All the time in the world

An apology for the premature death of my blog (Tromsø, Norway)

2010-03-04T12:45:00.003+01:00

. . . and a guest writer!

But first: I'M SORRY. I've received several e-mails of blog-related concern ('Irene, your blog has been quiet, does this mean that you are in need of rescue?') and think it's time to explain myself to you, maybe-not-so-faithful-anymore readers. The past month has been full of travel, wonderful, adventurous and often cold, and I've preferred embracing real, solid objects to withering before the cold glow of a computer screen. Computers just make me feel gross. My eyes and restless nature complain. And since I probably won't have the chance again to be as disconnected from cables and satellites as I am this year, I'm taking advantage. Actually, I'll be shipping little Toby (that's my computer) home in about a week in preparation for my travels in Peru and Chile, so my blog posts will be even fewer and farther between! But I probably will never be in need of rescue. DON'T WORRY.

In the past month, I've learned to hitchhike, and have used this mode of transportation to get to Kiruna in Sweden (where I saw snowmobiles doing back flips off a jump -- did you know this was physically possible? I'm still skeptical), and Kautokeino and Alta in Norway. Kautokeino is an important Sami town (the Sami are the indigenous population of Norway, Sweden, Finland and part of Russia), and I learned there than in the Sami language, time does not go; it comes. There's always more of it, not always less. Ha! Stress! Try to get me now! I think it's a thought-worthy philosophy (language is philosophy, no?) for reasons not related to stress-bashing, too.

I also went to southern Norway. As much as it shames me to admit it, I was a passenger on board the Hurtigruten, which sounded, when Katarina and I were buying the tickets, like a romantic and adventurous and educationally valuable (for its historical background) experience but ended up being . . . a cruise. Trapped in a giant floating hotel. NEVER AGAIN. But the coast of Norway is, as the brochures claim, breathtaking, and I'm glad to have seen it. Tonight I leave for Svalbard, where I will find the global seed vault and applaud long-term planning and preservation of biodiversity (yes, I will actually clap my mittened hands, maybe also nod approvingly), and on the 13th will fly to Oslo, on the 15th to Santiago, on the 16th to Lima, and on the 17th to Cusco. Phew. So much space between my feet and the surface of the earth for so many hours!

People have featured as prominently in my life the past month as places. Kristin remains a friend, as do Abbas, Maryam and their son Salman, Fatima and her husband Armin, and Atiyeh, all of whom I met at one birthday party! Another Watson fellow, Laura Candler, visited for a few days before going up to Svalbard herself and was my hitchhiking buddy to Alta for a few days after, and the time I spent with her was just wonderful. (She's the guest writer, and if you're sick of this dry update, you should jump ahead to the italicized work of art below.) The people who picked me up when I was hitchhiking were all great -- so generous, so kind, soooo talkative -- and, if there weren't over fifteen of them, I'd list and describe them all. Katarina and I stayed for a night with Jessica, whose blog I referenced in my last post, in Bergen, and we talked Minnesotan to each other. Who else can I mention? Surely I'm forgetting several dozen people.

I've grown to love Norway, and not just its government (the one that takes care of its people!), which awed me at first, but also its inhabitants and mountains and weather and celestial spectacles of light, and the way people gasp in assent -- this last merits explanation. Months ago, I was talking with an elderly woman who, every few seconds, would inhale sharply between sentences. 'The weather has been nice recently -- (GASP!!) -- Looks like it's going to snow again, though.' My first thought was that she might have some sort of breathing problem, and I jumped every time, mentally preparing to run for help if she collapsed clutching at her chest. She didn't seem distressed, though, and I never had to run for help. Later I heard from two Germans in Sweden that the people in the town where they lived did it, too, and that it was the bizarre Scandinavian way to say 'yes.' I thought, 'Noooo. Whaaaat?' A few days later, though, this wacky claim was confirmed by Kristin, a Norwegian herself and no liar, and she furthermore explained that the gasps were simply inhaled 'ja's. Instead of wasting precious warm breath on gap-fillers in conversation, Norwegians and Swedes continue to speak while breathing in. It's the charmingest thing you could possibly imagine. If I could marry a cultural behavior, this would be it. Our children would inhale entire sentences.

All right, I should stop before I get teary-eyed. My time in Norway flew -- but, the Sami would say, it flew towards me, not away. (GASP!!) Here's Laura's guest blog post:

Tall Pines in Georgia stands for more than trunks and needles, resin and fire-signalled seeds. It is a song. And a song can be with you anywhere without the weight of a pack slung around in turbulent flights. Songs pass the time without pages or folded corners, and bus stops reverberate splendidly in dry winter air. Crisp, clean, clear.

One morning while waiting I envisioned a man saddle a horse and cross the Blue Mountains through tall, dark pines filled with mockingbird mimicry - all the way to the Allegheny, and all for love. The same day showed me Sweet William and Lady Margaret flowering beside a bench in musical ignorance, oblivious to seasons, to sunlight. It was winter in the air, on paper and peoples' faces, but nevertheless, Tall Pines in Georgia clung to their needles white-knuckled and didn't mind being the only ones in green. They grow on.

And the song. The song stays in my head like stars in the Arctic darkness, hiding above clouds that pass by below but there all the same, all the time, light years away, and fills me with warmth. The clouds today are lithe, stretching thinly over the Barents like a furrowed field of Mama's white hair. Sometimes the earth needs a gentle covering; sometimes the stars shine too sharply. The ocean needs its islands, as much as it abuses them. And empty bus stops call out for songs from travelers' mouths, even if only in passing.

by Laura Candler.

Her blog can be found here: http://swooningblue.blogspot.com/, and I highly recommend it! She's studying curious clouds this year, and the way and extent to which people include the skyscape in their sense of place. And she has great eyes that see beautiful things, and fingers that can play the guitar while she sings.

I don't know when I'll update my blog next, but in the meanwhile, be well and, if you're reading this, I probably love you. Looooooove.

A post inspired by someone else's blog (Tromsø, Norway)

2010-01-27T12:49:00.004+01:00

Norwegians are, I guess, famously reserved, which I failed to notice until I read this blog post by Jessica, the younger sister of one of my good friends in Minnesota, who is spending a semester in Bergen. I thought, "But people here have been so friendly! But they've helped me when I've been lost!" Then I thought, "BUT. BUT I HAVEN'T BEEN IN A SINGLE NORWEGIAN'S HOME." (Brynjulv's apartment doesn't count, because, being a CouchSurfer, he's not, you know, normal.) And then, even worse, "BUT I HAVEN'T EVEN DONE ANYTHING SOCIAL WITH A NORWEGIAN." No coffee, no walk, no romp through the snow.

This was a blow to me. My impression that people here are, in fact, friendly and helpful, even friendlier and more helpful than the people in Bergen whom Jessica describes, was backed up by several other people, some of whom said, "Well, it makes sense! The southern parts of the country have been relatively densely populated for a long time, but in the north, many people have come from other places to work, and the help-thy-equally-lost-neighbor legacy lives on." I've experienced the present-day version of help-thy-equally-lost-neighbor, which is help-this-equally-lost-foreigner. On the streets and in cafes, fellow foreigners just talk to me, or vice versa. I've met people from Eritrea, Iran, Gambia, and other parts of the world in public places; we are magnetically attracted to one another. (And it's not hard to find foreigners here; over half of Tromsø's residents aren't originally from Tromsø.)

