My Expectations Are Always Waaay Too High

I was in Blackwell's today, which is the gargantuan corporate equivalent to Barnes and Noble, and I was buying a book for class. Well, two books: Kidnapped and Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson. They come in a single-volume work, so it's kinda like getting two for one, no?

While I was queuing (Did you see that? British word used!), my eye alighted on an all-too familiar book, Jon Connelly's The Book of Lost Things. As the astute follower already knows, I have already read it, and although my eager child's imagination readily devoured the back cover and then the whole book, it was not satisfying in the way I had expected it to be. I wanted the characters to move with such grace that they left a trail of glowing dust in their wake, the writing to be so eloquent that I want to throw myself off the top of the cliff like the poet-bard in Martin's painting The Bard below, due to sheer ecstasy of spirit.

You may doubt that such a character can ever produce a result like that. I may be exaggerating a smidgeon, but Mara from Mara Daughter of the Nile was like that for me. She sparkled, and not in a vampire-like way. Think of Philip Pullman's golden dust from His Dark Materials Trilogy combined with Tinkerbell's pixie dust, and then add some of the glowing scenery from David Cameron's Avatar, a few 4th of July sparklers for good measure, and then you begin to get close to what I have in my head.

Connelly's book held such promise, but in the end it fell apart for me. It was still beautiful, but it did not sustain the expectations I had for it.

Aside from Connelly's book on the table, I saw another: The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart. Listen to its title in your head, say the name aloud. Cuckoo-clocks catch me; I remember a friend of mine in a high school creative writing class wrote a poem about cuckoo-clocks, and she capitalised on the rich consonants of the word. Cuckoo-clocks evoke, for me, a world that is slightly askance, Lewis Carroll-like, full of imagination and childhood.

We'll see what this book has in store for me. That is, if I ever get around to reading it this semester...

I Remember Why I Love Life so Much

Not to suggest that I didn't love life before, but this song reminds of the past-perfect utopia that we conjure in memories. The first time I heard this song, it was a very happy time, and a person I love shared it with me, and I just want to quietly, contentedly celebrate life whenever I hear it.

Iron and Wine - Love and Some Verses

If only songs didn't have to have endings...

Beethoven in Plaza Mayor

On Thursday I went to a Beethoven concert in Plaza Mayor sponsored by Madrid's "Veranos en la Villa." The concert started at 10 p.m., and due to transportation issues I arrived at Sol right about the time the concert was supposed to start. The now-familiar street, Calle Mayor, was not as crowded as I expected, and there was not as much light as I remembered from earlier nocturnal excursions. I was alone, which made me glance around a little more warily than I would have had I been walking and chatting with a friend of mine.

The sounds of a symphony greeted me as I turned down the alley that leads to the Plaza, and there was a huge crowd of people standing around barriers, beyond which an even larger crowd was sitting. The symphony itself was in a gigantic box, and from my vantage point near one of the barriers, I could only see two of the violinists' right arms. No matter. The music was beautiful.

They played selections from Beethoven's sixth and seventh symphonies (I believe), and as the music played I saw story-scapes from Fantasia flit through my head: a young pegasus testing out its wings, centaurs celebrating summer, Zeus hurling thunderbolts. Then all of a sudden I was taken aback once again by the tones of his seventh symphony. Whenever I hear it, I inevitably think of The Fall, which is one of my favorite movies, and the images that correspond with that movie.

I was a bit disappointed because I saw the same images from the movie in my head, felt the same things I had felt before (admittedly they are pretty fantastic). But they weren't my own. I would rather I had exercised my creativity and supplied my own - which takes a bit more effort. I can make the paltry excuses that I was tired and didn't have the energy, that I had to keep minimal concentration not to fall over.

Truthfully, I kept getting distracted. In the Plaza's buildings, there were some people who were there that evening and opened their French doors to listen to the music: silhouettes leaned against the balconies or sat in chairs while light lit up the room behind them. I thought of how at that very moment, I was in one of the centres of Europe, that word us Americans say in hushed voices as land of sophistication, of history, of our imagined origins. Were I younger than I am now, all the cells in my body would have thrilled to even think of Beethoven, Plaza Mayor, night, lights, Madrid, all together. Nevertheless the music and the evening was very beautiful, but behind it all was the sordidness that comes with knowing how dirty the city can be, with knowing how the magic can fade if you stay in one place too long.

I have lived long enough that I can't imagine new things when I listen to music I've heard before - or I'm so out of practice with my imagination that I must put forth effort to use it.

