I find myself at one of those times when there are many different "threads" running around in my head, vying to be considered as blog fodder, but... they all feel a bit background. As if none of them are strong enough to be the backbone of a whole post.

But hey, I like writing this blog, and there are at least a few of you out there who like to read it, so what the hell.

• I continue to be fascinated by "the urban experience". In other words, what it feels like, for me, to be here in a city after so long in the hinterland. And also, how people size each other up in the urban space; how people "read" each other (which ironically sort of just means "make snap judgments about each other"). Much of my interest in this topic tends to break down along the "tourist / non-tourist" divide because, I suppose, I can't quite tell where I fall on that spectrum. Also, there is a vibrant anti-tourism strain running through the public discourse here, which probably adds to my interest in the question.

I find myself highly tuned in to the subtle signs that mark a person as an "outsider," and semi-constantly trying to guess how I am evaluated by others. In some ways (and on some days) I don't care, and in other ways and other days it is of course nice to blend in a little. Especially when this

and this

are very common sentiments.  (Sorry for the horrible picture.. wow it's really hard to take a picture on an escalator! The sticker says "Tourism Kills The City" and features a skull with crossed selfie sticks) 

If you can manage to avoid wearing stupid sports-related clothing or neon colors and being 80 pounds overweight, the indicators can get a bit more subtle. I find that a person's eye-line, facial expression, and gait can be very good indicators. Basically, if you're walking with a purpose while sporting a serious or preoccupied look on your face, chances are you won't be mistaken for a tourist. It's all very subtle, but endlessly fascinating.

Interestingly, Spaniards don't really wear hats. I've been told that my hats mark me out as a foreigner. So, in light of the fact that I do like hats, this is a choice I have to make on a daily basis - influenced not only by the amount of sun or rain I expect to encounter but also whether I care about "standing out".

• The anti-tourism sentiment is strong. While most parts of the world would kill for some tourist dollars, a few select locations have too much of a good thing. Venice has been pilloried for becoming a theme-park version of it's former actual self (there are no more Venetians in Venice, apparently) and there is genuine fear that Barcelona is heading down the same path. Tourism has grown tenfold in ten years. The new mayor Ada Colau was elected in large part on the strength of her pledges to do something about the problem (HERE is a great interview). Several people I know who have lived here for over a decade are very alarmed and do in fact believe the city is being degraded. Even I can see the difference between the city now and the city I have visited in the past (I can still remember the animal sellers on the Ramblas, gone now in part because they don't fit tourist sensibilities...)

• Cataluña is an interesting place in a historical and cultural sense, because it's a country within a country, and by the looks of things 40% - 50% of Catalans are not too happy about that. Cataluña has its own culture, its own economy, its own flag, and perhaps most importantly its own language. Franco tried to stamp all that out, and while it seemed as if he had some success during those years, it seems more accurate to say that it just went underground. The language is back with a vengeance. Even if your Spanish is really good, you'll still always be something of an outsider in Cataluña if you don't speak Catalan.

There is apparently a referendum coming up in which Catalans will vote on independence from Spain. The vote is not officially recognized by Madrid, and will not have any real effect, as I understand it. It's a strange  time to be here, and it will be interesting to see how it unfolds. This particular sign appeared one day across the metro system, and was gone one or two days later. Hmmm...

This sign has been around, in the metro, for weeks. Clearly, it's a message in favor of "YES, lets divorce from Spain." It's a bit hard to see, but someone wrote "NO" in sharpie below the "Sí", and then someone else erased it.

A typical scene here in Barcelona. Tour groups below multiple different flags and banners in favor of independence. The Catalan flag with the white star on a blue triangle stands for Independence.

Future blog topics

• Urban Filter

• The passage of time, and perception thereof

• The graphic symbol of Barcelona

• My sculptures (which are coming along)

OK, we are off the Venice in less than an hour, to see the Biennale. Hasta la vista

So, Christina has headed back to the States for a few days to help our good friend Shay put the Hand of Man into a shipping container for transport to Maker Faire Berlin. Interestingly enough, even though I am not there, just talking to her on the phone and listening to her first impressions about being back in the States has brought a few things into focus about why we are really here, and what we are trying to do. Her impressions of being in New Mexico go something along the lines of... It's big, it's beautiful, and we have really built a little piece of paradise out there on the mesa.

