Friday, November 7, 2008
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Spanish Mistress/ American Woman
Barcelona has defeated me. She has taken my money, ignored my advances, thrashed me in her teeth like a careless puppy and tossed me in the corner of society to trudge through my days like a crass and dejected hobo. I am a foreigner in her house and a foreigner without purpose or contribution to her way of life. I speak to her and she slaps the language out of my mouth. I offer my services and she rejects the very premise of my suggestion. I did not first meet with her lawyer and enter her home through the labyrinth of paperwork and procedure and thus she has denied me my humanity and deemed me useless to her. Instead, I am subjected to look at her from beyond the front gates, like a painting, a statue, a lifeless creation of beauty and passion unable to be touched, or loved, or spoken to. I pay money and she shows me her delicacies, like a peep show in a seedy downtown alley. Though her attributes are worth the money. She brings men and women alike crawling to her shores with hard-earned savings in hand for only a glimpse of what she has to offer. To know her would take years; a lifetime. To see her, to get a few erotic photos of her intoxicating figure as she dismissively smacks your face again and again is worth every penny. Disfigured, insecure, helpless and crippled in a world of salsa dancers I follow her around with my camera and beg her to acknowledge me. I want to feel her love in return and be embraced in the warm arms of her culture. I want to walk her streets with the confidence and eloquence of language and knowledge; the style and grace and talent that her people possess. I want to tingle with the joy that they feel. But I lack the education. I lack the words and etiquette and manners that she requires of me. I am an unsophisticated oaf with only my dollars to speak for me. My ego comes from the manic happiness and distraction that allows my people to avoid the depths of thought and emotion. I hoard it over her waving my green flags, demanding like an indolent child that I be seen for my hard work, but she is unimpressed. "Can I play music and woo her?" she asks. "Can I cook her a meal or paint her self-portrait?" And for Christ sake, "Where are my manners?" And so I shrink and slither from her, melancholic and thoughtful, put in my place, back to my home shores, back to my own woman whom even as I search for something better is shouting from the highest mountains that she is about to change. "I will be better!" she says. "I will educate myself and wander from my tasteless distractions and see the inhumanity and disgracefulness of my behavior." But I am skeptical that she has the capacity. I will believe it when I see her smile and applaud should one of her suitors create a thing of beauty to impress her, rather than reprimanding him and asking why he would spend his time so foolishly when he should have been working. I will believe it when I see her soften and take her young and fragile children to her breast and comfort them like a mother. She will dissipate my cynicism when she learns to act like a civilized woman and like Gatsby host warm evening parties for her neighbors as they laugh and dance into the morning dew. I will take interest in her when she has the good sense to ignore the ruffians throwing bottles in the alleyway. She is too beautiful to stoop to their level. They have nothing she needs and nothing she must concern herself with. If she were as strong a woman as she claims to be she would snub her nose in their direction while walking confidently off to enjoy the spoils of life with her civilized friends; relaxing, reading, taking long walks in the woods to enjoy what grandeur she has been graced with.
But still she is my woman; familiar, comfortable, sexy. We have a past together, a history. She asks so little of me and yet I'm willing to give so much. I would give up all my worldly possessions to see her swoon and soften. I would give a lifetime to create something lasting and precious if only I thought she would appreciate it. Instead I spend my days filing documents for her like a rube and drinking my way through her harsh punishments on romantic souls. I smile as I work her fruitless fields. She demands my optimism for any year now she expects her sterile soil to blossom. But I know better. She must rotate her crops, she must let her fields rest. She must not ask so much of her farmers and give so little back. For I am only human and I would walk her streets in a three-piece tuxedo and read her poetry if she only asked it of me. I would learn the harp and conjure fine wines to intoxicate her. I would be the man that Spain demands of me if only she would shut her mouth and kiss me. I don't care for her ego. I'm not impressed with her wealth. I want to know that she can love. I want to see that she can dance. I want to make passionate love to her by candlelight in a boat slowly paddling downstream. I want her to smile as Spain smiles. For if she would, I would help her down from her pedestal and be poor with her for a lifetime. She is so very tired and rigid, sterile and on edge, overworked and overextended and without the energy to fight anymore. Let us run you a warm bath America. Let us burn incense and make music for your pleasure. We will create a thing of beauty of you and all of us will be better for it.
