Um...

Hey. Are you still here? I've moved, y'all.

Philosopher's Stone

The mythologized Philosopher's Stone would be able turn base metals such as lead and iron into the noble metals, silver and gold. Alchemists around the world spent hundreds of years looking for it and while they did, they wrote and wrote and wrote. Procedures, observations, and hopes, all detailed with footnotes and appendices. Illuminations, plates.

I have been given both vague and specific advice about how long I should mourn the transformation of my most recent passionate affair into the quiet, kindness between neighbors it has become. It's one of those losses I'm expected to swallow more easily, since I have not simply lost a lover, but also gained a friend. And it's true, there's a bit of sugar with the medicine. A bit. Didn't I have a friend before, too, though?

This isn't another breakup song.

We are, every one of us, awash in a sea of expectations. Mine are mostly my own. I'm difficult, even still, I'm harder on myself than I ever am on anyone else.

There are days when I can clearly see a path, but the place it's heading changes all the time. Artist. Clerk. Manager. Executive. Cigarette girl. Writer. Teacher. Turns out it's just a road away from right here. What's so awful about right here that I can only ever dream about the next place?

Alchemy paved the way for chemistry. In their misled desires, those proto-scientists documented a few methods of trial and record that are still used today. I wonder what they would think-- if we could dig one up and ask him, how would he feel knowing that for all we can do: space travel, heart transplants, towering skyscrapers, and combat drones, we still can't turn lead into gold?

No. 2: Maillol's merganser

Glaciers take eons to form. One cold winter (or two or ten) is not enough to shape the land in ice's image. Compaction takes time, and a carving to the bone of basement rock too, is long coming. until deeper still, the Earth's crust is cracked as easily as a brûlée by a stern spoon.

But even as it cuts, so too, the water is held. Earth and water: stuck. Stuck.

It is in these desolate, stilled seas that the last of Maillol's merganser can be found. It soars the frozen floes, searching for signs of fish.

The bird can easily be identified by its thick, tapered wings and from below, wide, bronze legs. It's breast and belly are granite colored, and it's back and wings, dark stone. In flight, which is the only way it has yet been recorded, it is both broad and graceful. Always, it searches.

How long this bird has searched is unclear. Only one has been recorded, ever, and it seems to still endure: the last or only of its kind. Its age is unknown or even guessed at. Has it hunted the glaciers since they were rivers rich in fish? Were there once many, saluting the dawn with guttural cries of still still still?

How it continues, this single specimen, with no nest or meal or mate, is not recorded anywhere.

Paradoxically

What happens when an immovable object meets an unstoppable force?

According to physics, nothing, as the paradox negates itself. I.e., "an irresistible force cannot exist because it would require an infinite amount of energy which is not possible in a finite universe. An immovable object cannot exist because everything is constantly moving and an object that large would collapse under its own weight and create a black hole" (according to Wikipedia, anyway).

Which is weird, because that's both true and false, here. It takes infinite energy to keep moving in every direction and creates a terrible weight to be so goddamn sure all the time. But that doesn't stop our orbit, nope. Not even for one fucking minute.

a few notes on Nebraska

(The state, not the Bruce Springsteen album.)

It's hot. Camping in hot, muggy weather is high on my list of Things to Generally Avoid, so I'm going to happily accept the place to stay I've been offered in Lincoln.

It's flat. Like woah. I mean, there are some lovely brief moments of alluvial depression that appear out of nowhere, and occasional small rolls in the land that could almost be hills--but it couldn't be more clear that this was recently (geologically speaking) the site of a sea. The effects of water, recent and otherwise, can best be seen on the grazed land, where the grass is uniformly short. It's so flat that all of the current water meanders in this drought year.

It's covered in corn. I mean, you guys, they are not lying about the corn. It is tall and everywhere. There are also some soybeans, and I've seen one wheat field, but corn corn corn corn corn corn. The sandy, slippery dirt roads that serve as 55 mph thoroughfares all over the last couple of counties I was in--and maybe all of them, I can't rightly say--seem to serve the sole purpose of getting from one corn field to another.

