed was also obstructed with countless rocks and boulders. Which made for a beautiful backdrop of nature’s songs while hiking. The river had many waterfalls from all the rocks. And some large rocks sat in the middle of the stream which cause the river to split into two separate paths around the rock and then to come back together on the other side. All of this with a loud rush and undercurrents and white rapids peaking. and, the water was the clearest water I have ever seen. Even when the river was at it’s deepest, maybe three feet, I could still see clearly to the bottom. It was bizarre. I’d look down into it and could see it’s moving along its current, but at the bottom were oh! so slightly distorted red and orange pebbles.
An hour into my hike I found a large green meadow, where I sat, ate some cheese and crackers, and the wrote in the old journal for a bit. The meadow had short green grass, which at first I though was moss. And the ground was damp. In every direction I was surrounded by massive mountains. Completely boxed in on all sides. The peaks of the mountains are only large boulders stacked upon other large boulders. Without pattern or design. Looking up at them they were stunning. The base of the mountains were green with trees and the peaks turned to brown and gray and white with only the boulders. I realized the stacked rocks meant one could climb to the top with ease. Then, my monomania hit, and I was determined to climb. Ha. It wasn’t easy, by any means. It was much much harder than I had anticipated. The lower part was very fun because it required climbing up one rock and then jumping small gaps of meter to the next rock. It required squeezing between two rocks, or trying like hell not to get cut by the thorns that were all over the landscape. But, the top. The top got very difficult. A few times I’d climb several boulders, nearly vertical, which required finding grooves to grip with my hands and one groove to plant a foot and to pull my ass up any way I could, anyway, a few times I’d climb a few rocks and then hit a wall. Literally. Massive boulders fifteen feet high and straight up. So, I’d have to turn around and attempt to find another way up. But, like I said, I had monomania and I was determined and every obstacle induced great fear in me, but after making the leap (literally, jumping sometimes) upon realizing my safety I felt enlightened. It was all very enthralling to me. But, alas, I did make it. To the top of one of many peaks. And very very very high up. From the top I could see clear across the valley and I could even see Madrid. From the top I sounded my barbaric yamp across the treetops of the valley. It echoed and rang off the hills. I felt a power and invincibility within me.

Unfortunately, my camera battery was dead…yeah, I know one should check those sort of things before leaving…so I only had time to take a few pictures which I was saving, and thought the top of the mountain was a damn fine place to do it. So, no pics of la pedriza, but I assure you, it wasn’t my last time going…

Simple poems I wrote in zen like fashion while sitting in the shade of a tree along the river curling around rocks:

a rock faced leap
from fear to ambition
ensured like the billy goat
or like self actualization
on a mountain
in a county
that is not your own

running down a mountain
each step quicker
a joyous flee from
the self left on top

grip harder the protrusions
of granite stone from earth:
its god’s hand helping
the ascension
to summits of solitude
and reverence

photos in toledo

2008-01-27T09:50:00.001-08:00

This is my forbidden photo. it turned out like crap, but the potential for an amazing shot was high. lost oppurtunity thanks to the spanish military.