But still she is my woman; familiar, comfortable, sexy. We have a past together, a history. She asks so little of me and yet I'm willing to give so much. I would give up all my worldly possessions to see her swoon and soften. I would give a lifetime to create something lasting and precious if only I thought she would appreciate it. Instead I spend my days filing documents for her like a rube and drinking my way through her harsh punishments on romantic souls. I smile as I work her fruitless fields. She demands my optimism for any year now she expects her sterile soil to blossom. But I know better. She must rotate her crops, she must let her fields rest. She must not ask so much of her farmers and give so little back. For I am only human and I would walk her streets in a three-piece tuxedo and read her poetry if she only asked it of me. I would learn the harp and conjure fine wines to intoxicate her. I would be the man that Spain demands of me if only she would shut her mouth and kiss me. I don't care for her ego. I'm not impressed with her wealth. I want to know that she can love. I want to see that she can dance. I want to make passionate love to her by candlelight in a boat slowly paddling downstream. I want her to smile as Spain smiles. For if she would, I would help her down from her pedestal and be poor with her for a lifetime. She is so very tired and rigid, sterile and on edge, overworked and overextended and without the energy to fight anymore. Let us run you a warm bath America. Let us burn incense and make music for your pleasure. We will create a thing of beauty of you and all of us will be better for it.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Become a Follower
Hola! Que tal?
I want to encourage anyone visiting this blog of my Spanish adventure to click to your right and become a follower. This way you can receive notices when I post an update and help me to develop a broader audience for my writing. For those who don't know I also have a blog at www.peaceinsilence.blogspot.com with over three years worth of posts to explore. Feel free to check that out as well. Thanks for taking an interest! All the best!
Ciao,
Jeff
I want to encourage anyone visiting this blog of my Spanish adventure to click to your right and become a follower. This way you can receive notices when I post an update and help me to develop a broader audience for my writing. For those who don't know I also have a blog at www.peaceinsilence.blogspot.com with over three years worth of posts to explore. Feel free to check that out as well. Thanks for taking an interest! All the best!
Ciao,
Jeff
When Will We Ripen Culturally?
The excitement of my day-to-day life in Spain is not always as noteworthy as I would like it to be. Although perhaps I'm looking too hard for the grandiose when in actuality every day here holds some subtle difference that I find to be fairly amusing. For instance, one of the things that makes me laugh out loud is hearing really shitty American music blaring from car windows and in store fronts. Sometimes this deal is even sweetened with the driver banging enthusiastically on the steering wheel or looking really serious about how cutting-edge he is with his 1992 Jon Bon Jovi album rockin' in the car stereo. I mean, to each his own. One doesn't want to be too much of a musical chauvinist when traveling in someone else's country, but I have to wonder if they even know what the song is about. My landlady has the same problem (in my humble opinion), but she likes to make it even harder on me by reducing the already crappy music to bad light jazz versions of, for example, "My Heart Goes On," by Celine Dion. Ouch! I'm sitting in a virtual breeding ground of rich passionate art, culture, and music--the birthplace of flamenco, salsa, and avantgarde artistry--and we're listening to f-ing Celine Dion and Bon Jovi! The reach of American culture is more than just a little annoying out of the context of fast food drive-throughs and neon-sign commercial mainstreets. If you'll pardon my poor Barcelona pun, one might say it's just a bit Gaudi. Kind of like say a skyscraper placed in the middle of a National Park? Yeah, a bit like that. It just doesn't belong here.
This brings me to a larger point America: we really need to allow our country to ripen artistically and culturally. Perhaps now that we're socialist people will stop spending all hours of their short time on the planet pursuing individual wealth and actually take an interest in what our "Greatest Country in the World" has to show for all its hard work. In my Spanish class yesterday, we were going around the room and offering (in Spanish of course) what some or our country's greatest atributes, exports, remarkable foods, etc. were and it was interesting that the guy from California and I had the hardest time coming up with examples. In the end I had to say things like, "Hamburgers, Coca-Cola, junk food, and Hollywood." It hurt me. It really did. All the trite, unhealthy aspects I try at all costs to avoid about my own culture were the only things that others around the world think we all partake in on a daily basis. Although the guy from Ireland was quick to point out that our greatest export was actually FREEDOM!! Ha ha! To be fair though, he and the girl from London could only come up with fish and chips and exporting, "civilization." So maybe white people are just a little stuffy for creativity. We give it a shot, but we just can't seem to get past our need for extreme analytical thinking, clean, orderly environments, and practical uses for...well, anything that takes time or costs money. Except prefabricated ceramic livestock animals to decorate kitchen shelves. Americans love that stuff. Art in its finest form.
