Spanish time – the past (pasado?), present (presente) and future (futuro)

The title probably has little to do with the CONTENT of this blog (well I guess given it isn’t actually written yet… so who can say!). It is a mind play on several levels for myself:

1. I am starting to learn to use (clumsily and amusingly) the different tenses in Espanol – I can now have had a past and have a future
2. … but in reality when you’re in tourist mode it’s the most present you are ever likely to be. The past is somewhat muted and distant and everything else manana, manana (pronounced manyana - means tomorrow)
3. Yet just now I made the alarming realisation that my time in Barcelona is 2/3 over, eeks!
4. Also, in my mind, I am documenting and recounting so, sooo much... but it evaporates before it hits the blog – the tension of time, experience and documenting is ultimately insurmountable – already heady magic moments seem ordinary and cliché while new daily triumphs supercede…

But for now let me take you back into my recent past -

I’ll start with my first outing with Ana – the German girl who moved in when I did… that is if I can find my random iPhone scribbles.
We took a train into Catalunya and just started walking, randomly taking turns down side streets. She was taking pictures of graffiti while I took pictures of people and their dogs and concrete paving.
We eventually chose to sit at one of two outside tables at a small café in a windy (as in curvey not blowy) paved side street. We talked and then fell into comfortable silence while she sketched, drinking her café, and I wrote, drinking my te con leche. –We did this just for a wee while until we started gabbing on again.

ANA-THER EXCURSION
Random wanderings in old streets given ambience by smokers, passionate embraces and a family bickering. We look everywhere, unselfconsciously staring – touristing other people’s lives. On our aimless, gobsmacked mission, we eventually stop.



Sitting at a café we awkwardly attempt to place our meagre order – un café y un te con leche – our accents assault my ears but gift us a smile from the camerero. We sit, we talk, we laugh - we stop. We drink in everything even before our order has arrived.

The sound of the pavements being hosed and the cadence of foreign languages in flight, pour down the sides of balconies an accompaniment to the ivy. I watched a man meticulously hose down the pavement from one end of the small street to the other. It took us at least 20 minutes. I sat in concentrated shock and awe – a drought still too close for me to be comfortable with what I was witnessing.

Wrought iron balustrades failed to imprison distant jazz escaping an unknown balcony … it clashed in triumphant discord with the rumble of mopeds passing and an imagined child practicing piano. Violent colours of haphazardly hung washing became part of the romantic fresco palleted before me.

Where was I? I may never really know.