toledo

2008-01-27T06:58:00.000-08:00

My spirit and soul have been realigned and rejuvenated…and al it took was one beautiful trip to the Spanish countryside...well, kinda countryside. We went to Toledo, a city of 70,000, but nature is still very dominant there and the modern part of the town is built away from the historic part, which when entering, makes one feel as though they were stepping back in time—if one can ignore flocks of tourists with cameras and cars lining the narrow stone streets.
We, my friends Yelim and Sarah and I, started our adventure by climbing down a rocky hillside to sit on the bank of the river. Oh! How I’ve missed the river. The subtle flow and seamless eternity of water rippling on the surface as it passes over the rocks and ridges of the bed is enough to satisfy me for a lifetime. We sat near a very old bridge that had one large arch that spanned the river. The entirety of the bridge was created by stone and rock. It was very old and very beautiful. Through the arch one could trace the curve of the river to where a dam had been created and the water curved left slightly and then curved back right with a small and rapid decent. The water did not curl or have large rapids, just a subtle change and increase in velocity from the peaceful flow of my location. Back grounding the dam and the river were the steep Spanish hills that dominate the country side. The hills were beautiful. They rose and fell in steep descents and some rose to platues with nearly vertical drops. The steep slopes were amazing—with stone rising out of the sides and boulders protruding in gray and black, like the design of marble, all in excellence. But, they marble stones were juxtaposed with lush green grass, even in the these winter months. Truly a beautiful spectacle. Rising green hills, the boulders of gray and black, the river in a gorge separating the vista into two equal hemisphere of beauty.
And yes, there is more to say of the nature I saw sitting in one spot along the river. When I turned my head and looked north up the river, the hills were worn and beaten and were not lush and green with green hills and marble boulders, but were exposed with entire mammoth sides of red clay foundation. The opposing colors were amazing. Red and black and gray and green and the steady flow of the murky river. Within forty five minutes of my arrival I felt my soul had been repaired.
And, obviously, this does not even begin to cover the grandeur of the city itself. The buildings and the narrow streets and the monuments which dominate the historical district of Toledo. I was stunned by the beauty of Madrid. But, undoubtedly, Madrid does not compete with the majestical and historical beauty of Toledo. A small bit of background on Toledo, I don’t know much. When the Moors ruled Spain, Toledo was the capital…I think. And they allowed the catholics and the jews to live in piece along side them in the city of Toledo. So, architecture of all three conflicting religions still exist in harmoniously in the city today. Which, is very very old. Much older than anything in Madrid. I’ve discovered how modern of a city Madrid really is, in comparison to much of spain. It hasn’t always been the capital…not even close to it.
I don’t know how to accurately write what I saw. For I saw too much, and understood too little. I stood on a wall that surrounded an old castle, protecting the royal family from whom ever may have wished them harm, with platforms for watchmen to survey the valley below. The stone of the wall was crumbling on the outermost areas. I had to take a piece lying on the ground with me. We wondered through a tiny neighborhood with stereotypical, in the best sort of way, Spanish and medeterinian design. The streets were very narrow and neighbors, one standing on a second floor terrace, the other sweeping the stones of her entry way, called and talked loudly and laughed together. Continuing through the neighborhood, I thought we were on a road for cars when a set of stairs interrupted the road, which turned erratically left into another cramped neighborhood. The roofs of the houses were red and rounded tiles, long in length and short in width…again, as I’ve always imagine medeteranin architecture. Well, the tiles were once red. Now, most were decaying with time and weather, and splints of red paint remained, but mostly were a dull, very dull, orange with areas of no paint at all. But, I did not have a hard time imagining what all the tiles had looked like, in all their glory, a century (or more) ago. This is one amazing thing about being in the historic section Toledo. Being able to imagine yourself in the era when all of these buildings were in their finest. I may have been a Spanish knight for an afternoon, or a boy who only had the simple pleasures of life long before electricity complicated all we know. I did run on the tops of old stone walls that lined the sides of roads.
We saw grand cathedrals, at least 400 years old with busts of angles and jagged spires and statues of saints and Christ carved into the sides of the building. WE stood in a courtyard of a huge old mansion—it had white pillars that supported a large runway that stood twenty feet above. In the corner was a well with a cobble stone foundation. In one room of the mansion was a small art exhibit featuring art of the cult. Which had phenomenal pieces portraying the betrayal and crucifixion of jesus Christ. And others portraying the betrayal of St. Tome. And one gigantic piece of a queen whose face was hidden in a shroud of shadows and darkness but hose elegant dress was fully displayed in the light. The room also had parchments, decrees, and hand written letters from the ancient kings and artists of Spain. That was a pretty cool sight. An actual letter written by the king himself.
After seeing so much, which my pictures and words could never do even a quarter of the justice they deserve…Europe has to be felt with the body, there’s an aura and energy that these buildings exhale. But, after seeing so much, we went to a little Cuban restraint, where the owner was sleeping in the corner and the waiters at first did not want to seat us and def. did not want us there once we were in. But, oh well. We ate a good meal, though I have no idea what I ate, and we shared a pitcher of sangria. We laughed with the lightened spirits of the adventurous day and the uplifting wine and we toasted three separate times to life and adventures and uncertainty and friends and knowledge and to “bitch pig” (which is an inside joke none of you know).
After the wine and sense of courange and adventure it enables, I onged to see still even more…this after seven or eight hours of aimless wondering, climbing up and down the steep hills of Toldeo and seeing oh! so much. We hiked yet another hill to the military academy, which is now like our west point, and has been a fine academy for many years. It was sunset and the orange and reds and purples of twilight hung beautifully in the sky. At the bottom of a steep hill which led to the academy, there was a ledge of natural hill and grass I climed up to. It rose drastically higher than the rode itself, so by the point I walked the length of 100 meters that the rode was, I stood thirty feet above the road. From there I could see clearly across the gorge that divided the city and river at the bottom. I was high enough to see over the trees of the valley and looked directly upon the old castle, which is now a library, sitting on the highest point across the gorge. The setting son was directly behind the castle and the glorious twilight colors jutted out on either side of the castle. A military policeman yelled from the academy, “No! No! No!” letting me know to get down from the peak and back to the road. So I called back, “No?” as though I would comply fully, and then raised my camera to take a picture of the castle and sun set. The officer yelled even more ferociously as I raised my camera, “NOOO!” and I again called back with compliance in my voice, “Oh, okay,” and stood there long enough to take a photo of the vista before returning back down to the road.

And, on a completely unrelated side note. I found an English based magazine which writes reviews of the arts, entertainments, and clubs of Madrid, for which I’m going to write concert reviews. I’m very excited about this prospect of getting to know Madrid much better, and finding a group of friends, some Spanish, some British, some Brazilian and some American, who are all interested in arts and culture. I’m beginning to find a niche in my new home.

huzza!
jake.

Being Lost

2008-01-23T04:53:00.000-08:00

I’m lost here. I’m so fucking lost here. The original and initial response to the overwhelming beauty that abounds in this city is beginning to fade and the utter solitude I feel here is beginning to settle. Which sucks, but I might as well keep this blog truthful to the actualities of living abroad. I was told before leaving I would not return the same person and after two weeks, I can see how true this statement is. I will not be the same person. The shift in perception, the change in me has already begun. And like every drastic change in my life, and I would assume anyone’s life, it begins with hitting a place something like rock bottom. Every day life in Madrid is becoming redundant with it’s difficulties. This feeling of being so lost definitely has one, of a few roots, root in not speaking the language. Back to that idea of being deaf and dumb here. It’s very frustrating not having any basis for communication here. It leaves me in a complete state of solitude. And, I’m refusing to compromise myself and resign to hanging out with the other American 20 year olds here. Of course there are a few exceptions. I have two American friends here who I like very much. But, I came here for the counterpoint. To discover another culture. To juxtapose my own life with a culture completely foreign and independent from my own. I am grateful for the friends I do have, but, on some levels it feels like I left home where the people I love the most are, to meet other Americans. Side note to this, it’s funny the shift in how we (Americans) view ourselves. When we got off the plane originally and had our meet and greats with usac, it was important to define where we were from in America. As if it was a huge difference. Now, for me atleast, it’s to a point where whether you are from the west, Midwest, east, or south, we are all simply Americans. And our attitudes and personalities truly are very similar, very American. I don’t feel the need to locate my upbringing anymore. I am American, and that sums up who I am.
But, the being lost. I could not have prepared myself for this in anyway. It’s hard to explain the feeling. I wouldn’t feel this way if I was simply vacationing here for two weeks. If I was just backpacking and seeing the cities and getting a feel for the emotions they produce. But, the actualization of this is my home for half a year. This is where I walk, eat, sleep, socialize, go to school, gives one a feeling of utter confusion. Submitting myself to something so strange can only make one lost. All securities I’ve held on to disappear and I’m left naked and exposed. I’m sure with time it will become easier. It will. I know this. And that’s why this feeling is bearable, because I understand it’s temporary, but damn, it doesn’t make it easier. Even down to the literal sense. I can’t go anywhere here without getting lost. Trying to find my way around is daunting. I’m to the point where I’m going to go buy a compass to navigate easier. Cardinal directions have no inherit sense for me here. There are not natural landmarks to identify because buildings loom everywhere and streets do not run on a grid system. Everything is without direction here. I even tried to revert to my boy scout days when I had the bright idea of finding the north star….oh, I forgot, there are not stars in cities with six million inhabitants. Madrid is a place designed to confuse.
I’m entering a crisis of the soul. And the only way out is to rely on myself, to find the strength that has gotten me through some of the harder parts of my life. I’ve been able to overcome things in the past and become strong and confident, this is just another obstacle. But, it’s frightening not having any sense of security here, no way of predicting what will happen. There is no safely lining, no oracle or muse to hint and guide me. I’m alone on this one. Boy howdy, am I. Also though, that uncertainty I love as well. It’s so unknown who I’ll meet, what I’ll learn, what I’ll do, what I’ll discover. And these hidden treasures that are promised based upon my lust for them, are what allows me to stay so positive here. The adventure has begun, the surface level of beauty has been discovered (and is still being discovered. I often find myself stunned by the beauty of the buildings and art here).
And, again, because it’s so difficult. Coming to another country and not speaking the language sucks. Really really really bad. Super bad. Unfathomably bad. It’s testing in ways I could never imagine. Last night I went to a club and tried to order a beer. Cervaza. Easy right? My accent is so strong, and the Spanish accent is so unique, that my words are completely un understandable. Situations like this are what defeat me. However, my Spanish gets better daily. On such a minimal scale. I have so much to learn. I went to a café this morning and actually successfully ordered what I wanted. Without confusion, without frustration. That was incredibly pleasing.

