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.

In which the topic of cigarettes leads to some seriously dark thoughts -- be warned before reading.

I was at the gym yesterday, talking to a Spaniard who had come over to help me finish off a set on the bench press. I told him that I loved la vida aquí -- the life here -- in part because people are so friendly, amable. I've never once had a stranger come over to help me push out the final few reps of a set in the United States, but here it's happened three times in as many months.

As we got to talking, it turned out that my new friend was a doctor at a nearby hospital, and had grown up here in Córdoba. As I've noticed that every Spaniard and their mother smokes cigarettes, I asked him if the habit was popular even among doctors. His response was telling, though unspecific -- ''si, casi la mayoría'', he said -- ''yeah, almost the majority of them.''

And yet in terms of European life expectancy rates, Spain (79.78 year avg to the U.S.' 78.06) is right there at 19th with the leaders: Italy (a Mediterranean companion), France (another country heavy on the smoking), Switzerland (yeah, we know about your health care system) and Sweden (ditto on the system; the leader in Europe, at 80.63, only 8th worldwide).

I know the two or three people who will ever read this are curious to know which country heads the list. That would be Macau, a southeastern province-city of China which officially loses its semi-autonomy to the Big Red in 2049. Why? Macau was both the first and last Chinese city to be colonized by a European country. Portugal originally settled there in the 16th century, but in 1999 agreed to officially bequeath Macau to the people of Macau, with the stipulation that fifty years later it would be swallowed up by China. How did we get here again? Oh yeah, Macau's average life expectancy -- 84.38 years -- leads the world. I wonder how popular tobacco is there.

I hate to end this on a down note, but it must be noted that Swaziland has the worst average life expectancy in the world, and is the only country in which one is not expected to live past forty. Their average is 39.6. A tiny former colony of the UK in southeastern Africa, Swaziland also, not coincidentally, has the highest rate of AIDS in the world. In 2004, a study found that 38.8% of pregnant women tested positive for the merciless disease. Please, someone throw them a frickin' bone.

Of the forty countries between 155th and 195th at the bottom of the life expectancy rankings, thirty eight are in Africa. That stretch runs the hellish gamut from Madagascar, at an average of 59.4 years, down to the inferno of misery that Swaziland must be. The notable non-African outlyer is Afghanistan, 188th on the list with an average life expectancy of 43.8 years.

This global tragedy reminds me of a strangely lucid dream I had last night, in which an anonymous, legless, wheelchair-bound man was pleading with his family members to undergo some kind of fantastical operation which would give him legs at the cost of a few inches of height from each of them. With little pretense of remorse, the fully endowed humans stood around the desperate man as the fireplace lit the room with flickers of a dim, frigid glow. I can still hear his tearful wails as they faded away into the night.

Religion, Culture and History -- Put on Your Hardhat

I searched long and hard for a picture to lead off this post, one that could capture the essence of Barcelona, or even just the essence of its crowning architectural achievement. But the Sagrada Familia is too big to be confined in one photo without melding into obscurity its cacophony of meaningful details. I'd been to the architecturally exuberant cathedral twice already, but I'd never taken the time to notice its most subtle features. That's the trouble with the 150-year work-in-progress -- the approaching viewer finds himself so overwhelmed by the grand scale of the building, then by the stark creativity of its facades, that he's liable to stroll, jaw slacked in awe, right by some of its most expressive details.

For instance, try taking your eyes off the climactic scenes of the storybook Passion façade,

or dropping your gaze from this neck-cranking view,

to attempt reading some holy ramblings in a language -- Catalan -- you've probably never seen:


This time around, what I realized upon closer inspection was that Gaudí may be recognized most for his flamboyance, but that his workmanlike commitment and pious devotion give meaning to his shapes and colors. Tidbits of mystique abound in his masterpiece cathedral. For example, in the picture above, if you zoom in on the two highlighted phrases above the door on the right, you read, ''Que es la veritat?'' and ''Jesús d Natzaret, rei dels Jueus'' -- Catalan for ''What is the truth?'' and ''Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews''. The latter phrase seems strange to find at a church; what follows may give it some context.

Yet more obscure was a Catalan poem engraved on one of the main entrance doors. The door opposite it featured the same poem engraved backwards, and accompanied by an abstraction of symbols that seemed Dali-like in their apparent randomness.

Notice the end of the poem written in backwards Catalan, at the top of the picture. This is an excerpt of a stirring poem written by famous Catalan poet Salvador Espriu. In Catalan, it goes:

De vegades és necessari i forçós
que un home mori per un poble,
però mai no ha de morir tot un poble
per un home sol:
recorda sempre això, Sepharad.

Fortunately I was able to find a Spanish translation online. Notice the similarities in word and sentence structure:

A veces es necesario y forzoso
que un hombre muera por un pueblo,
pero jamás ha de morir
todo un pueblo por un hombre solo:
recuerda siempre esto, Sepharad.

In English that translates to:

Sometimes it's necessary
That a man die for his people,
Though a people has never died
For a man alone:
Always remember this, Sepharad.

