Doy a Vuelta

BEAUTIFUL was today. The sun shone even as I emerged from the metro at 8am and continued unfettered by clouds to the end. Thursdays are usually the best of my workweek - I have only 3 classes and after 15:00, week becomes weekend. Today was different. Here in Spain, many empresas receive federal cash to fund the process of Anglification. Ironic, after all the isolationism still surviving from darker years. Anyway, the government is wary of allowing its loot to reach untaxable outlets such as myself, and they are performing inspections. Consequently I have lost 2 of my classes, 4 hours of my workweek, a decent chunk of my monthly income, and 9 of my students. I had become fairly close with some of them, which made it all the worse when I was told not to tell them that today would be our last meeting. I prepared a lesson around an article on love and relationships, and tried to stimulate as much friendly, philosophical discussion as possible. They excelled in the reading and grammar, and I let them know it. In the last 10 minutes of each class, as in the beginning, I avoided any "English" work and just talked. Talked about them, their interests and opinions and plans. In the end I tried to intimate through subtle hints that I wished them well, but they just left smiling and saying see you next week, as though there deviation had been ousted for good. These were initially my hardest students to win over, as I was already their 4th teacher in a little over a month. I suppose, then, that I should be flattered by their taking me for granted. I wish I could have told them goodbye, though. I wonder how they will feel on Tuesday. I suppose anything would be better than betrayal. But the ego feels as the ego will feel.

Last night, a student interrupted the class to tell me that she thought what we were doing was a waste of time and that she wanted to do exercises or something else. Infuriated, I told her to open her book and work. I then put my head down in an attempt to quell my rage. This was the first 15 minutes of the lesson, and we were studying the grammar rules in the book because the other student had missed them in the previous class. Throughout the lesson I fumed inside, thinking how selfish it was of her to avoid even thinking to consider that the lesson did not revolve around her, that I had more in store in an hour and forty-five minute lesson than 10 minutes of grammar study, that I had scoured books outside of class for answers and spent literal hours trying to figure out the best way to approach the particular subject. I concluded that she was not worth it. If she didn't appreciate all the work I put in for just one of my nine different classes, then she could get fucked. Then I looked at her more than normally haggard face and noticed the cloth she clutched. I realized this woman has a family, and is staying late at a job that she obviously stresses about on the regular, to hear from me until the dark hours when she could be at home sipping rioja. It's ridiculous how we take each other for granted in our pursuit of satisfaction. Satisfaction that, by the way, would probably be much more attainable if we valued what we had and the labor that goes into everything we see and do.

This evening I went out for a walk (doy a vuelta) as the sun went down. Vague missions to find some earwear and search out a few sights, I began after passing the Palace by going into one of Old Madrid's large churches and gaping at altars and statues. I have been drawn to curches since the night in Budapest, but I have yet to find a comparable experience. But I drink them in all the same and love them top to bottom. I hope they never disappear. From there, an easy walk down Calle Mayor took me to the increasingly croweded Puerta del Sol, thinking of my parents all along the way as I stopped in pastelerias (pastry shops) to sample the fare with my eyes and nothing the locations of landmarks, both of my life and the city's. Up the start of the "red light district", Calle Montera is a plethora of urbanity. Prostitutes line the street along with cervezerias, salons de juegos (casinos), souvenier shops, moda (style) shops, gold purveyors, travel outfitters, and one of the city's most modern and dramatic police HQ's. I got some discount earrings and made way for one of the city's landmark and oldest pastry shops, known for their Christmas cake (roscón de reyes) all year round. Along the way I noted a decent wine bar next to a sidreria near the Plaza Santa Ana near Huertas, one of my favorite barrios. It was around this time when I began to crave a companion. I considered calling some friends but the idea that they would not only be busy but wondering what could be on the agenda besides buttressing a mental map with new streets and sitios deterred. I spent the rest of the walk- during which I entered another, less appetizing church, walked by young travellers smoking non-chalantly outside the first place I stayed in the city, and found another wine bar and small Andalucian garden before heading home to type this up as I padded my nerves with some Crianza before shoving steel into my earlobes- wondering what I was looking for. I search out spots to go into, check them out to make sure I would go, and then put them down to memory for another, accompanied moment. I walk randomly in oblong ovals, but with a vague itinerary that I'm not even sure I would want to follow on a different day, let alone expect another to share my motivation. I love every cobble that I tread and every corner that I round, but I know it goes one way, and I wonder how long that can last. Walking, I thought about all the music and movies I acquire in order to share. I half-jokingly imagine myself like someone stockpiling canned consumables for that distant Day. Today my students and I discussed quotes of love, ranging from ultra cynical to equally idyllic. I told them that I read or heard once, in a strangely intimate conversation between strangers, that friends love us as the part that we play in their lives. I am not sure how much they understood me and maybe I wouldn't understand myself. But the resonation has followed me ever since, echoing now down the calles and callejons of my newfound home. Whether or not it's best to walk alone, it was a fine night for it tonight.

