bosphorus blues

My certainty may seem premature -- I am, after all, still in the airport -- but I will be back.

I know because of the water.

As the cab drove up I watched IB's mum repeat the action that saw me off on a sweltering August night, watched the glass tip and the water fall from the first-story window to the plants below.

Barely four months later I am sipping tea at Ortakoy, my senses solaced by the blues of the Bosphorus.

I like discovering cities for the first time, but not as much as I like returning to them afterwards.

Especially Istanbul. Enormous, impatient, paradoxes at every corner -- it is a vicious city. 10 euros to get in; a slice of your soul to get out.

The waters of the tepid gulf, the vast Atlantic, the frozen St Laurent are the shattered mirror in which I recognize myself.

Istanbul has a slice of my soul and a shard of my mirror.

I know because of the water.

salvation?

I usually get one of two reactions when my degree in political science and theatre comes up in conversation.

Both are prefaced by an oh-that's-cool-and-unusual comment, eyebrow furrowing, head-nodding.

He he, says clever commentator one, all politicians are actors, anyways. He. He. CC1 is clearly delighted by his or her "originality"; I smile ambiguously.

Clever commentator two wants to know how art will save the world, in a tone that assumes that I think it can.

I like them separately, I explain. I do not find the oratory or dissimulation skills of politicians particularly compelling. Fields like theatre and development are OK, but in general not theatre-y enough. I like politics all by itself, the analyses, the theories, the figures. And in theatre I care about the crafts, the practices, the methods, the event.

But maybe that's not all true.

Last June I saw "No Dice" by the OK Theatre Company of New York, in the context of the Alkantara Festival in Lisbon. (As an aside, if you ever have the chance to see them, go, go, go. It is five months later and I am still thinking about it.)

As I roamed the internet for more information about the festival, I came across a culture/interview show (Câmara Clara, for my parents who are regular viewers) with its director, a certain Belgian fellow (!) named Marc Deputter.

Marc Deputter is unabashadly interested in political theatre. It is what he likes, and therefore, what he programmes. He offered what I thought was a very eloquent defense of what political theatre is today. It's no longer about answers, like it was in the 60s or 70s, when the enemy was clear and the solution was clearer.

In a world of dominant, accepted models, of one idea, where the end of history and ideology have been proclaimed, it is plently political just to throw out some questions.

Does art save? No, he laughed, but it can open debate.

Relevant also is that this man is new artistic director of what is probably my favourite Lisbon municipal theatre, where he promises programming with more politics and more dance. He's taking over from a darling of the Portuguese theatre/soap opera scene, who programmed things like The Laramie Project and The Pillowman...but also cast Sally in his version of the musical Cabaret through a televised audition process.

It's weird, the artsy things that are seared in my memory. Not necessarily the most professional, or the most well-acted/directed/designed, or the nicest or funniest or saddest or scariest. It's those two dance shows that helped me make sense of movement on stage. It's Laramie, at McGill by people I knew, whose weight I am still carrying. The little Egyptian piece I played with in Directing, whose metaphor I still don't quite know the answer to. That nouveau-cirque scene with the naked woman. More recently, weird and wonderful No Dice and Shakespeare is Dead, both of which have appeared in my ramblings.

Despite earlier denials and a continued love affair with musicals (it seems incongruent, I can't explain), it appears that I am interested when theatre turns political.

(Now, if I could only figure out exactly what that means...what do we call political theatre today? what are its topics, its forms? isn't everything political? is it bound to a particular context? what happens when it travels or is translated? does it have to be contemporary? what does it achieve? what's the point???)

Geez, I could write a whole thesis about this.

For the moment, I'll concentrated on "The Veiled Monologues" (yup, Eve Ensler for/about Muslim women) this Sunday and my anthropology of Islam paper...

what will I ever do for fun?

Forty-odd masters students, scribbling pretentiously in their notebooks. Forty-odd overly analytical minds, ascribing meaning to every unintentional or accidental action on stage. Forty-odd academics-in-training, trying to squish you and your work into the theoretical categories that are their language.

I would hate us.

Luckily, the directors and writers we have chatted with are more forgiving. I don't know why. Sometimes even I cringe at the questions asked. When someone looks an author squarely in the face and says, "Why did you write this? What does it even mean?" I have to swallow hard to surpress nervous laughter and the desire to smack my classmate on the back of the head (did you not just watch it?).

Strangely, those are the questions that spark the most interesting conversations. "What do you think it means?" Paul Pourveur, author of the brilliant Shakespeare is Dead, Get Over It fired back. My same classmate, whose head I would have patted after smacking, articulated a thoughtful response about the fragmentation of modern life and our complex relationship with history. Pourveur corroborated, added an attack on universality, questioned our love affair with the past, discussed how he tried to get that across with his writing.

Voilà interesting conversation.

