and then the Mediterranean

from last summer, 10 July
on the train 
I was wrong to pay attention to Rick Bragg's disdain for wheels on suitcases.
new goals:
learn about: Lorca, Catalan cooking, the Spanish Civil War, the art of O'rsay. Study my Spanish.

Although I pretended not to, I was able to understand a man who followed me along the waterfront in Barcelona. What is your name? What is your name? Do you want to eat? Where are you from? And then either he said right now or he called me a whore. I couldn't tell.
Much graffiti in Barcelona. Old train. German boys, Asian girls, elderly black couple with French accents and large suitcases, English boy with headphones on. I wonder which train station blew up, and how people could do such a thing. Brick apartment buildings with balconies, big dry hills, small trees, a woman in an orange construction vest washing a big black dog, overcast sky- gray, black, and violet.

tourist in Barcelona

9 July
Fighting my way through The Rambla crowd (Lorca once said this was one street he wished would never end, but surely it was different during Lorca's time) to the subway, on my way to #1 must see tourist attraction: Goudi's Church of La Familia, when I turned back and found my way, finally, to this small cafe where I sit now, at a table by the window, drinking a glass of wine and listening to the other patrons talk. I do think there is something sweet about tourists, fascinated by places, examining maps, photographing each other next to beautiful buildings. I want to go home and be a tourist in Oregon, as George says Béatrice is, in Paris. Nonetheless, I truly cannot go to one more tourist attraction, no matter how attractive. Four people sit at the bar, young, European, mostly English, talking to the bartendar. They are quizzing each other in their knowledge of Catalan. Now talking about a bullfighter who was killed by a bull. Whether this was a good or bad thing, they disagree. Janis Joplin on the stereo.