Transluscence

ONE WEEK into the month of February and the sun has finally returned to la capital. Yesterday was Thursday, which for me not only begins my weekend but is my shortest day. At 3:30 I was already at my flat eating lunch on the terrace, considering how to spend the remaining four hours of sun. I decided that it was too late to take the metro to a park across the city so I threw on a scarf and some shades and headed out on foot to Retiro. I entered from the SouthWest and walked up a beautiful hill toward the eastward crest. Turning left, I began to amble along a massive boulevard of rollerbladers, bikers, and the octogenarian army. Something to my left kept pulling me off the tarmac and into the green until I finally found myself rolling down a slope along a network of strange statues and busts. All of a sudden I saw through the trees what looked to be the skeletal outline of a roof and stumbled upon the Crystal Palace. Not quite 1851, but a magnificent structure all the same that elected to introduce itself to me at the exact moment of this very sort of day during this very sort of season when it would be able to house all of the light hitting its Western facade within its crystal skin. Chance alone?

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This week I have realized the folly of dichotomizing the week and its fin. I had been living four days of the week in a hibernation state, working, reading, studying, lesson-planning, and spending no money or time on enjoying myself in madrid. Hours divided up among classes, metro rides, office visits, and home work. Weeks flew by at a speed exceeded only by their ends and the months slipped through my fingers like sand. I spent Tuesday evening with Natalia drinking some of the finest Belgian beer and talking about our lives with a 19 year old Spanish porn star who offered me 3kilos of moroccan hashish to go home with her until Natalia and I finally broke away and got to spend an hour or two sitting with some 1e cañas at a quiet bar in Los Austrias thinking about the absurdity of life. Last night I met with Natalia and Erik and we had a 3 hour tour of Malasaña wine bars smoking, drinking, and talking. Thai people call it sanuk - fun time with friends - and only a short while ago did I realize that the Spanish do it as chronically. Walk down any street with a bar on it and you see groups of Madrileños sitting, talking laughing and gesturing with vivid enthusiasm four hours with no concern of "what are we doing next?" This is what they're doing. And we were able to pull it off with less than 10e. I found this to be one of the best weeks I've had in months, both at and after work as well as bodily and mentally. Chance alone?

I have recently read a book about a British xpat in Paris and it not only helped me consider aspects of my own situation here, but it reminded me of Paris. This of course begged multiple comparisons, and I thought of the nocturnal armies of streetsweepers that scrub each city every night. I recalled that the Parisians turn their rues into waterways as they remove the debris, while I had only seen Madrileños walking down the calles in teams of threes with a wide broom, a small broom and shovel, and a rubbish cart. Last night, as we left el pozo after some basque, rioja, and ribiera del duero copas, we found the streets glistening after the water tanks had driven by and soaked and scrubbed the streets like celebrity teeth. All this on a chance February Thursday. Chance alone?
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