Still gonnna sign out with utter excitement,

huzza!
jake.

random photos i like but haven't posted...until now.

2008-01-20T10:54:00.001-08:00

the metro at 1:30 am. the lonlienst you'll ever find it.

view of old down town madrid from parque retiro

rastro market photos

2008-01-20T06:30:00.000-08:00

Rastro flee market

2008-01-20T06:04:00.000-08:00

I went to the rastro today, which is a giant flee market. To say the least, it was great for watching, observing, experiencing, and aimless wondering. The only other market like this that I’ve been to is the Saturday market in Portland. Which takes place in a big open area, a big plaza if you will. Rastro, however, is not an open area. The city just closes many streets, countless, atleast twenty (remember the streets are small here and start and stop at random), and vendors set up booths and display what ever the hell they may be selling. There was quite the plethora of things there. Hippie clothes, jewelry stands, funny tshirts, watches, wallets, electronic booths, swords, knives, shoes, scarves, art—both paintings and really odd personal art like can ash trays and wire sculptures, there was even one guy selling his old clothes including a pair of boots that were worn completely out. The market was packed as well. Tons of locals, tons of tourists, tons of everybodies.
The coolest part about the market was the obscure musicians set up randomly. My favorite was a man who had twenty crystal wine glasses off all sizes set up on a home made stand. He played a full melody of music with high and low notes that rang like signing sirens. Both hands worked quickly as though he were a concert pianist. It sounded beautiful and it was just so different.
I found a huge catholic church as well. I first noticed a grand red brick building lining amongst the small cafes and apartments that line the narrow streets of Madrid. I didn’t realize it was a church until I got to the door. Inide mass was being conducted. Of course, I had no idea what was being said, but that was fine. The inside of the building was so amazing. The most grand church I have ever seen. Everything in it was exquisite. Giant pillars lined the center of the room and huge sky lights domed with stained glass. There were several monuments of Christ and mary to worship at. The center, where the pupit was had a huge wall of gold, I’m not sure if it was real gold…but still impressive. There were pictures of Christ amongst the center as well. And more columns of gold. And the wall itself was decorated with twist and turns and rises (I have no idea what to call them) of gold. It was beautiful. I knelt at a pulpit, pretended I knew what I was doing, and did the cross thing. Told god I felt him. And that was the extent of my worship. I thought it was funny that inorder to worship at the several monuments through out the room you had to pay. I know most religions have some sort of tithing, or collection dish, and what not. But literally, in order to approach the statues one had to put money into a box in the wall. And in order to light a candle (which were electric lights) at the feet of mary, one had to insert money and then the candle would glow electrically. That aside, the cathedral, or church, or whatever it was, was beautiful. Truly amazing. I had to take photos renegade style. I really doubt it’s kosher to be taking photos during mass. But the beauty was to much to not capture and share with all of you. I waited around after mass as well in order to sneak more pictures, and I had the grand I idea of somewhat hiding my camera and videotaping the church. So excuse the crappy angles of the video and what have you. But I had to be sneaky.

Anyway, another cool afternoon in Madrid.

huzza!
jake.