Other questions, which seem like they should yield fabulous insights, fall flat. How disappointing to find that the placement of the tv screens and doors on the back projection panel “just happened” (what, the screens covered Shakespeare's eyes and ears by accident? You didn't notice when that actor enters through the door that is on Brigitte Bardot's BOOB??) Or that four actors were cast (for a script that is not divided into parts) because that is what the theatre admin agreed to pay for. Or that the projections, screens, titles, and sound effects (which totally dominated the mise en scène) were incorporated just because “I wanted to try using technology on stage.”

Sometimes talking with the directors just leaves us more in the dark. As spectators we embue everything on stage with meaning, as students of performing arts, with intention. The answer to how or why questions is often “euh...intuition, “ or simply, “I don't know, it just happened.”

And then sometimes I find a director passionately defending a concept that we have looked at in class, or, what gives me more pleasure, saying something that metaphorically kicks Meyer and his irritating theory in the pants. Often they are are willing to talk about their influences, the schools of thought and practice they subscribe to, and their thoughts on contemporary theatre.

Often they make us smile:
What does the poster mean? I don't know, I found the picture on the internet and I liked it. You are looking for Shakespeare, or meaning in Shakespeare, and he's there, up your ass.
Or,
Why are the seven male actors in my version of Hamlet in their underwear? We do the most important things in life naked.

I don't ask too many questions (and when I do they are usually of the variety that fall flat) but I listen and am pleased to have the theatre as my classroom and the likes of Philippe Sireuil, Frédéric Dussenne and Jacques Delcuvellerie as teaching assistants.

I do have one reoccurring question that I have yet to find a satisfactory answer to.

If this is what I do for work now, what on earth am I supposed to do for fun?

la moustache

He crosses the corridor from his office into class with the macbook under his arm. He is sporting what we have already identified as the classic Monsieur H look: trendy rectangular frames, deep purple striped shirt, well-fitted dark gray jeans.

Unfortunately, it doesn't matter how cool he looks.

All we can look at is the moustache.

Monsieur H is the head of our programme and our primary lecturer. I took a liking to him during the application procedure, when he so promptly and soothingly answered my jittery e-mails. When I came to Brussels in May we chatted about the programme, career options and Montreal. He will most probably advise my thesis.

This semester we have three classes with him: Introduction à la critique, Adaptations, and L'oeuvre dramatique: sa structure et sa représentation. He is articulate, interesting and easy to follow. He deals succinctly with important theorists; illustrates everything he talks about with clips and photos; sends us zipping around Brussels to see shows and chat with actors and directors (two plays this week, two more next week); brings minds from around the world to share their thoughts with us (this year's guest lecturers include Daniela Amoroso from Brazil on dance, Biao from S. Paulo on ethnoscenography, Tueckyoung Kim from Korea on masks, and Shannon Jackson, head of the drama department at Berkeley, with a directing workshop).

For six hours a week, it is clear to us why Monsieur H is so well-liked by students, respected in the field, appreciated in the Brussels scene.

For six hours a week, we stare at the moustache.

Part of the fascination is the moustache itself. It is white, scrupulously groomed, exaggerated not in breadth but in length. It fills in the space under his nose, to his bottom lip.

This is the other part of the fascination: the utter absence of upper lip. I often sit in the first row, from the end of which he likes to gesticulate at the screen behind him as he lectures.

From this vantage point, I am treated to a perfect profile. While he talks about the rhythm of light in Peter Brooke's Hamlet, I think about the melody of the moustache. It wriggles to its own beat, now bristling over an invisibly pursed lip, now lifting with a particularly potent plosive.

It is becoming mythical, the moustache. When we meet former students, we share a laugh about it. When our classmate JK let his facial hair grow, we teased that Monsieur H had been the inspiration. In my mind, the moustache is to Monsieur H what long hair was to Sampson.

He just wouldn't -- couldn't -- be the same without it.

ma place flagey

There are places that keep their secrets to themselves, others that speak to you at first sight. Flagey whispered in my ear on a sunny May afternoon; I told J then that it would be my hangout.

I hadn't yet sipped mint tea at Cafe Belga or waited half an hour in the cold for the best cone of fries in Brussels. It would be months until I noticed the statue of Fernando Pessoa on the corner (ma patrie c'est la langue portugaise) or wandered through the weekend market.

I just knew.

---

It's Thursday, a few minutes past 9. We've been at Belga for three hours already. I have ingested a cappuccino, Le Soir and El Pais.

R is fighting to stay afloat in Meyer's philosophical quick-sand (Le comique et le tragique: penser le théâtre et son histoire). AD conjugates in preparation for tomorrow's French class. AG swigs his way through the extensive menu of Belgian brews.

In the meantime they have dimmed the lights and turned up the jazz.
It's canned today, but on Sunday it'll be live.

This is the sort of thing I jot in my journal, when my brain needs a break from the mind-numbing Meyer.