We have tried so hard here in Spain to find a decent place to do some work, a metal shop, and have consistently come up short. It would be a long story to detail how and why these efforts have failed, but suffice to say that we have not seen a single decent working shop, and certainly not one that we could get involved with. In contrast, Christina steps into our shop in Taos, and her first thought is… Oh my god what an amazing shop we have - we could build anything here. It's hard not to feel a little discouraged about how difficult it is here sometimes. But one thing we need to remember is that our lives in New Mexico, right now, are the product of over a decade of work trying to perfect the lifestyle that we want. And here… We are starting from scratch. So it brings into clearer relief the question - why exactly are we here? What are we doing? The truth is that we are trying to sew the roots of a situation, a long-term situation where we can have feet in both worlds… one foot on each continent. We believe that we will be better served in the long run, and that Kodiak will be better served, if we have choices. 

 For Instance, if we take a snapshot of the world today, it's not hard to see that the health care situation in Spain is vastly superior to that in the states. We pay about €160 per month for the whole family to have comprehensive health care, with no (non-dental) copayments, and with dental coverage. And that is for a private option. State-run healthcare is of course free, once you qualify for it. I was paying twice that in the States just for myself, with copays, and no dental. (Ironically, I have partially written this post while at the dentist, where I got a filling done for a copay of €27. Every time you step into a dentist office in Taos it costs $400!) The situation here is also better with regard to income inequality, one of the main reasons that the USA is slowly going down the tubes. It's also better here in terms of political consciousness; I think the lessons of WWII and fascism are closer to the surface here and would be less easily repeated, while the US seems quite willing to go down the road of less freedom in exchange for... what, exactly? Security? Prosperity? It's not really clear to me. (Let's hope, of course, that I'm right about this... memory is short, and France might be about to vote in Marine Le Pen... so this might just be naive and wishful thinking on my part)

On the other hand, the USA has so much going for it, such as great people, wide open space, a spirit of innovation and resourcefulness, and of course our little paradise on the mesa. Personally I think Trump is a blip on the time-scape, and the hard left-leaning reaction to him that is sure to come might just end up actually making America great again in a few years.

But the point is... no one knows what the future holds. So our long term vision is to create a life where we have choices, and where Kodiak has choices.

It's hard to see that, sometimes, and hard to remember it. For me, even the thought of Christina visiting the mesa and glimpsing the life we built there brings into sharper relief the challenges we face here... I can only imagine what it feels like for her to actually be there. From the beginning I said I would be pretty happy here if I could have a workshop and a motorcycle. I have neither. Christina misses outdoor space, a workshop, and the dogs. We have none of that. Kodiak misses his friends, the ease of English, the space of Taos. In a way it's particularly tough to see Kodiak struggle, because as a parent you want nothing more than the best for your kid. It's hard sometimes, in the day to day struggles, to remember that this crazy experiment is actually all about giving him the best... it's just a "best" that is still a few years away, and hard to see right now. 

 A note on motorcycles and why I miss them: not only is riding a motorcycle one of the things I enjoy most in life (and have consistently done since age 16, back in San Francisco), but... if I had to name one thing that I've learned in the last few years, a NEW skill, that I've watched myself get better at, watched myself noticeably improve at... it would be off-road motorcycling. Although I’ve been riding for 2/3 of my life now, off-road is new. 4 years ago I was a novice, and now I’m actually pretty good. It is a rewarding feeling to pick up a new skill, and I don’t want to lose it. Figure sculpting would be in second place, I suppose, in the “new skill sweepstakes,” but I haven’t been doing it long enough to see the same degree of change. So I fantasize regularly about the Husqvarna 701, the KTM 690R, and the KTM 500 EX-C 6 Days. Ooh... that 6 Days. Maybe one day… 

The truth is that, for me, its psychologically easier not to think about our life in Taos all that much while I am here. I find it easier to try to really keep myself in the present, to try to experience the things that this place has to offer as fully as I can. Ultimately, that's the biggest reason I wanted to come here. To remember that the world is bigger than 6 acres of paradise on the mesa. And really, having the most amazing workshop in the world isn't much good if you can't figure out what to do in it. Barcelona is helping me figure that out again.