But we repel Norwegians, who are friendly and helpful, but, I guess, famously reserved, even here in Tromsø. They will show me how to get to the library, but they won't ask where I'm from. And they will smile back if I greet them, but wonder if I'm a little off my rocker. It took me a long time to understand the distinction between friendliness/helpfulness and openness. Sometimes I still mix them up.

(Writing about this, I'm reminded of a hilarious incident in Pavel's dorm kitchen. He had just moved in, and we were having lunch at the table, discussing Norwegian reservedness, when a tall, Norwegian-looking guy walked in and started preparing his meal. Pavel asked where he was from. "Here." Then Pavel asked, "And do you think Norwegians are reserved?" And the Norwegian said, "Maybe . . . maybe we are reserved. But I don't know why." Then: SILENCE. End of conversation. He turned his back on us to finish doing the dishes. I think this was the real answer to the question.)

Fortunately, some Norwegians break out of the reservedness mold! They crack the shell of reticence! They smash the wall of polite disinterest! I was lucky to meet TWO of these in the past week. One I've mentioned already: Kristin, whom, it seems, I was fated to meet. We first met on the street when I asked a man walking by Brynjulv's apartment how recycling in Norway works (it's great! five colors of bag, each for a different material!). This man is Abbas, and we became friends while we walked into town. This was possible because we are both foreigners and therefore magnetically attracted to each other. He is from Iran, but has been studying engineering in Norway for a few years. Walking with us was his son, Salman, and behind us came his wife, Maryam, and Kristin, their friend and neighbor. I explained to them what I was doing here; we agreed to have dinner sometime; I hoped to see them again.

And a few days later, I did see Kristin again! On Wednesday we both attended the first meeting of Tromsø's chapter of Save the Children, and I discovered that she speaks near-perfect Spanish. That night we took our relationship to a whole new level when we facebook-friended each other, and I learned from her profile (how much more intimate can you get?) that one of her favorite books is Michael Ende's The Neverending Story, which has long been my all-time favorite book in the world. This boded well for potential friendship. On Sunday we spent the whole afternoon together at the Tromso Museum and later at Salman's 5th birthday party (about which I'll write in another post -- this one is supposed to be just about Norwegians), and actually BECAME FRIENDS. She's coming over for dinner on Thursday -- this is, in case you don't know, something FRIENDS do -- and at some point in the near future I'll be allowed to enter her apartment. She insisted that it was too messy when we stopped by there on Sunday.

My first Norwegian friend! And an invitation to a Norwegian home! The second invitation came later on Sunday night, at the TIFF volunteer party, which I spent entirely with Maiten and a Norwegian woman named Tove, fellow volunteer at Fokus Kino from Monday to Wednesday of last week (again, I'll write about the film festival in another post -- this one is about Norwegians). Tove is kind and tolerant of my obsession with the northern lights, which I've still only seen twice, and she invited me to eat with her sometime next next week. This is particularly exciting because her children are all much older than I am, which means that she is much much older than I am, and I love spending time with People Who Are Not My Age (and who are usually calmer and wiser than People My Age, myself included). There's just so much to learn from everyone.

So: This week was groundbreaking. I was invited to TWO Norwegian homes -- I didn't even have to threaten them! -- and made friends with the Norwegians who live in them.

Yesterday I said that I had to write about people, movies, and Norwegian culture. This is the "Norwegian culture" post. I will write about "people" and "movies" sometime soon, but probably not today. My plan for today is to go for a walk in the snow, read and people-watch in the library, and eat dinner with Katarina and two of her friends. It's amazing that I manage to stay so serene while leading such a stressful lifestyle.

A couple of welcome-backs (Tromsø, Norway)

2010-01-26T21:47:00.002+01:00

Oh geez. This is one of those intimidating blog posts -- the ones for which I first write an outline (the outline for this post has thirteen bullet points), which, instead of giving my writing any structure, makes me a little bit twitchy with stress and raises my heart rate. So much has to be reported! So many people have to be described in full detail! So many adjectives have to be employed! Fortunately for me, as soon as I start the next paragraph, I'll forget about all about my outline and write about, oh, say seagulls, which are not one of the bullet-pointed items.

The seagulls:
They have come back! I noticed them when I was walking into town last week, and thought, "Have they been there all along? Had I become desensitized to their loud, insistent cawing the way I'm deaf to the hum of the refrigerator? Did I just wake up from a silent dream? Does anyone else see them? Are they really there?" Just before writing this paragraph, I asked Katarina the first of these questions, and phew! my sanity appears to be intact. The seagulls, which fly south for the winter, seem to have returned north for the winter. I'm really not sure if this is normal -- it has, after all, been colder and snowier in the south than usual, and warmer and rainier in the north -- but even if the poor birds have gone loony, I'm glad that they're making a racket by the seashore again. The other prominent winged inhabitants of this island -- magpies -- have given me the creeps ever since I watched one of them knock a featherless chick out of a nest, peck it to death while it squirmed on the ground, and eat it in a park in Madrid. Ungh.

The arrival of the seagulls almost coincided with the return of that most beloved celestial object, Mr. Sun, to the skies above Tromsø. I'm pretty sure that nobody else was as excited about this as I was -- I squealed and bounced and thought it appropriate to stare directly and meaningfully into it for a while, while my retinas thought, "Whoa whaaaat?" -- but on January 21st, some stores sold solbolle, and this past Sunday was SUN-day (cute) at the Tromsø Museum. There was a presentation on the northern lights (for which, of course, we can thank our own Mr. Sun and his unpredictable temper) and a choir concert with a sunny repertoire. The songs were in Norwegian -- shocker! -- and Swedish, but Kristin, a new friend, translated some of the lyrics for me, and the melodies were so upbeat that everyone walked out smiling. Yes! This is a happy time! In olden days it was an even happier time for schoolchildren, because they had January 21st off from school, but at least they can enjoy bread and music. And, you know, SUNSHINE.

I've made it sound like it was dark until, suddenly and hallelujah, the sun rose above the horizon and all was brightly lit and glorious -- like a revelation, or a lamp -- but actually the days have been getting longer since December 21st, and weeks ago already the daytime hours lived up to their name. It's strange to think that the days will soon start encroaching upon the nights, and that in a few months the sun won't set at all. I think of it as a pendulum -- here, the arc is almost a semi-circle, with light on one extreme and dark on the other, and the farther south you go, the smaller the arc becomes. Surprisingly, several people I've talked to aren't so thrilled to be swinging back to the light. They call the winter "cozy" and "calm," the proper state for a winter land, and complain about insomnia in the summer. Apparently Mr. Sun slacks off when it comes to warming this part of the world, too, so that even when it looks like a summer paradise, it feels like, oh, Norway. Never-hot-Norway. I can see how that would dampen some already sleep-deprived spirits.

I've addressed only one of the items in my bullet-pointed list (the sun concert) so far, and lightly touched on another (new friends -- Kristin is one), but the oomph, the oomph is GONE. I'll post this now and tomorrow write about people, movies, and Norwegian culture. Ooh, when I put it like that, it's not intimidating at all! I just have to write about three things! Very doable. Hardly a challenge. TOMORROW.

A shortie about the SUUUN (Tromsø, Norway)

2010-01-20T22:21:00.004+01:00

I am just writing to say (ahem):

1. The sun will rise tomorrow. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3. The meeting with the nun (in the singular -- Sister Hedwig) on Sunday was WONDERFUL. Amazing. Life-changing. I am going to write a full report tomorrow morning and send it to the convent for a blog post go-ahead. Then I will go ahead and post it in my blog.
4. Between "morning" and "and" in the last sentence, somebody called Katarina to tell her that the northern lights were putting on a show. We ran outside to look at them. My first time! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
6. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Please excuse me while I go and have a heart attack.

