Two evenings ago, around 7:30, standing looking out a window before class started.  Watching the evening street life down on la Calle de Arenal.  I notice that one of the crawler-type light readouts over a storefront includes the time and temperature among the advertising hooha.  The temperature at that time:  38ºC.  That -- according to this handy online temperature conversion thingie, works out to 100.4ºF.

June 11.  100º.  Granted, there’s no way of knowing where the thermometer responsible for that reading was positioned.  Could make a difference.  On the other hand, maybe not.  Late in the day, sun getting low in the sky.  Air feeling warm enough that the actual temperature might possibly be in the 100º zone.

After class, went out to hoist a caña, gobble down a pincho of tortilla with the professor, the other lone student in class, and a couple of female language instructors from the school.  Nice people, good food, tasty potables.  A nice time.  When we stepped back out into the street around 10, the air wrapped itself softly around us, its heat impossible to ignore but too gentle to be oppressive.  Yesterday continued hot.  But this morning when I dragged myself out of bed and tossed open some windows, the weather had taken a turn toward something a bit cooler and fresher.  At least during the morning hours.  The afternoon got intense, with all the concrete, asphalt, bricks soaking up the sunlight and radiating it back.

I've paid little or no attention to the local weather reports lately.  Summer's arrived, the deal has been more or less the same from day to day for a while now.  Not much point in hearing them tell me how hot it’s going to get, that’ll just get me thinking more about than I already do.  What comes along comes along, and overall it’s been pretty sweet.

It might be taking its toll on the locals, though, because there have been strange things happening.  (WARNING:  SPORTS AND POLITICS COMING!)  First there’s Real Madrid, Madrid’s premier soccer (or fútbol, as they call it here) team, an expensive collection of many of the soccer world’s biggest names.  Who, despite all the heavyweight talent, don't have to will or the chemistry to rise to the level everyone wants them to rise to.  They rise tantalizing high, high enough to get everyone feeling happily smug, and then they stop delivering.  After taking Manchester United in the Champions League semi-finals, they couldn’t get the job done against Milan, leading to the first ever all Italy final.  Same thing in the Spanish league, where they should be kicking butt.  They just can’t seem to deliver.

Then there's the Spanish national team.  Another collection of tremendously talented players, with two games this last week in the Eurocup competition.  They lost the first game, to the Greek national team -- "¡A Grecia," said D., my intercambio, last night, "que es una mierda!"  (To Greece, who suck!  His words, not mine, I add hastily for the benefit of anyone of Greek descent.  Me, I know nothing.)  Then two nights ago, they played Northern Ireland and couldn't do any better than a 0-0 tie.  They created loads of shooting opportunities but couldn’t get the job done.  Against two teams nowhere near as packed with talent and savvy as the Spaniards.  Strange, but there it is.

And then there's local politics.  The poop hit the fan a few days back and continues to fly in bizarre fashion.  The Socialists (el PSOE), after eking out a major win in the May 25 elections by taking the government of the Community of Madrid from el Partido Popular by one seat in the Madrid Assembly (in combination with la Izquierda Unida -- the United Left, the current incarnation (I’m told) of the Communist Party), ran into major, unexpected difficulties.  Earlier this week, on the day of the new Assembly’s first session, the day officers of the chamber are elected -- two Socialist councillors deliberately did not show up.  They not only didn’t show up, they did not answer their phones all day, remaining carefully and completely out of touch.  Two people, exactly the number needed to give the PP a one-vote edge, which enabled them to take the post of President of the Chamber, and which has thrown the Socialist party and the Community government overall into an uproar.  The two members had no real explanations for their disappearance -- one of them tried to explain it away, without success -- so that they were quickly expelled from the party, and will apparently be brought up on charges of corruption, there supposedly being what some people feel to be sufficient evidence of possible bribes to justify the charges.  Meanwhile, the Socialists are two seats short, the results of the election have been essentially trashed, and the PP wants new elections immediately, while the PSOE wants time.

Two people.  Exactly the number needed to give back control of the government to the PP.  There are those who find that highly suspect.  And there are others who are quietly happy with the change in fortunes, while the higher-ups in the PP, after a day or two of what appeared to be civil restraint, are making political hay.

Sports and politics.  Not bringing much joy to many here right now.  The prospect of new elections does not promise much fun, and has me appreciating the fact that I'll be far away for a few months.  Up in the green mountains of northern Vermont, in what could easily pass for paradise during the warm season (once the black flies go away).  And into some of the cold season, for that matter, right up through Halloween.