The most likely scenario now is that we will be here for another 12 months. It's really not that long. With every day that passes by it feels more and more clear that what we owe to ourselves, what we owe to Kodiak, is to give this our all. We must put everything we have into making this experience everything it could be, and at the end of it we will see where the chips fall. Isn't that how you are supposed to live every day, no matter where you are?

War

It's been a while, hasn't it?
In some ways, not that much has happened. In other ways, of course, lots has happened.

The various crises which beset us last month have resolved to varying degrees.

Kodiak's school situation is certainly better than it was a month ago. He no longer protests attending school, and seems genuinely happy at the end of the school-day, but his acquisition of Spanish continues to be slow. Either...
• his brain is different and he's not picking it up the way many 6-year olds do,
• he is rebelling in some way against being here by intentionally resisting the language,
• he is actually picking it up, but not letting on to his parents, or
• I worry too much.

Our housing situation remains unchanged. I actually have come to enjoy living in the Raval, in the city center... but I am in the minority. Christina and Kodiak both seem to want more space with less people, so I'll go with the flow. We are looking for a new place... looking in the Collserola, Gracia, maybe in Sants or Montjuic... but we haven't seen anything too inspiring yet.

Our efforts to get the Hand of Man over to Europe have resolved fairly well, although with plenty of lingering uncertainty, for good measure...
Festival A (on whom I was depending for transatlantic shipping, but who was seeming to suffer from some sort of ongoing internal implosion) ended up coming up short of what was needed to make the whole thing possible. Since Festival B (which I can now identify as Maker Faire Berlin) was saying all along that they also didn't have enough money, it looked like it was all going to fall through. When I put it in those clear terms, Maker Faire Berlin figured out how to find a bit more money. It's enough to get the piece over to Berlin, and back to Barcelona... but not back to the US! Ha ha, what a risk I am taking!! Well, I hope to book enough more shows here in Europe to get it home one day! Already there is at least one other show starting to show a bit of promise, so we will see...

All along, in this here blog, I've been talking about the idea that a place like Barcelona offers a different set of resources than a place like New Mexico, and that I hope to take advantage of those resource while here. Among the more easily identified of these resources would be things like museums and other kinds of cultural resources, educational opportunities, retail availability, the beach. But another thing you find here, as in most of Europe I would guess, is history.

About a week ago, joined by our friends Kate and Sam and Brent and Sarah, all visiting from the US, we finally took the highly recommended Barcelona Civil War Tour, offered by Nick Lloyd. It was, actually, amazing. Nick has lived in Barcelona for 25 years and is obviously passionate about its history. His tour is a walk around the old town in which the importance of various actual locations during the war is illuminated and discussed. In many instances there is extant physical evidence, such as painted signs or gunshot damage in the stone walls. He is incredibly knowledgable on the topic of the war and its prelude, and has actually written a book which I think functions something like the-tour-in-book-form, although presumably much expanded.

Bomb damage from Plaça Sant Felip Neri which killed about 3 dozen orphans, photo taken in my first weeks here in Barcelona

The tour absolutely increased my understanding of the dynamics that led to the war, as well as the history and the meaning of the war itself. Before I go any further, I must insert the following caveat: The Spanish Civil War was immensely complex, and I am sure that I am among the least qualified people to discuss it, and any comments I make are probably wrong in at least some small way. I'm not hoping to start a conversation here on Geopolitics. All I hope to do is comment on a few points that Nick's tour brought to light, and perhaps share an opinion or two.

The strongest impression I have coming away from the tour and the limited reading I've done is the immense cruelty and injustice done to the Spanish people at the hands of a small but powerful military cadre which was motivated by fear of change and fear of liberalism. Starting in 1931 Spain began a process of liberalization which included elections, typically won in those years by left-leaning candidates and causes. Although it was still a painfully hierarchical and divided country, Spain was beginning to come out of the shadow of the Monarchy and into the 20th century. Cataluña was flourishing. And then, in July of 1936, a group of battle-hardened Spanish generals, fresh from fighting in Morocco, decided they didn't like all this "communism" going on in Spain, and attempted a rebellion. The rebellion was only half successful; they took some parts of Spain but not all of it. Thus... the Civil War. This is of course a gross oversimplification, but that's basically how it started. It's crazy.