Nun report forthcoming! On a day with SUN.

A reason for breathless anticipation (Tromsø, Norway)

2010-01-16T19:55:00.010+01:00

In about thirteen hours, I will be attending mass at the Carmelite convent in Tromsø, after which my new friend Pavel and I will eat breakfast with the nuns and then talk with them about time. WHOA WHOA WHOA. This was Pavel's idea, and, because 1. he speaks Norwegian and English (among other languages), 2. the nuns speak Norwegian (among other languages) but do not speak English, and 3. I do not speak Norwegian but speak English (among other languages), he was my interpreter during our first visit and will be translating all of tomorrow. For this and other personality traits, I am convinced that he is an angel. And I'm so excited to meet the nuns and learn about their lives! I'll give a full post-meeting report.

Pavel is a friend of Katarina's, my new housemate, who is also wonderful. He spent a few nights with us while he was looking for an apartment, and every evening the three of us drank industrial amounts of tea, chatted into the night, and sometimes engaged in less mature activities like balloon soccer and phone book-ripping (after I explained the theory to them, they both ripped a phone book in half -- the hot dog way!). Katarina is from Slovakia and Pavel is from the Czech Republic, both of which I have added to my List of Places to Spend Time in Before I DIE.

Now Pavel is gone (sob), but I hope to see him a lot in the next two months. In the past week, Katarina and I have watched three Tromsø International Film Festival movies (Mid-August Lunch, Same Same but Different, and 35 Shots of Rum -- recommended, not recommended, and not recommended, respectively), and I have watched another (Alle Anderen -- highly recommended) with a fellow passer-through, Maiten, a Dutch girl who is making a documentary on the polar night. We get in for free because we're volunteers! While waiting for Katarina in a cafe one night, I met a very nice man from Eritrea, Mateo, with whom I had tea two nights later. He has been in Norway since 2005, a refugee from religious persecution. I hope to see him in the next two months, too.

What else to tell? Well, I suppose I should apologize, faithful readers, for failing to write in a whole week, and then writing such a booooooring post. Your head is probably nodding as you read these words. Your eyelids are heavy . . . your chair is so soft and squishy . . . your feet are so warm . . . But there is a reason I haven't written! The reason is this: Katarina and I are STEALING wireless internet, which we know is bad and for which the technology gods will surely punish us, but which has also introduced a new personality into our household: IngerOnline. Inger is our mysterious neighbor, the victim of our wireless internet theft. Katarina and I joke that someday, we'll run into Inger while we're taking out the garbage, and, after introducing ourselves, we'll blurt, "BUT WAIT! Is your last name Online?!" And if it's not, we won't have to feel guilty. Inger Online -- a faithful companion for those lonely winter days.

But not that faithful. Inger Online sometimes TURNS OFF her wireless unit (the nerve!), and even when it's on, reception is so weak that we can only connect to the internet on the windowsill of Katarina's bedroom, which is at about chest level. This means that every second we spend on the internet is another day we'll suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome in the near future. This, combined with my general aversion to screens (which naturally prevents me from writing this in a text editor in a more comfortable place and copying and pasting it into my blog at the windowsill), is the excuse I present for non-communicativeness and a booooooring post (who can write inspired words standing at a windowsill?).

I'll write more, and better, about my new acquaintances, friends, and activities soon. And the nuns! I'll write about the nuns! But for now I'll spare my wrists.

Until soon, then, Inger Online permitting.

A resource for young'uns (Tromsø, Norway)

2010-01-08T22:33:00.005+01:00

"Young'uns" is a category into which I, being under the tender age of 25, fit, so I didn't feel too creepy yesterday afternoon when I walked into Tvibit, Tromsø's youth house, even though in spirit I've been an old granny for years. I walked past several tables of hip-looking teenagers engaged in relaxed conversation over cups of hot coffee (of which, I noticed, there was a full and free-for-the-taking thermos nearby) and made my way to a sign in the next room that said "Information". Oh, but what information! What enlightening clarification!

Once again, Norway takes the cake for public resources. Here is an excerpt from Tvibit's website:

At Tvibit anyone can arrange events, concerts, exhibitions, plays, dance performances etc. free of charge! All you need is an idea, and we will help you getting started. As long as the event is in Tvibits spirit, we enqourage it (this means that we don’t throw parties, birthdays etc. here). We will help you with equipment, rooms, people and other things you might need to make your event happen.

This was all explained to me in more words by the smiling woman behind the desk under the "Information" sign, who also told me about Tvibit's free health center, where anyone can drop in for a consultation with a doctor four days a week, and existing clubs (writing, photography, international, and, of course, I could start my own if I wanted to). There was a cafe downstairs with computers available for my use, and, if those were occupied, several computers in this room and in the project rooms with which I could surf the net, write a paper or plan a project. If I needed video equipment, I could check it out of the film house, and if at any time I had further questions about anything, I shouldn't hesitate to drop by and ask. I half expected her to offer me a trip to the Balearic Islands for inspiration -- but she didn't.

I'd walked by Tvibit's two glass-walled floors many times and seen groups of young'uns chatting in map-lined rooms equipped with computers -- now I know what they were up to! They were SOWING THE SEEDS OF CULTURE. For fun and with government funding. I just think that's the goshdarned greatest thing in the world. Don't you?

Yesterday I also had my first encounter with the Norwegian educational system. I hope to audit a class at the university called The Sami Nation, and, prudent student that I am, attended the informational session mentioned on the web page. This was all fine and dandy, except that the informational session was in NORWEGIAN. Who knows why?! I had sat in the middle of my row and couldn't get out without breaking some kneecaps, so I settled into my chair, pulled out a book of plays by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, and perked up whenever I recognized a word (the toughies, like "historie" or "klasse" or "bok", e.g.).

I never feel so klutzy as when I don't understand what people are saying to me. I've been missing Berlin recently -- I think because Tromsø is more like it than any other city I've visited this year, which is not to say that they're at all similar -- and one major difference between my stay there and my stay here is that, there, I was the one who had to make the extra effort to communicate. I was the one speaking in a foreign tongue and saying things like, "Now we must make goodbye" or "Excuse me, I have to go inside the toilet." In Norway, I cringe whenever I say, "I'm sorry, I don't speak Norwegian. Do you speak English?" Of course almost everybody does, but it feels unfair to force them to go through the discomfort of trying.

Three more things to tell:

1. I took another ice bath this afternoon, this time IN THE DARK (the group's usual meeting time is 5:00). You know, no big deal. Just had to dig a hole in the snow to put my things in. Managed to get dressed with frozen lumps for fingers. Same old, same old.

2. I went to the Tromsø University Museum today, where there is a temporary exhibit on homosexuality in animals. I almost teared up when I saw the pair of lesbian swans who had mated for life (and were still together in death, taxidermied and romantically posed). Did you know that lesbian swans raise cygnets together? And sometimes lay eggs in the nest of a pair of male swans so that they can raise cygnets, too? Did you know that homosexual behavior has been observed in over 1,500 species, and some species are almost entirely bisexual? Did you know that male flamingo couples can actually raise more flamingo chicks than male-female couples, because they have control over more territory? (The English translations were poor, and I read over and over again that the gay flamingos could "raise more chicken" until I laughed out loud.) They are called "super-fathers". There are also "super-mothers". I want to be a super-mother! The museum website asks: Is it reasonable to use the word "unnatural" about homosexuality? I think the correct answer is NO.