Soon.  In a matter of days.

Meanwhile, life in this beautiful city goes on.  Hot, a bit tumultuous, but satisfying, with no shortage of entertainment.

6:51:29 PM      

Damn, I'm good at futzing about and wasting time.  (Should I be concerned about that?)  There is always something I can turn my attention to do which will piss away major chunks of temporal reality, especially if that something has any connection with my computer and/or the 'net.  Sit me down in front of my little laptop and, without achieving anything of substance, I can wipe out hours and hours of the day in no time flat.  Or that at least is how it feels.  Computers, like televisions, are time machines.  Turn 'em on, and mornings, afternoons, evenings immediately wink out of existence.  It’s a bona fide phenomenon, one that should be studied and harnessed for the good of, er, whomever.

I do not spew empty blather with that first paragraph.  No, no -- I speak as one who knows at least vaguely whereof he speaks, one who just spent an entire afternoon sitting in front of his computer doing a whole lot of, well, nothing, really.  Not that all of it was intended to be pointless.  A chunk of it got spent trying to transfer the software for my Salon.com webpage from my old, ailing laptop to my new, perky laptop.  (According to the Radio UserLand license, that bit of software may only reside on one lonely computer at a time.  Which means that if one wants to make entries to one’s Radio UserLand blog from a different computer, one has to MOVE the software.)  The problem:  the new, youthful, high-tech laptop uses only CDs, no floppy disks; the old, ailing warhorse only writes onto CDs.  I attempted emailing the various files to myself, sending them from the old codger to the young punk.  That simply didn't go the way it should have -- do you have any idea how many little teeny piddling files there are in that goddamn software package? -- and it wouldn't surprise me if you experienced the resulting teeth-grinding as something that felt like distant tremors.

And before I knew it, early afternoon had given way to six o'clock, the day continued galloping on toward the evening hours, when I had an intercambio scheduled.  Managed to pull myself away from all the afternoon's fun, made the day's first meal (it's real damn easy for me to forget to eat -- how do I do that?), hoovered it down.  Pulled on clothes, got out into Madrid's hot weather version of fresh air.  A long walk took me through rush-hour crowds and traffic to a table at a halfway point between here and where D., today’s intercambio, works.  Which turned to be one of Madrid’s only Starbucks outposts.  Not a place I frequent in the States if I can possibly help it.  Here, to rendezvous with a new Spanish friend, what the hell.

A fine intercambio – conversation in Spanish and English about sports, work, language, women, movies (most of the basics) -- compensating for some for the buggering-up of the previous five or six perfectly good hours of sunlight.  Recently, I've gotten hooked up with some great intercambios, meeting fine people in the process, people I hope I'll remain connected with when I get back here in November (he said wistfully).

This morning I stopped in at the local centro comercial, visited three or four of the stalls I frequent, picked up enough groceries to last me until I get out of here on Monday.  The last grocery shopping for this time around.  (*SOB!*)

Right.  Enough of that.  I will not get maudlin.  At least not right this nanosecond.

To finish up for today:  a brief rundown of some genuine websearches conducted through Google and other engines which have led unfortunate souls to this webpage:

Tomato Vender (sic) in Spain

Women’s Belley (sic) Button Photos

Incredible Hulk Tattoos

liquid refreshment photos

homemade diapers

11:57:20 PM      

It's time to get current with the madcap world of art:

Oh, quiet down.

Bothering the good folks of Birmingham.

A paean to the modest, underappreciated art form of signage.

And Barcelona beats the record.

6:14:30 PM      

Down in the Metro this morning, waiting for a train.  Not well ventilated, the Metro, so that it has a strong tendency to get stuffy when the mercury heads toward the stratosphere, as it has here lately.  I'll head into a station, take stairs or escalator down into the Earth, the air initially feeling like a cool contrast to the warm air/intense sunlight aboveground.  Until I get down to the train platform where as soon as I stand still I can clearly feel that the air is not only warm, it is thick in a way the air up in the street is not.  My sweat glands immediately swing into action, beads of moisture popping out all over my body. 