The war split the country between the right, or the Nationalists (aligned with land-owners, employers, the rich, the church, and about half the military) and the left, or the Republicans (aligned with workers, anarchists, most of the youth, and the other half of the military).

"Mujeres Libres," Republican women, from La Llibertária, a bar on Carrer Talleres

Things looked good for the Republicans initially, but it didn't last. Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy supported Franco's Nationalists generously, while the US, England, and the rest of the world refused to weigh in. Russia helped the Republicans a bit, but not officially. The Italian Air Force and the German Luftwaffe used Spain to get their pilots accustomed to dropping bombs on civilians.

Bombing of Gran Via de Corts Catalanes, Barcelona by Italian pilots, 1938, Wikipedia

So the war was won by the backwards-looking conservatives with the help of Europe's budding fascist regimes, who crushed the forward-looking liberal side, and then subjugated them for 36 years. To ensure conformity, Franco killed hundreds of thousands and outlawed every political party but his own. He famously claimed that he would kill half of Spain if he needed to. Nationalists killed in the war were given proper funerals and commemorated by plaques, fallen Republicans were buried in roadside ditches. When World War II ended, the Allies liberated Germany and Italy, but not Spain... in part because the oppressed Left in Spain was always associated with communism.

When Franco died of natural causes in November 1975, Spain transitioned easily into democracy. It seems they'd had enough of the Fascist experiment. Since that time, spaniards live by the "pact of forgetting," which is what it sounds like. It's all too painful to talk about or think about, so they consciously choose not to.

This is obviously a huge topic and I don't pretend to be an authority, but its fascinating. And it's a tribute to Nick's tour that I know as much as I do, or care. At the end of his tour, Nick is visibly wiped out; he puts so much of himself into it. Highly recommended.

From the cover of a book at Rosa de Foc, Communist Bookstore, Barcelona

Footnotes: My sources of information for this post are: Nick's tour, Wikipedia, Homage to Barcelona, and Ghosts of Spain.

Life is sometimes a....

Oh boy, one really does not feel much like blogging when things are not going quite as well.

Isn't that the way it is with all social media though? And perhaps with all social interaction? When it's one bit of exciting news after another, it feels glamorous and exciting to share it with the world. And when things feel more like a slog, why bother? Plus, it doesn't put out the right "image." (I say that tongue in cheek, with a roll of the eye - I think the skewed "image" that people put out on social media is understandable, but also "unnatural," and a main component of why people feel / bad when they spend lots of time on Facebook.)

So yeah, things have been a bit of a slog lately. It's been 10 days of dealing with 3 crises.

Crisis 1: When you have a kid, making sure the kid is doing all right is priority number one. Not only does it FEEL like it must be job number one, the truth is that there are major consequences for the family if he is not OK. Finding the right school for Kodiak has been a whole hell of a lot tougher than we'd imagined. First, we found an English/Spanish/Catalan school online that looked simply amazing - that was how they represented themselves on the web anyway. We pulled him out after exactly 10 days; it was small, strict, and depressing. Next was another trilingual school in which he fared better; at least this one had a few native English speakers and an actual playground. But after four months, it was clear that an atmosphere of strictness, punishments, rigorous classes, and a permissiveness towards bullying in the guise of "let the kids work it out" was too different from the supportive, creative, and freedom-filled education Kodiak was used to from New Mexico. It was slowly killing his spirit, and he was rebelling with growing force. Like I said, there were repercussions for the family.

So we made the tough decision to pull him out. Luckily, old friends from my teenage years in San Francisco have lived here for decades, and one of them has her daughters in a very progressive and liberal school way out in the hills at the edge of town. The big concern for the moment is that this place is NOT trilingual... Spanish and Catalan only, and Kodiak's uptake of Spanish has been slow. He has only spent about one week there so far, but the early indications are promising. Last week, while Crises 2 & 3 were unfolding, Christina and I were trading off days, spending the each entire day at his new school with him, to ease the transition. Did I mention the school way out in the middle of nowhere? One hour on public transit, each way.

