Sunday, January 31, 2010

and then the Mediterranean

from last summer, 10 July
on the train 
I was wrong to pay attention to Rick Bragg's disdain for wheels on suitcases.
new goals:
learn about: Lorca, Catalan cooking, the Spanish Civil War, the art of O'rsay. Study my Spanish.
Although I pretended not to, I was able to understand a man who followed me along the waterfront in Barcelona. What is your name? What is your name? Do you want to eat? Where are you from? And then either he said right now or he called me a whore. I couldn't tell.
Much graffiti in Barcelona. Old train. German boys, Asian girls, elderly black couple with French accents and large suitcases, English boy with headphones on. I wonder which train station blew up, and how people could do such a thing. Brick apartment buildings with balconies, big dry hills, small trees, a woman in an orange construction vest washing a big black dog, overcast sky- gray, black, and violet.