rosette

I'm going to get up now to go for a walk.

I've been restraining myself from playing the guitar.

I can imagine the rosette: a simple, geometrical mosaic of two muted browns surrounding the opening in the top of the guitar, but I can't imagine making any music now.

My hands are too cold anyhow, but that's not why I can't play.

I haven't been able to assemble the puzzle of elements that constitute this new technique.

The new technique requires an incredible amount of work, and the incredible amount of work requires an assuredness that the work will not have been in vain.

I'm going to leave the apartment, and walk around the city for awhile, to convince myself that anything is worth doing.

pile of guitars

This building is the just the same as other buildings at other Spanish universities: a half-empty shell of a place, too big for its occupants, a project for an architecture degree: the ramps too long, doorways that lead to unused patios. Students and professors appear abruptly in the midst of a lone class. Peer through the doors of a room labeled "library", and there are a few unoccupied tables and chairs. The building is not entirely disagreeable: it has windows, walkways. Really, a building made acceptable by its windows, and by the people who inhabit it. In Spain, like in Latin America, the people who work in buildings like this seem to live here. Of course they work as well, but there's something more. In the cafeteria, we watched from our uncomfortable silences as the cooks and the waiters sat down to an idyllic meal. Somebody's family members had arrived. There was a basket of bread on the table, some olives; an old woman was bringing out a pot of beans and chorizo.

Phone call from Madrid. We switch to English after the first few exchanges. My Spanish has gone with my nerves, perhaps. The other students are in the near distance now, standing by the door, a few smoking. From this distance, the guitars appear to be in a pile. By the edge of the building, I've found an almond tree, and a patch of yellow wildflowers. Vision wandering as I listen to the voice of my friend arriving from an office building in Madrid, I notice that the tree still has almonds on it, some of them still in the decayed, blackened shells, others shriveled or rotting in the open air. I think, no students have come to pick them this season. Along the road, a few people are leaving the dorms carrying weekend luggage. The dorms, a diagonal row of four or five new, empty apartment buildings, are out at the beginning of a vast field where sheep come to graze from time to time, just past an old, ruined farmhouse. I stoop to pick a small yellow wildflower, scrape the stem for a scent, and drop it back into the weeds.

mirror

There's a round mirror on one of the walls in my room. It's held in place by four nails that were placed in a square, and bent in at right angles. Between the lower right-hand nail and the mirror, I've wedged a postcard that I found in Charlottesville, at a bookshop on the ground floor of the old Albemarle Hotel. Most days, there are three racks of postcards outside the shop. Some of the postcards have been there for a long time, and have faded or torn. I stopped there one day to buy a postcard for somebody. I bought one with a photograph of a man sharing a bench with a small elephant, and sent it to an address somewhere on the coast of Washington state. Another postcard caught my eye, because it reminded me of some dolls that a friend was making in Ecuador out of wool and ceramic. I thought I might send it to her, approximating an address and hoping for the best. Then it occurred to me she may have left already, and I decided to keep the postcard. It's a painting of 8 different kachina dolls. The colors are mostly faded reds and still-dark blues, offset with white, and touches of black and turquoise here and there, against a parchment-colored background. I can't decide why postcards and mirrors go well together. Maybe the overlay of images is attractive, or maybe there aren't many noticeable places to wedge the edges of postcards into, but I suspect that it's mostly so that when you look into the mirror, you have the image there to distract you, or to accompany you in some way.

walk

I took an unexpected walk this afternoon. The phrase that kept running through my head as went was that I was taking the proverbial walk into the Spanish countryside, which really refers to when I lived in Santiago de Compostela, and found it surprisingly easy, having chosen the right street, to simply walk out of the city and into something more or less agricultural. Finding the right street takes time. Today, after several weeks here, I was wandering through the old part of town, thinking about the guitar program, when I realized that I was probably close to the old Jewish neighborhood.

