On my last evening in Córdoba I got to see a corrida de toros -- a bullfight. I'd wanted to experience the 300 year old relic of Spanish tradition since I'd come to Spain, but could never gather the moral self-assurance to act on my curiosity. I felt wrong giving financial support to a sport -- or is it an art? -- that cheers on the bloody death of innocent, disadvantaged animals.

Toreros, asesinos -- bullfighters, murderers -- was graffitied
in several places on the outside of the ring.

But, as is usually the case, my curiosity got the better of me. Not only is bullfighting an integral part of Spanish culture, but I realized that for me at least, the very fact that it would be hard for me to watch was the reason I needed to see it. A few months before Federico García Lorca's 1936 execution, he wrote one of his famous plays La casa de Bernarda Alba, in which the domineering title character proclaims, "Y no quiero llantos. La muerte hay que mirarla cara a cara." -- "And I don't want to hear any crying. Death must be confronted face to face."

Death is a natural part of life, I figured. If I can eat animals daily, I should be able to stomach watching them die from hundreds of feet away.

That evening I walked to the bullring with my friends Josh, Mary and Fatima.


We had paid 10 euros and little thought to the spectacle we'd soon see and probably never forget. Of course we knew that bulls would die in front of us, but I don't think any of us had wanted to imagine what that might actually look like.

In the modern bullfight, the man-bull interaction is divided into three main phases. In the beginning, the bull gallops out into the ring, each one of the six beasts bigger and more aggressive than the last. A few men stand around using pink capes to attract the bull's attention, then run away like the physically puny species we are when it charges at them. (Contrary to popular belief, it's the movement of the cape -- not the color of it -- that gets the bull to charge.) Eventually the bull gets annoyed by this fruitless game, and rams the closest horse. Unfortunately (for the bull) the horse is well-protected by some kind of thick padding, and is mounted by a man who proceeds to jab his spear into the area behind the bull's head.

Notice that the horse is blindfolded.

But the nape of the bull's neck hasn't been tenderized nearly enough yet. In phase two, three of the men leave behind their pink capes and pick up a pair of colorful knives. As the bull charges each one, he jumps aside at the last second and drives both knives into the same spot on the bull's back. This picture (not taken by me) shows the result:


Now, with the bull panting and bleeding, he is weak enough for a single man to go cara a cara with him. This third phase of the bullfight is the most renowned. The color red takes center stage, as the torero's red cape tantalizes the bull over and over again until one final charge, when the bull's exasperated sprint comes up with nothing but air and a sword driven down to the hilt in its back.

Of the four bulls we watched die, the majority tended to react to this fatal blow by walking around in a daze for a few moments, then slowly retreating from the men to die on its own. It would become obviously exhausted and start spitting up blood.


When it neared the very end of its life it would let out a few heartwrending groans and sit down, with an almost docile air. Finally, and mercifully, it would keel over onto its side:


The torero with the red cape then kneels over the bull and takes it out of its misery by repeatedly stabbing it in the same, softened bloody spot. After the bull's body stops its macabre writhing the torero slices off an ear as a kind of trophy for a fight well done. And the crowd goes wild.

The brutality of time

Today I left Córdoba, abruptly abandoning the most blissful four months I will ever live. The last few days have been a tropical storm of unabated joy and anxious anticipation of the day we could never imagine coming.

Last Thursday I went to the opening night of Córdoba's renowned week-long festival, Feria.


The sudden midnight illumination of the fairground's Mezquita-inspired facade was magical;


but a rare cold, driving rain stole the night. I can count the number of rainy days I've seen in Andalucía on one hand, but the timing of the weather that night was entirely appropriate for the circumstances. (Maybe there's a reason the Spanish word 'tiempo' means both "time" and "weather.") The low-key night ended somberly, as my friend Matt was to leave Córdoba early the next morning.