3. Tomorrow I move out of Brynjulv and Ellen's apartment and into Katarina's living room. A new temporary home! A new housemate! Oh, the potential.

It is snowing fingernail-sized pieces of fluff. Ten points for Mother Nature!

A blue sky! (Tromsø, Norway)

2010-01-08T12:15:00.004+01:00

As I type, I am looking out the window at a BLUE(ish tinted with yellow) sky. IT LOOKS LIKE DAY. Oh glory be! Now I know that my real enemies are the clouds; the sun and I are on speaking terms again.

In the time I've spent sitting in front of my computer looking up the idiom "on speaking terms" (in a relationship close enough for or limited to friendly superficialities OR in a relationship of open, willing, or ready communication -- the sun and I are "on speaking terms" in the former, and limited, sense of the idiom), clouds have crept across the sky and it has started to snow lightly. Coastal weather. What a crusher.

But I know that there is a blue(ish tinted with yellow) sky behind those clouds! And the snow is very pretty.

Soon I'll write a rave review of Tromsø's youth center, which is almost as amazing a resource as the library.

The snow is gorgeous.

A sparkling island (Tromsø, Norway)

2010-01-05T17:41:00.005+01:00

Well, this post is long overdue! Brandon has left (sob) (as in "how sad," not that he has a mean mother), as have the two young Dutch men who served as my adventure buddies for the two days following Brandon's departure (sob), and now I am alone, again, with Tromsø, this slug-shaped artificially lit island city that manages to be beautiful and warm despite the dark and sub-zero temperatures. Sub-zero on the Celsius scale, I should say. The temperature on the Fahrenheit scale is not as impressive as I'd hoped it would be, although I've been assured that, when wind and humidity are taken into account, the residents of Tromsø suffer more than the residents of, e.g., Karasjok, where it is a whopping 29 degrees Fahrenheit colder than it is here (18 and -11 degrees, respectively).

On New Year's Eve, after our polar bear swim (fortunately polar bear-free -- the night before I'd had nightmares/involuntary violent fantasies in which I was dismembered by a hungry polar bear displaced by global warming) and meal of whale flesh, Brandon and I walked across the bridge to Tromsdalen, where we took a cable car up to the top of the first swell of a line of snow-covered mountains. We arrived unfashionably early and spent several hours walking along the mountains, which glittered in the light of the full moon. At one point, Brandon turned to me and said, "Irene! Do you hear the silence?" Which should give you an idea of how heaven-like the landscape we were exploring was. Here is a picture of that landscape:

(Notice that the snow ACTIVELY SPARKLES. That's no passive reflection you see going on there. This snow is ALIVE.)

Towards midnight, we headed back to the cable car building to watch the fireworks in Tromsø from above, feeling much like Zeus and his cohorts on Mount Olympus, but before the show we caught a wee glimpse of the Northern Lights, pointed out by a very friendly Irish or Scottish (Brandon and I disagreed about this) couple. It was more like one very faint light smeared out, tinting the grayish sky a little bit lighter gray. Disappointing, to say the least, but we of indomitable good cheer and optimism recover quickly from such letdowns. After cursing and loudly disbelieving our bad luck, we went to watch the night's main spectacle, which did not disappoint at all. This is what Tromsø looks like from above:

Now imagine it sizzling and popping with fireworks. You have to imagine it because my camera ran out of batteries long before the stroke of midnight, but maybe it's better that way. It was beautiful! There were fireworks up on the mountain, too, and we were surrounded by children with sparklers and other Things On Fire, so we started the New Year with a dazzling display of light. I hope that this means that the whole year will a dazzling display of light -- you know, metaphorically. I am always up for being dazzled.

Brandon left on the 2nd (sob), and that afternoon I met up with Tim and Ruben, who had written to me via CouchSurfing and asked me to show them around town. We went to the Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum and the Perspektivet Museum, which both had excellent exhibitions, and then we walked around town, which was already starting to come back to life after the holidays. The next day was more eventful -- both Tim and Ruben swam in the icy sea under my inexpert supervision (they joked about weak hearts and having just one lung while I played out about a hundred worst case scenarios in my head) and survived.

After getting on the warm bus to head home, we decided to go on the cheap tour of Tromsø and the surrounding area, i.e. we rode a bus for about an hour and a half as it looped to the northern end of the island, back through the center and over the bridge into Tromsdalen, and finally close to the apartment where I'm staying. The bus driver, a tattooed ex-seaman, eyed us skeptically at first, but towards the end of our tour opened up and even boasted that he had never once in his thirteen years as a bus driver scratched the side of the bus while passing through a bridge that was only eighteen centimeters wider than the bus (we had commented on the narrowness of this bridge the first time we passed through it; the second time I was mentally cheering for the bus driver and dreading even more the day when I will have to get my driver's license).

Tim, Ruben and I ate, watched "Pulp Fiction" (I ran to the kitchen whenever somebody pulled out a gun, and read in the staircase during the most violent scene), and then I almost forcibly ejected them from the apartment, overwhelmed by an inexplicable flood of antisocial feelings. It was really very rude of me -- I lost major Social Interaction Points -- but they were kind enough to overlook it and invite me to eat with them at their hotel yesterday evening, which I did.

Today was a successful day, even on the social interaction front. After sleeping a few hours -- insomnia, which I will get to shortly -- I showered and headed to the library, which still holds Wonder of the World status in my book. I read half of a book of poetry by Stephen Dobyns, whose poem "Tomatoes" I really like, and made zero friends. However, I did manage to locate the Tromsø offices of Save the Children and Amnesty International, reconnected with Kine, a woman I met at the Christmas Eve volunteer dinner, and gave both her and the sole AI employee my e-mail address and a smile that meant, "Thank you so much for letting me have tea with you and telling me how to volunteer with your organization! You have no idea what this is doing for my state of mind! I am so happy that I'm smiling!" But they probably just thought I was being polite or, likelier still, a weirdo.

It's good that I'll be volunteering with these two organizations because I just found out that I'm not allowed to take university courses (against the Watson philosophy!), which was one sure-fire way that I was planning to meet people. I will be attending one lecture class on Sami culture and history, because they're here and I'm here and it seems silly not to, but that's it for academic structure in my life. In response to this sudden change of plans, I spent about two hours feverishly planning excursions to other cities (while a tiny voice inside my head reminded me, "Budget! Budget! Budget!"), and have decided to go to:

- Jokkmokk, Sweden for the first week of February to attend the Sami winter market.
- Karasjok, the Sami capital of Norway, shortly thereafter.
- Svalbard in mid-March to witness the sun festival.

!!!

The sun makes its first appearance here in just a few weeks, and I have to say that it is coming none too soon. Yes, people leave their houses, walk around town, and even ski in the dark, but it's just not the same as having a few hours of real daylight during which you WANT to go outside. Residential streets are quiet as graves -- you hope that there are living humans inside all of those brightly lit houses, but there's no way to know. They might all have disappeared! So: the darkness turns an otherwise pleasant city into a playground for existential fears.

Also, I've been having quite a bit of trouble sleeping. At night I lie in my bed, staring out into the dark, for hours, and it seems that as soon as I fall asleep my alarm clock starts beeping wildly at me. I set it for 9:01 in the morning so that I can be ready to leave the house shortly after 10:00 and take advantage of the twilight hours, and I've started using the large sunlamp in Brynjulv and Ellen's living room to simulate morning before that. It's wearing me down, though. I've been moody and sad, and I'm eating like a moody and sad person does, and my interactions with the outside world are moody and sad unless I make an effort to look less moody and sad. IT IS ALL THE SUN'S FAULT. But I'll forgive it as soon as it comes back in T-minus 16 days.

