Bass in Rothko Chapel

Yesterday, I went to the National Gallery of Art. It had started raining outside. Trees were in bloom. I started in the west building, where I saw some impressionist works. I'm trying to recall which ones they were. Toulouse-Lautrec: people in ill-lit nightclubs, in-profile, faces puffy and fatigued, bored by routine at the very place people go to avoid boredom. Glancing at some cubist paintings I was reminded of something Jonathan Goldstein said on Wiretap... Lingering at portraits of the founding fathers by Gilbert Stuart (recalling a particularly idiotic comment by somebody who called in tonight to a debate on NPR about healthcare reform, who claimed that the founding fathers were men of genius, and that he didn't care what law scholars said about anything, and that the founding fathers really knew what freedom was, and that the government was somehow violating his freedom... and a particularly lucid call from somebody else, suggesting that much of the opposition to the Obama administration is race-related... ) a small painting by... Whistler (?) of a street scene in Venice; a 20th century painting of Mount Khatadin by somebody whose name I can't recall, the clouds in the same purplish-grayish-blue palette as the mountain... and then red and orange of the autumn leaves, and a lone pine tree at the edge of a pond...

Then I came to Rothko.

Why do I like Rothko? I wish I could state this concisely, but at a quarter to one in the morning... I guess it's the fact that those later paintings, the ones that are just compositions of rectangles are so emphatically non-representational. And they seem so absolute. Rothko is not trying; he is succeeding... nothing seems to be standing between Rothko's expression and the viewer's reception. We are not impressed by virtuosity or effects of any sort... the works seem nearly artless, the soft edges and textures suggestive of improvisation and meditation, experimentation without the zealousness of Mondrian, for instance.

I feel apologetic for liking Rothko.

But I don't want to talk about that.

In the tower of the National Gallery, there was a sort of reproduction of Rothko Chapel. There were the paintings: enormous canvases of black squares on black backgrounds. The Morton Feldman composition was playing over some speakers. Watching one of the canvases, in the same way one watches a cloud, I guess, I noticed something that seemed, at that moment, uncanny: the figure of a man at the edge of a deep pit: Rothko's self-portrait, the artist contemplating his impending suicide. And I wondered whether the paintings were supposed to be open to these sorts of ridiculous interpretations, whether Rothko had considered that onto his works, the viewer would, if only for a moment, impose some absurd idea of representation: a landscape, a window, Dante (or Orpheus?), ...

Perhaps I like Rothko because he can't possibly disappoint. The stakes are so low, the elements so reduced. Nobody should waste time on something so obvious. Why should anybody waste time on anything less absolute?

I was in the middle of writing this two days ago when I went out to have a drink with my hosts for Saint Patrick's day:

I'm in Madrid, and this is my last night in Spain.

The day was sunny and temperate. I got up earlier than usual, and went to have breakfast with my friend Gina underneath the office building where she works, in Nuevos Ministerios.

Later, I walked across the city to see Juan Álvarez about a new guitar case. Arriving and found his shop closed until 5:00 pm.

I went to the Prado and the Reina Sofía in the evening, when both museums offer free admission.

Now, I'm at home in Berryville, Virginia. There's much to write about my last day in Madrid- something brief about weather; something much longer about Goya and all the paintings I had left too little time to see.

I'm still here.

The apartment smells almost like a bar:

cigarette smoke, stale a priori

and inexpensive alcohol.

I'm still here:

I have not gone to Asturias.

I have not gone to Barcelona.

I have not gone to Malaga.

I have not gone to Vienna.

I have not gone to Berlin.

I will not make the trip across France to London to fly back.

I will leave in the mid-morning on a plane to New Jersey.

