Today is another rainy day in Barcelona. The 40 degrees is not so cold but it's cold enough to make you look at the sky and ask it, "Sky, where is your sun? Will you still be capable of giving us springtime in March?" It's more of an annoyance than anything else, not having the sun (especially when you live in an interior room and receive no natural light whatsoever).
What have I been doing lately? Well, going to class, cooking with my friend Anca, reading, etc. Yesterday was Sunday and I gave my room a good thorough cleaning (Jessica comes on Wednesday!), making sure to take the occasional break to solve my Rubik's Cube. Yes, playing with my Rubik's Cube is a pastime of mine. About a week or so ago I was walking around Plaza Catalunya, looking at beautiful Barcelona in the nighttime and decided to buy myself a little capricho, if you will. I walked into El Corte Inglés and climbed 4 different escalators until I reached the toy department. There was one Rubik's Cube left. I spent the next few days watching videos on YouTube and applying the different algorithms I learned to solve it. Now, I am guilty of taking my cube with me to random places and repeatedly solving it in public. I know, I'm just that cool.
Besides Rubik's cubing, I read some Don Quijote, ate some chocolate, and read a short story by Borges. I love Borges. An enormous collection of his poetry lies on my shelf in my room in the U.S., waiting for me to come back and hold it again, to undress it with my eyes. I have great relationships with my books. They always allow me to write all over them, accepting my commentaries about what they tell me, my critiques about their respective realities. Words are my form of cariño because they permit subtetly but still allow simplicity. Writing and communicating are only as complicated as you make them and nuances are much more beautiful than blatence. If only actions were as easy to carry out as talk.
It's strange to me that I will be coming home from Barcelona in a few months. I will be ready to go home and at the same time I will want closure with Barcelona. It will be like saying goodbye to a good friend. Can a city really be a friend? Well in my case, yes. It's not that I will not miss the Catalán people, as I have met some very nice ones, but I think I will miss the physical city of Barcelona more. Living here has forced me to be able to work myself out of my own depressions, and I did that mainly by walking or running through the city. Granted, for this same reason I run and walk in every city I inhabit, but only toward a few places I have a connection.
For example, I run in Los Angeles when I am there, but feel nothing toward it. I run in Champaign when I am there, but only tolerate it. I run through Mahomet when I am there, and I love it. I love running in Mahomet because I have that connection with the space; it holds memories that I formed there both alone and with people. I feel this sort of affinity toward Barcelona, as I have made memories while traversing its streets. I have thoughts connected to certain street corners or cafes, and memories tied to certain plazas or neighborhoods. Barcelona takes on a new form in my mind's eye.
Many people don't understand this notion. They ask, "How can you have an affinity for a place that is not your home, that makes you angry sometimes, that does not have feelings? It is only a place." Well, for me, the space that I occupy takes on human characteristics. I live with it, engage with it, occupy it, scorn it, make memories with it, love it, and just feel it. Being an extremely environmental person (there is a reason that I always talk about the weather, as it affects my space) and a loner at heart, the space that I occupy, in this case Barcelona, is always there even when people are not. Its form is erratic, though its presence constant.
I view my life in terms of a narrative, thinking about the different narrative spaces that I occupy. For me, the space that I occupy has almost equal significance to me as do the people around me (though they usually go hand-in-hand, influencing each other). As the narrative space changes, I change a little bit too. It's only natural.
Just as I brought a little bit of the U.S. with me to Barcelona, I will bring back a little bit of Barcelona with me to the U.S. I like to think by the time I leave here, I will have left at least some form of my footprints here. Their presence will not be blatant, though they will exist subtetly. Nuances are more beautiful than blatence anyhow.
Plaça San Jaume, Generalitat de Catulunya. Love this Plaza!!
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