Crisis 2: One learns a lot about oneself when doing a big experiment like suddenly moving to Barcelona for a year. Christina and I have each learned interesting things about ourselves. Really, this deserves its own blog post (or section thereof), but suffice to say that I am very comfortable in the heart of downtown Barcelona, and Christina is progressively unhappier here. The constant crush of people, which only threatens to get worse as summer approaches, is looking more and more like a deal-killer for her. In addition to being located in the epicenter of town, our flat also lacks outdoor space and workspace, two big strikes "against."

So, we started looking for a place to move to, and we actually found something that looked like a little paradise. Just out of town, with a garden and space to work, and strangely affordable. We fell in love. But the market is tough here - fast and competitive. So, while we spent days helping Kodiak adjust to his new school, we were also firing off emails and making phone calls trying to be the first ones in line for this cool place. In the end, we failed. Someone else got their ducks all lined up first. It was disappointing. We keep looking.

Crisis 3: But the problem that's been keeping me up at night has to do with the Hand of Man, my big mechanical car-crushing sculpture. We've been working on getting it over here for the summer festival season, and for quite a while it looked like it was going to be easy. It's important to get it over here for income reasons, as well as reasons of making connections in the festival circuit.

A certain festival I've successfully worked with in the past (let's call it Festival A) was planning on bringing the sculpture over for a festival date early in the summer, and then storing it for another date late in the summer. They have enough money to bring it over and store it, and as an incentive to Festival A I have offered that they need only pay one-way shipping, from the USA -> Europe. The big time-lag between shows meant that I could book other festivals between, thereby earning money to help pay for the return shipping. In fact I did get very advanced in my negotiations with another festival that falls between the dates of Festival A (we'll call the other one Festival B). Festival B does not have enough money to ship the piece over from the USA or store the piece for long periods of time, so Festival B can only happen due to the big shipping budget of Festival A.

Then, last week while we were dealing with Kodiak's school and trying to secure this exciting house, Festival A suddenly informed me they were cancelling their first date at the beginning of the summer. My ability to appear at Festival B is now gravely threatened, as well as any other show I might try to book during the summer. It doesn't make sense for my to simply accept Festival A's second date (at the end of the summer) because I've only asked for one-way shipping, and one show date is not enough income to pay for return shipping or storage.

For the moment, the problem is unsolved, and the whole enterprise may fail. The situation is actually significantly more complicated than I've represented; it would probably get quite tedious if I recounted all the permutations. Suffice to say that there are backup plans, and backup plans to the backup plans. There are alternative festival dates being considered for Festival A, and there are overtures being made to Festival C and Festival D, in last-minute efforts to make the whole thing happen. It's a lot of work, and it's frustrating because so much of it is out of my control. And it's risky; one-way shipping is in the neighborhood of $10,000, so a cancelled date can spell financial disaster.

And to add fuel to the fire, I am running out of time. Trans-Atlantic shipping takes about 6 weeks, and Festival B is about 7 weeks away. So anyway, I will know within a week whether this is happening or not. Will update.

__________________________________________

Well, sorry if that was boring. Life is sometimes a slog, and in the bigger picture I think it does a disservice to gloss that over. If anything, this post will be a reminder to me, when I re-read it in the future, of what this time was like. And, for those of you readers who don't have kids and/or don't have big sculptures that you are trying to ship to Europe, this post gives a glimpse of my world.

And to lighten the mood a little.....

I will return to form soon, with more posts of art, both my own art and the art that inspires me. Stay tuned.

OK, I promised in the last post that I'd publish a few pix of what I've been working on.  As I mentioned I tend to be a bit unsure of myself with this medium. I have many ideas for sculptures I'd like to sculpt, including a whole series based on a certain concept I have in mind, but I am slow and these take a long time.