That was essentially the case today.  I’m planted on the end of a bench, waiting for the train, the underground air feeling close, uncomfortably warm.  I look down the platform, the air stuffy but absolutely clear, and a hot weather memory of standing on the platform in a west-side subway station in Manhattan comes to mind, 96th Street maybe -- whichever station one uses to change from the local to the express during the commute from the west side’s northern reaches to downtown.  High humidity combined with pollution so intense that the air in the tunnel looked like mist.  And then I remember spells of summer weather in Boston so outrageously humid that the covers of paperback books in my apartment would surrender and curl up like large, damp wood shavings.  So much moisture in the air that it looked like thin, diffuse fog, the only real difference between that weather and rain being that raindrops generally move.  Weather that can be real common in Boston/Cambridge, depending on the summer.  Which puts my few minutes in the Metro’s stuffy air in perspective, so that I immediately feel better.

In the train, two mid- to late-20s women stand together, talking.  One wore tan suede running shoes, red/white plaid flared, cuffed pants, a black skin-tight top.  Hair dyed a dark, unnatural red, with a piercing dead center between the inside ends of her eyebrows where something tiny glittered.  (A diamond or its cut-glass equivalent.)

Later, in the barrio of Salamanca.  Walking along the shady, tree-lined, park-like, mid-avenue walkway that stretches for blocks along la Calle de José Ortega y Gasset, the dappling of tree shadows and sunlight poured down the back of a 60ish man walking ahead of me, so smoothly, so clearly that it looked like a special effect, like something projected onto his back from a machine.

Still later, coming up on 2:30.  Walking north along a street with wide, tree-lined sidewalks, on the way to meet a friend for lunch.  The sun far enough over in the western half of the sky that buildings were casting deep shadows, the kind that smart pedestrians seek out during the summer months here.  Deep shadows, meaning three to four people deep.  Spaniards tend to have a different sense of space when walking in public places, as compared to the rest of us, er, honkies.  They tend to spread out and occupy as much of the space as possible.  So that a pedestrian approaching from the other direction never knows how they’ll move.  Today, with everyone wanting to remain in the shade, it made for fine people-watching.  Some moved further into the shade to make room.  Others spread apart, some moving out into the sun around me, then back into the shade.  Some clearly preferred not to give way, presenting me with two options:  move out into the sunlight to pass them or walk straight ahead, not giving way, and see what happened.

What happened:  a remarkably smooth process of people deciding in the moment whether to give way or not.  Me or them, didn’t matter.  No one (including me) cared enough to make an issue, someone (sometimes me) always moved aside to allow passage. 

Correction:  a few elderly folk cared enough to make an issue, grimly maintaining their course, with no intention whatsoever of making way for an approaching pedestrian, even if there were only two elderly folk walking together, spread well out to occupy as much of the shadowed sidewalk as possible.  Not a problem, thought I.  They have undoubtedly paid their dues in this lifetime -- I’m happy to give way, let them take up as much sidewalk as they want.

Arriving back here in the barrio.  As the train pulled into the station, a slim, aging hipster --  old jeans, a tired flannel shirt, long graying hair pulled back in an unruly ponytail, face abundant with salt and pepper stubble -- stepped over to the door, positioning himself so he would be the first out.  The train stops, I stand behind him as he hits the door lever.  Nothing happens.  He tries it once more, twice more.  Still nothing.  We both turn around, heading to another, already-open door, him behind me, literally pushing me as we go.  I hold the other door open as I exit so that we’ll both get out.  We make it, he says, “Vale” (Okay), moving past me, starting up the stairs first.  I go up the stairs two at a time, my usual mode of going upstairs.  I pass him on the way up, something about that must have seemed like a challenge to him.  He picks up speed, reaching the top of the stairs and pulling even with me as I walk down the corridor.  We approach a slow-moving person, there isn’t room for all of us to walk abreast -- the slow person is in front of the hipster, I speed up to give the hipster room to move over and pass slow-walker.  Hipster speeds up to match my speed.  I slow down to allow him to pass.  He slows down, again matching my speed instead of taking the opportunity to pass slow-person.  In that moment I realize there’s some sort of head game going on.  It is so clear, so brazen, so silly that I burst out laughing.  To which he responds with a strange mix of energies, his expression softening into a half-smile, as if part of him couldn’t help acknowledging the silliness, while also radiating sudden anger, as if genuinely pissed off at my open acknowledgment of the situation.  Looking straight ahead, he starts talking, his voice reflecting the mix of smiling, slightly sheepish acknowledgment and anger, saying, “Claro, vaya -- ja! ja!”  (Sure, hey -- ha! ha!)  All the time matching my walking speed.  It is so bizarrely, comically surreal that, on impulse, I break into a full sprint toward the escalator, still laughing, waiting to see if he’s going to do the same.  His speaking volume increases, his tone of voice still split between humor and anger, he seems to be torn between wanting to go after me and not wanting to appear too silly.  I hear his voice behind me -- further and further away -- as I reach the escalator and head upstairs into a beautiful summer afternoon, the air full of the sounds of life:  the conversations of people in the plaza, sparrows chirping, dogs having a close encounter.