counterpoints

2008-01-19T04:25:00.000-08:00

One big reason I wanted to come to Madrid was to expand my social conscience. To discover what makes a person of one nationality different from a person of another nationality. I wanted a counterpoint to the American mind set. In America we are well aware that we are “the greatest nation in the world.” Which, is true. We are a very wealthy nation, even with our economic slump of late. We have a powerful military with correspondence all over the world. Our art and media is influential all over the world…I hear more American music in Madrid than I do Spanish music. They likes No Doubt. My point to all of this is, in America we know this. We are told this by our leaders often. But being raised in America, I really know nothing of any other nation in the world. Just tid bits of tragedies that make it onto the television and newspaper. But as far as individual culture of a different country. Nothing. Nothing at all. And maybe this is because I’ve dedicated my study time to books, and not international studies and things of that nature. So it may be my fault. But me thinks not entirely. Even when I read the newspaper, the world section is very brief and usually only cover tragic events, such as storms or bombings, and or major political ones.
But, what I want to know about is the individual. I want to know about the average human, who is just like me, who lives a small life driven by personal satisfaction with an understanding that the grandeur of the coverage of the media is essentially irrelevant to our everyday lives. I will never be president. I will never be a suicide bomber. I will never be celebrity. I will live my quite life seeking happiness in the small things I find the most meaningful.
So, I got one counterpoint last night. I say one, because I hope to get many more. And while i had fantasized it would be Spanish counter points that I would be logging into my brain, last night was from a Spaniard, but rather a couple of Italians. Two girls, Franchesca and (well I call her because I can’t freaking say the full thing) Gabby. Both are studying at the URJC through usac as well. Last night we found a quite corner in a faitly quite bar in an are of town called Chueaca. It was I, two other American students—sarah and yelim, and the two Italians. And the conversation naturally turned towards life in our home countries and eventually stayed focused American politics. Much was said about the war in iraq and 9/11. and much was said about how president bush handles both and how the policing of the world is not Americas job. Which everyone at the table was in concurrence with. I don’t think it’s necessary to go into details about this topics. It’s pretty self explanatory. The more interesting part to me was the empirical evidence of my fundamental belief, which I pulled from reading literature from many nations through many time periods. People are people. Wherever you live we are equivalent. And while, yes, culture shapes mindsets and presentation of an individual, our thoughts are inherently equivalent.
One thing I was worried about coming to Europe was the stereotyping of the American individual. I was worried I’d be mistaken and seen as our government is viewed. Dominating, loud, aggressive. I was worried that the separation of the individual from the entity that is America would not be empathized with. Which, atleast with my Italian friends, couldn’t have been further from the truth. Infact, it’s well understood. And it’s a universal mindset. It applies to all peoples from any where in the world. The individual is valid and their thoughts are valid and love and harmony and compassion are seen in all peoples from any where in the world. Last night I was viewed as an individual first asked freely my thoughts of the state of many situations and my beliefs were accepted as valid based upon my free will and the acknowledgement of my private being.
I guess the counter point I ‘m trying to make clear. What I pulled from last night was how the Italians viewed Americans. Gabby said that when she thinks of Americans she thinks of faced paced, consumer driven people, who do not take time out of their day for personal enjoyment. And one thing I’ve definitely noticed with the Spanish siesta is that this is definitely true. In spain, every day all stores close for three hours and people meet at cafes to be with their friends and family. It creates such closeness of individuals to spend so much time together. It creates stronger bonds and makes friendship more of a loving situation than simply and companionship thing. Yes, I agree with gabby, Americans are faced paced and it seems often we do not take time out of our days to enjoy the simplest things in life. Friends, conversations, the beauty of the world that is always around us, i.e. the trees, the flowers, the blue sky, the sounds of the city. I’ve noticed this in the states. How can a self proclaimed vagabond/drifter/romantic/dharma bum/new aged hippie minus the need for drugs not realize the importance of these things? These things are what make me happy are what make my life full. But yes, hearing it from another culture is uite impressive. To realize that other places in the world put emphasis on such simple practices was all too cool.
Another counterpoint I loved, and I’m summarizing here, is that gabby views Americans as spoiled, to which franchesca agreed, to which I’m sure many Spaniards would agree. In the states we really know nothing of foreign countries. We know the bare minimum in fact, and often (and I really don’t mean everyone, in fact I’d say it’s the minority) view other countries as inferior and irrelevant to the power of the united states. We are spoiled because we don’t have to learn another language. Because the rest of the world is trying to learn ours just to keep up. At fourteen Gaby’s parents sent her to England to go to school because they knew it was necessary for her to learn English in order to be successful in the modern world. But American don’t have to do this. And most of us don’t have a desire to even try. We fully know that with English we can accomplish many things in the world. Which is completely true. So, too often, the desire for social expansion is not desired. Is not of any importance. And for this reason we are spoiled. And I am not trying to think of myself as a hero, really I am not. I just simply had never ever though of America in this manner. In fact, I was not really aware how powerful America is. I mean I knew. But didn’t understand. In italy, and I’m sure other places, it’s necessary for the peoples to stay informed on American politics and economy because so much of what the states does affects them at home. America has three giant military bases in italy that if or when the time comes, will turn italy into a war zone without them even wanting it to be. America is a very strong nation, I just never understood how strong it was.
Finally, I’m not trying to sound anit-america. I’m not. In fact after last night, I was very proud of my upbringing. Without being raised in Idaho on a farm in America I wouldn’t be the person I am today. And I like me. I actually left the bar with a feeling of gratitude. This doesn’t mean I agree with our politics or our stance in the world. But, I am grateful for my heritage. And to know that being American does not mean being stereotyped is a really good feeling. I look forward to my return to the west (though I am far from ready to have it actualized). I look forward to the trees and rivers and the nicety of the peoples throughout the pacific northwest.

huzza!
jake.

2008-01-17T07:45:00.000-08:00

Plaza Mayor is ripe with history. it was were all the festivals of madrid were held...long long tme ago. it's where bullfights used to happen and during the spanish inquisition it's where heretics where beheaded via the guillaten (i have no idea how to spell that. you know, you put a head in a hole and a blade falls and chops it off). now it's cafes and shops and still in the summertime festavils are held there. you can buy one of the tiny apartments above it for only two million euro.

All these are taken in Puerto Del Sol

2008-01-17T07:35:00.000-08:00

Taken inside of Plaza Mayor. cool view through arch way.

deaf and dumb.