Before long, I found a winding alley with with an historical marker on an adjacent wall that read: Barrio Judío. I followed the alley, and ended up at the top of a steep slope. Heading downhill was a another alley that led to some whitewashed houses. Most of the medieval quarter is bare stone, mortar, brick, or adobe (from the old moorish fortifications). I had passed this alley before, but I must have thought then that it led to private property. Today it looked different, so I went down the rough cobblestone steps, and emerged into a tiny, whitewashed plaza lined with vaguely exotic plants. This was the site of the old synagogue, part of which had been rebuilt into a hermitage. I imagined that the massive columns of the porch were once part of the interior of the synagogue, and that perhaps an incongruous, nearly keyhole-shaped window had perhaps been part of the older building as well. From there, I descended into a small park with some olive, fig, and almond trees, and profusely flowering rosemary bushes.

Visible on the hillside across from the medieval quarter, was a road that switchbacked up the hill towards an outcropping of rocks. There were some horses there, grazing in the wild mustard. This was the proverbial road into the countryside. A short while later, I had made my why across a small stream and up the road, which appeared to lead towards the summit of a small mountain, on the top of which was the obligatory religious destination. The sidewalk was laid with neat bricks. I continued uphill, stopping to gaze at the old part Cáceres, as it flattened out into a jumbled pattern of buildings, palms, and citrus trees. Reaching the top of the hill, I was buffeted by a strong wind. I could look out onto the vast, empty plains on one side, and the whole extent of the city on the other. A horse was grazing in a field bordered by rough slabs of rock. The ground was water-logged, and the wild mustard rose here and there out of glassy pools of water. In the distance, magnified by perspective, the sprawl of high-rises appended onto the ancient town, and a sky crowded with oversized clouds and sunbeams. On the other side of the road, a few small almond trees were in bloom. I continued towards the summit.

F minor

I'm listening to Brahms, the Sonata in F minor, opus 120 number 1. I've never listened much to Brahms, but that may change, judging from this.

The sun is shining outside, reflecting off the walls of the building opposite mine, incidentally, a brothel, or something similar. There is a sign, hanging from a defunct balcony, which reads "Pinguino II" next to the stylized representation of a penguin. The balconies were once elegant, glassed-in with ornate iron work. The main balcony has a sort of crown on it, with little wrought-iron flourishes, and star-shaped panes of blue glass.

Walking down Calle Busquet, a block away, you can see the medieval part of the city in dramatic relief, but from my window all that's visible is the brothel, a crude mosaic of rooves and walls, a rusty television antenna, an apartment building on Calle de Sánchez facing towards the sun, and a large-enough patch of sky traversed at times by flocks of small, dark birds.

Bass in Spain

There is a lot to write, and I'm writing some of it now.

The time is 7:30 pm, although by the time I finish writing, it will be later.

I am in Extremadura.

See

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/hsmith/autobiography/harry.html

If I had a camera I might take some photographs.

I am in a small room with sea-green walls, red and white hexagonal tiles on the floor, a few cheap pieces of furniture. This is my room for the month, in a dilapidated building on Calle Parras, a narrow street about which the only good thing that can be said is that it's in the center of town. Before it became part of a major route for cars and buses, it must have been very pleasant, like the streets that run parallel to it on either side. Now, after a month here, I can safely declare that Calle Parras, or this stretch of it, is no longer fit for human habitation.

I am here to study classical guitar.

Once a month, a handful of guitarists congregate here to receive instruction from one of the best guitarists in the world.

For the moment, I am among that handful of guitarists.

Needless to say for those readers familiar with Cáceres, I plan to move to Madrid next month.

It's uncertain how long I'll stay here in Spain, so perhaps now is not the best time to start a blog. Or has the possibility of departure reminded me of my intention to keep a blog while here?

I've been watching El sol del membrillo, about Antonio López, the Spanish figurationist painter, trying to portray the quince tree in the backyard of his studio in Madrid.

I've been working intermittently on some some studies by Villa-Lobos (numbers 6 and 7, from the manuscript), and Sonata opus 25 by Fernando Sor.

There is general agreement that it has never rained this much in Cáceres.