Plaza Mayor

How to Make Photographs at Which You Don’t Cringe Every Time you See Them - Part 2

This angry-photographer-post's theme: landscapes. Now, landscapes are a bit tricky, because it can be difficult to make them interesting. Landscape photos are similar to landscape paintings, although they take a lot less time and skill. When you take a good landscape picture, though, you take a good picture. I don’t profess to be on the level of Ansel Adams – far from it – but if you want some inspiration, take a look at some of his works.

Ansel Adams, I'm not sure what it is called.

Look at the juxtaposition of textures in the foreground and then in the middle portion of the picture. It appears as if you're looking at two different pictures - which is both the strong and the weak point of the photograph. There is a lot of contrast in this picture, such as between light and dark, rough and smooth, straight and curved, but there is nothing to unify the composition. Your eye is pulled towards the right, but the thing you want to see is out of the frame. Some people like this and think it is artistic. It drives me nuts. (Except in the case of portraits, where we are left to ponder the expression of the subject.)

Now, as discussed in the previous post, you want to make it so your eye moves around the picture. Ask any art teacher and they will tell you that the eye gets bored looking at a symmetrical picture three times as fast as looking at an asymmetrical (interesting) picture. The way to achieve this is by getting balance.

There may be several reasons for you to take a picture. One is that the landscape is so beautiful and you want to capture it. Another reason is to show your friends back home. Whatever You're doing, you're probably more concerned about taking the picture itself and capturing it for later than enjoying the scenery as you pass through it. I am, anyway, and it heightens my awareness of a need to constantly capture and store. In the end, I'll have nothing save a few empty - but well-taken! - pictures.

What Spain looks like. Remarkably similar to Home.

This is not a very good picture. It is flat and static, there is not much depth, and the plateau cuts the picture neatly in half. You should not show pictures like these to your friends and family. Yes, they might document what the Spanish countryside looks like, but again, not that interesting. Don't even take them. Okay, maybe you can take them, just for your own personal benefit, but don't show them to anyone.

Can you believe it? It's the same country!

Okay, this is better. Note the difference between the tree in the foreground and the mountain in the background, complemented by the road on the left, which leads into the distance. More interesting, yes.

The astute reader will realize that I have already posted some of these pictures before. However, not all of them. 

"1"

"A"

"Rhyme and Reason" - If you can correctly guess the inspiration for the these photos' names, I will write and/or dedicate a post to you.

Now, these are not necessarily landscapes (would you call them architecture?), but they illustrate themes I wish to discuss. In the first picture, there is a lot of depth leading from the nearest fountain to the art museum on the hill. I really like the line the spumes make, but the photographs are a little flat still. This is a good photograph, but it could be better.

Take the second photo graph. We still get a sense of depth, and a sense of expectancy, of emptiness, in the sky, but there is too much sky, and it makes the fountains and the building on the hill too small.

I really like the third picture because it keeps the distance that we saw in the first photograph, leading your eye towards the building. However, it also gives the composition a "U" shape - your eye sees the first lamp, dips down and follows the lamps, and then rises again to see the building. However, even this picture is not perfect - the soft glowing light of the first lamp gets lost in the sunset. The other lights contrast enough with the scenery to be considered acceptable.

Also, I'm so glad that I don't run any ads on this site. Otherwise, I might have to check about copyright issues, especially with things like Ansel Adams photographs. Typically, you don't have to ask permission if it's for personal use and if it's for free educational purposes.

Speaking of Ansel Adams, if you want to name-drop a niche-photographer among your friends, I suggest Tillman Crane. When I was younger, I confused him with Ansel Adams - they both have such artsy names befitting photographers. He taught my siblings photography when they were in high school

Yes, I support local artists. For more interesting art, look at Nathan Florence. He taught me art when I was in high school. 

Keep on Dreamin', Boy, Cuz When You Stop Dreamin' It's Time to Die

I seem to have a penchant for using song lyrics as my titles. Aside from being the lines of a great song by Blind Melon, they also remind me of the starry-eyed teenager-I-once-was.

In going to Barcelona, I fulfilled a dream of mine. It was both more and less than I imagined it would be, and even a little bit of exactly what I imagined it to be. It will go the way of all dreams that have been fulfilled - it will settle in my memory until it sinks, dust-filled, to the deeper recesses of the mind's cavern, to wait until I start to forget things and my second childhood comes.