The prairie is full of bugs and birds. I have a lot of feelings about both, so I'm going to hold off on putting anything down on the permanent internet record just yet.

Some fun facts I've learned since I've been here:

• The Tiger Salamander, once common to the plains wetlands, can live for up to 25 years. 
• Five different strangulation murders (in the US) were originally blamed on constricting snakes--but constrictors always go for the chest/thoracic region rather than the neck. 
• A landowner cannot modify/undo a reconstructed wetland on his or her land--it becomes protected land--but no such protection exists for reconstructed prairie. 
• Marijuana is a naturally occurring prairie plant. 
• There are 45 species of bumble bees in North America, and 20 of them are Nebraska residents. 
• Carrion beetles smell just as you'd expect them to. 
• Scientific data has incredibly rigid limitations.  

Obligatory birthday melancholia

My 39th birthday is coming up and I am waffling between apathy and anxiety about it. I have often had high expectations for my birthday and have been sad when they weren't met, so I'm trying to keep a lid on that this year. So, on the one hand, it's just a day--I'm pragmatic and know this in my heart. I will be no different on Monday than I will be on Tuesday and all that.

But, on the other hand, it sounds so much older than I feel. Almost 40? Come ON. Maybe it's the starting over, back in school, etc that's contributing to my general disbelief, but I'm not sure. There are some alarms going off, though I doubt it's all the usual stuff. I am not lamenting my lack of babies or anything. Maybe my lack of a viable career. Also, some options have passed me by forever (and I am not being overly dramatic here, I'm just saying). For example, I will never be in the 40 under 20 or even, likely, the 20 under 40. Even my starting over looks different now than it once did. There's less grace, more clawing for a comfort zone.

I am so set in my ways that I make things harder for myself than I am supposed to. I don't act nearly forty most of the time... so that when I do, it doesn't serve me. I don't make enough room for others, I always act the way I act, I am unforgiving. These are the ways of old people, and I am only now learning that they are my ways.

Sometimes my knees feel forty, but only on the three flights to my apartment, and there are times that I look in the mirror and see all these lines around my eyes and mouth--and am both enchanted and appalled. I know I will never have the smooth stomach I once dreamed of, and that the stomach I do have is considered "character," at best. I have a lot of character, alright, and it will probably wind up being my downfall.

I like all the lines on the back of my hands--they are new. I like that my voice stayed a bit raspy, even though I quit smoking nearly a decade ago. I like that I am in better shape, even now, than I was ten years ago. So, you know, don't get me wrong. It's not all bad; it's just all slipping when it once used to be climbing.

The Ugly Truth

Telling the truth is hard for me.

I don't lie very often, but I keep a lot to myself. You wouldn't know it to spend ten minutes with me, because I hardly shut up--yet my closest friends and a very few lovers have been able to hear what I leave out. (The best among them don't let me get away with it.) It's my birdsong and it sounds like a dog whistle and looks like an eyeroll.

The things I let slip out are meant to entertain and attract. I will say anything to keep you from leaving, if I like you. I want my words, my writing, my antics to please. To retain. Yet I hold back, even knowing that my readers and lovers and friends would prefer it if I didn't. I know this is true. But, you know, I know a lot of things that I am not able to use practically. For example, I recently learned that the Queen of Belgium has a hall of mirrors that is wallpapered with the bodies of over a million and a half Jewel Beetles. It glimmers a green and gold bubbled iridescence, and even the chandelier shape seems prosaic under the glow of all those little bodies. It screams out the labor that was required to create it--a staff of thirty, hunched over bugs and glue.

It is beautiful, but if my own tiny insect collection is any indication, it is also now teeming with dust mites. Even now, her guests, each time they walk through, are being peppered with microscopic scraps of leg as the mites chew the joints in each of the million point six carapaces.