2008-01-17T06:26:00.000-08:00

Of course I knew. Of course I did. I knew that coming to another country where my native tongue was not their native tongue would be a trying and difficult task. But the idea of it excited me. I was revved for the challenge and thought many laughs would come from the misunderstandings. And in the back of my mind I had the comfortable thought that everyone in Europe speaks English…right? No, no no no no. so not true. One of the first things I was told when I arrived here is that hardly anyone speaks English in Madrid. So that comfort blanket was ripped away from me.
It has become daunting and tedious for me to do the most simple of things. I can’t go to a restaurant and order what I want. I can’t ask for a beer or a glass of wine. I can’t request my check. I can’t go to the farmacia and buy soap or q-tips or floss. I can’t ask for directions in the streets. I can’t do much of anything. Other than look like a jack ass and feel like one to. I even know how to say all the things I’ve listed above. But the Spanish accent is so strong that no one understands my lazy American tongue. Today, I don’t mind so much. I went to a café for a kebab bocadilla (which is a hybrid of hybrids a Spanish/Turkish sandwich), and ordered, I’m pretty sure exactly how a Spaniard would, and I got the most confused look from the bartender. But, it didn’t bother me. Yesterday I felt terrible. I felt very confused and frustrated and lost. I felt as though I had just lost the ability to speak and to hear. I’m deaf and dumb here. I’ve reverted to a savage state where all I can do is point and mumble at the things I want. I’m a child here. An infant here. I can’t say what I mean. I can’t understand grown up conversations. Sure I can catch a word or phrase and what not, but I have the ability of a two year old to comprehend the world around me.
Today, it’s not so bad though. I knew this would happen, but, my lord, yesterday it struck me pretty hard how out of place I am. Especially being the only blonde haired person amongst thousands of others. Oh, that’s another funny thing. The Spanish are people watchers…huge people watchers. On the metros all they do is observe everyone else. Everyone is watching someone…well, not everyone (lots of people read on the metro and lots sleep too…way too many people on the metro), but there’s a whole lot of people watching going on. And you know what’s great about people watching? Finding the most obscure thing about the scenario and discovering it. Yes, a big blonde haired kid is an easy target. I get stared at a lot on the metro. Though it doesn’t bother me. They aren’t vicious looks or anything. Just observations. My super American--couldn’t be more American and blend in in America looks, are finally helping me stand out. Hehe.
The old Spanish woman hate me though. I’m sure of it. I guess old Spanish women are more stubborn than old Idaho women. They’ve spent their entire lives surrounded only by the Spanish, and it’s only been in the past ten years that immigration and tourism has really picked up in Madrid. So old Spanish women have given me some pretty nasty looks. Oh bother.
On the plus. I was out rolling a cigarette before class, singing to myself, feeling pretty chipper. And two Spanish girls walked by and said some shit in Spanish I didn’t understand. However, my friend yelim (American student fluent in Spanish) was walking by them and told me what they said. They thought it was cute that I was singing and thought that I was handsome…I’m sure in Spanish cute and handsome are way cooler when not translated. So, sweetness, huh? Now I just need to quit being deaf and dumb and learn the damn language. Four days into class I can count and conjugate regular verbs….crap, long ways to go.

huzza!
jake.

barrio de la concepcion. my neighborhood.

2008-01-17T06:11:00.000-08:00

n
notice the shops underneath. this is how all the businesses in the burbs are.

The Prado

2008-01-14T10:45:00.000-08:00

To write my about my time at The Prado is no easy task. To attempt to assign words to the intangible emotions that overwhelm the mind and body with such a feeling of solitude and peace and harmony and love and beauty seems like a futile endeavor. None of the words above even begin to encompass the intangible wholeness one feels when surrounded by so much grace and wonderment in large and small forms in every direction. Even when the words are combined they still do not convey nor equivocate the purity experienced when examining and studying the masterpieces displayed at The Prado. In fact, no words express expressing emotions can capture what I felt. There is no word like void that is highlighted in a positive connotation. Possibly if there is a word that combing void and solitude and quietude and beauty, then that word may be applicable. But I do not believe it exists. This undefined word is the true power of The Prado. I felt the absence of all things. The removal of earthly pain. I could not even sense the weight of my body pressing into the balls and heels of my feet. It was as though I was a heavenly body constricted not by gravity, floating angelically above the ground—where heat nor chill nor simple aches in the joints of my body are were noticed. This is the only way I can think to express the purity The Prado creates in the soul deep inside of me.
As for my external experience I dedicated my time to discovering the genius of Francisco Goya. There is so much to see in the prado. The building is four stories tall with at least six wings and ten rooms within each wing. To see everything in one day is impossible. Impossible in the sense that the mind and body and soul cannot handle that much beauty, it is too much to bear. Yes, one could walk from one room to the next, but to feel each painting is a feat I do not believe I can accomplish in the five months I will be staying here…especially because there are two other museums of equal caliber in Madrid.
When first standing in front of a giant piece by Valezquez, I was stunned by the massive size of the painting. It stood ten feet tall and five feet wide. How an artists could keep the precision to have congruency throughout the piece I will never understand. To keep such a massive work on scale is a talent all in itself. Also, the realization that I was standing infront of the exact canvas that the artist painted on himself was a powerful sentiment in itself. My eyes looked upon the same canvas that Valezquez’s eyes looked upon as well. All of the work in the prado is the same canvas the original artist touched with their own hands. That’s a profound feeling in itself.
I’m not sure why I am so drawn to the work of Goya. His diversity is very appealing to me. He can paint portraits and still life with the utmost of precision. He can paint and draw the absurd, or surreal, equally as moving. I started looking at the dates each was created, which made me wonder even more about Goya the man. The earliest work the prado had were paintings of friends and families celebrating life. Dancing and singing and playing in the outdoors. The blue of the sky were vibrant. The greens of the grass were lush. The yellows of children’s dresses mirrored the sun. The painting, for me, undoubtedly expressed an optimistic tone and a feeling of eat drink and be merry. I have to assume that this reflected the spirit of Goya in his younger years. I can imagine him celebrating life with friends in the country side during summer and stepping back to sketch a scene.
In his middle aged years he became the painter of the king and his family. Many works were displayed or the royal family. The thing I found interesting about this time period is that all the facial expression of the royals were nearly vacant. It appeared their eyes stared at nothing. As though they were calloused to the world. And though they had no emotions left in their hearts. And yet, they still allowed, and probably loved the work Goya had created. Over all, these pieces were my least favorite, however if I understood art more I’m sure I’d get more out of the accuracy in which he created the pieces.
Then in the late years of Goya’s life he created what are now called the Black Paintings. These are what really grasped me. Really made me dumbfounded by the creations of Goya. Black is a good word. Most of the scenes are dominated by dark colors, ash gray, blood red, jetblack. They are dark and oppressive and portraying his fellow Spaniards in such a dark and idiotic manner. To me, it seems he lost all hope and faith in this country me. In one painting, the name escapes me, a giant and omnipotent character stands loominous (not luminous) in the dark sky. He is naked and strong and savage. He looks confused as though he has no intentions of ill will but simply lost in his own head of destruction. In the valley below the sky, swarms of tiny humans flee in fear away from the giant. I took the giant to be time or god or afterlife or what ever eternal question can never be answered by humans.
This sentiment is mirrored in the painting Saturn. Saturn was the god of time and melancholy. Saturn, in Goya, is a beastly figure with a hairy body and wild eyes and bulging naked muscles. He bits the arm off of a body, which has no head and blood running from the neck. Again, I think this is the same sentiment as from above, the fear of death and life and the timid life it can create in the mortal humans.
The rest of black painting, I believe (who can possibly say what is right and wrong?) are derived from these two. They feature caricatures of half ape and half human bodies. In many of the scenes theses devolved creatures huddle together, like conformity, and their eyes express fear and the trembling of bones. Overall, I took that black paintings as Goya’s loss of faith in the Spanish and humanity in general. He was a cynic and viewed the world in such a hopeless light. And, I couldn’t help but think he was working out his own fear of death through these works, alleviating the pain and confusion he felt.
Incredibly lucky for me, the prado is featuring a very small collection of Goya for a short period. It was one of the last things he worked on before his death. He called it, “El Toro Mariposa (the bull-butterfly).” The collection was broken into three categories: Buelan Buelan (they fly they fly), dibersion de espana, and materia para ridiculo. All were done with pencil, some charcoal, and some with a pencial that looked like charcoal but with orange/red lead. Buelan featured men trying to fly. It was symbolic of the futility and foolishness of the dreams of men. Dibersion was all of bullfights. Spaniards stood in large groups laughing and dancing at other men who were being gored by raging bulls. And ridiculo featured more caricatures of the Spanish as beastly and devolved persons. All three helped form my opinions of the black paintings, which I think undoubtedly have to be linked due to their proximity in creating. Oh, and the really cool things about El Toro Mariposa, is that they were small pieces created in a notebook. Some were even done on the back of envelopes and one could still sea the postage stamp on them. I can imagine him carrying the notebook around Madrid, watching his country men, and sketching the tiny pieces in the very plaza I’m sitting in right now. Now, that’s a really cool notion.