That was rather morose. On a happier note: as one dream is fulfilled and vague, perfect possibilities fade away, another dream is born. This might sound silly, but my newborn dream sounds absolutely lovely to me.

I want to take the trans-Siberian railroad from Moscow through Mongolia to Beijing.

The journey takes six days, and I'm sure there's not much to do other than sit and read and watch as the countryside goes by. It sounds like a perfect occasion to get a Kindle. It also sounds like a perfect worldwide adventure - begin in Europe, possibly London, and end in the Far East. Be a real traveler like the ones we read about in Victorian literature. Think of Anna Karenina every time I see a train or stand on a platform. Get to see China, and perhaps end the journey in Korea or Japan.

When I first heard about the trans-Siberian railroad my sophomore year of high school, I guffawed just as loudly as the other students in my European history class. What a ridiculous - wonderful, Romantic, idle-way-to-spend-your-time - idea.

I believe that we must keep on looking forward and dreaming, because dreams make life worthwhile. We must balance between being content with where we are and wanting more - and dreams are the perfect medium for that.

I don't feel the suns comin' out today 

its staying in, its gonna find another way. 

As I sit here in this misery, I don't 

think I'll ever see the sun from here. 

And oh as I fade away, 

they'll all look at me and say, and they'll say, 

Hey look at him! I'll never live that way. 

But that's okay 

they're just afraid to change. 

When you feel your life ain't worth living 

you've got to stand up and 

take a look around you then a look way up to the sky. 

And when your deepest thoughts are broken, 

keep on dreaming boy, cause when you stop dreamin' it's time to die. 

And as we all play parts of tomorrow, 

some ways will work and other ways we'll play. 

But I know we all can't stay here forever, 

so I want to write my words on the face of today. 

and then they'll paint it 

And oh as I fade away, 

they'll all look at me and they'll say, 

Hey look at him and where he is these days. 

When life is hard, you have to change.

The Barcelona 100 - Take 2

Teddy and I were headed to the beach. Note that we did not bring any towels with us for this trip. I usually take my showers at night, and my plan was to stand in the shower until most of the water dripped off me and then let the rest evaporate as I was falling asleep. This worked fairly well taking a shower the first night. However, going to the beach is an entirely different matter, as sand gets everywhere and you want a towel to sit on. Additionally, the temperature always seems cooler at the beach than a kilometre away from the beach, and a toasty 30 ᴼ C suddenly becomes a pleasant 28 ᴼ C. [I just made those numbers up.]

Beach!

We got to the beach, nestled down on a bit of sand, and watched the waves roll in, the people walk by, and the sky change colors. The beaches in Barcelona are not very clean, and I only stood in the water up to my knees – Mediterranean water, mind you. Teddy and I took our turns in the water because we didn’t want our stuff to get stolen, and then for the rest of the time we laid with our heads resting on our shirts (resting on our purses resting on our flip flops resting on the sand). We stared up at the pinky-blue sky and watched as the clouds changed shape.

It sounds so wonderful, sitting on a beach in Barcelona and watching as the clouds scud by, naming shapes and letting the imagination take hold of the sky. There is something Romantic in it all, a feeling that I had while sitting there and three days later when I’m writing this post.

The National Art Museum and its fountains.

Afterwards, we caught bus to Playa Espanya. (Catalan is different than Castellano, and as a person who is learning Spanish, I found it really confusing. Who calls an exit a “sortida”? What happened to the familiarity of “salida” which you find in the Madrid metro?) We got off at the huge roundabout there, and my eyes went wide at the two towers which marked a wide street up towards the National Art Museum. The street was lined with light water fountains, and at the end of the street on top of a hill was a gigantic fountain. A crowd had gathered around it, and after a few minutes of waiting, music started playing and the lights changed color in a water show. It was like misty magic playing right in front of our eyes.

The magical fountain, which kind of looks like a jell-o pudding.

Afterwards, we went back to Las Ramblas and grabbed a bite to eat at an all-you-can-eat tapas bar.

And now on to Monday. The evening at Hostel New York was much quieter, although it was much hotter than the night at Auberg Palau. We checked out, took a quick jaunt to the train station to leave our bags in a locker, and then we went out adventuring again. This time, we went to the Casa Mila, did some shopping, and then I took a quick tour of the Casa Batllo because I really wanted to see it. Both of these buildings were again done by Antoni Gaudi, and they were pretty amazing. I only spent about 25 minutes at the Casa Batllo because Teddy and I had to catch a train back to Madrid in less than two and a half hours after I purchased my ticket.