Okay I'll be nice now. Spain does obviously have its problems like everywhere else, but the humanity of the culture is what is remarkable. No prize is so great that they would put it above taking care of the people who live here. The sense of community is incredible. Today I went to the Picasso Museu and on my way off the metro stopped in at a coffee shop to grab a quick cafe negro (which is actually an Americano by our standards). It was 2 in the afternoon, so it was right about seista time. The place was teeming with people crammed around the little tables with sandwiches, finger-foods, and petite cups of espresso. For two hours right in the middle of the day, everyone just stops working and goes out for lunch and a nap. At four they return to work for a few more hours, have a late dinner (perhaps at one of the many outdoor cafes all over the city) and drinks (if they so desire) and don't go to bed until midnight or so. Work the next day starts in the late morning around 10 or so and around they go again. I'm not sure how it got to be this way, but it seems to utilize the entire day for enjoying life while cramming work in somewhere in the middle. Much different than the states where work seems to be the center piece of life and anywhere one can fit-in leisure is a fortunate luxury. I believe this happens in large part because of the strong desire for Americans to own homes. Home ownership doesn't seem to mean much if anything to people here. At least in Barcelona proper the trend seems to be to own a large flat if one has money and people don't seem the least bit put-out to rent rooms out after their children have grown. Again, this plays into the sense of community here. There isn't the, "This is my property, that's yours. I can do what I want on this side of the fence and you keep your business over there." Some would call this personal freedom, but as we've seen it really just leads to isolation, petty fighting, and the need to get further and further away from the actual city where all the culture and entertainment exists in the first place.
So I wonder if one day we will ripen culturally. I have a feeling we will as more Americans start "jumping the pond" to see more of the civilized world and come to similar conclusions as myself, that for all our boasting and chest-beating about freedom we really don't enjoy the finer parts of life very often in the states. When given the choice to live in a way where the people rule and the government and businesses try to maintain some type of order while meeting the people's needs or like we do in the states where the people live in constant fear of...well pretty much everything from the germs on the rim of the toilet to the CEOs that have more power than most evil dictators of yore, I think they will likely see that this way is much more enjoyable for the vast majority of individuals.
This brings me to a larger point America: we really need to allow our country to ripen artistically and culturally. Perhaps now that we're socialist people will stop spending all hours of their short time on the planet pursuing individual wealth and actually take an interest in what our "Greatest Country in the World" has to show for all its hard work. In my Spanish class yesterday, we were going around the room and offering (in Spanish of course) what some or our country's greatest atributes, exports, remarkable foods, etc. were and it was interesting that the guy from California and I had the hardest time coming up with examples. In the end I had to say things like, "Hamburgers, Coca-Cola, junk food, and Hollywood." It hurt me. It really did. All the trite, unhealthy aspects I try at all costs to avoid about my own culture were the only things that others around the world think we all partake in on a daily basis. Although the guy from Ireland was quick to point out that our greatest export was actually FREEDOM!! Ha ha! To be fair though, he and the girl from London could only come up with fish and chips and exporting, "civilization." So maybe white people are just a little stuffy for creativity. We give it a shot, but we just can't seem to get past our need for extreme analytical thinking, clean, orderly environments, and practical uses for...well, anything that takes time or costs money. Except prefabricated ceramic livestock animals to decorate kitchen shelves. Americans love that stuff. Art in its finest form.
Okay I'll be nice now. Spain does obviously have its problems like everywhere else, but the humanity of the culture is what is remarkable. No prize is so great that they would put it above taking care of the people who live here. The sense of community is incredible. Today I went to the Picasso Museu and on my way off the metro stopped in at a coffee shop to grab a quick cafe negro (which is actually an Americano by our standards). It was 2 in the afternoon, so it was right about seista time. The place was teeming with people crammed around the little tables with sandwiches, finger-foods, and petite cups of espresso. For two hours right in the middle of the day, everyone just stops working and goes out for lunch and a nap. At four they return to work for a few more hours, have a late dinner (perhaps at one of the many outdoor cafes all over the city) and drinks (if they so desire) and don't go to bed until midnight or so. Work the next day starts in the late morning around 10 or so and around they go again. I'm not sure how it got to be this way, but it seems to utilize the entire day for enjoying life while cramming work in somewhere in the middle. Much different than the states where work seems to be the center piece of life and anywhere one can fit-in leisure is a fortunate luxury. I believe this happens in large part because of the strong desire for Americans to own homes. Home ownership doesn't seem to mean much if anything to people here. At least in Barcelona proper the trend seems to be to own a large flat if one has money and people don't seem the least bit put-out to rent rooms out after their children have grown. Again, this plays into the sense of community here. There isn't the, "This is my property, that's yours. I can do what I want on this side of the fence and you keep your business over there." Some would call this personal freedom, but as we've seen it really just leads to isolation, petty fighting, and the need to get further and further away from the actual city where all the culture and entertainment exists in the first place.
So I wonder if one day we will ripen culturally. I have a feeling we will as more Americans start "jumping the pond" to see more of the civilized world and come to similar conclusions as myself, that for all our boasting and chest-beating about freedom we really don't enjoy the finer parts of life very often in the states. When given the choice to live in a way where the people rule and the government and businesses try to maintain some type of order while meeting the people's needs or like we do in the states where the people live in constant fear of...well pretty much everything from the germs on the rim of the toilet to the CEOs that have more power than most evil dictators of yore, I think they will likely see that this way is much more enjoyable for the vast majority of individuals.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
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