This is a "portrait" (in quotes because it is not a portrait of an actual person, rather a composite from my mind) which has been in progress for quite a while. There is still something wrong with the right side of her mouth (her left side). I can't decide if I'm going to try to fix it or just call it done.

I just added the hair yesterday, in a final push to actually finish it. 

And here is the figure which I have inadvertently sculpted to look almost exactly like the other one which I sculpted many years ago. 

There is something about that pose, I guess, which is very compelling to me. 

Jorge, my sculpting teacher, has pointed out to me during class that, without meaning to, I tend to sculpt in a way which is idealized, more like a mannequin, but which is therefore also lacking in the "life" that a real person has. I can really feel the tension between these two approaches. This sculpture is basically from my mind, with a collection of random images used as reference. And it's very difficult to sculpt this way, as there is no absolute reference to use as an arbiter of whether a certain part is too big not, too small or not, angled correctly, etc. Actually the sculpting class itself embodies this tension, because in the morning we sculpt from the live model for three hours, and in the afternoon she is gone and we must sculpt from memory, which in my case is also clouded by ingrained generic anatomical awarenesses. 

I will hopefully post more of this one soon, as it is clearly not finished. 

And here is the sculpture I am working on in class. 

I think they say it's good for the brain, and the person, to try things that are difficult, that one is not too good at. And damn, that certainly applies to me and figure sculpting. I find it incredibly difficult. It is really the act of seeing, firstly, and then of making your hand control the clay in order to reproduce what you see. Then of course you must see your work, see the model again, find the differences, and correct them. It's really a lot like a control loop with error-sensing feedback, such as you might find in servo-hydraulics. But the feedback device is the eye, and the actuator is the hand. And in contrast to potentiometers, which are in a sense perfect input devices, the human eye (my eye) is not perfect. It's such an interesting process, training my eye. I get frustrated that I am not better at it.

I keep imagining using a full-body scanner to 3D scan the live model, then 3D scanning my sculpture, and allowing the computer to show me the differences, highlighted in red and blue for volumes that are too big and too small, respectively, so that I can correct them. Wow, that would be really complicated, and simultaneously really lazy. I'm sure that such an arrangement would ensure that I would not learn exactly what I am trying to learn.

My artistic output to date here in Spain also includes some maquettes (which for all intents and purposes are small sculptures, currently adorning our flat) which I have made for various festival proposals. I suppose I am somewhat superstitious, in the sense that I don't think it's appropriate to post those here as they have not all been evaluated yet for possible funding and eventual actualization.

Hasta pronto, chicos.

Jassans (again)

I had a request to show some of my finished sculptural stuff, and I guess I've been stalling long enough. I find that I am quite slow at this clay sculpting, and also rather unsure of my results... I'm sure these are reasons for my hesitating in showing it.

I promise I will show some pics in my next post. The truth is I wrote this post to include both the Jassans followup, and my sculpture pix... but it seemed too much in one post so I edited that stuff out. Soon.

So, another Jassans related story.

You may recall (and it doesn't really matter if you don't) that some weeks ago I attended a lecture about the Catalan sculptor Josep Salvadó Jassans. The lecture was in Catalan so I did not get too much of it, but it was at that lecture that I met Jorge Egea, from whom I am now taking sculpture classes. The lecture was given by an older fellow called Dr. Octavi Fullat, and he had a book available for sale at the lecture (available in either Catalan or Spanish) which I elected not to buy at that time, as the book is all words (no pictures) and Dr. Fullat is a philosopher, and a quick glance revealed it would be a dense read, in Spanish.

So, remembering that the exhibition of Jassans' work at the MEAM is scheduled to come down this Sunday, I decided to go see it one more time last Friday. While entering the museum, I noticed that Dr. Fullat's book was available in the book shop, and I decided to give it a go (I would say I'm a little more "into" Jassans now than I was then, and at only €6, why the hell not!). As I went upstairs, the first sculpture I noticed was by Jassans' teacher, Rebull. It was a sculpture of Jassans' wife, Antonia Borras.

I thought to myself... "how interesting that Rebull would have sculpted her too. She is well-represented in the museum." You might remember that I posted a photo of Jassans' wood portrait of her previously in this blog. Here is another picture of that same piece...