Are you still here?

Today I got so frustrated that I lost my shit. And my optimism. A good friend pointed out for the millionth and a half time that I am too hard on myself. I have only managed to get one new piece of writing accepted for publication since I started my program. And. And. And. Goddamn it.

It feels like epic failure even though I can cite a number of reasons why it is not, if I was say, consoling a friend in the same situation. I don't often treat myself like a friend: I am not fair with myself. I exaggerate; I totally kitchen-sink all of my arguments with myself; I am exceedingly unkind in my judgements about myself. In this way I have a wound that never heals. That same good friend pointed out that it is this wound, and my attempt to close it--even as my broken arms clutch at the seam--that makes me a good writer. My critical eye sees a lot and its distortion, while not universal, sometimes rings a familiar note. I like that. I like it because I can reach others--not because the act of writing fixes any of my brokeness. If I could be put out of the mental turmoil in exchange for a dull life of cube walls and glue bottles, I would not do it.

When Camille Dungy spoke at the University she said she was a better person in her writing. She said she could edit out the pettiness and small-mindedness and be the better self she wanted to be through her poems. I try to be better every day but I often fail. I try to be true in my writing and I often fail at that, too. Too often, I write to please the reader instead of myself. I know too well that there's no pleasing me. I've heard it over and over and over, inside my head and out.

My taste is good, and my commitment, strong. I am stronger than I allow, and better. I know this, too. Just like I know that there is a species of woodpecker that carefully inlays acorns in the trunks of trees for winter storage, one by one in nut-shaped holes, so tightly that the acorns cannot be worried loose by the clawed fingers of squirrels. The holes are drilled first and then acorns found to just fit each one. Fewer than a million and a half to a tree, I'm sure, but no less lovely and more useful by far.

I don't know what I'm trying to say. But it does seem that I could learn something from the damn birds about what to spend my time on, and how that time will be repaid. If I were in the mood to learn anything, that is.

{untitled}

In art school, I left things untitled that had no obvious name. I felt like a phony and a douche almost every time I forced a name on a piece, so if the name didn't leap, fully formed, I did without. In critique, someone would invariably ask me to justify the *title* of untitled. Like, what was I trying to say to the viewer with my refusal to give them a way into the piece?

That word, refusal, is why I gave up being an artist. Also other words, like juxtaposition and conversation. And more I can't think of because it's late. Because anything I left out was a refusal and any two things I put in we're being meaningfully juxtaposed or were in some conversation that we (the critics of one another's work) had to transcribe and decipher.

'No conversation' was never an option, and I had no words or skills to assert my refusal of that paradigm.

When I refuse, it is awkward and stilted and uncomfortable and you know it's happening. I mentally rehearse asking for feedback, and try to have a socially acceptable response at the ready--one that will give me space to move away and think about that feedback somewhere alone for awhile--once I've gotten it. My unmitigated glare can shut down the conversation otherwise.

My enthusiasm, untempered, can be just as awkward. I will interrupt your conversation with a non sequitur daily, if not hourly, without some complex system of inner filters that always seem frayed and penetrable. And I've asked over-casually in my mind a million times who you had dinner with, rejecting the answer of "some folks" every time. But in my mind, I reject your lie in a way that will allow you space to answer. All in the hopes of a casual delivery, but what comes out is tensely predetermined. And you've no option but to lie more or defend.

This is how a crack forms in any commitment. Why I dropped out of artisting. And my marriage. And the corporate world. It is difficult for me to fit in without practice and repetition. I can learn the words of gracious disappointment or of curiosity in the face of misunderstanding. But they sound learned to my tin ear, not felt. I cannot be gracious under the heat of your stare that says "I can't believe you just said that." Even if your stare is only saying that in my imagination.