huzza!
jake.

spanish peeps

2008-01-14T10:44:00.000-08:00

The peeps in Madrid are a foreign bunch. Imagine that. I haven’t had any conversations with any Spaniards minus Gabrielle who works for USAC. All my opinions are observation based. The Spanish are very trendy. Super trendy. Which, as most of all y’all know, I generally dislike such behavior when back in the states. However, I’ll let it slide here based upon the idea of how close people are here. Friends are true friends who will talk for hours with each other. Families are so close. Every night Merche and Ana, the family I live with, go for an evening walk, they make dinner together, they even share a room. So yeah, I understand the desire to be like your friends…I guess. Anyway, I’m letting it slide.
I was in Puerto del sol, a part of old downtown Madrid, a really pretty part which is now a huge shopping center. Behind me was a mother pushing her three (or so) year old son in a stroller. The son said (in Spanish of course, a friend translated for me) “I don’t want to go home and take a bath. I want to buy clothes.” It was funny/sad. How does a two year old become obsessed with fashion? It seemed very odd to me. But that is what he wanted. Anyway, good or bad or different or whatever, the Spanish love fashion, and granted, the woman do look really hot, so who am I to complain?
As I imagine it is anywhere in the world, there exists assholes and nice peoples in spain. Which, is why I’m up so late tonight writing this blog. I went to a café this evening for a glass of wine. I said to the woman behind the bar, “Tienes vino?” and she looked at me really odd. Granted my Spanish is terrible and my accent sucks, so I’m sure it was hard to understand. But she was really cold and rude. Other places I’ve gone, the bartenders or baristas or whoever are really nice and are happy I’m trying my hardest to speak Spanish. But not this woman. She was rude as shit. Anyway, after a thirty seconds of dirty looks from her I just pointed to the beer and said, “mahou, porfavor.” (mahau is a local beer that nearly every café carries). And she poured it. Then my roommate came up and I asked him if there was something wrong with the way I was saying “tienes vino,” and he said no and then he asked her if they had wine for me. She said she spoke English and that’s why she was rude to me. I don’t get it. At all. If she spoke English she could have helped me out a little. How the hell am I to know she spoke English. Oh, and contrary to what I was told before leaving…hardly anyone speaks English in Madrid. Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is the Spanish get offended over things my American mind just can’t understand.
A second example of this: yesterday six of us students stopped at a café in Puerto del sol and had lunch. We started off on the wrong foot with the waitress. One student was taking a really long time to order and the waitress just stood there waiting for her order. We told her we needed a minute and she just kinda hovered. I get this, cultural difference, I guess. Order when the waitress has time, I suppose. Anyway, she just stood there and I felt really bad because as a member of the service industry I know how much of a pain in the ass it is to have a slow customer. By the time we got our order in the waitress was really peeved and kept rolling her eyes and what not. Which I thought was rude, I’m pretty sure there was some stereotyping of Americans going on. And I know it’s difficult to be in another country, especially spain which is incredibly proud of it’s heritage and culture. But doesn’t human compassion have to come in to play a little? A simple understanding of we are not from this country and we are trying hard to understand? Maybe not. Anyway, here’s the kicker. Once they brought out the food, my friend ordered a sandwich type thing, I forget it’s Spanish name, and she began to eat it with a knife and fork. At this point the waitress and one other waiter kept walking passed the table and scowling at us. Seriously scowling. A look of get the eff out, you are not wanted here. When I ordered another beer, the waitress slammed it down so hard that the head flowed over the top of the glass. Finally my roommate approached her when she was alone in the corner and asked her why they were so angry with us. She told him it was because our friend was eating her sandwich with a fork and it was meant to be eaten with her hands. Serious. This is why they got so angry. This is why they treated us like shit. This idea is very odd to me. Not the custom of eating it with your hands. I like that idea. But, the waitress not telling my friend to use her hands because it was customary is bizarre. To get so angry, to become so rude to other humans who are completely ignorant to local custom and who are in a foreign country to learn all about the customs, is completely perverse to me.
But, like I began this blog, some people are dicks. Some are nice. It’s universal. These are two examples of the bad in the world that have me up so late on a school night wondering why people suck. Well, I guess I shouldn’t say suck. Why the Spanish are the way they are. I guess I need to investigate much more. However, some of the responses I’ve received have been pretty perplexing to me. The Spanish are proud, indeed.
To give some props to the Spanish. I haven’t had a single bad experience with asking people for help in the streets. The Spanish are so willing to give directions and help a lost American find his way. It’s nice.