Now I'm going to go for a walk -- perhaps I will buy an overpriced tea at a cafe and try to chat someone up. PERHAPS I WILL SEE THE NORTHERN LIGHTS. I obsessively check this site, but so far it has done nothing but give me false hope. PERHAPS MY HOPE WON'T BE FALSE TONIGHT.

A very short swim in very cold water (Tromsø, Norway)

2009-12-31T17:52:00.006+01:00

At exactly 1:00 pm this afternoon, Brandon and I walked over icy sand and into the ocean, which was cold. We stayed in the water for approximately 58.98 seconds. Five hours later, we are still trying to process this traumatic experience. Our therapist, my imaginary friend Zargon, suggested that we write haikus and share them with a few supportive friends in order to move on with our lives. Please -- help us to heal.

Also, we ate Minke whale for dinner tonight. Chef Brandon turned our "whale flesh" into four edible steaks, two of which he consumed in about fifteen minutes' time. I am waiting to see if he will live through the night.

Here are our divinely inspired haikus (Brandon says, "These are the whale god's vengeance upon humanity" -- but I think that we are artistes):

plunge in arctic sea
would see breath if I could breathe
hy-hy-hyperventilate!

Are you still there, toes?
I cannot see or feel you.
Come back. I miss you.

eat whale, swim in sea
a new years never to be
forgot, auld lang syne

Bad people eat whale.
Masochists swim in North Sea.
I need therapy.

I will not shiver.
Shivering is for the weak.
The Force is with me.

run back to the fire
hunch fetal, warm feet and hands
melt inter-toe snow

The haiku above
brings back painful memories
of when I had toes.

Circulation -- pah!
It is so overrated.
Blue is the new black.

a walk in the park
saw statue of amundsen.
in blue bathing suit

Envious of whales.
Envious of polar bears.
So composed. Not me!

I need some blubber
or a pelt of waterproof
warm fur, or something.

yes, whales socialize,
the canaries of the sea.
but taste like tuna.

Breath freezes in scarf.
Thigh skin like metal armor.
Welcome to the north.

See: snowy mountains,
frosted sand, nothing living.
Let's go for a swim!

"Next time, wear thick clothes,"
they tell me, smiling. Next time?
Am I crazy?! Yes.

That's it for the haiku therapy.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! We hope that 2010 brings you love and joy and wisdom and many, many hot showers.

We love hot showers.

A guest writer -- Brandon Horn (Tromsø, Norway)

2009-12-29T00:14:00.003+01:00

I came and knocked on Irene's door at 11pm last night. Despite this, she let me in. We planned out the following morning--buy whale meat, circumambulate the island of tromso, and buy some bread. It was almost a complete success. We stopped walking and caught the bus after Irene learned that I cannot walk on ice, and that the island is kinda big. But my main goal, that of buying whale, can now be checked off the to-do list. After our initial disappointment in a fish market that smelled strongly of fish, which made Irene hungry and me less hungry, where we learned that the hunting season for fresh whale is from April to August, we went to the grocer and got 2 frozen blocks of whale flesh packaged in blue cardboard boxes. The box doesn't say what kind of whale it is--I think its Minke. We got bread and 5 liters of milk on the trip to the grocer. Then we tried to walk around the island, or at least to the North Bridge. We failed in this aspect, but succeeded in buying gummy candy men and discussing what it would be like to be the last person from your community or society or culture. This is my first full day in the arctic and in Tromso, and the first time I've seen Irene since Claremont. Tromso may not be geographically antipodal to claremont, but it is close. We haven't made our to-do list for tomorrow yet. I'll let you know when we have.

A video (Tromsø, Norway)

2009-12-23T16:29:00.013+01:00

Brynjulv showed me this video last night -- a bit of "Norwegian propaganda," he told me proudly. He says that everything in it is pretty much accurate, but:

1. it is rare for the government to pay for somebody to recover from an illness in a spa in some southern country, although it does happen in special cases, and

2. the island paradise prison is where inmates are sent to serve the last years of their sentences; they don't spend all of their time there.

But conditions in normal prison facilities are good, and it is rare for somebody to be sentenced to more than 10 or 15 years. Also, the government is toying with the idea of simply putting a bracelet locator on convicts' ankles and letting them live at home (with, of course, a strict schedule and restrictions on travel). You know, keeping them integrated in society, so that they can continue to contribute as the citizens they are and lead purposeful lives. What an idea.

This country is so rational. They do so many things right. I feel like a barbarian coming from the United States, where almost 1% of the population is behind bars and the death penalty is still legal in some states.

In other news, I found out that I can attend university classes for free, and I'm salivating over the list of English-language courses. I KNOW, I know what you're thinking: NERD. I've been out of that closet for years. And just think: Arctic Biology. Marine Ecology. Aquatic Animal Welfare. Techniques for Investigating the Near-Earth Space Environment. The Sami Nation: Indigenous people, Ethnic Minorities and the Multi-Cultural Society. Tell me those don't sound REALLY COOL.

(I'll sidestep back to the wonder that is Norway: Education is extremely cheap here -- well, Norwegians pay for it in taxes -- and accessible to everyone, including retirees. There was a 78-year-old woman in one of Brynjulv's literature classes last semester! And when we were walking around the university, he greeted a 40-something-year-old man. "Professor?" I asked. "Fellow student," he answered.)

Tomorrow, Christmas Eve, I'll be volunteering at a church, giving out food and presents from 15:00 until 21:00. I'm so excited. I can't speak Norwegian, but I can smile at people and wash dishes. Maybe I'll make a friend. New Year's Eve I'm spending with Brandon Horn, one of my best friends and a fellow Watson Fellow -- he arrives a few days after Christmas and we're still trying to decide if we can eat whale and not go to hell (not Satan's; the hell that our consciences will raise). We do, however, plan on going swimming -- IN THE SEA, IN THE DARK. Apparently it is the thing to do. Look at these crazies. They're so happy. (Thanks to Maiten, who appears in the video in a black t-shirt and hat, for sharing her footage with me!) Maybe we will be that happy, too.

In early January I'll train to volunteer at the Tromsø International Film Festival and watch some of the movies for free (so they claim, at least; I wonder if I'm walking into a trap!), and . . . that's it. Those are my ambitious plans for the next few weeks. I will report successful carryings-out and failed carrying-out attempts as they occur.

I just discovered the "insert link" button -- can you tell? (No pun intended.)

A new motto (Tromsø, Norway)

2009-12-21T21:42:00.008+01:00

"There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing."

If I told you that I had spent 1554 Norwegian kroner -- that's $265 -- on two pairs of long underwear, two undershirts, and three pairs of socks, you might guffaw in disbelief or, worse, hit me repeatedly over the head with any heavy, blunt object within your reach, screaming, "Think of the starving children! Think how much food you could buy for them with that money! Think of the medication you could buy for the sick!" until I cracked and fell to my knees, sobbing in guilt.

That's why it's good that you, reader, are so far away from me, and I am in Norway, where it is normal to wear a "second skin" that costs more than a plane ticket. The box in which my long underwear came claimed that they might become my "new best friend." Wenche, with whom I stayed in Oslo, and I thought that that was kind of pathetic -- clearly they were meant for misanthropes who used Norway's snowy wilderness as a retreat from pesky humanity and who had no breathing, warm-blooded friends.