My very scientific cafe classification rests on criteria like type and volume of music, brand of coffee, foaminess of milk, yumminess of accompanying treat, smokiness, natural light, opening hours, variety of international press, whether the puzzles are normally blank, etc.

Belga doesn't have the best cuppa, but I forgive it because it scores so well in all other categories. Good soundtrack for reading or socializing, biscuits with the hot drinks, non-smoking, plenty of window seats, open until 2 am every day, newspapers in languages I hardly recognize, always with a soduku to be done.

My kind of place.

AD, the newspaper and I at Belga on a Sunday afternoon...
when we could still sit outside.
Photo courtesy of R.

nomadic, sedentary, and everything in between

I have always tried to stay away from anthropology.

I faced it only once as an undergraduate, in a Lit. Theory course (remarkable only for its utter irrelevance to my theatre degree). The blood-and-feather-filled pages of an article about Balinese cock fights confirmed at once my hatred of ENGL 317 and general suspicions of the field of anthropology.

It probably didn't help that anthro courses (and professors) were so frequently the objects of harmless derision in our living room.

You understand, then, why my pulse quickened when the professor of my Anthropology of the Body in Islam course produced a photo album of her field work in Central Asia. In my sleep-deprived brain, lights flashed and voices screamed ("Lu village!!! Lu village!!!").

Then I remembered I like being shown pictures and calmed down. Wide green spaces, rough mountains, and the yurtas that were the subject of our discussion. The course is about the construction of Islamic communities through corporeality, gestures, practices of the body -- performance, in short.

Today in particular we talked about architectural patterns across Islam and the practices of the body that they imply/reflect. Central Asian -stans, North Africa, and Muslim communities in Europe. Nomadic groups, sedentary groups, and everything in between.

At the end of class, one of my Erasami leaned across the table. "What she just explained...this is my life. It's a good class, n'est-ce pas?"

This is IM's first time out of Cameroon. He hasn't taken his tuque off since he landed in Brussels. He tags n'est-ce pas on the end of every other sentence and says things like "Il n'est pas nécessaire d'aller chez le marabout pour savoir qu'on va arriver en retard ce matin!" To our potluck yesterday, he brought tree roots with peanut paste. It was the only food that survived the airport check -- probably because the customs agents didn't know it was food.

There are ten Erasmus Mundus students in the MA Performing Arts Studies programme. Nomads, sedentary folk, and everything in between.

We are from Cameroon, Quebec, Venezuela, Ecuador, Chile, India, China, South Korea and Serbia, with interests and goals as varied as our backgrounds.

The medina and the yurta village don't look anything alike, but they obey a shared logic. Maybe we are like that too, structured in our own way by our sensitivity to performance/aesthetics/corporeality?

I am not sure what gestures we have performed -- maybe our anthro prof is observing -- but our community has recognized itself.

now I'm excited

I have fruit in my fruit bowl, dishes in my cupboard, and a plant on my window sill. There are schedules scribbled in my agenda and class notes saved on my laptop. And -- a true indication of permanence -- I have my very own internet connection.

It took three trips to IKEA and some phone calls to tech support, but I am starting to feel settled. My shoebox studio in Res has improved from downright drab to passably dreary, with my messy-haired plant and red pillows putting the cement/brick walls and rougher-than-loofah carpet to shame.

But even all the muddy-coloured curtains in the world couldn't block the ray of sunshine that is following me these days. Being back at university, shielded from the hardships of maturity, is a constant source of bliss. Every core of my being wants to be here, in my little room, looking out at the wilderness that is this part of ULB's campus. It helps that the real sun has been shining, too. That the people in my programme are fascinating. That friendships are so easily forged. That the big decisions are whether my last elective should be museology or architecture and scenography.

All the classes so far -- even the ones that drag me to campus at 8 am -- have been fabulous. My french is in boot camp, but it is the good kind of pain. I am counteracting the nostalgia I feel whenever my Québécois friend speaks by adding daily to my dictionary of beligicismes.

I have so made the right decision.

Now I'm excited.

family matters

On an average day, my shelf in the refrigerator is home to something like half a red pepper, some apples and a stockpile of plain yoghurt -- foods that are about as exciting as my culinary talents. This week is an exception. On Sunday the royal galas and danones were pushed aside to make space for a more valuable cache. The stack of taper, contrary to the regular fruits and dairy, is worthy of all envy. Each of the plastic boxes is filled with the most delectible of Spanish homecooking: there is one of paella, another of sopa de ajos (garlic soup), albondigas (meatballs) in sauce, stewed chicken...and a foil-wrapped tortilla de patatas, crowning the pile.

I have learned to like a lot of things in Spain -- red wine and eggplants, to name a few -- but the gusto with which Spanish mamás clean their houses and cook their feasts has not rubbed off, not even a smidgen. This weekend confirmed what I already suspected -- that while I don't fit the mamá profile, being a Spanish child suits me just fine.