Casa Mila

Casa Battlo

Casa Mila again

However, actually being there, my expectations overran the experience. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would. If you read my last post, you should know that I had dreamed of seeing these places for five years. That’s quite some expectation. However, now as I look back on my pictures, the buildings are indeed very beautiful. Perhaps the downfall of Guadi’s architecture is so detailed that it needs to be focused, cut, cropped, and bounded within a photograph.

After the casas, we caught the train back to Madrid, and our Barcelona adventure faded back into quotidian Madrid life. This has been only a quick sketch of my few days in Barcelona, and obviously a lot of thoughts and details are missing. I have to keep some things for myself, don’t I?

The Barcelona 100

Today marks a momentous occasion. This is my hundredth post, and what better way to celebrate than posting about my adventures in Barcelona, Spain‽ Thank the stars for the concordance of trips and posts into such an opportune time. It was a wonderful time, and I fulfilled one of my life dreams by going to Barcelona. However, before I talk too much about Barcelona, I'll tell you more about Teddy's visit. We spent the first day of her visit here in Madrid, exploring Puerta del Sol, the Prado, the cathedral behind the Prado, and Plaza Mayor.

The Prado is that-a-way, man.

As we were outside of the Prado, we were approached by an older man who started to talk to us and ask us about Madrid. We were obviously tourists, pouring over our maps, and I wasn’t necessarily happy to be approached by a well-meaning but overly-helpful Madrileño. He asked us how much Spanish we knew, and said that we should practice Spanish everyday for eight hours for several weeks if we really wanted to get good at it. Who has the patience and the free time to study Spanish for that long?

There was a cathedral behind the Prado, and I wanted to see inside it. The man, very kindly, asked if he could come with us, and we couldn’t exactly say no. We walked up the steps (on a red carpet, mind you) to the entrance, and we walked in on the middle of a wedding. The cathedral was full of people, and the bride, groom, and priest looked small as they stood at the end of the nave. We made our visit brief, and were out in front of the cathedral in no time. The older man did not overstay his welcome by much, as Teddy wanted to listen to a guitar player in the shadow of the Prado, and the older man wanted to go to the Botanical Gardens nearby.

The following day, we got on a Renfe train, and three hours and a lot of Spanish countryside later, we arrived in Barcelona. Barcelona, say it slowly and let it roll off your tongue. Barcelona, city of dreams and magic and wistful futures, of voyages and crossroads. We had arrived.

Leaving the apartment early in the morning

You bet your bottom that's a Renfe train.

What the Spanish countryside can look like.

We got our tourist Metro tickets, and then we were off on the Metro to our hostel in the Gothic Quarter. Our first night was to be at the hostel Alberg Palau, and we wandered the narrow, winding streets of the Gothic Quarter before finding the correct, cozy little side street where our lodgings were located. I had never stayed at a hostel before, so this was going to be quite an experience.

I was really surprised when we arrived at the hostel and it was so clean and neat. It took up an entire floor of a building from the nineteenth-century, and all of the rooms circled around a central skylight. The windows were always open, and you could see across the courtyard into every part of the hostel (well, every part of the hostel which wasn’t a room). Every room got light, especially the breakfast nook.

Look at the happy frog! How can you not trust that frog?

I did not remember to take a picture of the common areas of the hostel, but I did manage to find the drawing I had made in order to get from the train station to our hostels.

Teddy and I were put into a room with five other chicas, one from Seville and the other four from France. We had French doors which opened onto a balcony overlooking the street below. There was no air conditioning, but a nice breeze came through the door. We settled our stuff down, made an itinerary, and were off to wander around Barcelona.

We saw a bit of Las Ramblas, although we didn’t spend too much time there, and we got lost and distracted looking at clothes - especially kurta pants, which are all the rage in Spain. We wandered over to La Cathedrale de la Santa Maria del Mar (who knows if that is correct). Interestingly enough, we caught the tag-end of a wedding at the Maria del Mar. Two cathedrals and two weddings in two days. Go figure.

We walked along the Carrer de Colom (they say “carrer” instead of “calle” for street in Barcelona, I think) and towards the marina just as the sun was setting. The air was moist and cool, and the sky was pink and cold. In the middle of the sky, there was a little glowing white wedge. Any pictures I have taken don’t do justice to the atmosphere and the immensity of the marina, the street, the sky, the moment.