Who is Sepharad? I wondered the same. It turns out that Sefarad was the name assumed by the Jewish diaspora in Spain -- known to us as the Sephardics. In fact the man who is arguably the most famous and impactful Sephardic Jew, Maimonides, was born right here in Córdoba. I walk by a commemorative statue of the twelfth-century philosopher, doctor, and rabbi almost every day. Spain has seen great religious diversity over the last two thousand years, but recent studies show that only 1.7% of its present-day population identifies with a religion other than Catholicism (77.3%) or atheism/agnosticism (18.9%).

I'm intrigued, and continue translating the poem:

You must secure the bridges of dialogue
and try to understand and respect
the diverse opinions of your children.
That the rain falls little by little over your fields
and the air passes like an extended hand,
smooth and gentle over the vast countryside.
That Sepharad lives forever
in order and in peace, in work,
in the difficult and deserved
freedom.


Passing through either of the Sagrada Familia's gloriously cluttered façades, one suddenly finds oneself in an airy, spacious temple of tranquility.


The organic shapes of Gaudí's tree-inspired pillars soar overhead, with the carpentry camp at their feet the necessary reminder that this holy monument was indeed built by man.


There's something about the stained glass windows in the Sagrada Familia -- perhaps it's their youth -- which gives their colors an exuberant clarity unlike any I've seen before. My camera can't hope to do it justice, but here's a taste:


But, like most cultural icons in Spain, the Sagrada Familia isn't all beauty and sacrament. Gaudí's legacy has left a trail of political baggage. The pride of Catalunya, a region of Spain with sentiments of separatism, and a man known by some as 'God's Architect', he is a polarizing figure for much of Spain. I had read a lot about the existence of 'many Spains' -- that the country is a simmering pot of regional differences trying to turn the page on a polemical twentieth century history which lurks in its collective subconscious. In the Sagrada Familia's basement museum I found definitive proof of this dynamic.

I was reading the Spanish section of a sign explaining that many of Gaudí's sketches and models are no longer available since being destroyed when his office caught on fire. Strange, I thought, I wonder how that happened? I looked over to the English translation to make sure I had understood everything, and my heart jumped. There I saw the same sentence in English, but with a little extra information: all of Gaudi's works were destroyed ''when his office was set on fire during the Civil War.'' I looked back to the Spanish to make sure I hadn't missed anything. Nope. The Catalan translation also conspicuously lacked the decisive detail.

How sensitive must this society be about its own history, that it avoids discussing such undisputable details? The Civil War happened in the 1930's -- surely we're past the era of ''it's too soon''. We've all been told in elementary school that it's important to learn history so we don't repeat the mistakes of the past. Is Spain sabotaging its future generations by turning away from the lessons of its painful past? Or is this forced ignorance necessary to maintain peace in such a fragmented country?

I met two German girls in Lisbon who told me that their school system was very forthright when it came to teaching the history of World War II. The Spaniards have taken the opposite approach by dancing around controversial issues the way their flamenco dancers dance tantalizingly around each other, staring down each other's souls. This dance, though outwardly beautiful, is one of willful ignorance and self-containment. Can it ever be productive to ignore history?

Flashes of Granada

Granada is a city I will never forget. Granada is the Spanish word for ¨pomegranate¨, and like the luscious fruit itself this Andalucian treasure is healthy, delicious food for the soul.

The first site we visited was Lalhambra, (¨the red palace¨ in Arabic), most succinctly described as Andalucia´s answer to Versailles. But while Versailles boasts beauty by way of grandiose expanse, Lalhambra offers majesty and sensory seduction.


Built 700 years ago by the culturally and technologically sophisticated Moors, the Alhambra (Lalhambra is how the Spaniards say it) is truly best experienced using all five senses. Well, the lemon trees were off-limits to tourists -- so I didn´t get to taste anything. But you get the point. By the midpoint of the tour I had shed my shoes and socks, eagerly soaking up sensations with all four limbs.




Every now and then we would come upon a fountain. The agua fresco -- cool, fresh water -- provided an oasis for the senses.



The courtyard shown above was, as it appears, the very picture of serenity. The great thing about the place was that it had a few areas such as this which were cordoned off from visitors, visible only from windows. One can imagine how crowds of tourists would sully this virgin view.



On a wall near the entrance of Lalhambra was mounted una poema by Jorge Luis Borges, which he wrote in 1976 -- entitled, Alhambra:

Grata la voz del agua
A quien abrumaron negras arenas
Grato a la mano concava
El mármol circular de la columna
Gratos los finos laberintos del agua
Entre los limoneros
Grata la música del zéjel
Grato el amor y grata la plegaria
Dirigida a un dios que esta solo
Grato el jazmín.

Vano el alfanje
Ante las largas lanzas de los muchos
Vano ser el mejor
Grato sentir o presentir, rey doliente
Que tus dulzuras son adioses
Que tu será negada la llave
Que la cruz del infiel borrara la luna
Que la tarde que miras es la última.


Pleasant is the voice of water
To he who was overwhelmed by dark sands
Pleasant to the cupped hand
The circular marble of the column
Pleasant are the subtle mazes of the water
Between the lemon trees
Pleasant is the music of the zéjel
Pleasant is love and prayer
Directed toward a god that is alone
Pleasant is jasmine.

Vain is the sword
Before the long spears of the multitudes
In vain to overcome
Pleasant to feel or to realize, mourning king
That your joys are goodbyes
That the key will be denied you
That the cross of the infidel will erase the moon
That the evening you see is your last.