Incurable

Act II. Sitting here in limbo. I am in that gateway between the rich experiences of recent travel and the long return home, as made manifest in the Barcelona airport. Mainly my limbo is the queuing, about a dozen so far, from center city to departure gate. Europeans love to queue and Americans to cheat it.

In line for coffee in the departure area, a Hemingway short story plays out. Separately arriving, a band of American twenty-somethings one by one cut in line ahead of me and rehash their escapades of the previous night.

It is like 'Hey Dude, Where's My Car?" Each unable to recall what they did the night before -- except get very wasted and trash their girlfriends' house. To remember, Dude and Sweet decide to proceed with a sense-memory-simulated perception-altered-consciousness memory retrieval process. The twenty-somethings banter. In the queue, the Romeo among them talks of sitting on a bench until sunset to break up with his Catalonia girlfriend.

Hemingway's 'Hills Like White Elephants' is set in a train station just south of the Barcelona airport, in Tarragona. It is about a break up between an American man and a young Spanish woman. They indirectly discuss abortion. The girl compares the nearby hills to white elephants. It's metaphor. Maybe it is about the valley between aimless hedonism and pursuing life in a full natural sense. It's a short story. Read it and you decide. I retreat with my Cafe Americano.

My first visual arriving in Barcelona, ascending a glassed elevator from the Metro to The Rambla, is a Marilyn Monroe costumed girl, dancing on a second floor balcony, beckoning tourists to an Erotic Museum. That metaphor interests others.

My quest is quixotic, but without a Sancho Panza, donkey, or a happy ending. What makes Barlcelona world class? Specificly, what did I fathom years earlier as a twenty-something? More specifically, did I then see Barcelona for what it was or did I then imagine living out an imagined story meant for the annals? It can't all be a pastry filled with crema catalana? Can it?

In some ways George Orwell did the same. In 1936, he volunteered to fight fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Fighting ravaged the streets along The Rambla. But, Orwell faced intense boredom saying “if this was history, it does not feel like it,” while keeping watch on a rooftop for three days armed with wine, cheese, and a stack of Penguin classic books. 

Two and a half days of walking along The Rambla and I am no closer to my truth. But, I am in better shape for it. Often I sit along the way to contemplate the many Antoni Gaudí architectural wonders. Gaudí did not classify his works as fantasy. Instead he said, "We own the image. Fantasy comes from the ghosts. Fantasy is what people in the North own. We are concrete. The image comes from the Mediterranean."At La Sagrada Familia I find rest on a stone cube directly in front of its northeast facade. There I begin to study every odd detail of the concrete image looming before me. It could take hours. Instead, a young northern European couple order me off. Startled, I refuse. They implore. The He shows me Their past by thumbing down to pictures already on his phone. Once, They had been exactly here. They desire to recreate time. Loop back. I relent, but also spit out a 'fuk you.' Hearing me, the He flexes His upper arm of at me. Then, the He moves on to His next moment as the She ascends the cube. The He orients His camera phone to vertical as the She preens like a fantastical peacock. The She extends her wings upward to invite the mysticism of these Gaudí towers. The He captures Her ghost. It is how We remember. Now.

I shrug and head over to yet another tapa restaurant. What one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties. It is craft. One never knows what engenders what one experiences. Tapas are surely what I will remember of this journey. Time is a loop. Incurable.

Xuixo

Act I. I tell everyone that Barcelona is a world class city. I only have two memories of it. Why?

One is brief. Strolling along the Rambla de Mar on a torrid August day after college I come upon a glassed display of tortes. I think it foolish that the case is out in the sun. Maybe I choose a Xuixo, a puff pastry filled with crema catalana.

I don't remember. In that moment Xuixo is what I crave. However, I do not retain the pleasure of devouring it. Yet, that pastry becomes my emblem of what is a highest good of any city. 

The other is long winded, but begins with a college buddy stepping off the train at Barcelona-Sants. I had traveled alone all summer. It was great to be able to share travel. We left town immediately. No emblem there.

Instead, he and I hitchhiked two hundred kilometers to the principality of Andorra, the final ride a drive up a swervy mountain pass. There we descended some forty kilometers on foot into France through pastures clanging with the bells of dairy cows, stopping to loiter along mountain streams drinking wine and eating Jamón on baguettes.