Sunday morning, were off to see the Sagrada Familia. A few stops on the Metro and we found ourselves blinking in the sudden sunlight at the mass of towers that is the Temple of the Sacred Family. I was incredibly excited, because I had wanted to go to Barcelona and see buildings by the famous architect Antoni Gaudi for nearly five years. (That is a quarter of my life span, by the way. If I have any older readers, like Mom and Dad, that isn’t much to someone like you who is much wiser and has experienced more, but my perspective changes when I put the years into percentages. I hope yours does, too.)

We bought our tickets and the use of an audio guide, and we were on our way into the cathedrale amidst the milling crowds.

I am happy.

Despite being in the process of achieving my dreams, I was a little dissatisfied as we entered the cathedral. There were a lot of people and it was rather warm out, making me sticky and sweaty, which took up a lot of my patience, but then I had problems with my camera. First of all, my camera wasn’t taking crystal-clear pictures every time like I expected it to. Secondly, everyone I asked to take a picture of me didn’t know what they were doing. It gets boring if you take a picture of someone and they’re standing in the middle of the frame in every single photo, full-body shot. There is a reason why the viewfinder and the digital camera preview were invented: you can see your picture before you take it, which means that you can crop the picture and make it artistic, or at least interesting!

Note: As you can tell, I did not take this picture, which is why I don't particularly care for it.

Anyway, this was a momentous occasion in my life, and I wanted to document it well – not have a collection of poor, blurry pictures as remnants of my memories. I didn’t want to spend all of my time taking and retaking pictures until they came out, either. (Yes, Mom, this is a blatant plea for a new camera for my birthday.)

I was also disappointed by how incomplete the cathedral was. I knew it was still under construction, but I hadn’t realized how much it needed. Much of the area where the altar will go is unfinished, and there was nary a hint of a pew. The audio tour expected it to be done by 2030. That’s a whole lot of work which needs to be done on the cathedral in twenty years by about 200 or so people. I take solace in the fact that the exorbitant fees charged by the Sagrada Familia are the only way that construction continues on the cathedral. Now Teddy and I have contributed a little piece of the Sagrada Familia, along with millions of other people.

Nevertheless, it is still a beautiful, beautiful building. My immediate impressions were that it was a gigantic sandcastle.

Sandcastle!

The colors were really, really beautiful, like a watercolor rainbow.

After the Sagrada Familia, we checked into Sunday night’s accommodations, Hostel New York. We had our own room this time, although it was on the fourth floor, had one tiny little window, and no air circulation. The hostel was kind enough to give us a fan which we kept running constantly. Hostel New York was nowhere near as quaint or personable as Alberg Palau, but not all things can be equal. After a quick change of costume in our room, Teddy and I were ready to hit the beach.

The view from the Alberg Palau, where we stayed the first night.

Thus ends the first installment of the Barcelona adventure. This post has already gone on way too long, and I have lost so many details and thoughts just getting the bare bones of what we did down.

Some Other Beginning's End

(A minor gagging sound is made at the title of this post.)

Tomorrow is the day. I’m heading out for Madrid, Spain, and a life-changing experience. The bags are not all quite packed yet, but that will come in time, once I stop distracting myself with the computer. On the eve of every departure and new adventure, I dream some wondrous universe of possibilities, of whom I could be, what I could do, whom I could meet and impress. I did it before going away to college; now is no exception. It always seems so much more vague and glamorous in my head. The reality is decidedly more ambiguous because I meet people who are exceptionally more interesting than I could ever imagine, yet there are a lot of disappointments and setbacks and annoyances which are inconspicuously absent from my imaginary utopia. I don’t think I’m alone on this, dreaming of Edenic universes contained within the possibilities of opportunity – quite the contrary.

I took this last evening at home slowly by taking a walk with my mother and brother through the surrounding suburban neighborhoods. The night was darkening, and clouds brooded over the gargantuan mountain chains which shadow our valley. Savoring this last bit of home for seven months, I was surprised to realize I didn’t have many feelings on the subject, rather a dull emptiness. Tomorrow I’m going to Spain and will probably be shocked into feeling something, but that is far away from me right now. I cringe at putting forth this metaphor – I am an empty vessel waiting to be filled with experiences from abroad – but the part of my brain which filters out such constructions as that metaphor is not functioning at this hour.

Barring major disasters, I won’t be back in the States until Christmas. The world will continue to spin, and it will have gone halfway around the sun by the time I come back.

That’s enough for now. I can’t think of anything appropriate to say, other than that these next few months will be life-changing.