Life:  packed with amazing experiences, unpredictable people, unexpected turns and twists.  Rarely, if ever, boring.

7:19:40 PM      

When I dragged myself out of bed and opened some windows this morning, I was met by a classically beautiful summer morning.  Blue, cloudless sky filled with swifts performing their usual virtuoso-level flight acrobatics.  Morning sunlight, clear and soft.  Air just warm enough to indicate a hot day in store.

And quiet, one of the things I enjoy the most about weekend mornings here.  Quiet, gentle, starting up in slow, gradual fashion.

My first morning in this flat [see entry of 9 September, 2001] looked and felt nearly identical to this one, apart from the angle of the September sun, moving toward equinox as opposed to solstice.  The bell of the neighborhood church rang at 9:15 and 11:15, the city cleaning crews picked up after the previous night’s revelry, folks slowly, gradually appeared in the street, heading toward the kiosk in the plaza to buy a Sunday paper,  or to one of the few tiendas open on Sunday morning to cop a baguette or two.  Now and then the sound of a dog barking from the plaza resonated between the buildings on this narrow street.  Same as today.

Yesterday was a day of some festivities in this barrio and a neighboring one, Malasaña, to celebrate 'Barrios Abiertos' (Open Neighborhoods).  When I walked through the plaza this morning to pick up a newspaper, there were garlands strung up around the space from which hung little teeny flags, representing countries from all over the world.  Now, it may be nothing more than coincidence that all the teeny flags appeared in conjunction with the Barrios Abiertos thing.  It may be nothing more than the neighborhood tarting itself up for the high tourist season, the barrio’s way of saying Isn’t this just the cutest, quaintest plaza you’ve ever seen, all you tourist-type furriners laden with money you’re dying to spend?  Please, spend it right there.  Drink yourself yourselves silly.  Have something to eat.   In return, we’ll relieve you of some of that cash that’s taking up so much room in your pocket/handbag/wallet.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I hasten to add.  It is, in fact, a nice plaza, a good place to hang out for a while, get a taste of the local scene and then range around the neighborhood from there. 

When I passed through the plaza, older neighborhood denizens sat on the several concrete benches that run along the plaza’s east side, talking, reading papers, watching the local edition of the world.  A couple of coed groups of 20-something folks sat out in the middle of space, talking and drinking beer.  Not the usual sight on a Sunday a.m.  Maybe finishing up a long night out.

The neighborhood remained quiet well into the afternoon (apart from occasional hammering from some overmotivated maniac doing renovation work somewhere close by).  I, good boy that I am, persuaded myself to go to the gym, hopping onto the Metro where I stepped into a car and found a place at one end, leaning up against the bulkhead, working my way through a few pages of a Spanish translation of The Thin Red Line.  The car was crowded, every seat taken, a handful of people standing.  As the train got underway, I realized that one of the standing passengers, a white-haired 50-something a couple of doors down had begun talking loudly in a strange, slow, sing-song way, holding up a few crumpled pages on which words were written, too far away for me to make out.  The noise of the train prevented me from making out more than a few words here and there, what little I heard didn’t seem to make too much sense.  He turned slowly back and forth as he spoke, angling the papers so that they faced whichever direction he faced.  This went on until shortly before the second stop.  At that time, he folded the papers up, slowly made his way along the car to stand by the door near me, mouth partially open, until the train stopped, when he got out.

Hmmm.

On the way to the gym, a family sat outside a fancy restaurant in the barrio of Salamanca, four of them sitting together on a comfortable-looking wooden bench deployed there beneath lovely, overarching shade trees by the city.  A late-30ish male stood in front of those four, a camera in hand, taking snapshots of them.  Off to one side, a teenager with a videocamera filmed the whole process.

As I walked into the gym, 'Stir It Up,' a Bob Marley and the Wailers tune from the early 70s, played loudly on the in-house sound system.  A good tune, one that felt fine to hear.  Excellent step-right-in music.

It’s now Sunday evening, coming up on 9:30, plenty of light still in the sky.  Early, really.

Time to go out and enjoy the evening.