My school collegue and Portuguese student J had been promising to tour me around Southern Extremadura since the beginning of the year, and this weekend our schedules finally coincided. We spent Saturday morning in Jerez de los Caballeros (a pueblo blanco with a church like none other, a happy medley of red brick, painted tiles, and bright blue details) and lunched in Zafra.

By evening we were at J's hometown of Almendralejo, where his mother and 98-year-old grandmother (!) welcomed us. We gathered some more family members and dug into that steaming paella for Sunday lunch. As the day proceeded, the sensation of being lent a family for the weekend grew stronger. The finishing touch -- almost too good to be true -- was when I was packed off to Don Benito that evening with my own bag of tupperwared goodies. Food for the week, conveniently packaged and labled to save me time on work days. Not only that, but a cherished family tradition I was invited to partake in. Something about nuking my ready-made meals makes me forget I'm so far from my own family. A simple but effective delusion.


The delusion has been necessary in the weeks since my parents' visit at the end of April. They crossed the border into Spain for the first time, in order to spend a weekend with me. We did a lot in the three days they were here -- day trips to Sevilla and Mérida, midnight feasts, shopping on Don Benito's one-and-only avenida...Dad even had time to change the oil in the car.
They also brought me goodies: sesame cookies from Abu Dhabi, books from Lisbon, movies of my munchkins from my sister. It's not that treats are the only thing parents are good for, but they are what most invites you to revel in your condition as someone's son or daughter.

With each bite of sesame cookie and tortilla, I think grateful thoughts for family, real and otherwise.

see carla teach. teach, carla, teach.

Trying to wrap my head around teaching Shakespeare to low-level English students again. This time it's Hamlet. It frustrates me to do things when I can't see the point.

If the point is for students to understand and enjoy Shakespeare, they should just study a good translation in their literature class (which is happening this year with another play).

If the point is to expose students to authentic English literature, we should start them on something that bears at least a faint resemblance to the register of language, or structure, or themes of their regular class materials.

But instead, because Shakespeare is such a fundamental part of the cultural dimension of the language we teach, we drag him into our classrooms, so dumbed-down -- sorry, accessible -- he's hardly recognizable. And still in language far above the students' level(s). I wanted them to act out snippets of scenes, but I can't find a decent minute's worth of text that isn't too much of a mouthful.

Maybe that Shakespeare acting class has made me snobby, but the fun in Shakespeare is the language. And I still think that a good translation in Spanish is better than this English cut-and-paste paraphrase sitting in front of me. I can think of no better way of turning people off Shakespeare.

I still have to teach a Hamlet lesson tomorrow, so I am going to get back to my internet search for inspiration. Here is something I found along the way, just for fun.

---

The big gripe at PTA meetings today is that such reading matter as Dick Dare and Dick and Jane are not important educational enough for elementary school children. Here is how we propose first-graders be exposed to the world's important literature.

See the man. What a funny man. His name is Hamlet. He is a prince. He is sad. Why are you sad, Hamlet?
"I am sad for my father has died" says Hamlet. "My father was the king." Where are you going, Hamlet?"
"I am going to the castle," says Hamlet.
On the way he meets a ghost. "Where are you going?" asks the ghost.
"I am going to the castle." says Hamlet
"Boo, Boo" says the ghost.
"What is you name, you silly ghost?" asks Hamlet clapping his hands.
"I am your father," says the ghost. "I was a good king. Uncle Claudius is a bad king. He gave me poison. Would you like poison?"
"Oh, no," says Hamlet. "I would not like poison."
"Will you avenge me, Hamlet?" says the ghost.
"Oh yes," says Hamlet. "I will avenge you. What fun it will be to avenge you."
On the way he meets a girl.
"Where are you going ?" asks the girl.
"I am going to the castle," says Hamlet.
"Ha, ha," says the girl.
"What is your name?" asks Hamlet.
"My name is Ophelia," says the girl.
"Why are you laughing?" asks Hamlet. "You are a silly goose."
"I laugh because you are so funny," says Ophelia. "I laugh because you are schizophrenic. Are you schizophrenic?"
"I am not schizophrenic," says Hamlet, laughing and clapping his hands.
"I pretended I am a schizophrenic. I pretend, for what to fool my uncle. What fun it is to pretend that I am a schizophrenic."
See Hamlet run. Run, Hamlet, run.
He is going to his mother's room.
"Oh, I have something to tell you mother." says Hamlet. "Uncle Claudius is bad. He gave my father poison. Poison is not good. I do not like poison. Do you like poison?"
"Oh, no indeed!" says his mother. "I do not like poison."
"Oh, there is Uncle Claudius," says Hamlet. "He is hiding behind the curtain. Why is he hiding behind the curtain? I shall stab him. What fun it will be to stab him through the curtain."
See Hamlet draw his sword. See Hamlet stab.
Stab, Hamlet, stab.
See Uncle Claudius's blood gush.
Gush, blood, gush.
See Uncle Claudius fall. How funny he looks, stabbed.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
But it is not Uncle Claudius.
It is Polonius. Polonius is Ophelia's father.
What fun Hamlet is having.
"You are naughty, Hamlet," says Hamlet's mother. "You have stabbed Polonius."
But Hamlet's mother is not cross. She loves Hamlet. He is a good boy.
And Hamlet loves his mother. She is a good mother. Hamlet loves his mother very much.
Hamlet loves his mother very, very much.
Does Hamlet love his mother a little too much?
Perhaps.
See Hamlet run, Run, Hamlet, run.
Where are you going Hamlet?
"I am going to find Uncle Claudius."
On the way he passes a brook. In the brook he sees Ophelia.
Ophelia is drowning.
"Where are you going?" asks the man.
"I am going to find Uncle Claudius."
"Oh ho! I am Laertes," says the man. "Let us draw swords. Let us duel."
"I don't think I'm going to find Uncle Claudius," says Hamlet.
See Hamlet and Laertes duel.
See Hamlet stab Laertes.
See Hamlet's mother drink poison.
See Hamlet stab King Claudius.
See everybody wounded and bleeding and dying and dead.
What fun they are having!
Wouldn't you like to play like that?