WE WERE WRONG. I LOVE my long underwear. I'm seriously considering naming both pairs, so that my future housemate can say, "Irene, don't forget to bring Otto/Bruno with you when you go outside!" and mean, "Irene, wear your long underwear, forgetful non-Norwegian fool!" My legs owe their continued existence to Otto and Bruno, just as I owe my life to Wenche, who gave me (yes, gifted me with) an old winter coat of hers. These cost more than all of my underclothes combined, and I nearly hyperventilated when I first tried to go shopping for one. When I told Wenche what a traumatic experience I'd had ("They're so EXPENSIVE. I just can't believe that they're so EXPENSIVE. I didn't know things could be so EXPENSIVE." -- sometimes I fixate), she said, "Irene, I have a coat that I don't use anymore. If it fits you, it's yours." Can you imagine?!

Wenche, if you are reading this, thank you again . . . and again and again and again. You win the 2009 Generosity Award -- a most difficult prize to get, considering the wonderfully giving people I've met during this trip.

Now that I'm on the topic of nice people: When I was in Oslo, everyone I met was thrilled when I said that I was going to be living in Tromsø. "People there are so open!" "The Northerners are the friendliest!" "You'll see -- everyone will want to give you something." In the day and a half that I've been here, I've confirmed these claims. Exhibit A: My CouchSurfing host, Brynjulv, who is letting me stay in his and his girlfriend's apartment for three weeks while they are on vacation in the Netherlands and Spain. He has given me the long version of the newbie orientation session, complete with marked map, photos, and handy vocabulary. Thanks to him, I know what food is cheap (mainly fish), at what grocery stores it's cheapest, and where I should go if I need, e.g., a cheap monthly bus pass. (Do you notice a pattern? I am a bit anxious about the cost of living in Norway.) He is also a very pleasant fellow and who reads sci-fi and enjoys a good bar of chocolate.

Exhibit B: People on the street. I have asked several strangers for directions or about buildings, and they always stop to give me detailed answers. One man didn't know the street I was looking for, and pointed me towards some other people a ways away. After they had told me which way to go, I looked back, and the man was still standing there, half a block away, to make sure I had been able to figure it out! I nodded and waved to him, and he went along his way.

Exhibit C: People off the street. Today, in the Tromsø public library, which I will rave about in the next paragraph, a man sitting at a computer using the internet noticed that I was looking at the internet sign and stood up, saying, "You want to use computer?" I can't for the life of me imagine the same situation in the United States. Nobody would offer to give their place at a public computer to a stranger before they had finished whatever they were doing (important things like watching YouTube videos of people slipping on banana peels). Such an act would be beyond considerate and go into the realm of self-sacrificing; here it is the norm.

So: There's no dearth of kindliness in Tromsø. There's also no dearth of books, movies and music. As I was exploring today, I passed by a beautiful, large building with a double arched roof and glass walls -- it was the bibliotek! And what a bibliotek it is. Four floors of books in all sorts of exotic languages (like Norwegian and Finnish); the entire bottom floor is for children, full of color and games and pictures on the walls. It was on this floor that I found "Harry Potter og de Vises Stein" in both book AND CD formats. My master plan is to listen and read simultaneously until I am fluent in Norwegian. I estimate that this will take about a week.

But back to the library: It is so easy to get a library card in Tromsø that I was not surprised that the library was bustling with (quiet, considerate) activity. All I had to present was a student ID and an address. I warned the attendant that my address would be changing in three weeks; she smiled and said, "Oh, no problem! Just come and change the address in your file when you move." No fee, no processing time -- I checked "Harry Potter" out minutes after I had entered the library for the first time. This is how public services should be! Accessible and well-maintained, with a helpful staff and a comfortable environment. I plan to spend many an hour at the public library. Maybe I will make some geeky bookish friends.

The rest of Tromsø is just as beautiful as the library. It is a small city, full of nice shops and restaurants, sparkling with Christmas lights and the lit-up windows of houses. A big bridge connects the island to the mainland, and the view from the center of the bridge is stunning -- towards the mainland, you can see the faint outlines of snow-covered mountains looming over the yellow lights of streets and buildings, and, in the other direction, Tromsø looks like an illuminated electric blanket warming up the hillside. (They don't make long underwear for hillsides; it needs some warming up.)

The only bone I have to pick with Tromsø is that it is Too Dark. Latitude is no excuse -- there's no reason for it to be nighttime twenty hours a day. I woke up this morning at 8:30 and had one of the severest internal struggles of my life: to get up and dressed and go outside IN THE DARK? Or to stay in bed, in pajamas, trying to sleep until the sky told me that I should do otherwise? In the end, my better half won, and I was out the door by 11:00 (after eating breakfast with Brynjulv), even though it was still dawn. I walked until the sun was setting again -- actually, it never goes above the horizon, but a suggestion of the sun rises and sets -- at 1:00 pm, came back to the apartment to have lunch, and wandered for another few hours in the dark, feeling wild and daring.

It's not just me who is thrown off by the darkness! I spoke with Brynjulv and one of his friends about it today, and they said that their sleep schedules become irregular in the winter; they just don't know when they are supposed to get into and out of bed, since it always looks like sleepy-weepy time (my words, not theirs). Brynjulv's friend works odd hours (5:00 am - 11:00 am), so not even his job helps keep him synchronized with the rest of the population, which is more or less active between 9:00 and 5:00 (and later, of course, in the bars). Wenche in Oslo said that she sleeps much more in the winter than in the summer -- up to two hours more in the winter! She doesn't need as much sleep in the summer. Her body functions without it. I, obsessive recorder of banal events, almost always write down my wake-up hour in my agenda. I wonder if I will notice that I'm sleeping more in the next few weeks than I did in Mexico, and I wonder if I will start sleeping less after late January, when the sun reappears.

In any case, I will henceforth force myself to get out of bed as soon as my eyes open, lest my weaker half look out the window and try to convince me to stay put, and my long underwear, Otto and Bruno, will have lots of fun traipsing around town with me. We (Otto, Bruno and I) almost forgot: Happy winter solstice! Welcome, waxing days!

A very cold, very dark place indeed (Oslo, Norway)

2009-12-17T16:43:00.006+01:00

It was five o'clock all day today, except when the sun was setting at four o'clock. It is bizarre to walk around in perpetual late afternoon! Shortly after it got dark, I wandered back to my temporary lodging with Wenche, a CouchSurfer who is going to teach me to cook fresh codfish tonight (!), because I'm used to going home when it gets dark. I'm going to have to break that habit soon, or my existence in Tromso will be an unhealthily solitary, indoor one.

During the four hours of five o'clock that I walked around, I saw much of downtown Oslo -- very pretty, very chic -- which is full of Norwegians successfully leading healthily social, outdoor existences despite the bitter cold. The streets and parks were bustling with people of all ages, walking, skating, rolling (the babies in their stroller cocoons), and speaking Norwegian, which sounds very pretty to me. I wonder if they are always saying very pretty things. (Must find Norwegian classes in Tromso.)

I went into the Nobel Peace Prize Museum, where my eyes, as usual, teared up when I saw the pictures of President Barack Obama. The exhibit was not just about him, but also about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, and I wondered what all of this history means to the (surely mostly European) visitors to the museum. Does it seem very distant? Very foreign? Unbelievable? It seemed a bit unbelievable to me as I read the captions that went along with pictures of Civil Rights protesters and Freedom Riders -- was that really just a few decades ago? In the country that I grew up in? I wonder what changes will occur in the next fifty years that will make my grandchildren tear up.