There's a near constant near panic to my inner monologue. The sentences in there all end on tremulous little scared notes, high-pitched voices. (Not real voices, she said, reassuringly.) O the histrionics! O the end is nigh! Forsooth, forswear!

All semester, even all year, I've struggled with the fact that my *writing* resists my voice at every turn. (That concept of refusal again, when I know damn well that my voice withers and scampers off at the glare of my pen. I can't believe I just almost said that.) But all evidence seems to point to my voice being more interesting and readable than my writing. There is a chasm of trust that I am afraid to leap across. Yes, this is a synecdoche: for everything, always. What's wrong with your writing is what's wrong with your life.

And writing, like life, is harder than I thought it would be. Or so my poster with a kitten stuck comically in a tree says.

Somehow I'm supposed to learn to trust myself and others and everything this summer. My chest gets tight and my thoughts spiral out hysterically like people out the doors of a theater fire just thinking it. One jump and I'm over the chasm. When I look back, it will seem so much smaller of a space to have crossed, I know this to be true. Everyone in front of me seemed to have hesitated for so much less time than I'm taking. My mind is screaming two things: JUMP and RUN BACK, NOW.

This cannot be subtractively analyzed to a tidy root I might lever out like a wailing mandrake. Neither can I tease it out slowly like a snarl in mohair. Some things are hard and take time. Some things are hard and take time and fail nonetheless. We are supposed to keep trying even in the slack face of it.

Day 15: Tenerife - Anaga north, laurisilva forest

I am recovered almost completely.

Today we hiked through the laurisilva forest on the north side of the Anaga refuge. In our first hike we saw traces of this tertiary forest system that gave way to pine forest and then scrub. But today, we walked through giant ferns and mossy tree branches and heard a LOT of birds and saw many lizards.

I felt fine, but after dinner, I learned that I was not in fact fine at all. So I will be turning in early (again) in the hopes that my last day in town is cramp-free.

For your viewing pleasure, some of today's wildlife.

Laurisilva trail with laurels (natch) and ferns

A rare glimpse down at the sea through the trees

I don't remember the name of this plant, but if you see it, you know you're in laurisilva

Pretty, but invasive

Tenerife Lizard (gallotia gallotii)

Definitely not a Blue Chaffinch

Canary Skink

Canary Gecko

Day 14: Tenerife from bed

My view, all day, was of the bottom of the top bunk. Sick sick sick. It's not travel without a little misadventure, right?

OR... Rick Steve's Quick Weight Loss plan: "Drink the water!" (Note: I did not drink the water.)

Today was a lecture day. The rest of the group stayed in as well, listening to policy lectures, so I didn't miss any actual adventures--just a lot of useful information. Luckily I asked someone to record the lectures for me.

In lieu of pictures, here are two Guanche legends from Tenerife:

The devil, Guayote, was jealous of the sun god, Magec, and so he imprisoned him inside of Teide volcano--bringing darkness to the world. The Guanches pleaded with the god of gods, Achamán, for relief from the endless night. Thus Achamán came to fight Guayote. He eventually won, and light was returned to the world, while Guayote was doomed to simmer angrily in the belly of the mountain. At night, he would roam the countryside as a huge black dog, eating people and livestock alike.

***

During long droughts, all of the people would abstain from food, dancing, and other frivolousness. They would take their sheep and goats to sacred, high places and separate the kids and lambs from their mothers. Then the people would cry along with the upset animals in the hopes of melting the heart of Achuhucanac, the rain god. Several of these special places are still called Bailadero or Baladero, which comes from the Spanish "balar", to bleat.

Day 13: Tenerife - Teide volcano and more sickness

Some hiking, some nauseousness. All in a day's living out of country.

My queasiness is actually fairly monumental at this point. Since very little instruction happened today, just amazing views of volcanic rock formations, here they are and here I go.

Some amazing roadside striations (of pumice and basalt)

Hiking to the top of an old peak

The view from most of the way up (the island of Gran Canaria can be seen across the sea and through the clouds)

Teide peak

The view of the caldera rim from the almost peak of Teide

More view from the nearly-top. Glittering ocean out there...