[http://www.geocities.com/gandril/Laughs/hamlet.html]

vertigo

Most sane people, myself included, are afraid of things like large animals with sharp teeth, rickety suspension bridges, and large groups of hyper children. There are, however, two things in this world of which I am irrationally afraid: needles and heights. Unlike wild wolves and rope bridges, my phobias are unavoidable. I have few defenses against a doctor determined to inoculate -- even fewer, I have discovered, against 20 children determined to push me off a very high platform.


The zip-wire turned out to be among the least vertigo-inducing activities I participated in during our week at English Camp in Santa Susana, a touristy beach town about an hour north along the coast from Barcelona. The climbing wall was much worse. I had made it about half-way when I stopped to contemplate how much further -- higher -- I had to go. I stalled, clinging to the wall like a gecko. At some point I rationalized that it would be far worse to loose face with my students than keep climbing...and up I went.


The most dizzying moment of all occurred atop a pile of 14 plastic beer crates, which I had somehow managed to stack and climb.


Very quickly, I might add. I sensed that if I thought about the physics of it all for more than a few seconds I would faint into my harness. Instead I told the kids to cheer or else, and when the big-people legos fell out from under me, I hung in midair (like J in that play) and danced the macarena in my harness.

If you are going to face your fears, you might as well do it with pizazz.

a stickier baptism

When I saw them coming towards me with the half-liter cups of rebujito (chamomile wine mixed with 7 up), I recognized the looks of pride of people about to share a valued cultural practice. My colleague/friend/hostess C had been wearing the same expression that day as she pointed to castle in her pretty town of Zafra, pinned the flower in her hair to complete her Sevillana outfit, described the stages of the romería she had brought me to experience. With the naive eagerness of a foreigner who senses they are about to experience something authentic I extended my hand to take what I thought would be my first cup of the regional brew.

I only clued into what was going on when someone from behind gently pushed my head forward and an excited voice said, "La van a bautizar!" A moment later, blinking through a rebujito-fall, I understood that I had been adopted as a daughter of Zafra.
Vaya initiation ceremony.


My friend and fellow first-timer I was even luckier -- she had her wine-drenched moment of glory captured on local TV!


Our baptisms did not follow Church doctrine per se, but they did occur in the context of a religious festivity. The romería in Zafra honours Our Lady of Bethlehem (la Virgen de Belén), a statue of whom we accompanied back to its chapel in the country side. The carrerita couldn't have been more than a half-dozen kilometers, but on foot (and with various stops for dancing, eating and drinking) it took about four hours of a warm, sunny Saturday afternoon.

Zafra is the last major town in Extremadura. Beyond these hills (and the little people, look how many there are!) is Andalucía; Sevilla is less than an hour away. As I listened to the accents around me, photographed colourful Sevillana skirts and clapped along to the flamenco dance breaks, it became clear why Zafra is nicknamed Sevilla la pequeña (Little Seville).

It was just past 7pm when we rode our chariots into the grounds of the chapel, stopping to toast the people along the side of the road.

It was then that the barbecues appeared -- and I swear they didn't stop grilling until we left a good 7 hours later. There were all the fixings you would expect -- jamón iberico, tortilla de patatas, empanada de atún...and more buttery-sugary things than I can remember names for. There was plenty more of that chamomile wine, too, which thankfully went down my throat and not down my front. As the sun set the tunes morphed from olé olé into your garden-variety club music. Lots of Nelly Furtado, who, as my Spanish friends like to exclaim ad nauseam, is the same 'crossbreed' as me.