When I went upstairs to view Jassans' work again, I noticed even more portraits of her. I noticed her strong jaw-line, present in every sculpture.

(Please note that not all of these sculptures are credited as being portraits of her, but to me it is obvious that she was, at least, the model)

I took a few more pictures of the Jassans exhibit and headed upstairs to the 2nd floor, where I noticed that Jorge has quite a prominent presence, including these portraits which I like a lot. 

Feeling finished with the museum, I came back to the Jassans work on the 1st floor for one last look. As I meandered around, I suddenly recognized Dr. Fullat! And who was with him but... Sra. Antonia Borras! I felt like a bit of a geek as introduced myself and asked him to autograph his book. I also introduced myself to Ms. Borras and told her how much I loved her husband's work. She graciously shook my hand, and then politely moved away. Then when I mentioned my self-guided Jassans field-trip to Reus, and the fact that I was a friend of Jorge's, she came over again, even more warmly, signed my book with a lovely inscription, and invited me to her home! Wow, talk about mediterranean warmth! Yes, perhaps I'm a sculpture nerd, but it was quite exciting for me. Jorge and I have a tentative plan to visit Sra. Borras at her home some time soon.

From left to right: A sculpture by Rebull, Sra. Antonia Borras, Me, Dr. Octavi Fullat.

And yes, Dr. Fullat's book is a dense read. He explained to me that he was forced to retire at age 70, but that at 89 he is still writing and going strong. It reminded me of my grandfather Arno Ristow, who at 102 is still writing and going strong. We should all be so lucky.

Perception of the Passage of Time is Subjective

Several blog posts ago, I was discussing the topic of "tourist mind" versus "city-dweller mind." "Tourist mind," if you'll allow me these terms, is wide open. Eyes are open, ears are open, camera is at the ready. "City-dweller mind" is significantly more closed. Eyes are often shielded in some way, ears are also often occupied by headphones. This is not a mindset of absorption, but rather one of protection. And to be honest, I can understand it. Cities can be hard. Christina is having a slightly harder time living amongst all these bipedal animals than I am, but even I occasionally get fed up with the piss, the vomit, the drunks, the homeless, the police, the prostitutes, the tourists, the unfriendly shopkeepers, and the obnoxious loud-mouthed soccer-playing Turks who took over our plaza for a while there. Yes, sure, there are life-affirming and uplifting moments sprinkled in there, but having a few self-protective tools at your disposal is usually a good idea.

As documented in this blog, I felt the shift from "tourist mind" to "city-dweller mind" begin to happen to me after about 2 or 3 months here. And here is the punchline of today's post... the thing I have noticed recently and find extremely interesting: My perception of time shifted radically, also at the 2 - 3 month mark. Those first 2 or 3 months, in which everything was new and my observational capacities were turned up to eleven, moved very slowly. On any given day, I knew what I had done the day before, the week before, even the month before. I knew what I wanted to do next. I felt the days were richly full of new experience, and that time was crawling. And then... slowly... it sped up. And now it's a blur, like it usually is. What did I do yesterday? Not sure, I'll have to check my blog, or my texts.  Weird.

They say that meditation can affect the perception of time. This feels to me as if it must be related, as one of the claimed benefits of a meditation practice is an increased awareness, an enhanced perception. I can imagine that if one were to walk around perceiving everything, that time really would feel richly full and would move comparatively slowly. But can you run the gauntlet of city-center low-lives with your eyes and ears wide open, and come out the other side unscathed? My guess is that you can, but that it would require some advanced form of compassion, or perspective, or some other gift bestowed on few of us. Maybe this is why monasteries are always in the mountains.

This morning Kodiak and I were riding the metro to school. The metro is a great place to see a wide swath of humanity, and also a great place to see "city-dweller mind" on full display. Lots of sunglasses, earbuds, and closed faces. But something caught Kodiak's eye, and I looked over with him to see a young girl, perhaps 9 or 10, in a surfing stance, trying to "ride" the tumultuously moving train without holding onto anything. And she had a huge smile on her face. I told Kodiak that I love how happiness is contagious. Sure enough, he and I were smiling just watching her.

Child mind.