Tonight: After eating codfish, Wenche and I will stand on her balcony and look for the International Space Station. We will wave at it with numb, mittened hands -- maybe it will wave back!! Tomorrow: Vigeland Park, the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History, and the Viking Ship Museum, in that order, so as not to miss the park by day (i.e. at five o'clock). Ja!

A cold, dark place (Oslo, Norway)

2009-12-16T23:29:00.016+01:00

I've slept about six hours in the past lord-knows-how-many days (well, I do, too: two days), and I'm curled up in a warm sleeping bag, covered with a heavy comforter, looking out of a frosty window into the dark Norwegian night and watching my computer clock work its way towards midnight -- but I am not asleep. Why am I not asleep?! One of the great mysteries of life. I hope that I'm not turning into a vampire. If I am, though: well-planned, Irene! The days are so short that I won't have to worry about turning into dust -- and in Tromso even less. And maybe I can get away with drinking hot chocolate instead of human blood.

My last few weeks in Mexico passed quickly and wonderfully. I:

1. blazed touristy trails with my motherdearest, who visited for five days at the end of November and gave me Mexican history lessons whenever I wasn't force-feeding her my favorite corn products (like tamales, huchepos, corundas, and corn ice cream -- just the thought makes me salivate). We wandered around Morelia, ferried to Janitzio island from Patzcuaro, visited the pyramids at Tzintzuntzan, rode horses in the monarch sanctuary in Angangueo, and bonded with Adriana and Nina the Lopsided Kitten (RIP -- see item 5). All in all, a wonderful visit. I confirmed my unoriginal theory that parents are good for the soul, and, since history lessons are good for the brain, and corn products are good for the body, my mother left me healthier than ever.

2. hiked up the Cerro Camacho, the mountain/big hill that looms over Ocampo, and climbed the military tower at its summit. The views would have made Ansel Adams's pulse race; unfortunately, I am not he, so the photos that I took probably won't make your pulse race. Appreciate the effort, though, and imagine yourself there. It is a very pretty spot on Planet Earth. (The aforementioned photos will be posted tomorrow! I think.)

3. hiked/swam up a river to El Salto de Agua, Niagara Falls' little little little little little little little little little brother in the outskirts of Ocampo. Once there, Eduardo, Fierros and I flirted with death by swimming in the icy pool at its base -- who's scared of a little hypothermia? Not we. My lips were still purple when I got home two hours later. I'm sure that it built character.

4. went to a secret butterfly colony in a private forest that is usually only accessible to biologists. This was not only a breathtaking natural experience (so many butterflies!), but also allowed me to make peace with Don Gato, who owns a taco stand in Ocampo and invited me to come. He has always suspected that I'm gay, which, I think, is a little like suspecting that I'm a crack addict (because it means that I'm psychologically unstable, potentially dangerous, and could be a bad influence on others). Things have always been a bit awkward between us. Now he still suspects that I'm gay, but also knows that I like butterflies, which is in my favor, no? What morally unsound person likes butterflies? (Note: I don't think that crack addicts are morally unsound.)

He and his nephew, Julio, gave me a big lecture on corruption: it is everywhere, and you cannot escape it. One man, they said, has taken complete control of El Rosario, one of the monarch sanctuaries. As he is the intermediary between donor organizations like the WWF and the El Rosario ejido (the people who communally own the sanctuary), he decides where the money goes, and it is rarely distributed fairly. They also told me about La Familia's doings in Ocampo. La Familia is the Michoacan mafia; it has a hand in every government office and almost every business in every town in Michoacan. Don Gato told me that he had to pay La Familia a monthly "contribution", and that he had once walked into the city hall to see the municipal president opening a cardboard box full of two hundred-peso bills -- not for his residents, but for the mafia. The local police are in on it, and sometimes the federal police, too, and nobody knows what the soldiers are up to; there is nobody to turn to. A frightening state of affairs.

5. watched Nina the Lopsided Kitten die of poisoning on the morning of December 9. Adriana and I were devastated, and wept many a bitter tear. She is buried in the backyard under the tree that she used to scramble up in her wild fits of huntress passion, and we hope that her atoms will become the petals of a wildflower or the wings of one of the moths that she so cruelly abused in life. The saddest thing about her death is that it was almost certainly not an accident; people poison cats and dogs on purpose. Nobody was surprised to hear how Nina had died, and nobody understood why Adriana and I were so sad about it. And they're right: Nina was a cat, and, in some parts of Mexico, people, not cats, are starving to death. I keep trying to temper my outrage at the poisoning of cats and dogs with this thought. Perspective, Irene, perspective. It is wrong that Nina was poisoned, but it is also wrong that Nina was better fed than some of our neighbors. But: all of it is unfair!

At least we are 99.99% sure that Nina was the happiest kitten in Mexico, and possibly in the Universe, during her months with us. And she died very quickly. So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut would say.

6. co-hosted a posada, part of a Mexican Christmas tradition that starts on December 16th and goes all the way until Christmas (ours was an early posada). The tradition goes as follows: people carrying statues of Mary and Joseph go from house to house asking for lodging (just as Mary and Joseph did when she was about to give birth to Jesus) by singing and setting off little sparklers. They are rejected once, rejected twice, and finally welcomed into the house, where they eat pozole and drink ponche, receive aguinaldos, which are little bags full of candies, and, if they're lucky, get to take a few whacks at a piñata. Our guests were lucky. We had a great piñata.

7. fantasized about returning to Michoacan next summer for a visit. It all depends on my bank account -- do you think that there will be more money in it the next time I check? You never know. There can be miracles. I guess that it also depends on my prudence -- do you think that I will choose to manage my finances wisely or toss hundreds of dollars out the window to soothe my aching, Mexico-deprived heart? Mmm. Things are looking grim for my financial future.

I have wireless internet now, and tomorrow evening I plan to start posting my Mexico pictures. They are plentiful and diverse.

I will also write about Oslo! I've already eaten reindeer sausage (Rudolph . . .) and met four delightful strangers, one of whom thrust her e-mail address upon me and one of whom just gave me her card. People are so kind! One who speaks Norwegian might say that they are "snil" -- THAT'S RIGHT. My list of Norwegian vocabulary is now about four words and three expressions long. I'll be fluent in no time.

A beautiful tradition and swarms of praiseworthy insects (Morelia and Ocampo, Mexico)

2009-11-23T13:19:00.004+01:00

A little over three weeks ago, I was walking with Adriana along the streets of Morelia, the capital of Michoacan and Adriana's home city, crying my little heart out. "It's so beautiful!" I kept saying. Adriana, who has a heart of stone and, I suspect, faulty tear ducts, rolled her eyes at me, as she does every time I cry at a movie or song or, in this case, the Day of the Dead altars that lined the stone pedestrian avenue and filled the yard of a nearby junior high school. She does not understand what it is to have feelings. But it was so beautiful! The altars were being set up during our walk the night before Halloween, and they would stay until at least November 2, the Day of the Dead.

