La musica mueve el corazon

Why does certain music always pull at my "heart strings"? Music, more than a lot of other sensory modes, triggers unpredicated memories for me. Right now I'm listening to the soundtrack from El Laberinto del Fauno, which has me constantly on the verge of tears. It's almost as if I can only listen to it when I'm feeling particularly sentimental and just want to give in and have a good cry. Part of the reason this is happening is the associations I have with the experiences of that movie--first in Spain, where I just saw it randomly with Roberto and had no expectations and was blown away; in that instance, of course, I was thinking in Spanish, living, breathing in Spanish. It just had a different feeling. Then there's the actual power of the story, of the images, acting, music, all that. It's so beautiful. So, then I saw it again a couple of weeks ago with Enoch, Mom, and John...of course, there were subtitles. There were members of my family. There were giant buckets of popcorn everywhere and people blathering in English all around me. So the set-up was different, but as soon as I settled into the movie I was back in Spain, thinking in Spanish, loving those characters, all of it. And something about the music...Guillermo del Toro just knew where to put the right type of music to make me shudder with sobs. It sounds terrible, perhaps, but anyway. It just felt so inexplicably good to cry like that, to not be able to control my breathing and feel that swell in my throat and just have all the feeling squeezed out of me until I'm exhausted. I miss Spain. I miss playing music, too. And I kind of wish that this country had a rich, terrible, overwhelming history the way Spain does, with its hidden twists and periods of unrecorded mystery.

collapsing memory

I think a good direction for this blog-ish thing is to sketch out my interjected traces of memory: those random points amidst an activity that suddenly remind one of a memory, and the reason for it can't quite be pinpointed. Whether or not it's a procrastination device for my unconscious, it still seems like a valid thing to record.

I say this because I'm in the middle of Part Three to Thus Spoke Zarathustra, reading about the great city that the "foolish ape" of Zarathustra is trying to dissuade him from entering:

"Here all the blood flows putrid and lukewarm and spumy through all the veins; spit on the great city which is the great swill room where all the swill spumes together. Spit on the city of compressed souls and narrow chests, of popeyes and sticky fingers--on the city of the obtrusive, the impudent, the scribble- and scream-throats, the overheated ambitious-conceited--where everything infirm, infamous, lustful, dusky, overmusty, pussy, and plotting putrefies together: spit on the great city and turn back!"

I've yet to witness Zarathustra's response, but that isn't the point. The memory that popped into my head somehow emerged out of the thick haze of that passage, combined with the Sufjan Stevens wafting through the room, I suppose.

The memory:

I just emerged from my Spanish Theatre final on a weekday in mid-December. It's a Thursday, so all I have left in terms of obligations for the semester is my Spanish final the next day, and I've already studied plenty. Because I don't have an unlimited Metro pass this month, I'm trying to conserve my tickets and walk as much as possible, and today is one of those now-rare days of Spanish-style Indian summer; the juxtaposition of the singing birds and green grass with the lavish Christmas street decorations is a strange one, tempered by the soothing, crisp freshness of the winter air. Since I've finished the exam early, in less than an hour, I think I'll walk home. I'm on a(n odd) mission: to find THE chuches store. ("Chuches" = spanish gummy candies.) It's the store by Lorena's house, that we went to back in the days before I was able to put all my observations and experiences down into returnable memory, so I have this vague feeling of the neighborhood and the street and the storefront. I just want those chocolate-filled bear cookies. And maybe some chuches for my family.

I emerge into the bright sunlight, assess my corner-torn map briefly, and set off down the Calle Princesa and the Avenida de Reyes Catolicos. I decide to take the most direct, yet the most weaving, route across the northwest corner of the city from campus toward the Quevedo area. What music am I listening to? I don't remember. It doesn't matter. I walk down tree-lined streets I've never seen before, occasionally checking my map to see that I'm going the right way. My stride is at its most confident; after all, I've been working up to this all semester long. Roasted chestnuts magazine stands cafe con leche, all whirring by as I take each step. Finally I get to "the neighborhood," but there are six streets branching off the Plaza! Which one is it?! I decide to try each one, going a block down and doubling back up the other side. TONS of "tiendas de alimentacion" and even "frutas secas" but no chucherias and certainly not the one I'm looking for. Should I just get on the Metro and go home? What have I got to do today, anyway?

