HALFWAY between my quarters and the toilet adjacent. I stand legs astride in effort to move while remaining still enough to keep my unzipped pants from falling to my ankles as I simultaneously reach forward and behind to blindly transfer the light from bedroom to bathroom. This is what I have become. It's the 60 minutes I have to myself in my home before heading out to plan and deliver my third round of classes stretching across the city from 8am to 8pm each Monday and Wednesday. A bipolarizing profession, it's left me strangely content today after an unforseeable month of forward propulsion and numerous goodbyes.
The sky was brilliant on the first day of June and it left me squinting in business parks, bus stops, and sun-baked sidewalks. The day went on and on, never dragging, but feeling a week while I indulgently recoiled into recent memory again and again. A week ago I dropped my bag in the street at the sound of my name called out by a voice I'd left behind. Last weekend we ran past guards in El Prado trying to throw us out after the closing bell because I was desperate that I might never get to show my friends the Ladies In Waiting again. Later that night we peeled thin slivers of shiny jamón marbled with pure acorn fat from a plate prepared and delivered by my favorite beaming watiress down on one of the finest food streets in all the world. Today I felt inspired to write like I hadn't in some time right around the hour of returning to work. And so I stood for a second and watched myself hit the two waist-sqare light switches in front and behind me and wondered for only a second how I might have gotten there. Only a split-second before I realized
...
The sounds of the city are so many. Now I hear only the muffled echoes of clanks and shuffles waft in through my window from the flats above and below me as Madrid settles into the June night.
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