When I finally plopped down on a curb at 1-something, I realized that I hadn't sat once since we started walking at 3 pm. Every joint from my hips down was aching, my hair was a mess of sticky clumps, and I knew that the 11 hours of alcohol consumption would have consequences. But for my best Extremadura experience so far...? It was a small price to pay.

a postcard from barcelona

It was still dark when we pulled into the Barcelona Nord bus station. After the twelve-hour, overnight, cross-country journey, we were decidedly groggy. Within 15 minutes of our arrival, a suspicious figure in the metro unzipped a luckily empty pocket of N's backpack. We arrived at our hostel at 8 am ready for a shower and found that we couldn't check in until 2pm. We found a café to have breakfast at and both the coffee and the tap water tasted weird.

It wasn't love at first sight.

Luckily I know not to trust my first impressions. And indeed, things started improving almost immediately. All it took was the sight of a group of children on a field trip at the city history museum -- school children that I was in NO WAY RESPONSIBLE FOR -- to lift my spirits. (The ruins of Barcino, the roman city the gothic quarter of Barcelona is built over, were also neat.) By the time we settled into a little restaurant in Sant Pere for lunch, I suspected Barcelona and I would get along.

(A hides behind a napkin. We may have been happier, but we were still caked in bus grime. At least we were well-fed!)

We did manage to shower that afternoon, as the rest of the gang trickled in to the city. At dinner that night at a quirky restaurant just off Plaça George Orwell sat a motley crew of North Americans currently living in Spain and France (including four McGill Political Science alumni/alumnae!). We finished our first night in the city with a coffee (also terrible) at Plaça Reial (so pleasant it made up for the bitter brew).

The following three days zipped by.

Let me preface my account of Thursday by saying that Barcelona is possibly the most tourist-infested city I have ever visited. Camera-toting, t-shirt wearing, foreign-language-speaking mobs were everywhere. We contributed to all of this of course, moving in big groups and nattering in English as we did. No day were we more touristy than Thursday, when JF, A and I settled into the open-top double-decker Barcelona tour bus and plugged in the turquoise-green earphones of the audio guide.


The marvelousness of the Gaudí monuments -- strewn throughout the city and therefore difficult to get to on a tight schedule -- made the protesting voice of my inner independent traveler much easier to ignore. Gothic art meets Disney's Fantasia -- how could your imagination not be tickled?

We were content to snap photos of the Sagrada Familia and La Pedrera from the bus, but hopped off in order to wander Park Güell. Cartoon-ish spires, whirly columns, sweeping staircases...it could have been made of candy. We skipped along the squiggled path to the top of the park, from where Barcelona, Mediterranean to mountains, poses for photographs.


At the end of afternoon we got off at the beach -- but refrained from dipping our toes in the sea (this time, JF). Later there was paella -- not typically catalán, I know, but delicious none the less.


Friday, Friday...the weather was beautiful. We strolled from our hostel to the colourful Mercat de la Boquería (one of my favourite stops of the trip) for fresh fruit breakfast. JF and I wandered the shops in La Ribera and admired the off-beat shoes, clothes and jewelery that I always expected to find in Barcelona. We lunched bread and cheese on a bench on Passeig del Born. JE joined us, and for dessert we had an eyeful of Picasso. Again, the tourists were overwhelming, and although I did enjoy the museum (highlight: the study of Velázquez's Las Meninas), I would have preferred a bit less hullabaloo.

And suddenly it was Saturday. I happened on a photojournalism exhibit on the Rambla and then found a café with seats in the sun and good coffee (at last) behind the market. I spent the rest of the morning induldging in my favourite Saturday activity: reading the newspaper. Went for lunch at Elisabets with JE and D, where I teased JE for drinking coffee while D and I dug into our appetizers.


Before I knew it, I was back at the bus station, trying to draw conclusions. I don't know if Barcelona and I are kindred spirits. It did take until Saturday in the sun (or maybe the decent coffee) for us to connect. I think, though, with more time, we'd probably find lots to like about each other.

In the end my favourite part of Barcelona wasn't the monuments or the food or the beach -- it was the two Js I shared the city with. As JF would say...guuuys, I am so happy we did this! (:oP)


More photos here.

poema que li sentada ao sol

PAIRA à tona de água
Uma vibração,
Há uma vaga mágoa
No meu coração.

Não é porque a brisa
Ou o quer que seja
Faça esta indecisa
Vibração que adeja,

Nem é porque eu sinta
Uma dor qualquer.
Minha alma é indistinta
Não sabe o que quer.

É uma dor serena,
Sofre porque vê.
Tenho tanta pena!
Soubesse eu de quê!...

- Fernando Pessoa

playing at carnival

Everything I needed to know about Carnival, I learned in Theatre Studies. Bakhtin, Shakespeare and Aphra Behn repeatedly prompted discussions about the suspension of social norms and the magical things that can happen on a Carnival night. A last-minute offer to ride with a colleague to Lisbon for the long Carnival weekend was too perfect to pass up. Licentiousness? Debauchery? Costumes? I'm there.

