Sunday, January 31, 2010

It would have made much more sense to get less sleep during the day today so that I wouldn't be up at this point in the night writing this, the reflection on the past few hours of sleeplessness and thought. S just came back from the trip she took to London with the students and the teachers from the Real Colegio Alfonso el XII, where she works as a language auxiliary teaching both students and teachers the wonders of the modern English language. The truth is that we don't get to see nearly as much of each other as we used to, being that we lived in the same apartment in Boulder for over a year. I cannot say that it has really been much for how we are relating to eachother lately. I am losing touch with the girl that I love, slowly, with each day that I spend in a tiny bed in Madrid and that she spends in a tiny bed in San Lorenzo de El Escorial.



This was the answer I had, close the book that I had started so long ago. I was hooked on the memory of the time that past between Agust of 2002 and May of 2003, and it seemed as if everything had pointed to my finally being able to walk through the door, with S, closing it behind me and leaving all the insecurities of that period behind. Now, I am forced to ask myself whether I have made a mistake and let someone that means so much to me get too far away. Her words are very reassuring, they give me hope: her actions are cause for concern, they seemed to have cooled with the Spanish air. 5 months here and five months remain. They have the possibility of being five months of near bliss, spending time with my love, but they too, have the possibility of being a natural pergatory. I do not believe, or at least do not want to believe that the latter is a true possibility.



One phrase, to (was to) be uttered in a restaurant in Rome, (was to be) really, the asnwer.

Thursday, January 28, 2010














The building and nearly the perspective of which I wrote yesteday. Shannon's family came to visit her here in Madrid so we spent a good portion of the time walking through the center of Madrid as well as with other side trips.

This picture was taken durin the trip that we took to Granada, during the sunrise one of the first mornings we spent there.

The memory is a funny thing, what it wants to remember and what it wants to forget. Pictures do there best to force the memory into an accurate rememberance. They also help place those memories in a more organized fashion in the imagined brain, the frame, structure and rooms where related memories are held and the halls between them.

(please note the images are property of the author)

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Todo fluye, nihil sepiternum est: It is so easy to let my life simply flow by, each minute merging into the next without the least bit of importance. The paths that I have taken appear to overlap, to move in the same direction over the same coordinates at a different point in life, so why is it that the second time seems to imply a level of bitterness that, I can only speculate, is born from the lack of newness? Trying never to lose the natural enjoyment for the moment in which I find myself, I have managed to lose the persepective that the times do in fact change the path even if it passes over the same exact coordinates. Borges argued the same in his review of the second writing the Don Quijote, that those same coordaintaes, the same footprints over the same path, give even more meaning to the steps taken and the experience since there is a more profound understanding of each moment and its implications.

In part those implications are the birth of a rougher conscienciousness that gives way to a bitter reflection. The same historical awareness, and history itself, that has inspired such great literary works that react against the institutions of their times and atrocities that often come in tow, continues to leave the wake of bitterness in the lenses of being. In that same breath, when I write the following words, without that same awareness as to the history of the locations through which I pass, some of the beauty is lost. The bitterness seems to be as much a disgust of the loss of ignorance and the decrepitation of the idealized social memory that was taught outside its borders and that made the buildings glisten in their crumbling state, as it is simple disappointment.

How I would love to return to the project that I organized with the help of so many friends, artists and musicians. I supplied the artists and musicians with a brief history of the Alhambra, primarily focusing on the cultures that played a part in its construction and partial destruction over the years, as well as the myth of the origin of the name: the crymson glow. The same artists and musicians were given a brief history of Flamenco music, in a sense synomomous with Andalusian music. The inspiration of the project were the few brief moments I spent at the age of 16 looking up the hill towards the artificially amplified crimson glow, with the music of a gypsy's voice and his guitar filled my ears and completed the sensory overload provided by the hot summer night, the slight, warm breeze and the cold vinilla ice cream. To complete the packet given to the artists was a disk of a few pieces of flamenco music and a few pictures that offered the same perspetive that I had as an aging child. The concept for the artists was to somehow encompass the movement as the passion that fills the historied music into the an image of the façade of the great fortress.

How the overlapping paths both haunt and liberate me, seeming always to find another trailhead to lead me back to them. While in Granada not all that long ago, while a guide for the Alhambra spoke about the last battle and the taking of the last, great Islamic city in Spain, he told the story of the King of Granada and his mother. While they climbed through the mountains the king turned his head and began to cry, leaving the city and the Alhambra behind, and his mother chided him, saying, "You cry like a women at the loss of a paradise you were not man enough to defend."

To change the proposal of the project, to offer the same images but instead of the movement and the emotion of the music, to have the artists each paint two images inspired in the emotions of both the defeated Arabic King, leaving behind his paradise, and the emotions of the victorious Catholic Kings, viewing their new trophy. The depth of the emotion and the significance of the history would lend room for the interpretation and commentary needed for the voice of an artist to truly take form on whatever canvas and medium.

Can I also return to other memories and other paths and, without the destruction of those beauty of the memories, forget the truths that I once used to form them? It is yet another fear that forms a sense of bitterness. To risk losing the beauties formed in life at the cost of continued, seemingly uncontroled growth. I am not sure where I will be tomorrow, but where I was yesterday continues that influence that decision, and that history is built nearly every minute. If I break the chain at such an early point, that is to say at the base of the reality I have forged, the changes could be chaotic and unnerving, and could simply end with my sanity.