5:00 pm: Setting out in a hurry for the mountain, spend some time walking in the shadows of the old stone buildings, on rough cobblestones, under a Roman arch. Walking down by the synagogue, I smell woodsmoke, and it reminds me of Andalucia five years ago, Mathis and Miriam and I, coming back from collecting a powdery white clay for the roof of a stone house, passing olive and orange and almond trees in the dry afternoon sunlight

5:15 pm: fields of yellow wildflowers, now with a few purple ones here and there, the snows of the Sierra de Gredos hovering just above the horizon, only two visible, nearly mistaken for clouds, neglected; I stop to watch a horse, and he begins to trot towards where I'm standing, the wildflowers padding his hooves, hiding the movement of his legs so it looks like he's floating towards me in slow motion.

5:45 pm: I stop to Look out over Caceres again. The city, dense and compact, stretched out in a ribbon along the hills. Nothing has happened. I arrived here two months ago, and before the week is up I'll be gone, and nothing will have happened. Some guitarists came here a couple of times, and I was with them. What is there to say: the city is there, I am here?

6:00 pm: The road must continue past the overlook, too crowded on a Saturday with cars and Spaniards. For awhile, it becomes a trail, the wildflowers growing in close, defining the edge of the road.

6:15 pm: Greeted close to the end of the road by a couple and their dogs. "Do they bite?", I call. "No, they just eat.", the woman calls back. Then onwards to a TV tower, where the path joins up with a motor road that heads down, and surely doubles back someplace. I'm too thirsty to push on. A gate to a property: olives and scrub oaks, some children playing in the yard. I turn back towards the overlook and the church.

6:30 pm: The first time I saw the mountain, I made some assumptions. There was a cluster of whitewashed buildings on top: one of these must be a chapel, I thought. Even from that distance, it was possible to discern a statue of Jesus ("I shall reign in Spain," proclaimed a plaque on the door to the chapel of the old manor house in Asturias that I won't be visiting now.). Since this was Spain, there also had to be a bar of some sort. at six thirty I entered the bar, and ordered a long shot of espresso with some milk, and a glass of water. I sat in a corner where I could look out onto a domed alter, and beyond, to the city, where, in the narrow streets filled with noisy vehicles and their exhaust, evening had already set in. I took out my notepad and started to write this.

7:45 pm: I walk under some arches, and out into the plaza mayor. Somebody revs a scooter. People are beginning to come out into the street. The last light of dusk turns the sky into a dome. Through a third-story window, I'm surprised to see a girl playing a violin. A string quartet is rehearsing. I stand under the window, but all I catch is a single note.

The digits in the upper right hand corner of the computer screen are climbing towards 1:00 am. I started to write, "the clock is turning towards 1 am," but where is the clock, exactly? There are also some numbers on my cell phone that represent the time in peninsular Spain, although they run over a minute behind the computer. Sometimes, getting up from my chair to go to bed, I say to myself "I am not my computer." The predictable formula for book titles resounds in my brain as I turn the corner from Calle Pintores towards my apartment: "My Computer, Myself," to which could be added something to the effect of: "a memoir".

Or, "a blog".

I'm planning my trip to Madrid, if you could call anything I do "planning". My roommate says to me, "Tú das mucha vuelta."

"You think too much."

Sometimes, it's genuinely exciting to read music. Today, I listened to one of Mozart's Haydn Quartets, and read along. Can you guess which one?

Last night, I slept in the other room, where I could plug in a small heater. At 11:30, I dragged myself out of bed. I opened the curtain, and was momentarily stunned by the brightness of day.

The sky was completely clear: an incredibly intense blue, and not a cloud in sight all day. Cáceres began to resemble its promise. The city seemed to have built for this sort of sky. Still, it was too cold.

Several people have reiterated to me the customary saying about Extremadura: "Es muy extrema y muy dura." (It's very extreme and very hard.) My assumption was that on arrival, this saying would prove misleading. Nobody who says that has actually been to Extremadura, I thought. Now, I'm certain that there's some truth to the saying.

The name Extremadura is the Spanish word that translates to "extremity," which I thought was more of a reference to its location on the Portuguese border than anything else. Nevertheless, there always seem to be many reasons for particular names. Or once named, does something begin to resemble its name? A rose by any other name, yes, but...

