This room

I had the privilege (no sarcasm) of attending a meeting / brainstorming session last night held by the editors and principal contributors of a local Bcn culture publication. The way I've been feeling this week, it's hardly surprising that I was overwhelmed by the large personalities of those in attendance. I found myself mute, crossing my arms and legs and closing myself to the world that everyone else inhabits, maintaining a fairly consistent expression of "I'm interested but I'm not going to try too hard." This happens to me sometimes, this kind of self-sabotage that makes me seem dry and philistine. I have things to say, but they get stuck in the same chest cavity where I store all of my anxiety. 

The meeting lasted 3 hours, but its slow, nonlinear progression started to feel like an endless steppe. Suddenly, I hadn't been in that room--a cozy space with white walls, dim light, red candles, and circular cruise ship windows that offered a view into the alcohol-filled kitchen--for a mere few hours. I had been there all day, perhaps my entire life, just sitting, hardly giving any more signs of life than the plastic chair beneath me that seemed to have become as much a part of me as an arm or a leg. It suddenly occurred to me that I might never leave this room. There was no June 6th flight to Chicago. There was no graduation. There was no Masters in Public Policy and Foreign Service exam. There was just this room, these lime green pillows, these half-empty cans of Estrella beer, this comfortable smell of cigarettes, this tall man in the bright red shirt whom I cannot stop thinking about for just one second of my whole goddamned day. Overtaken by romantic angst and cabin fever, I imagined myself drinking all of the bottles of Vichy Catalan sitting in the kitchen in a dramatic act of self-cleansing, just drinking and drinking them until I had bathed all of my organs and rotten emotions in expensive sparkling water. 

The meeting let out and I felt like a newborn who had just left the comfort of the womb to enter prematurely the incomprehensible and sometimes cruel reality that governs our society, and when I was safely at home in my room I began to cry like a baby, although I am 20 and really have nothing to cry about.

If only you knew

I just started volunteering as a teacher's aid in a public elementary school. I've always had this idea that I love young kids and interact brilliantly with them. In spite of all experiences to the contrary, it's a half-truth that I maintain with fervor. It's difficult not to adore those six-year-olds who are still too innocent to offend, their curious eyes as wide as water basins. To teach them, though, is another story, and it's something I simply don't feel comfortable doing. It's pretty much a given that my lack of self-confidence and rather austere composure make me an unlikely candidate for entertaining kids. I keep telling myself that I'll learn. In the end, though, I seem to be just another cynical girl who will grow up to write a bitter and painfully introspective novel. These people aren't made to mold young minds. 

Still, my job really isn't that complicated. I say 'hello,' I teach the students games, I read aloud, trying to raise my voice above that hesitant murmur that has become my trademark when I am placed in situations that make me uncomfortable. I really do like going to the school, not so much because I feel as if I'm making a big difference, but just because it's heartening to hear a chorus of 'Hannah Montana!' as I walk across the playground and is so enjoyable to play 'Go Fish' and watch the students laugh and chatter amongst themselves in Catalan and Spanish. It's completely wonderful to eat lunch with the teachers, too, though I don't think I've said anything more than "està boníssim" (referring to the meal, of course). It's the simple things that you appreciate. 

Arriving to school today, though, was a total fiasco. My bus stop was closed because of some festival in Plaça d'Espanya, and so in the end, the teacher who supervises me, Josep, had to pick me up on his moto and bring me to school. Josep is one of those really good guys who is perfect with children and is truly concerned with the well-being of others. His sense of humor and sensitivity kill me, and when I'm around him I start to act in the awkward way that is typical of shy, star-struck teenagers who have just been introduced to their idol. 

The weather was beautiful today, and the view on the way to school in Montjuïc is spectacular, especially sitting on the back of a moto. When I think of two people riding a moto in this way, though, what comes to mind are couples or close friends--that is, the type of people who don't mind touching one another. I thus found myself torn between the desires to not hold onto his waist (should my feelings for him be discovered) and to not die. It's one of the more awkward dilemmas I've experienced. 

I guess that I'll remember that ride to school for a long time. There was something so bucolic about it--the sun, the wind, the tiny dots of civilization below the mountain. It was a moment of perfect bliss, and then arriving and stepping off the bike, struggling to unfasten my helmet, I was jolted back into the unfortunate reality of impossible love. It just isn't fair.

Cecilia's window

I love these third- and fourth-floor apartments that look out over a vast landscape of rooftops and clotheslines. It has always been my dream to live in an apartment like this. Houses don't appeal to me. I have never liked gardening and would prefer to avoid lawn upkeep altogether. One day, I will live in a community of rooftops and drying clothes. It's an image--the shirts, socks and footballs that your neighbors have lost, the occasional head peering out of a window, the dozens of quirky weathervanes--that I absolutely adore. My apartment has a similar view, but it's a very different feeling from El Raval, the neighborhood in this picture. It's something that I'll really miss when I leave Barcelona.

Good morning

Sometimes, after getting out of the shower, I'll open the window a crack and will hear singing outside. It's something that, due to lack of precise musical knowledge, I can only classify as Middle Eastern--almost like Qur'anic recitation. It is both eerie and beautiful in the quiet Barcelona neighborhood of Gràcia. 

Today I miss home.

Photo: waiting for the pink line at the 18th stop. The Sears Tower is peaking out over the church.

It doesn't take much to knock me

I've been living a sheltered life.