Two days later I went on an unforgetable hike through the hills of Córdoba with my friends Mary, Mareva, Amanda and my new Spanish friend Ricardo.


The pinnacle of the day was when Richy and I reached the summit of a prohibitively steep hill which we probably shouldn't have tried to scale.


A few minutes later, we came across an old, 1930's country house that must have been bombed out during the Spanish Civil War.


These days, Nature lives there.


This fantastical experience, too, would soon become that fantastical experience.



After countless hours of hiking the group's patience began to wear thin. We walked back to Richy's house and took a dip in his pool to cleanse our bodies of the dusty, sweaty itch that one inevitably feels after a day of walking through the maleza -- undergrowth -- of the countryside.

(This word maleza is incredibly telling in light of the passage I recently read in Lorca's Bodas de Sangre, in which a farmer talks about his lifelong "battle against the weeds, the thistles, and the rocks that come from who knows where." The interesting thing is that the word belleza -- "beauty" -- comes from bella -- "beautiful." If mal means "bad", shouldn't maleza translate to something like "badness", instead of "undergrowth"?)

It was the second time I had been to Richy's house, in Córdoba's El Brillante ("The Brilliant") neighborhood overlooking the city.


The swim that day was deeply therapeutic, like writing this post has been for me tonight. There is much more to come...

Today I opened my bottom drawer to get out a pair of jeans. The drawer opened with unusual ease. My jeans are in my suitcase.

Another time, not at a drunken 6:30am, I'll go into further detail about why it is that Spain will always have a place in my heart. Right now I'm overdosed on merriment, my shoes are dusty and I've got little more than this song running through my head:




This song is a techno-ized version of the song traditionally played by the bands that flow through the streets of any given Andalucían city during the religiously decadent week of Semana Santa.

I recently started reading Bodas de Sangre -- Blood Weddings, a play written in 1985 by the tragic Andalucían poet Federico García Lorca. I only just started the second act, but up until now in Lorca's fatalistic plot the leading female character is en route to the wedding where she is supposed to get married to a man for whom she has a sadly curt, forced love. She has just had a distressing conversation with her married ex-boyfriend -- distressing due to the conspicuously mutual attraction that spikes their exchange.



I bring up this book because, though it takes place in and is informed by my current home region of Andalucía, I have found few cultural references that I could really relate to. That was until today, when I took a day trip out to the campo -- the countryside -- and read the following passage in Bodas de Sangre:

Padre: Yo quiero que tengan muchos. Esta tierra necesita brazos que no sean pagados. Hay que sostener una batalla con las malas hierbas, con los cardos, con los pedruscos que salen no se sabe dónde. Y estos brazos tienen que ser de los dueños, que castiguen y que dominen, que hagan brotar las simientes. Se necesitan muchos hijos.

Father (talking to his supposedly soon to be sister-in-law): I hope you have a lot [of grandchildren]. This land needs arms that don't ask for pay. It's the only way to keep up the battle against the weeds, the thistles, and the rocks that come from who knows where. And those arms have to be those of the family's, have to punish and dominate the land, have to make the seeds sprout. Yes, the life demands many children.

Climbing the hills around the tiny pueblo of Espiel, nothing was more beautifully displayed than the dominance of nature and its intractable forces. We began our trek walking up a paved road:


which soon gave way to an overgrown dirt path:


which promptly disappeared, as we treaded through knee high grasses rarely touched by human skin:


Why do people love to explore nature, anyway? It often seems to me that what draws us is that aura of innocent virginity found on any given mountain, field or forest. It's an organic peace that simply can't be found in the urban jungle.

But at the same time, nature wouldn't be itself without its infinite, unsentimental brutality of growth. What do I mean by that? To take a less romantic view of the world, there is no manmade structure or living being that natural forces will hesitate to tear down and swallow up.

Ashes to ashes,
dust to dust.
Stones to stones:


and die we must:



It's not always easy to remember when you live in a city, but I really believe that humans are just one of many species inhabiting this earth. And we should try to act accordingly. Nature is beautiful, but it is not charitable. It is giving, but it is indomitable.