Anyway, should sleep, very late, very tired, very annoyed, very very very.

Jake.

an afternoon with alfie

2008-01-12T18:19:00.000-08:00

Today I went to el monumento de rey alfonso XII. It is located inside the beautiful parque de retiro, which means the park of relaxation. This is precisely the correct name for such a meditative place. I have never felt such reverence by being in the presence of anything man made before. Not ever. The feeling of spirituality that had overcome me this afternoon is a feeling I have only felt when stricken with all the glory of nature. However, observing the sheer elegance and artistic beauty of the monument left me in such a trance that only my soul was present to sense the outside world. The location of the monument was once where a palace the rey y riena de espana lived. It fell a long time ago. Rey Alfonso was the last king before the second republic took power of espana and forced him to leave, leading to the civil war and the rise of Franco. That aside, the monument was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. It sits in front of a gigantic man made lake/pond. The length is 200 yards tall and the width is 500 yards wide. Boats are available to rent and paddle around the monument. The monument itself is a large platform which has stairs in the front leading down to the water and four lions on the waters edge, which I imagine to be protectors of the king. On the outer edges of the platform, two large walls stand. They are reminiscent of the roman coliseums with giant pillars and decorated at the top with cherubs. In the center of the platform stands a giant vertical statue, I’m guessing 100 ft tall, with Rey Alfonso sitting on his horse. The four sides of the vertical statue each contained a smaller sculpture that the monuments creator had asked other respectable artists to create. One sculpture is the reason for me plummeting into such reverence at the holy site. It contains five characters. The center character is naked man who looks famished and his ribs show dominant through his skin. Behind him is an angel pulling his body up to heaven. His face looks pristine, as I imagine anyone who is looking upon the face of god would look. As though all pain and worry and strife had instantly been removed from his head and his heart. The angels face is look of compassion like the task was redundant but rewarding each and every time. To his left, a friend of the man with strong muscles and a splendid figure appears to be left behind on earth, and is allowing his friend to lean on him for strengthen, as though he was helping him stand, helping him ascend to his final glory, helping him through the struggles of life. Lying at the feet of the ascending man is a miserable looking human. His face, looking up at the rising man, is discontent and sour as though he was enraged with despair. Lying at his feet are shackles though he nor the ascending man nor the strong friend appear to have ever been locked into their clutches. The final figure I can not figure out. He appears to be a priest holding a bible, but his expression perplexes me. At first I thought he was simply raising his hand to say goodbye to a soul he may have helped but his eyes appear empty and his mouth is far too frowned. Perhaps he is jealous, perhaps he is distracted, no not distracted. He may be pondering when his time for heavenly assent will come. I just do know. I can’t place his look.
So, after pondering this monument I walked down the stairs that lead to the water, sat and wrote in my journal and then smoked a cigarette. A couple rowed near me in a boat and stopped to look at the king’s monument. The woman leaned her head back and the soft breeze swung her hair up, faintly exposing her ears, and she closed her eyes and the look on her face was like the look of the man ascending to heaven. She was perfectly content. Perfectly blissful. It was beautiful and I knew exactly how she felt.

jake.

monumento de alfanso xii

2008-01-12T18:03:00.000-08:00

more pics sans caption. how about this. Madrid photos.

2008-01-11T11:01:00.000-08:00

a standard street in old downtown madrid. i love the terraces. everybuilding in old downtown has a terrace.
The Prado. that statue is the back of Goya. on the oppisite side is his face.
a random side street i took. i thought the colors were pretty.

photos without captions cause i can´t figure out how to use this site and i´m getting charged by the minute in the interent cafe.

2008-01-11T10:47:00.000-08:00

a central part of old downtown madrid. they're all office buildings now.

this is a train station. crazy huh?

t

these are all in parque retiro. i liked this king cause he was standing on a head and his nickname is the battler.

10-1-08

2008-01-11T10:45:00.000-08:00

Thing are settling slightly. Oh, so very slightly. As in the city isn’t as overwhelming. But not in a bad way. It gives me more time to reflect upon the actual beauty of it, in place of a feeling of pure overwhemltion. But, by god, this city truly is beautiful.

I live in the burbs. The burbs of Madrid, as I imagine any major city, are quite crowded. I imagine sooner or later I’ll begin to miss grass. Ha. Maybe I already do. The streets of my neighborhood, La Concepcion, are lined with apartment buildings. They stretch as far as one can see. It took twenty minutes of wandering last night to finally reach some sort of non-apt based area. Which is exactly what I had anticipated when moving to Madrid. So there are no let downs. What I wasn’t expecting was the lack of stores. Well, the lack of walmart, Albertson, winco, style store. I didn’t expect those exact chains to be here, but I had assumed Spanish style stores would. Nope. Negativatory. Most of the apartments begin on floor (what we’d call in the states) two. Though, they stil call it floor one. The bottom floors are shops. There’s a butcher. A pharmacy. A café (well, tons of cafes, they are everywhere!). A tailor. A tobacco store. A fruit stand. An electronics store. A bakery. Etc. Each one is owned by an individual and gives that person and their family their livelihood. I think it’s awesome. It makes for a cool community and gives plenty for the eyes to look at when passing on the streets.

