You’ll never believe
where I’m writing you from this time. When people say ‘Spain,’ I used to think
of cities bathed in sunlight and splashed with vibrant color straight from the
tube, like you see on postcards. Barcelona is better than anything I’d heard.
You would love it here.
I enter Barcelona from the South, and I’m
already feeling apprehensive about the light drizzle that trickles down the
windows, threatening to ruin a perfectly good weekend in Southern Spain. Then apartment
blocks loom up on either side, colorful and crowded, draped with laundry and
flags striped red and gold. They cluster together to whisper jokes about the
fair-haired imposter in their midst. They are just how I imagined far-away
Latin cities looking before I discovered that I had wings. The bus jerks and
lurches into La Placa Catalunya, the pulsing heart of Barcelona, and I dismount
amongst disoriented Asian tourists and flustered Americans. We stand dumbly in
the square, forcing disgruntled bikers and drivers to go around us, and blink
in the sunlight that bursts from the clouds at last. I close my eyes and soak
it into my skin.
I begin taking pictures of buildings.
I quickly realize what a vain endeavor that
is; each façade is different, each crafted with stone faces or dancing gypsies or
pastel floral or shattered tile. Everything is beautiful. Nothing matches
anything else, it’s a mess, it’s an interior decorator’s nightmare, but no one
seems to mind.
Every building is wrapped about with balconies thrust out into
the cerulean air, elbowing others out of the way, catching the golden sun in
pools of molten gold in its glass and tiles, keeping it from reaching the cool
pavement in between. We all fight for air, drawing in gasps of ocean freshness
and growing things in between puffs on cigarettes and lungfuls of carbon
monoxide.
I lost one of my favorite earrings in
the airport, and Barcelona urges me to fill the holes in my flesh with
something dazzling. I buy a pair of dangling beaded mosaic earrings, and
they’re a little flashy for me. But I feel flashy here. These earrings are
something that the me I want to be would wear. I’m almost her, sometimes. Maybe
I’ll become here if I stay here long enough among the winding streets and
murmuring bustle and the Spanish that slumbers somewhere in my muscle memory.
Barcelona makes me want to take my shoes off. It has been a long winter and she
tempts me with honey sunshine and alien trees forcing buds from their slumber.
I strike off in the direction of Las
Montanas, seeking something to climb, attempting to return my body to its
natural elevation. Despite Luke the guide’s directions, I get lost. I know, I
know; that’s just like me. You know how I am with sense of direction. I
discover strange modern art welded to the chain link fence of an urban basketball
court and ask for a muffin de pomas—ask for it in Spanish, and feel a surge of
undeserved pride when I comprehend the shopkeepers reply. Maybe my linguistic
victory tinges the flavor, but at the time it seems like the best muffin I’ve
ever tasted.
Although I never find the mountains,
I do eventually find my way back to the generic hostel where I’ve set up shop. I
seek solitude to write this on the rooftop terrace, seven floors up and about
level with the rest of the city. Nothing is very tall here; the city prefers to
drape herself across the Mediterranean coast instead of build upward. She
doesn’t have any reason to reach for heaven. I contemplate waiting here until
night time to see the stars, but the after-sunset air bites like her sister
daylight does not, and I don’t like the way she tastes.
That night I meet up with Luke, the
guide who will be tasked with keeping track of me, as well as the rest of the
group—currently an unknown factor—and I am nervous. The new me shows herself
and settles an easy confidence around my shoulders like a shawl. We cross the
city, completely unrecognizable at night, to Tapas row, where we sample Tapas
and beer and learn more about each other than friends who’ve known each other
for years. We stumble across street art on our way home, the city mumbling in
an uneasy slumber around us; it will come alive again when the Yuppies hit the
clubs in the wee hours.
Day two begins with strange
compliments from an American boy with bloodshot eyes. “Sticky green,” he tells
me, “try the sticky green!” When I manage to talk my way away from him, I
discover the tour group has coalesced in the form of three other women from my
home country (if I can call her that after having abandoned her for so long) and
our teasing South African tour guide. Off we go, trying out rudimentary Spanish
on coffee and pastry vendors as we decide if we like each other over breakfast.
Still too soon to tell.
Time stretches into an eternal
sunshine afternoon caught in glimpses between gargoyles and terraces of
apartment blocks the color of sand and honey. We ramble down Las Ramblas, visiting
the steps where someone named Christopher C changed the world forever, pointing
out artists who live in sandcastle houses, and snapping photos of postcard
quality. We mount matching green bicycles in the George Orwell square—Luke
points to a black camera in the corner: the first 24 hour surveillance camera
in the city. I wonder if Mr. Orwell would laugh or cry to know that.
Two girls nearly
capsize on the flight to the sea, but I fly between small shops closed for
siesta, dodging tourists and locals until we come to the place where the city
slopes off into the spray of the sea. The Mediterranean is rough today, and a
sturdy wind whips my skirt around my ankles, trying to push me North where I
belong. Or maybe it’s the universe trying to tell me that someone I love has
just flickered out of existence. But that is not part of this story.
Night falls sometime during this
narrative, and we congregate in La Marqueta Boqeria to learn the secrets of the
region: how they spice their food, where the crustaceans can be caught and
cleaned, how to remove the strange silicon spine of La Calamari.
We laugh and chatter with other potential expats, clinking glasses of Sangria made the Spanish way. I discover that I am amongst friends here after all.
‘I want to live in a sandcastle when
I grow up,’ thought young Antoni Gaudi at some point, probably. I feel like we
would have been friends. His church La
Sagrada Familia is the strangest, most beautiful building I’ve ever seen,
impossible to capture in photographs, equally impossible to capture here. It
makes me want to believe in God so I can come to speak with her here in this
place of rainbows and sunlight and impossible height. You would love it, Eddie.
Barcelona has magic in the air, and you get a little of it inside of you every
time you breathe.
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We strike out into the night with a
picnic and more alcohol than we will possibly drink (spoiler alert: we did) and
settle on stone steps to watch the fountain catch fire. The night glitters in
Barcelona. We banter and clap to an underground Ramba—which is not Flamenco,
don’t mix those two up—and fall in love a little with the singer with the
sultry voice and the dancer with flowers in her hair. Dizzy with sangria, we
toast the night with tiny colorful shots with names like Harry Potter and Boy
Scout and Sex on the Beach.
Sunday is warm and beautiful and we
finally make it to the peak of a mountain, crowned with a church of stark white
stone and strangely modern furnishings. We take countless selfies with the
sprawling shape of Barcelona hundreds of feet below us, and Trina drops her
phone off a mountain. We say goodbye to Luke, Dani takes a siesta and we go off
in search of breathing spaces. We discover LARPers in the park and join in a
game or two of sword-fighting capture the flag. As night and my impending
departure come on, we traverse the pier in search of Paella, and share laughter
and gelato in the streetlamps of a looming church square.
I would send you more pictures, but I am a jealous lover. I am torn between wanting to share with the
world and to keep the secrets of my beloved close to my heart where only a few
will know them. This is the account I will leave of my love affair with
Barcelona, and I will always remember fondly the weekend I spent lost in her.
