The force of destiny

I've just gotten home from the movies--The Reader this time. The silence of my apartment is delicately broken by Grieg's "I Love You," and now footsteps, maybe Robert or Paul, and my loud and clumsy typing. It was raining when I got out of the movie, like it has been all day, but I felt like it should be raining after a film like that. I'm feeling very somber because of it. 

It's quiet for a Saturday night. I walked down Carrer de l'Or and passed la Plaça del Diamant and saw that there was no one there, probably because of the dreary weather. I love the walk back from Verdi Park--past la Plaça de la Virreina and then la Plaça del Diamant until I can see where my little block is born, out of the intersection where there's a bookstore, a falafel place and a music bar called Calexico. The sequence never gets old. I walked up the stairs of my apartment and felt a big calm, something that I was able to maintain until I entered the chaos of my room. There's papers scattered everywhere, clothes hung over the furniture, post-its stuck on the walls, dishes on the bookcase. I ought to study but I'd rather just clean up the clutter. At least make the bed.

If I hadn't heard Catalan coming back from the theater I might have forgotten where I was. Sitting in my room listening to classical music I've created a similar effect of placelessness, if I'm bold enough to make up my own word. It's just got me feeling so odd that I'm going back to Chicago in two months, and I'm not sure I've done everything I've wanted to do, and I don't know if it ever would have been possible, anyway. But there's so much more to see. 

Everything began quite simply, laying on a bed in the Hotel Ayre, just arrived from North America, making a first phone call from the hotel phone to a friend in Valencia, thinking I can't believe it. Somehow, seven months have passed and all I have left as concrete evidence of that initial uncertainty, nervousness, excitement is the comb that I took from the hotel bathroom. The logo has faded completely. It was a purple 'a' on a clear comb but now it's just a clear comb. I guess that people have made metaphors out of these kinds of things before.