The cafés here are awesome. There is at least one between every street. I’d say block, but the streets are so chaotic that blocks don’t really exist. You can eat for so incredibly cheap. Two euros will get you a good sized snack (tapas are everywhere) a cup of café con leche (which is the most phenomenal coffee on the earth. But I’ll have to make a separate paragraph for the grandeur of café con leche), and a beer. All for two freaking euros. If you are slightly more hungry, three and a half euros will fill you to the brim. And the food is excellent. I ordered paella, Spanish rice and sea food, and the dude behind the counter pulled fresh shrimp, muscles, and some sort of fish off of the ice in front of me, and sautéed it with the rice. All food here seems to be fresh. I haven’t seen any frozen food yet. Lots of cafés have cured ham hanging from the ceiling. Oh, ham is huge in Madrid.

My host family is very nice. I live with a 60 year old woman name Merche, her adopted daughter Ana (15), and one other American student named Isaac from Iowa. I am not excited about living with him. He’s 20, a douche, and talks about “getting bitches” a lot. He’s a know it all who never shuts up, and is constantly coming into my room while I’m trying to read. A cardinal sin in my book. However, he is fluent in Spanish. So I’m nice to him. Haha. He’s saved my ass a few times already. And living with Merche, who speaks no English, would be really difficult otherwise. I painted him in a pretty harsh light. He’s twenty and immature. And under no other circumstances would I choose to hang out with him. But, Merche. Very nice woman. She smiles a lot. Talks to me anyway, and I talk back in English. And we don’t understand each other. It’s fun. She has a dog who apparently will hates us for the first two weeks. A little tiny mutt. Jalie.

Our apartment it self is a big piece of crap. It’s tiny and old. Many thing are broke and even more things need fixing (how’s that possible?). I sleep in a room decorated for a little girl too. Pink walls. Posters of Disney and baby puppies. So I’m glad I didn’t pack my poster with kittens hanging from a close line with the caption that read, “hang in there,” Merche knew I was coming. I have no idea how old this place actually is. Not super old like 1750’s but I’m guessing early twentieth century. Oh, and I saw a for sale sign for one of the apartments on the street…240.000, 00 Euros!!!!!!!! They are so expensive. It’s freaking unbelievable. And we are twenty minutes from city center.

K, café con leche. Aw come aw wry! It is so good. They brew the grounds really strong. With a fraction of the water we use in the states. I’m not sure if the beans themselves are different, I’m guessing they have to be, because they are slightly sweeter, a whole lot less bitter, and have well, fuller, but not bold taste…not sure how to explain it. At cafes, they serve it in an 8 oz glass that looks like it is made for milk. Not a coffee mug at all. It’s about 1/3 café and 2/3 leche, and then you add pure sugar grains for the most delicious breakfast drink on earth. Or afternoon pick me up. Or late night snack.

I haven’t really met any Spaniards yet. School starts Monday and every day I’ve been here there has been some sort of USAC affiliated orientation. So I’ve been hanging out with the other USAC students a lot….which I just love…tons of twenty year olds…nuff said. A few asked about my tattoo and their eyes immediately glazed over the second I they heard the words, “moby-dick.” Ha. Oh well.

K, loosing momentum. Covered quite a bit. Though not everything. Not nearly everything.

Oh! One last thing. The roads here are lawless. Two lane roads often fit three cars abreast. Drivers will drive in the oncoming car’s lane and onto sidewalks to get around obstacles, such as people or a car parked in the middle of the road. It’s scary. I never want to drive here!

Huzza!
jake.

Day one in madrid

2008-01-09T14:43:00.000-08:00

The travel was miserable. Much worse than i had anticipated. From leaving boise, and including al of the lay overs and delays, it took me twenty-eight hours to finally arrive in madrid. I learned a few things, the french really are assholes. eleven hours in a plane is equivalent to be putting in the hole. And jet lag is not a myth. But, i have arrived and it is amazing here.

tonight i got lost. that is all i wanted to do. Many of the other USAC students chose to go out drinking tonight. i had to pass. at dinner one student was talking about how spanish people are deuches, and needed to get their asses kicked. yeah, i don't get why he's here either. a few others talked about how dirt the city was, which i'll get too...instead i just wandered around seeing how much only a square mile (which was only investigated on the surface) has to offer.

one cannot prepare for the grandure that is madrid. Every thing in the city is art. Well, everything in the part of town my hotel for tonight, is art. The buildings are all so old. Every detail of them is perfected. The doorways are art. the window wells are art. the statues that top the buildings, they too are art. The round abouts have gigantic foutains in the center of them. All the ministry buildings, similar to our "deartment of" buildings are in old palaces. they are magnificent buildings. I'm staying a few blocks from the meuseo de prado. the building is gorgeous. i don't know what the architecture is called, but it remingds me of the palace of versille. and, right behind the prado is a huge gothic chapel. the styles are just so vastly different. it's amazing. and, also, right behind the chapel, is a gigantic public park. it was locked by the time i found it, but i wil discover it's beauty soon.

the city is so amazingly clean. it crazy. again, i'm staying in one of the most relevant areas so i can't speak for the whole city, but the streets are so clean. the sidewalks, which are created out of granite tile, not concrete slabs, are spotless. the building do look dirty. but they are so old. centuries of weather and damage to them. so yeah, some of the buildings do look like they have dirt on them, but touch them and they sure don't. everywhere in america i'd find cigarette butts, their euqivalent places in spain do not.
i took one turn off a major blvd, and i was on a stereotypical cramped european street. their wideths were barely wide enough for a passing car. the parked cars were pulled onto the sidewalk to make space. the streets themselves were coblestone, and were definitely not set up on a grid system. intersecting roads crossed at random and unpredictable angles. large buildings, some apts, some offices, some resrautns with offices and apts on the top levels, lined the roads. and every single window had a terrace. infact, nearly all apts i've seen in spain have terraces. oh man, i hope my apt has a terrace. i'll find out tomorrow.

the people here seem to be great. and yes, the spanish are beautiful people. my lord are they. i was sitting in front of the prado smoking, and a madrid native named alexendro asked me for a smoke, and then sat down and we talked. He didn't speak english well. i don't speak spanish well. but he still sat down and got my basic story. he told me he was going to grenada, which is three hours away, tomorrow.

this is only the surface of what mardid has to offer me. day one was amazing, and there is so much left of the city to discover. oh, and not to mention the people i am bound to met.

jake.