9:59:59 PM      

This morning, walking down la Calle de Hortaleza, I passed three males standing together at a point along the way that sees little pedestrian traffic at that hour on a Saturday a.m.  Well into an early-morning (or all-night and then some) bender, one of them holding a nearly-empty liter-sized beer bottle, each with a cigarette in hand, discussing something probably not earth-shaking but important to them there in that moment, as is often the case with drinkers in the middle of a marathon.  Arms waving around, focused intently, talking loudly, rapidly.  Three guys I could swear I’ve seen in every single big city I’ve ever spent time in, or three guys fitting the description of certain universal types, the kind that get sent out by a central casting agency to fill slots in the ongoing beerified street theatre that seems to be a feature of urban life.  Not that they’re on every block or street, but sooner or later I’ll pass them or their brethren in just about any population center of any size that I pass through in this strange, ongoing concern we call western civilization.

Not destitute individuals.  Not the truly down and out souls who live on the street, carrying bags of belongings or pushing shopping carts packed with mysterious collections of stuff.  Not the kind with skin and clothes that have taken the intense, sustained punishment of weeks or months in the urban outdoors -- toughened, weathered, darkened from the ground-in accumulation of grime.  The three guys I saw this morning were dressed in perfectly presentable jeans, casual shirts, sneakers or standard issue shoes, a bit rumpled from hours of carrying on as they were, a bit unkempt, but indicating lives with some sort of home base, some sort of money, shelter, basic self-care, all that.  All slender, one slightly tall 20-something, one 30-something with longish frizzy brown hair, one straighter looking 40-ish type.  The first and the third completely nondescript and inoffensive-looking, the kind who will blend into any crowd.  The second was a more recognizable type, a kind whose look immediately identifies him as a character of this kind of scene.

And here’s the thing.  I walk by, they’re energetically discussing/debating whatever, and I realize they sound exactly like the counterparts I’ve seen in other places.  But exactly.  They speak fast, in blurry streams of unintelligible sound that’s impossible to break down into understandable language, punctuated by certain exclamations or common swear words or obscenities used as adjectives or adverbs, window dressing to provide the appearance of the indigenous language.  But apart from those few recognizable -- purposely recognizable, I think -- words, they weren’t speaking Spanish any more than their counterparts in the States or London or Paris or  Rome speak English, French, Italian.  They’re speaking some blurry cross-cultural, even supra-cultural lingo that none of the rest of us can understand.  A sly, mutated Esperanto-ish thing that provides universal communication among their fraternity while remaining absolutely indecipherable for the rest of us.

I am not normally given to paranoid wonderings, but how can one avoid it with something like this?

I go down the street, drop a DVD in the rental shop after-hours return slot (this being Madrid, shops like that don’t open until noon so that everyone, staff and customers alike, can recover from late night activities), dump some recyclables in nearby recycling bins.  I walk back along Hortaleza, the three aliens have vanished, not visible in any direction, along any visible street or sidewalk.  Hmmm.

I continue along to one of my morning espresso spots, step inside behind two 30ish gay guys, both mid-height, wearing skin-tight short-sleeved jerseys, pulling wheeled suitcases.  A stool presents itself at the counter, just a few feet inside the entranceway, I plant myself there.  To my right sits a 40ish male, deeply into reading one of the daily sports newspapers, a small brandy-snifter style glass to one side, half full with either rosé wine or a drink that’s a combo of red wine and Casera, the local version of lightly flavored spritz-water.  To my other side, sits a tall, lanky, slightly made-up gay 30-something, turned around on his stool in my direction watching the TV, long legs crossed, slightly hunched over, left elbow resting on the bar, left hand holding a cigarette.  A cup of café y leche sits on the counter, now and then he sips from it.

Behind me, a table of young 20ish and 30ish Africans is making a huge amount of noise, one of them literally shouting.  And as I order my espresso and churros, he continues yelling.  Yelling is apparently how he converses.  Not the kind of start to my day I had in mind.  I finish up quickly, walk a couple of blocks to a different place, the cafeteria at the Plaza de Chueca down the street from here.  Also noisy, but more diffuse.  No yelling, just Spaniards just carrying on morning conversation.  Much more user-friendly.  Better for café and newspaper.

It’s now 12:30.  Early-starting (^*%#!!!) neighborhood construction noise has tailed off and the day is getting underway, gradually, quietly (for the most part).  In a short while, I’ll be heading out to lunch at my landlords, a trip that can take anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half each way, depending on trains/buses.  They’re an entertaining bunch, I expect to be well diverted.

On to the day.

12:51:25 PM