Day 12: Free day, sick day

Today was a free day and many of us were sick. Including me. While everyone else's troubles seemed to be... digestive in nature, mine were of the more fluish variety. I have been shivering and aching all day. We are all really hoping it wasn't the completely delicious yet raw and unregulated goat cheese we ate yesterday.

I gotta climb a volcano tomorrow, so I hope I feel better.

My New Year's Resolutions

1. Create as many shitty first drafts as possible
2. Move every day
3. Read nonrequired texts often
4. Write more letters to friends

Day 11: Tenerife - Anaga Rural Park

Imagine a National Park that includes a pioneer town, where everyone who lives there (and no, they are not there for you to gawk at, they live there) grows their food and ranches and farms using a blend of traditional and modern methods--for example, no new buildings but a portable milking machine for the goats is okay. This is Anaga.

This "rural" park includes some vestiges of laurisilva forests, a forest system that dates back to the Pleistocene. There are dragon trees, cardone cactus, and laurels and pines. There are euphorbiums and aeoniums. There are also goat herders and fisher people. We hiked from the top of Anaga, nearly down to the sea today. And in a few hours, we will ring in the new year with 12 grapes.

I ache all over and I am cheek-flushed with wine made here at Mayco. It's good to be here.

geek girl climbs down a mountain

Day 10: Tenerife - bananas, sheep, and the water problem

Today I ate a banana fresh off a tree. That's some good stuff! I also walked on a black sand beach, chased some of the sorriest sheep I've ever seen (owing to their being woolless), and gained about 5 pounds from all of the food that the school keeps feeding us.

The Canary Islands provide all of Spain with bananas and before being outbid by Morocco, sent tomatoes to the UK, Spain, and Germany. Those are their only two exports. While they also grow some papayas and make a (supposedly) delicious goat cheese, those stay on the island. Tenerife imports around 90% of its food.

Fresh water is a problem. There are many convolutions to the process of mining, distributing, and paying for water rights, and some "black business" in the background. The wells (caves/mines) are privately owned, though the water itself is a public resource.

All this and more I learned today, and both my brain and belly are overfull. Tomorrow, we hike through a cloud forest and go to a goat farm (cheese right off the tree, I hope). The weather, the scenery, the views--all have been remarkable. Even the few moments it rained, it was such a gentle and cool rain, it was beautiful.

Some of the Mayco school cabins

Looking down at a small waterfront village

Canarians and the British prefer a larger tomato than the mainland Spaniards

At the banana farm

Short-haired lambs running frantically from our approach

Birds of Paradise are all over the place

Toes in the Atlantic, on the east side of the island, facing Africa

Windy, cool, perfect

Day 9: La Laguna, Tenerife - the Mayco school

This a.m., after a train ride that I can only describe right now in French (quelle horrible!) because it is still too raw, like the moments after you jam your toe into a bed leg that you misjudged because the blankets were hanging too far down on one side--you know that shuddering moment where you just need to stand still and take really deep breaths and maybe shake your hands out, like they're wet?--I met up with the rest of my classmates to fly to the island of Tenerife.

It maybe wasn't THAT bad of a train ride, but it was pretty awful. The flight was a surreal extension somehow, with my simultaneous desire to and inability to sleep and the whiny child from the train (all night, ALL NIGHT, he whiiiiiiined in Spanish about obscure parts of his body hurting and the seat being uncomfortable and other, less clear though still unbearable things) being traded out for two squealing just-past toddler sisters that ran up and down and up and down and up and down the full length of the plane for the duration of the captain has turned off the fasten seat belts sign and you are now free to move about the cabin time. And someone, always someone behind me who must be the approximate dimensions of a circus bear with the constant need to spin in their seat, like a shark who must undulate or drown, always pressing and rustling up against the flimsy fabric of the seat back, straining the joints of both of our connections to the plane (or train) floor.