I popped my Carnival cherry in Torres Vedras, with cousin C and the rest of the gang.

I didn't take many pictures -- we were packed into the cobblestone streets so tightly that the jostling made taking out my camera difficult. At one point we scored a stoop, from which it was actually possible to dance. Those left in the swarm were bumped to the beat (or close enough) by the constant flow of naughty nuns, Pocahontases, human-sized beer bottles, Raggedy Ann dolls, a Pope, cartoon characters, miscellaneous animals, and battalions of cross-dressers.

My cousin and I wore matching Little Red Riding Hood costumes, which came in handy when it started to drizzle. The rain didn't seem to bother anyone, though -- not even the guy who climbed a tree in the plaza and ripped off his dress to show off his black lacy underwear.


Monday night at Bairro Alto in Lisbon was a similar story. On the coldest, wintriest nights the Bairro is full of people, standing outside the tiny bars with beers in their hands. On Carnival Monday, it was almost impossibly crowded and even more convivial than usual. I pulled together the standard cat costume with cardboard ears and a black stocking/coat hanger tail -- which invited congratulatory meowing from fellow revelers. My favourite costumes of that evening (possibly the whole Carnival) were the six people dressed up as youtube videos. They wore big cardboard boxes as computer screens, with a square cut out for their heads, and a long list of comments down their fronts. I almost ran into one of them who looked at me expectantly and said, "Download? Share?" Too funny.


I rounded out the weekend at the Tuesday afternoon parade in Sesimbra, a beach town 40 kms south of Lisbon. If it weren't for the people in the crowd wearing coats, you would have thought you were in Rio. Sparkly floats paraded, scantily-clad girls shimmied, and the samba drums beat loudly, with the calm waters of the bay as their backdrop.


As for the licentiousness and debauchery -- I'd be breaking the rules if I told you about them. Carnival excesses exist because we agree not to talk about them once Lent begins.

What happens in Carnival, stays in Carnival :o)

the wrong roommate

I almost died when I opened my grade seven book last week. Felt my heart jump into my throat and my eyes pop.

I closed the book.
Sat down. Breathed.
Stood up.
Opened the book.

I had to sit down again.

I hadn’t imagined it. She was still there, full-page and glossy, with that stupid moral dilemma look on her face and a ghouly-looking thing standing behind her.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Buffy and I have had a tumultuous relationship. Some of the people who I love most dearly in this world have a mildly unhealthy obsession with everything Buffy. It might have been ok were it not for two details. The first: that I lived with two of them. The second: that I had the brilliant idea of organizing a group gift of the entire series on DVD to one of them…while we were still living in the same house.

To make a long story short, I grew jealous of Buffy as she took over my living room and my housemates every evening. Over the year, jealousy morphed into hatred. I thought we had reached an agreement last June when we decided to avoid further damage by simply keeping our distance.

Following me to Spain was not part of the agreement.

Pearson-Longman has tried very (too?) hard to make this textbook cool. Every unit ends with a pop song (everything from The Beatles to Vengaboys), there’s a soap-opera on DVD that accompanies the text, and everything is very colourful. Unit 4 is about daily life. Instead of boring exercises and word lists, students learn to tell the time by asking about flight departures from Sunnydale Airport and pick up vocabulary (go to bed, have breakfast, go to college, have dinner) by reading Buffy’s schedule.

The problem is that my grade sevens were probably not even born when Buffy premiered in North America, let alone when she made it to Spain. That means that when the struggling students that come to support classes with me on Tuesday afternoons ask about the show, I am supposed to have answers.

I suppose I am thankful for teaching notes. I now know that Sarah Michelle Gellar has a cat name Cayo and a dog named Thor. Apparently she likes pasta and her favourite colour is red. Angel is the only good vampire in the world and he likes Buffy. He works at night because the light kills vampires. Buffy doesn’t smoke.

Ugh.

I have to vent now, because in class this week I have to act like Buffy is my favourite and the neatest topic that we could ever study.

Couldn’t they have sent one of my other roommates instead?

madrid in your pocket

I bought a book off the street in Cáceres for 50 cents, which was probably less than what it cost when it was printed in 1965. The book is Spain in Your Pocket, written by a certain Peggy Donovan, who smiles at me from behind her typewriter, a smoking cigarette in her hand. Among Peggy’s most impressive accomplishments include her marriage to Major Stanley Donovan, Cheif of the United States Military Mission. The back cover blurb assures me Peggy is a trustworthy guide to Spain – she has “visted personally” each site she describes and has “taken courses” at the University of Madrid (oh my!). Oh, and did I mention that she was the wife of Major what’s-his-face?

My copy opens with a hand-written dedication, signed by Peggy herself and dated April 1967: “For Fleur (could be something else, the handwriting is a bit unclear) and Tom Meyer – In anticipation of May in New York together – from an admiring collegue with warm regards, Peggy Donovan.” I find it rather telling that even Peggy’s friends didn’t think it worthwhile to keep their signed copy. I worry that Peggy’s book didn’t do too well.