I wandered up to the Plaza de Italia, where, in the furthest distance, I could see the Sierra de Gredos: a band of pale white hovering above the plains, the contours of the mountains barely legible against the sky.

I've become nocturnal. Awake till 2:30 or so, writing or playing guitar, and then up at 11:00 in the morning. I've moved to the smaller bedroom. There's a lightbulb with a yellow-ish chinese lampshade, a wardrobe and a nightstand made out of cheap plywood, and a cot. The walls are the same sea-green as the other bedroom, although here there's been some careless work- a few spatters of plaster. I might be watching too many movies, but there's something cinematic about the room at night, as if it captured the essence of a particular kind of poverty.

There's a window with opaque glass patterned with rectangles and ovals, and there are two panes on the upper part, tinted red and blue. There are two wooden shutters that open inwards, an ingenious design for windows that receive too much afternoon sun at siesta time, but out of place in this tiny interior room. There are no electrical outlets in the room, and therefore no heat. It smells musty in there, although not entirely disagreeable. Sometimes, it recalls the vaguely sweet scent of an old book. The disagreeable part is the dampness, lending the bedroom all the ambience of an unfinished basement, the impression reinforced by the absence of any direct sunlight. At night, I close the shutters, and the room becomes pitch black. In the morning, I open my eyes, and a dim, diffuse light outlines the shutters and the crack in the door, which, warped by the humidity, doesn't close all the way. I reach for my cell phone, calculating what time it might be before I look. There's no way of knowing whether I've woken up on my recent schedule (around 11:00, as I mentioned), or whether something else has caused me to wake up early.

I spend most of the day in the living room, ironically called "el salón" in Spanish. Now that I think about it, "living" room may not be a great term either. Slightly ironic as well, I suppose. Or maybe I'm being harsh. Nevertheless, no room so dark should be painted such a deep shade of purple. The salon does have the virtue of being one of two rooms (the bathroom being the other) to receive any direct sunlight. A genuine ray of light may enter, clouds permitting, at any time during the late morning or the early afternoon.

Meanwhile, the bathroom becomes ideal for showering around 11:00, when, standing in a bathtub with a clogged drain, I can feel some actual sunlight while I look at the pattern of colored circles on the cheap shower curtain. Luckily, the water heater might be the only dependable appliance in the entire apartment.

I'll leave a little jade plant here, which I transferred to a clay flowerpot that sits on the windowsill outside the bathroom window. Each day, I open the window and peer out to the right, where I can see an ornately-tiled patio lined with a few potted plants struggling through this unusually damp winter. I look back down at the jade plant, growing imperceptibly, indifferent.

I left the apartment because I was trying to think more clearly, but let's face it: I also needed an excuse to drink a cup of coffee.

It was raining again.

It's been raining all day.

Since I'm in Spain but not in Galicia, I assume that, by default, the rain does not call for a umbrella. In Santiago, I had a sturdy umbrella with a curved wooden handle. I used it for a year or two until I forgot it on the second floor of the VCU auditorium, where it was promptly appropriated.

I can now say that the rain today did indeed call for an umbrella, but that I went out into it several times without one.

Arriving at the cafe around a quarter to seven, I could tell from the crumpled napkins and empty sugar packets that I had missed a large crowd. Spaniards tend to arrive at their cafes in waves: the first and largest wave occurs between 10 and 12, the second between 4 and 6. When I arrived, there were still some stragglers: a heavy-set older man drinking a beer, and another playing the gambling machine next to the bar. I ordered a coffee, and sat down to write in a little orange notepad. The television was turned to a channel that began showing music videos by Julieta Venegas, and later switched to reviews of video games. As usual, there was nothing to write.

I kept writing anyway.

I wrote that my book about Spain would be called "Winter in Galicia". Ironically, the action of the book would take place in Extremadura, Galicia serving as a reference to the extraordinarily rainy weather. According to a local newspaper, this is the rainiest winter since 1947. The presence of "Galicia" would also recall my former, far more picturesque stay in the Iberian Peninsula, when, around this time of year 5 years ago, I herded sheep on a small farm just north of the Portuguese border.