It's the song that's streaming out of my big, "the real world isn't good enough for me today" headphones. It's the song that "made me" blog, I guess. I was walking by Parc de la Ciutadella and it was so sunny and gorgeous that I got lost in the soundtrack provided by my iPod--at that moment, the dulcet, electronic tones of Erlend Øye. The song's beginning sounds like a complete throwback to the 80s, and not in a good way. I hesitate to put it on any mix I make for a friend, and yet it's one of my favorite songs of all time. That day outside the park was really the first time that I'd listened to it, and, like a lot of music that I treasure, it expressed a sentiment that was all too in sync with what I was feeling. Easy and loose / I'm sure confused / It doesn't take much to knock me / I've been living a sheltered life. I should start a blog, I thought at that moment, if only to use this song as its title.

It's just that I let even the smallest things get to me here, as I often do at home, but here the tendency seems more acute. I have an awkward exchange with a cashier and my day is ruined. I hear laughter and conversation in Catalan and assume that it must be some sort of joke about me that I don't understand. I suppose that there's a certain narcissism behind it, as if people care that much about me to really dwell on my struggles to use the subjunctive. It's a bit ridiculous, I would say. 

But I think that I'm getting better. I had a training last week to volunteer at a public elementary school, and I began to feel that I was being integrated into the real world, where people live and work and have friends and families. It's a shame that I didn't decide to do this sooner, that I spent five months being incredibly homesick and wavering between the poles of "T'estimo Catalunya" and missing Chicago to the point of developing chest pains. I can't regret it too much, though. I'm only human.

I feared that this blog would become more of an excuse for indulgent self-reflection than a source of information about Barcelona. I guess we all process these experiences differently. So I'll tell you that I went to the Fundació Miró the other day and that I loved it. The museum adventures will continue now that I have an articket. 

I miss everyone at home so intensely, and yet I don't know if I'll be ready to come home in four months. Being here has changed me in ways that I'll only begin to realize once I step off the plane on June 6th (tentative). 

When you live 30 seconds from the theater

On only one other occasion in my life have I gone to the theater alone, and it wasn't planned. This was last year, when Doc was showing Almodóvar every Wednesday, and I was meeting a guy that I had met at the UChicago Folk Festival. He never showed up. I went in anyway. The film ended up being not one of my favorites. I think that it was La Ley del deseo or something, and the irony of watching it after being stood up was just enough to turn me off.

Really, though, there's something quite therapeutic about going to the movies alone. There's no talking, no passing of chocolate between friends, no "What did you think?" after it's over. You are silent. You are absorbed. 

I opted to see Milk again, and for two hours, I could have been anywhere in the world; all clues to my surroundings disappeared, along with the strangers sitting around me, in the darkness of the theater, all eyes fixed on the screen, not even a hush emitting from the audience. We followed the film with a devotion that I've observed during silent prayer in church. The worst part about seeing a movie alone, though, is when the lights come on. You take your time putting on your coat because there's no one waiting for you. You skip the discussion of "What's next?" because who's going to go to a bar by herself? Still, I liked it, especially after three hours of sleep last night and the nightmare that was my medieval history final--8 essays that I put off all semester.  

In other news, my flatmate, Robert, might be one of my favorite people in the world. 

Feeling like I needed you

During my morning commute to Latinos Progresando in Chicago this summer, I was almost always accompanied by my little iPod mini, something that made taking two buses across town a lot more tolerable. I'm fond of the shuffle setting - there are always songs in my 4 GB portable collection of music that end up surprising me. On the #9 one morning, during the second leg of my journey, Goldfrapp's "A&E" came on. I had put it on my iPod but had never actually given it a listen. The somewhat corny introduction usually caused me to skip it. That morning, though, I let it play for the full duration of 3:18 minutes, and I thought that the way it complemented the cloudless blue sky and hot Chicago sun beaming through the bus windows was enchanting. 

It's kind of a sad song, really, and as I was listening to it while studying in the UAB library one day, looking out at the same blue sky from the second-floor window, now thousands of miles away from Chicago, I had to hold back tears. It's a song that not only reminds me of that summer in Pilsen, but of everything that I miss about home - not just Chicago, but Grand Rapids, too, and all of the places and people that helped raise me. It makes me miss my mom, someone who I was so close to as a child but with whom I've have had a more complicated and sometimes frustrating relationship in recent years. I see kids here being picked up by their parents from school, laughing and eating pa amb xocolata, and I realize that I'll never be in that place again. I remember when my mom used to pick me up after school and how sometimes we'd stop at Kava House to get a giant cookie. I remember how my dad came to my mom's house to take me to school at 7:05 AM every single weekday morning from the time that my parents got divorced until I graduated from high school (about 13 years), and how he would sometimes stop by Kava House beforehand to get me a coffee or spritzer. We usually didn't even talk during those ten minutes in the car. I was always too tired. At the time it all seemed very mundane and routine, but I've romanticized such experiences to an extent such that I can't help stumbling into the hole left by their absence. It's not as if I can't still get coffee with my parents, but that perfect and simple quality about our relationship has transformed into something more difficult to characterize, and I imagine that this process will only speed up as I grow into adulthood. 

I don't know what more to say about it, but I guess that I've always had these feelings, and being in Barcelona has only amplified them. It's ridiculous to be so melodramatic about everything. I suppose that music often has that effect. It brings you back to a memory so vivid and particular that a part of you would simply prefer not to leave.