Much of my reasoning comes from a powerful book I read a few months ago, called The World Without Us. Written by Alan Weisman, it uses history, architectural and natural science, and scary pollution statistics to paint a picture of what might happen to the earth if humans were to suddenly vanish. The third chapter, called The City Without Us, talks about New York City after the disappearance of humans. Particularly astonishing is how vulnerable its massive bridges are to the relentless waves of nature's forces:

The bridges are under a constant guerrilla assault by nature. Its arsenal and troops may seem ludicrously puny against steel-plated armor, but to ignore endless, ubiquitous bird droppings that can snag and sprout airborne seeds, and simultaneously dissolve paint, would be fatal. Del Tufo [Manager of the George Washington Bridge] is up against a primitive but unrelenting foe whose ultimate strength is its ability to outlast its adversary, and he accepts as a fact that ultimately nature must win....

Every connection is vulnerable. Rust that forms between two steel plates bolted together exerts forces so extreme that either the plates bend or rivets pop....

Three times in the past 100,000 years, glaciers have scraped New York clean.

So what of the man vs. nature dichotomy? What's going on in man and nature's relationship?

It's complicated.

Lenny Kravitz comes to Córdoba, and inspires his fans all over again

Do you remember when we were in elementary school and Lenny Kravitz came out with his airy, fantastical hit ''Fly Away''?

''I want to get away, I wanna flyyyy awayyyy, yeaahhh yeahhh yeaaahhh!''

Yeah, you remember that one.

He was pretty cool; at least I thought so. When's the last time you thought about him? Yeah, I don't know either.

Well, in an inexplicably random collision of times and spaces from two very different eras of my life, Lenny Kravitz came to play a concert in Córdoba this past Sunday night. I was unwilling to pay the 40 euro entry fee, but I had heard it was possible to see or at least enjoy the outdoor concert from outside the venue, so I went and met my friend Mareva there. I didn't regret it.

Indeed, it was difficult to see much of Lenny that night. Crowds of equally frugal Spaniards hovered around areas where the tarp covering the chain-link fence had been ripped, eager to match the sight with the music. Mareva and I mostly hung out across the street, where we could sit and chill while still reaping the full effect of the massive concert speakers. On occasion, when Lenny went into a sweet solo (his ''Stairway of Heaven'' cover comes to mind) or a song we liked, we would walk up to the fence. I soon realized how easy it was to scale the 15-foot fence and perch myself on the top. It also would have been easy to drop down on the other side, but I didn't think it right to ditch Mareva. How gentlemanly of me, right?

This was my view from atop the fence:



Even from the outside looking in I loved the concert, and I gained a newfound respect for Lenny Kravitz and his rock star stage presence. He negotiated the awkward foreign-crowd dynamic as best he could, offering a ''¡buenas noches!'' and ''¿que tal?'' here and there, and taking in stride the dead silence that followed his impassioned ''Can you hear me?!''

But as much as I liked the concert enough to revive Kravitz's presence in my iTunes library, my newfound admiration for the Spanish people was the big souvenir I took away from this amazing night. I have never in my life seen such an energetic, enthusiastic, responsive and grateful crowd as the one I saw that night. You know how usually at concerts people put their arms up and wave them for like half a song, or just when they get really excited, and then put them down again soon after? Not this crowd. It was moving and cheering all night, and when it came near to the end they compelled Lenny Kravitz to come back for not one, but two encores! (I've never seen that either.) Between his last song and the encores, half the crowd would wave both arms back and forth towards the stage, as if bowing to the man. The people who weren't physically praising him were doing the Spanish encore clap -- a lively, Flamenco-based beat of thirds. CLAPclapclapCLAPclapclapCLAPclapclap.