I shouldn’t give Peggy such a hard time. I have taken her “travella” on all of my journeys and it has provided endless amusement and noteworthy advice. She suggests, for example, that travellers to Spain always carry “special pills, a sewing kit, a pepper mill, nescafe, woolite and extra eyeglasses,” among other useful items. She exclaims things like “Spain is enormous fun” and writes long, capitalized titles: “THE MANY FACETS OF MADRID: WHERE THE HOURS ARE NOT FOR SLEEPING, THE AIR IS ELECTRIC DRY, AND THE PLAZA MAYOR CASTS A SPELL.”

The real fun in the book are the sweeping generalizations that still hold some truth and the specifics that are clearly dated. During my first visit to Madrid in September, I wrote in my journal about the trendy children who seemed to have free reign over Plaza Santa Ana, where I sat sipping my beer. In 1965, Peggy wrote, “No capital city is more given to children than Madrid and their later sense of high style and the solemn stare begins in the prams of the Castellana....” She devotes a good deal of her chapter on Madrid to describing how modernity has arrived in the Spanish capital. The “signs of affluence” that she singles out – the replacement of the donkey by the Seat 600 and the fifty-five driving schools that turn out anarchic drivers, both ladies and men – if no longer applicable, are certainly entertaining.

I was eager to compare notes with Peggy when A and I returned from our excursion to the big city last weekend. In Madrid – wandering in the crowd at Sol, finding the Egyptian novel I wanted at the bookstore, eating yummy vegetarian food, watching the Lebanese film Caramel with subtitles rather than dubbing, discussing Buenos Aires with the hostel receptionist (after winning big points by correctly identifying him as Boca Juniors fan), sipping coffee in the absurdly warm sunshine, being awed by Las Meninas at the Prado, reading the theatre reviews – I felt connected to the world. The city girl in me, suppressed as she is these days, breathed freely.

I was happy to find that Peggy likes Madrid as much as I do. I think I’ll let her have the last word to make up for teasing her so badly. She says it better anyways.

“Madrid demands little, gives much. ... Madrid concentrates on the vital, the laughing, the noisy side of life. There is no loneliness in Madrid. It is the least lonely city in the world....”

A in the foreground, Prado in the background.


Note the shirtless boy on the far left. Yes, it is January. Yes, it was that warm.

We had lunch outside. That was pleasing.

leaving and returning (or the half-way point)

Fluffy double bed with pressed sheets

balanced meals

social interactions that don’t involve retelling your life story

voices that match lip movement

soup when you are sick

friends of the same age

stapler, sewing kit, colouring supplies

clean air

company at lunch

expresso machine.

Usually it doesn’t bother me overmuch that my room here is intended for a child (with matching kiddy furniture and pastel blue walls) or that my treasured art supplies are split between a cupboard in Lisbon and a basement in Ottawa. Every once in a while, though, I am overcome with frustration and can think only of sleeping in a big-girl bed and making my own thank-you cards. The frustration hit big time in December – but dissipated as our plane landed in Abu Dhabi. For the next two weeks or so I positively reveled in the conveniences of permanent living, going to familiar places with familiar faces and making café au lait to excess.

I spent the long plane and automobile journey back to Spain in a bizarre state of disembodiment, in which my mind dragged its feet far behind those of my body. During the few days it took my mind to catch up with the rest of me, my empty head was full of mutinous thoughts. Wasn’t it nice to hang out with people your own age, they teased, and have a fully-stocked house, and have someone to look after you when you were sick?

Going home was a big fat reminder of the things I don’t have because I am here. But getting away also made it possible to stop obsessing about details and contemplate my Spain experience more generally. I decided, after taking a few big steps back, that the canvas is quite colourful (sunny days, good people, weekend escapades, an endless stimuli) and that those few dark brushstrokes (exhausting myself trying to be a good teacher, small town blues, missing people and things) provide necessary definition.

An appropriate epiphany to mark the half-way mark in this leg of the Iberian adventure, I thought.

back in don benito

All things considered, it could have been worse.

It wasn't easy to leave home -- it never is -- but at least I wasn't vomiting (like on the way there) or going back to a snowstorm (like my Canadian-bound friends).

The weather is actually, strangely, sort of...nice. I felt all cozy sauntering down the street in my new wool coat this afternoon -- a sensation replaced by sheepishness when the thermometer in the main square blinked 15 degrees at me. 15 degrees -- and I'm wearing gloves!

This weekend I am working diligently on what I expect will be my last graduate school application (of the 2008-09 round) and trying to get my act together for school. I have the perhaps misplaced hope that I will become more efficient at planning lessons...but so far the prep is sucking up as much time as ever.

Don't worry, I'll be back to my blogging ways soon enough.