This is not my favorite part of travel.

But holy shit, once we got here? It's a freaking paradise. The hosts at our school, the Mayco School of English, have been beyond kind and attentive--we are all stuffed to the gills with an abundant lunch of tapas and then a three course dinner. We have been cautioned against drinking the tap water but assured we should all take hot showers for as long as we'd like. Because no one wanted coffee or tea after dinner, our chef will be shopping for "night tea" tomorrow, such is the breadth of their generosity.

Here are some of their own pictures from the grounds: Gallery. It's like summer sleep-away camp in the tropics (but with only 2 or 3 people in each bunk house--I'm currently unpacked lavishly across three bunk beds). Tomorrow we visit a sheep farm and a banana plantation in the morning, and after lunch we will get a lecture on some Canarian and Tenerife history. I know for now, this bunk bed is about the most awesome place I can't wait to be. Hasta mañana.

Day 8: Barcelona to Madrid

Okay. I didn't plan today well at all. Hotel check out time is 12 (no ecceptiones) and the train leaves at 10 tonight. I have two large backpacks. I had the hotel hold my bags for a couple of extra hours, while I walked Las Ramblas (not nearly as impressive as the tourism guide would have you believe) and then had my last meal in Barcelona at the famous Cal Pep. For just a few tapas, the price was steep, but they were damn good. Then I got my luggage and fancied I'd walk to the station through an interesting looking part of town. I made it a third of the way before I caved and grabbed a subway. This shit is heavy to walk across town.

So, that leaves me with several hours until the train gets here. The only internet is at McDonalds. I can't use the club lounge until 8 pm. Four hours away. More lessons learned for next time. Good news is that I should be able to sleep on the train.

Day 7: Barcelona la ciudad de ciencias y los artes

Do you remember that black and white Twilight Zone where they put this crazy mark on your forehead if you break the law that means no one can acknowledge you? The mark burns through hats and can't otherwise be hidden. The "prisoner" can go anywhere and do anything--but no one can talk to him or even act like they can see him. He's stoked at first--he goes into the women's spa and sits in the sauna with them--no one can stop him. But the novelty wears off when he realizes they all look scared out of the corners of their eyes.

That's extreme. But not being able to speak Spanish very well has its distinct disadvantages. Today involved several difficult conversations, first at the botanical garden and then at the ornithological institute. I recorded the interviews, since I had to work so hard just to listen. I'm not sure if I got more dead ends or if there is a good story in there or not. There are lizards, pine trees, and dragons. Who knows. There's the idea of island adaptation and successive migrations. There's the interesting story of Colonial Spain's influence and the trouble with goats and the benefits of fire. Are any of these interesting enough for an essay? I have no idea. But everyone today seemed to know someone else who could help me much more than they, someone who was, so sorry, nowhere nearby or available.

I did have a fantastic lunch at a wonderful non-touristy restaurant. I asked the office manager at the ornithology institute--who spoke no English--for a recommendation, and she did not disappoint. No one at the restaurant spoke English either, but the bartender was very theatrical in his explanations of my options. I had a fantastic black rice and mussel paella and fried white fish of some kind. Also amazing olives and lots of vino tinto y agua con gas. Ultimately though, the day beat me. I am exhausted and frustrated with my research. I usually have too high of standards for my work product, so I am hoping that's the case here. I'll only know for sure after I get back.

I'm not sure whether or not I'll have internet from here on out, but my fingers are crossed. In the meantime, some highlights from today...

View from the MNAC (museum of Catalunya art) on the way to the Jardi Botaníc

The Strawberry Tree (endangered on Los Canarios)

Several small Dragon Trees with a couple of large Phoenix Palms. The Dragon Tree is actually a monocot, rather than a tree--a grass with a fat stem. Since it has no rings, the age of individual specimens was often grossly overestimated.