In this picture you can strain to see part of the pulsating wave of appreciative arms (look near the big flush of light at the left of the stage; now imagine that over the entire crowd you saw in the picture above):



But my appreciation of Spanish youth was not to end quite yet. It being a relatively small venue and still too early to go home, Mareva and I decided to hang around to see if we could see Lenny leaving the stadium to board his tour bus.

About an hour and a half or two hours later, it was us and about 10 other Spaniards our age. Most of the other band members had come out, stopping with varying degrees of begrudgery to pose with eager, camera wielding fans. The exit gate was mostly blocked by a large truck that was backed up in it. It was a constant race to guess which side of the truck Lenny would come out on. Suddenly a man walked out of the gate on our side of the truck, and the Spaniards around us went berserk. Apparently it was a famous Spanish actor who grew up in Córdoba. Oops, didn't recognize him. And an actor he was. And by actor, I mean decoy. The bus had pulled up perpendicular with the front of the truck so that its front door was on our side of the truck and its back door on the other side. All of a sudden there was a commotion on the other side of the truck -- Lenny was coming out on that side. As the ten of us moved toward the narrow stretch inbetween bus and truck to get to Lenny's side, a security guard suddenly apparated, clogging the space before us and pushing us back. Some of the more fanatical fans were really upset; I found myself more amused at their reactions and impressed at the seamless execution of Lenny's team.

The saga continued. Lenny proceeded to sit tantalizingly on his bus for at least a half hour, inviting the mostly unsatistfied fans to mill around bugging his driver, knocking on the tinted windows, and watching the most desperate fans do generally ridiculous things. One girl started pushing all the buttons and turning all the knobs she could find on the outside of the bus, in some sardonic attempt to open its door. One girl walked around the bus wailing in heavily accented English unbelievable things which the rest of us just stood around laughing goodnaturedly at, such as, ''Lenny!!! I need you! I will lose my job without you! Please, Lenny, help me!!!'' She seemed to be in her own world. All of this was funny, and probably could have been found anywhere.

But what it evolved into was uniquely Spanish. The teenage Spaniards started singing traditional Spanish songs in front of the driver's window, the climax coming when they began to dance the traditional Andalucían sevillanas dance. Turn up your volume and enjoy:





After this, Lenny must have told his bus driver he'd do autographs, because the driver opened the door and started taking pieces of paper from people. I happily took advantage of what my Spanish companions' cultural exclamation had reaped, and got in on the autograph party. Though we couldn't see him behind the bus' cockpit curtain, I can only imagine that Lenny was a little bit tickled by his fans' enthusiasm. The bus driver wasn't too happy, but what can ya do?



Yes, the Spanish people are a happy one, even in desperate times. Last night my host mom and I were watching a TV show which features musical performances from Spanish music stars of the 70's and 80's. At the end of one song, the band's singer took the microphone and told the audience, essentially, ''I know everyone is going through hard times right now. But when you hear my music I want you to dance and forget about your troubles.''

Amen to that.

More on smoking in Spain

If any of my limited readership is still coming back to this lonely, peat-covered blog after my last post, you may not be after this one. So without further ado, we return to the topic of... cigarettes!

A few days ago I was hanging out in a cafe with some friends, rehearsing a presentation we would give to our Spanish Constitution class full of Spaniards the next day. Now nearly every cafe and bar in Spain worth its weight in beer has a handy cigarette machine in the corner. Patrons of all ages are welcome to come up, pop in a few euros and walk away, cig-in-mouth like a rock star.

So on this particular afternoon I happened to notice a man walk up to the machine with his five year old son leading the way. The man bent over and put a few coins in his son's hand as if to say, ''I know how you love using the cigarette machine! Have a blast!'' The little boy waddled giddily up to the machine and pushed the coins down the slot. Then he reached up, finger searching for the right tobacco insignia-adorned button. Losing his patience, the father grabbed the boy's hand and led it to the flavor he wanted. Push. Pop. Addiction.