In hindsight, I was in the best shape of my life. (Just before, on my own, in Monaco I swam a half mile of the harbor, just at the foot of the steps descending from the Monte Carlo Casino.) Mental maturity came later. Despite the idyllic setting I remember squabbles with my friend. Again why? Perhaps, I had traveled too much on my own. A second decider meant a different framework for choices. More likely, through travel, I had grown into someone different than my college student self and our encounter forced a reunion on the old terms.

It is far easier to revisit Barcelona then rekindle that odd emotion from a remarkable hike. I just remember I was spitting mad. It is a virtue not to make a meal of emotions. We keep in touch infrequently. I wished him happy birthday on social media a month ago. Maybe that is what my Barcelona cream puff tells me.

Some forty years later I write this headed at almost three hundred kilometers per hour on a Spanish Renfro train to that same spot. A whole lot has changed. Maybe this visit will fill in what time has emptied. Surely my designation of 'world class' must have had other than the singular merit of a Xuixo.

I am a visual person. What my eye takes in is almost everything to me. I prefer mountain vistas above all else. Of course, the essence of a precipice ridge is the tumultuous forces of collision and erosion. I fancy it untouched by human strife. No need to get under the hood and rummage about. Much of what we see in the world today is not beauty, but anger and contention - people spitting mad. The landscape between Madrid and Barcelona is an unremarkable void; a hostile landscape. My eye wants to find some beauty in it. For in beauty there is solice. There is none as I hurtle toward Barcelona.

This trip has jumped forward day to day to the next place. No time to savor. In Madrid all I could do was hobble to key points. I retired early to my small pensione near El Oso y el Madroño at Puerta del Sol. All night I was serenaded by joyful crowds mingling in the pubs below. There are ways other than the eye to make sense of things. But it is my way.

Marrakesh

No one visiting Marrakesh looks at their phone. Why would they? Sounds, aromas, and craft abound. Drummings here. There, rhythmic, trance-like Gnawa music floats. Jemaa el-Fna snake charmers. Uncountable stalls of fabrics, pottery, copperware, and leathers. Carts stacked with mounds of cumin, ginger, harissa, curry, and paprika. Fragrant displays of orange, fig, pomegranate and olives.

All made immediate as this rampart world thrives within a cobblestoned maze of tight medina alleys cojoined irregularly by open air souks. A glance at your device would ignore the peril of weaving motorbikes. Or, you would miss adjoining hat sellers accuse, in glottal-stops, of slights and misgivings. Or, skip experience-seekers of all faiths and traditions melding in the bazaar. For over a millenia.

Some are led led by guides touching on the history or importance of this or that. But others, like me, wander aimlessly to find purpose in unexpected discoveries.

Abdul, my riad (guest house) jack-of-all-trades implored me to call him once I got lost in the medinas. I did get lost, but stubbornly circled and circled back. I enjoy the accomplishment of being astray.  

And everyone seems fluent in several languages. Except me. For the life of me, I cannot learn other languages. I hiss, I slight. I implore. It is ugly.

Women, in groups, or alone, seemed very comfortable wandering the medinas within the ramparts of old Marrakesh

I stayed at Riad Dar Hamid. A riad is a large house with a corridor that takes leads to an open air garden patio with two opposite rooms called Qubbas. Traditional riads have a hammam steam bath, a store-room, large living rooms, two kitchens, and separate masriya bathrooms. This riads was converted to a two level guest house with lovely suites and a pool and dining on the rooftop. As soon as I arrived my pre-ordered tagine ghanmi, salad de fruits frais, Cafe noir, and eau minerale was waiting. It has been an enchanting stay.

I had a vague understanding that Marrakesh was part of the Maghreb, or land between the sea and the sands of the Sahara, and along historic caravan routes from sub-Saharan Africa. My flight in passed over large cultivated fields and orchards. All brought to market in the medinas. Long ago Karez - vertical shafts, connected by a gently sloping qanat tunnels were constructed to tap into existing ground water for transport over long distances in this hot and dry climate.

As always not enough time. Barely able to scratch the surface here or explore festive excursions in the nearby desert or Atlas mountains.