Afterwards, I stopped by the grocery store, where I bought 3 oranges, a package of cookies, a can of garbanzos, and the cheapest wine available that still came in a glass bottle. The wine cost 99 cents, with a small label near the base of the bottle that reads "Viña Enseña", which can be translated-with some poetic license-to "the vine teaches". The label actually refers to the name of the vineyard. I thought that "Enseña" could be the name of a place somewhere in Extremadura, and when I entered the text "enseña extremadura" into Google, the first link on the list of results was an article that began:

El placer está en tus manos. Así ha llamado el Consejo de la Juventud de Extremadura, dependiente de la junta gobernada desde hace décadas por el PSOE, a una campaña con la que, dicen, pretenden fomentar la masturbación entre los jóvenes.

In fact, as a noun, "Enseña" translates to "insignia", not the most obvious cognate.

Meanwhile, the name of the grocery store is "Tambo". Tambo is also the name of a number of small towns in Ecuador (and other places within the Inca empire) because it was the Inca term for an outpost, which, according to Wikipedia, was established every 20 or 30 kilometers along main roads.

Once again, it's gotten too late to call a guitarist from Málaga I've been meaning to call for the past two days. Then again, will I go to Málaga? I said I'd call, anyhow.

I've resumed writing after 40 minutes, and it's now definitely too late to call. My excuse: "I was writing, and I lost track of time." Anyway, what exactly am I supposed to say when my plans continue to evolve each day? Besides, I remind myself (or delude myself by thinking that) in Spain, as much as my mind struggles with the concept, mañana is a flexible term that seems to mean: a time in the future when something has happened that will have changed the current situation. It may also be necessary to observe that while el mañana means tomorrow, la mañana means morning. Accordingly, this can be interpreted to mean that mañana was historically an indication of an indeterminate future, meaning roughly "you know, in the morning, or tomorrow, or whenever". Only the two words together, i.e. "Mañana por la mañana", refer to a specific period of time, tomorrow morning.

In the grocery store, I noticed some American university students. As I passed by, I felt as if I should say something: Oh, I'm American too. Where are you all from? But reflexively, I turned my gaze elsewhere, and hurried towards the wine section. Why?

There doesn't seem to be anything to write.

Earlier, when I was drinking coffee, I thought there was something to write.

The television is on: an American-style crime series called Hombres de Paco, which my roommate is watching while eating an assortment of deep-fried foods.

I'm hoping to sleep tonight. I received an unexpected email requesting my presence at the university tomorrow. All I know is that it has something to do with my tuition money, for which I was certain I'd turned in all the necessary documents.

I walked out of town again today, arriving at a small neighborhood of austere one-story houses with tiled walls and patterned blankets hanging in front of the doors. The streets were nearly empty, bare concrete trailing into fields dotted with wildflowers. A fence enclosing one of the fields had been mended by the a rusted front panel of an ancient kitchen stove.

This weekend: Madrid.

weather

Up by 11:00 or so. Coffee and a piece of toast in a crowded bakery a few blocks away.

I took all my things out of my room yesterday. Somebody was moving in, taking my place. She showed up with all her luggage, left, returned five minutes later, said her boyfriend didn't like the place (too old, brothel across the street), and left.

On Saturday, there had been incredibly strong gusts of wind. Doors opening or closing suddenly, clouds skittering across the sky. Yesterday, you could see dirt strewn on the streets from toppled flowerpots, wayward leaves.

I'll stay in Cáceres till the end of the week, putting up flyers, waiting for somebody to call.

Visits to a couple of offices: an accountant at the university (It's going to take longer than we thought, the director has to write another report.), the police (You can stay in Spain until April 30th, or you can request a visa extension.).

I walked through the new part of the city, looking up at apartments with sunny corner balconies and plants.

Stopped at a cafe, and had a coffee (un café con leche, largo de café).

I picked up the guitar today, and played a fragment of a variation from Fernando Sor, trying to listen.