far too much writing, far too many photos

runswithscissors


Friday, December 05, 2003

Rain moved in late yesterday afternoon, and with it an easing off of Madrid's recent cold snap. Something I'm sure the locals appreciate. I spent a couple of hours with a Spanish friend last night -- the two of us meeting at a Starbucks located midway between his workplace and here, talking half the time in English, half the time in Spanish. Both of us agreeing that we'd been given pretty bad coffee, deciding next time we'd go to a nearby cervezería, get a good glass of Spanish beer, maybe some tapas. During the conversation, I brought up the cold spell, the local reaction to it, the fact that I thought it had been beautiful December weather. [See yesterday's entry.] He essentially laughed at everything I came out with on that subject, especially the idea of the weather being enjoyable. Pretty much said it all, I think, as far as the local reaction to cold weather

Got myself up and out to the gym this morning, like the good boy I am. Post-sweaty suffering, I retired to one of the two rooms the gym uses for classes of various kinds (Estudio 2 -- it's not just a studio, it's an estudio!) to stretch, etc. As I'm doing so, a 20-something woman entered -- slender, long black hair, attractive. She put some orchestral music on the room's small stereo, began doing tai chi, going through long sequences of slow, graceful movement. There was something strangely familiar about her, I finally realized she bore an uncanny resemblance to a friend of mine from the Cambridge/Boston area, a smart, attractive woman named Bev. Examining her face, I could see it clearly was someone else, someone I didn't know. When I returned to what I was doing -- glancing at her from time to time, aware of her reflection moving slowly in the mirrors that cover three walls of the studio -- I experienced the repeated, disorienting sensation of being around a friend I knew for a fact was thousands of miles away.

Her outfit: a red short-sleeved top, black sweat pants, dark socks. The pants, I noticed, were emblazoned with words, three words printed in a gentle curve across the woman's butt, reading ALMA Y CUERPO -- soul and body. I tried not to study her butt too excessively.

Later, emerging from the Metro here in Chueca, making the short walk home, I found that work on the building across the street had gone abruptly into high gear after several days of relative quiet. The truck with the crane was back [see entry of Nov. 25], parked in the narrow street in front of my building, shutting down local traffic. Across from me, the girders for the uppermost floor of the building are being put into place. The first step in wiping out of some of my view, a prospect which I confess gets me down if I dwell on it.



I've enjoyed the view I've had of neighborhood rooftops, I've liked being able to see the outer edges of some beautiful sunsets. I've been fortunate compared with people on the floors below me -- as the new building's gone up, they've lost more and more of the day's light. I won't lose much actual daylight, just a portion of the vista I've been fortunate enough to have out my windows.

Ah, well. Everything changes. I'm still situated here in the heart of a great neighborhood, one overflowing with energy and activity and people to watch. Still planted in the middle of a city I love.

*****************

Postcard from Vermont --

Part of a recent email from a friend in Montpelier who works with the ski patrol at a large northern Vermont ski area:

"Do you know what graupel is? It's a kind of snow, like little white ball bearings, usually whipped around by high winds. It happens particularly when fronts collide and when temperatures drop suddenly. I was bombarded by graupel this afternoon, as I walked around town doing errands. Five minutes later, the sun was shining. But it's cold, cold, cold tonight.

"A story I forgot to tell you the other day: Though there was little snow on the slopes on Saturday, there was a skim of it on the road as I left, enough to send quite a few cars skidding off the road. The [mountain's] access road is long and steep and features a wicked S-curve about a quarter of the way down. I made it through that curve, but not without some significant fishtailing. Conditions were as bad as I've ever seen that section of road, slick and greasy with an underlying sheen of ice, and I came at it a bit too fast. I managed to ride out the skid in the classic way, steering the direction of the skid (with gratitude to my race-car driving dad, who taught me in a snowy parking lot).

"I'd picked up a hitchhiker on my way down, an eccentric, bearded character known as Callahan who works on the mountain, in the summer wielding a scythe to clear the sections of trail that are too steep to be done mechanically, and in the winter as a lift attendant. 'Lift-rats' are the lowest on the totem pole and he could do better, but chooses to spend his days in a tiny shack at the top of the quad, riding a stationary bike for hours as he watches over disembarking skiers. Callahan is legendary for the hair-raising ski trails he cuts in the backcountry -- and also for the fact that in summer, dressed in jeans and hiking boots, he rides his mountain bike up the access road every day, carrying a backpack full of 100 pounds of rocks. (The rocks may be apocryphal, but I've seen him riding many times.) He's not training for anything, he just likes to do it. Anyway, I think Callahan's knuckles might have been a little white as I skidded through that turn, muttering, 'Whoa, whoa, don't worry, we're okay, I got it!'

"I hope that's the worst trip this winter, though I heard later that there was some pavement resurfacing at that spot this summer that may have left it permanently slick."

rws 7:41 AM [+]

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BLATHERINGS

August 2001
September 2001
October 2001
November 2001
December 2001
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February 2002
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May 2002
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November 2007
December 2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008
May 2008
June 2008
July 2008

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MORE FOCUSED BLATHERINGS

Personal History



Travels:
London '01
Pamplona
Italy '03
U.K. '03
Sevilla
Casablanca
Stoke-on-Trent
Barcelona
Québec/Ottawa
Boston/Lisbon/Madrid
Italy '04
Montréal
La Sierra

Events:
Madrid -- arrival
9/11
Emergency Room I
Holidays 2001
Holidays 2002
Holidays 2003
Holidays 2004
Holidays 2005
A neighbor's passing
Madrid -- March 11 bombings
  and aftermath
Emergency Room II
Israeli friend/Madrid Marathon
Madrid -- Royal Wedding
The DELE exam

Excerpts from GONE, a novel:
Chapter 1 (complete)
Chapter 6 (complete)
Chapter 8 (excerpt)
Chapter 9 (excerpt)
Chapter 9 (excerpt)

Screenplay excerpt:
BURBANK SHRUGGED

Short stories:
Murphy's Wife
Another Autumn
Queja de Una Hermanastra
  Muy Conocida

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .


OTHER SOURCES OF WHOLESOME ENTERTAINMENT

People/Weblogs:
dooce
foxvox
fudge it
fear not
rebekka
bookslut
802online
idle words
madhaiku
wockerjabby
grow-a-brain
digital camel
letting me be
kung fu grippe
franklin avenue
fanatical apathy
baghdad burning
the happy booker
mimi smartypants
between the miles
just a hippie gypsy
tomato can brushes
playing with my food
sugar mountain farm

Good Clean Fun:
gizmodo
futurismic
postsecret
dave barry
human clock
mcsweeney's
spaceweather
book-a-minute
internet archive
self-portrait day
my cat hates you
out of context quotes
surrealist compliment
  generator
strindberg and helium

Makin' Musical Whoopee:
muxtape
soma fm
pandora
last fm

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ABOUT RWS/CONTACT





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runswithscissors would like to thank everyone who's ever lived for everything they've ever done.



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