Walking is better. Cheaper. My one-euro walk, it has value. I turn down the Calle de la Castellana, the historic artery of the west side, covered with holiday dazzle and sculpted parks. Down there on the left, there's my internship, that I'll never see again. Swanky boutiques, hole-in-the-wall cafeterias, streetside benches deep in conversation, I weave through them all to get to Juan Bravo, which will lead me straight home. Little do I know that I have to go under the Castellana bridge, through an open-air sculpture garden that I've never seen, in order to emerge on the other side, familiar territory. Stores of every kind whiz by, I'm wearing my conspicuous large white-framed sunglasses that are by now broken, and of course my flats. My legs are happily burning and buzzing in activity, and I want to stop on every corner to buy that dress, that coat, those boots...but I'm out of money, and I don't have chuches, what do I do? (I stop at the Alonso Martinez metro chucheria later that night, that's what I do! What a relief.)

I walk through my apartment door: Keats is just waking up. Complaining about her work, her internship assignment, her slothness. Well, after a two-hour tour of the city, I eat clementines. Three. And then? I leave again. I'll be gone in three days, who knows when I'll be back, I can't just leave the city there unexplored. A more than slightly mundane story, but vivid and fresh-smelling. That memory will probably never be as fresh as the first time it re-enters my being.

Was that really my life? How do these segments of time, these moments, create a continous line of existence?

The smell of fresh bread and flowers

After settling back into the grind that is Grinnell, I'm still noticing this strange void that permeates everything I do here. I don't want to slap some senioritis excuse onto it, or blame Iowa for anything. But I'm quite sure that it comes from the rude juxtaposition of Europe and America (can you believe it?). In Madrid, as well as in London, Amsterdam, Paris, and all the places I've gone across the pond, of course there's that element of excitement that sparks the air and every step I take; after all, these are big, cosmopolitan, and famous cities. But something about the grand buildings and the ridiculously maze-like streets combined with the air of compassionate indifference imbued in its people make Europe a very sensorially-indulgent place. There are so many scents flying around everywhere, people rushing by in a whirlwind of conversation, pockets of grungy cafeterias and swanky bistros, ornate hotels next to worn-down wrought-iron gates. I like the interplay of old and new, of chic and modest, of buzzingly fast-paced and yogic calmness. It provides people-watching at its best, especially on those days when I decide to walk down Alcala in Madrid and stop for a cafe con leche at a little corner cafe, where everyone stands at the bar with their coffee and the door is constantly revolving. I can stare out the window at the matronly housewives taking their sweatered dogs around town, or I can sit back and listen to the daily buzz of people's lives around me. Then I can duck down a little avenue and run into a tienda de jamon, a leg-of-ham shop, where the attendant scrambles around weighing kilos of cured pig for women in white sunglasses and lace-up boots. On a Thursday, I might take a night train to Cuenca or Sevilla, wander around another new town for a day, run into some crazy twentysomethings outside a club and join them for flamenco and caipirhinis. After class on Monday, I bid my petite and model-featured brunette friend goodbye as she throws on her helmet and jets down the street in her Vespa. My confident walk and icy stare shoot down, yet appreciate, the blunt honesty of the men I walk by on the way to my office. I grab a sandwich of tortilla de patatas, linger at Loewe's new wedding-gown display, and head upstairs to translate a project proposal and join a lunch meeting.

Things I wish I had done:

1. Kept a travel blog. I wrote in my journal constantly, but I should have also created a space just for my observations and experiences.

2. Mixed it up over a summer or two during college--I feel like my resume and academic background lacks variety that would bode well for grad school aspirations.

3. Taken more leadership initiative at the beginning of college, like joined student government or ftp.

Anyway, it's not the end of the world. And it's a real eye-opener to have my peers, some of whom also majored in philosophy, had a steady job, and just generally did well academically, are now getting into Columbia and Berkeley law schools. I guess there's something to be said for Grinnell after all. Nothing wrong with a little quaint rigor.