The best goddamn paella ever. Seriously. I will dream of it.

Casa Batlló in the super fancy part of town, with Louis Vitton and Prada shops. The line was long and the cost to enter, high. In other words, this is the only view I got of Gaudí. Next trip will be an art trip.

Day 6: Barcelona by Gaudí and by foot

My dogs are barking, man. Like woah. I feel like I walked all over the city--I have blisters on my pinkie toes. I was a turísta today, and still only saw a tiny fraction of what this city has to offer. And yes, still in love with Barcelona.

Today I saw a bit of Gaudi's Barcelona. I decided not to fight the crowds to get into the Familia Sagrada, and instead took pics all around it.

Under construction: 100 years later

 Then I took the metro to the bottom of the big hill at the top of which is Gaudi's Parc Güell. It looks like a big park on the map, but one can't appreciate it's... rigors without a topo map. The damn thing IS the top of the hill, and there are winding steps and cobbled ramps and climbing colonnades the whole way up.

I don't know what this lil guy at the Parc Güell entrance is supposed to be, but I dug him.

The crowds were just as throng-y at the park, but at least it was free to fight them there (the Sagrada was something like 12€ -- which I am willing to pay for paella, but not to shuffle through a building with a mob.

The most famous dragon in all of Barcelona. I wanted a pic of my hand in his mouth so bad, but he was swarmed with a large Japanese tour group.

(Yes, all of the photos in today's post are goofy self portraits. I took other pics, but decided to go with a theme for this one.)

From the top of the Parc. It was a long steep climb, but the view was amazing.

At the very top of the park, at trés cruces, one gets nearly a completely unobstructed 360º view. Here's looking out toward the coastline.

After sangria and paella, I wandered down to the shore and stuck my toes in. It was cold as hell, and while I was too polite to take her picture, there was a woman completely buck ass naked laying in the sand.

And at the end of my day, I soaked my aching feet in the cold, stinging, beautiful sea. Tomorrow, I meet with a botanist and (hopefully) can track down an ornithologist. If not, there's always Parc de Joan Miró.

Day 5: Madrid to Barcelona

This morning, I got up crazy early and took a taxi to the Atoche train station to take the AVE train to Barcelona.

The AVE train is the high speed train--and for much of the journey we were nearing or at 299km/hr (that's just under 186 mph for those of you about to google that). It was surprisingly smooth and unsurprisingly high tech. The chairs were very ergonomic and they played an Audrey Tautou romantic comedy--which awesomely didn't require headphones to follow. We made one stop, in Zaragoza (Saragossa), and the whole trip, nearly 400 miles, took less than 3 hours station to station.

Then I wandered around the amazing, beautiful, surreal streets of Ciutat Vella, the Old City. Everything was closed (including the Museu de Geologia and the Museu de Picasso). I saw the most remarkable balconies on narrow winding streets and mosaics and stained glass and old butted up deliciously to new--THIS city knows how to do that with some goddamn panache.

The new building on the left has painted trompe l'oeil friezes and the one of the right has a tree carved into its brick face... It is next door to...

...this building, the Palau de la Música, home of the Orfeo Català. I couldn't get a good pic, but GOOGLE IT to be amazed.

MAN I LOVE BARCELONA. Also, the proprietor of an Alahambran import store might have proposed to me after I accidentally used the informal form. Lesson learned: usted usted usted!

Tomorrow I hope to see Parc Guell y Familia Sagrada, La Perada, y Casa Batlló. With Tuesday being spent at the Botanical Garden, and Wednesday (hopefully) at the Ornithological Institute, this means I will likely miss Parc de Miró, and the Picasso museum. Luckily the Dali museum is outside of Barcelona, so I can only mourn missing it theoretically. I will definitely becoming back here.

And here's one more of a very serious "cucurucho con dos" by the waterfront. One scoop was tirimísu, and the other "torró." Second lesson learned: torró no es muy bueno.