Each one is made in honor of a person who has died, whose picture sits on a table at the center of the altar, and whose achievements, personality and tastes are reflected in the altar's elements. An altar in honor of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, for example, featured a life-sized figure sitting at a desk, pen in hand. There is also an offering of food -- in the cases of people who are being remembered by their families, this consists of all of the favorite foods of the deceased: tamales, corundas, chocolate, pan de muertos, and, often, tequila, among other tasty edibles and relaxing drinkables. Behind the food, and all around the altar, hang flowers and colorful sheets of tissue paper that have been stenciled and cut with death motifs, and there is usually a clay skull, skeleton, or Catrina (elegant and gaunt female death figure) on display. The floors of the altars are the most impressive part. They are made of corn, seeds, colored sawdust, orange and purple flower petals, sand, salt, and other grainy things that can be turned into elaborate designs. I noticed that many of the altars showed salt footsteps leading to a grave, and Adriana explained that this was so that the dead could find their way back to wherever they had come from after visiting the world of the living. See?! So much love and caring. Doesn't it make you want to cry, too?

I cried again on November 2, when Sergio, Adriana's father, took me to the main city cemetery. No place for a claustrophobe. It was packed with people bringing bouquets to graves, or decorating tombstones with marigolds, or setting up crowns of plastic blossoms, or simply sitting together holding hands. My eyes had trouble focusing on any one thing -- there was so much color, so much activity. Just outside of the cemetery was an enormous food market, equally overwhelming and bustling, and as soon as we went out to buy coconut water, I felt silly for crying. This was a celebration! A day of remembrance, not a day of grief. Of course, the dead are missed, but, more than anything, their lives are celebrated.

I wish that Americans did this! It seems to me that most Americans are terrified of death. We do everything in our power to avoid it, to postpone it, to distance ourselves from it -- we even put old people in nursing homes so that other people can deal with their medical problems. We should be learning from our grandparents, who have decades' worth of stories to tell and wisdom to impart, but instead we discount them because they are no longer young and immortal. The Day of the Dead brings the idea of death into every mind in Mexico, at least for a few days, and does so with colorful tissue paper and comical skeletons and fond memories. It embraces death instead of denying it -- surely this is a healthier approach to the inevitable? (It is also so beautiful!)

A few days after we returned to Ocampo from Morelia, I came back home from my daily English classes with Karina and Marcelo, and Adriana, who had been fiddling with the water tank on the roof, said, "Irene, have you seen the butterflies?" I said, "NO!!" We expertly climbed our rickety ladder, La Roña, and stood on the roof looking up with our mouths hanging open. There were butterflies everywhere! They were flapping their little wings in the wind, blowing thither and yon, but all going in the same general direction -- as they had been doing since late August, when they started their journey in Canada and the northern United States. These insects had flown 4500 kilometers! And here they were, arriving to their winter resting place. I kept thinking, "Welcome, little buddy! Hello there! Welcome! Oh hi hi hi!" Very exciting.

I went up to El Rosario, the biggest butterfly sanctuary, on November 7, expecting to see little. It was a cold and cloudy day, and after my guide, Rosalio, led me up the mountain to the four trees where the butterflies were clustered, I thought, "But this is not little!" They weren't flying around, as they do when the sun is shining, but the brownish-orange masses of insect wings bending the branches with their weight were impressive. (I keep thinking how different a phenomenon this would be if it weren't butterflies that migrated and hibernated in the forest but rather, e.g., cockroaches. Surely they would have been exterminated by now, no? Monarchs are lucky that we think they're so goshdarn pretty and delicate.) Rosalio told me a few stories about the butterflies -- the most interesting one was that they were drawn to gold and other metals in the mountain, which, he said, had been detected by satellite but never found on the ground. I had heard before the link between the butterflies' orange wings and the color of gold, but never in the context of science. (And I must confess that I'm highly skeptical, although: who am I, short-term visitor with little knowledge of biology and history, to doubt the word of a man who has lived here all of his life? Everything is a form of understanding, after all. We just explain things the best way we can.)

Yesterday I went up to the same sanctuary with Alma, a friend who stayed with us this weekend while her husband was away on business, and oof! wowee! oh man! it was spectacular! I can't do the experience justice in writing -- nor in talking, nor in pictures and videos -- but I'll try. It was a warm, sunny day, and, as soon as we arrived to the entrance of the sanctuary (two hours after leaving the house -- the transportation gods were not pleased with us), we knew that we were in luck. There were butterflies fluttering about over the fields and in the parking lot outside the hut where we had lunch, and, a few minutes into our walk up the mountain with our guide, Maria, we passed a big, wing-flapping group of them drinking from a puddle of water. A bit higher up, we stopped and gaped in awe -- there were streams of butterflies coming at us from all directions. They glided down the wooded slope, and flew around our heads to impress us with their gentle flapping sounds ("Bravo!" I thought, "What a powerful wingbeat!").

It got better. A few minutes later, we looked up and, holy shamoley! there was a whole river of butterflies in the treeless part of the canopy that mirrored the path. So many butterflies! You cannot imagine. It was like a two-level highway, with ugly, loud, clumsy humans on the ground and delicate, silent, unassuming monarchs passing above. We reached a field, where they were flying around like snowflakes, and finally made it to the trees where they had chosen to cluster. There were now more than four trees almost entirely covered with butterflies, and, all around the trees, thousands of them were swarming. Again, if they had been cockroaches, I would probably have feared for my life or, at least, my hygiene. (Why do cockroaches have such a terrible reputation? And I consider myself open-minded when it comes to insects!) They were monarchs, though, and Alma and I both sat on the ground and smiled like little kiddies. Even though our fellow visitors were shamelessly ignoring the sign that said, "Silence, please!", we could hear the flapping of wings like rustling leaves.

How amazing that the people living near these forests have seen this year after year for generations! And the people in Ocampo and Angangueo have watched the butterflies drifting in the sky every November, nearing the end of their long journey. Interestingly, though, very few people from Ocampo have ever gone up to the sanctuaries, and the children in Adriana's classes don't know the first thing about the monarch's life cycle. The monarch butterflies are Michoacan's claim to fame -- every tourist brochure features at least one photograph of a butterfly resting on a leaf -- and the people living closest to the action don't feel a strong connection to it (except for the tourist dollars it brings in). This is partly due to the lifestyle and resources of most of the residents -- Adriana tells me that the farthest away from Ocampo most of her students have been is Zitacuaro, which takes about half an hour to reach and is a relatively small city -- but also has to do with education. The goverment could decide to get people pumped up about the monarch butterfly, to teach them about its history and why it is important to protect it, from an early age, so that the sanctuary guest lists featured visitors from nearby as well as people from Canada and Germany. The butterfly reserves are currently a rich person attraction, even though the entrance fee is minimal; I wish that they were an everyone attraction.

The last thing I promised to write about was the celebration on November 20, when, in 1910, Francisco I. Madero declared that he intended to take the presidency, which had been held by the dictator Porfirio Diaz for decades. The start of the Mexican Revolution! This is, I was told, the most important political holiday in Mexico, and Ocampo partied appropriately hardy. Alma and I watched the two-hour long parade, in which red-, green-, and white-clad schoolchildren of all ages danced (the very youngest just wiggled with spirit), made impressive human pyramids, performed acrobatic tricks, and chanted, "¡Viva Mexico! ¡Viva Madero!". After the parade there was a Mexican dance competition in the main (and only) square, and at night there was a dance at the worst locale in town, which has a dirt floor and only half a roof. It was splendid. We stayed until the wee hours, and I felt bold enough towards the end to dance to every song with either Freddy, Ricardo, Jacob or Cesar, patient young men endowed with remarkable hopping abilities. Duranguense -- my new favorite kind of dance -- is not much more complicated than bouncing from one leg to the other with bent knees, either alone, in a loose embrace with a partner, or plastered onto a partner like another article of clothing. It's ideal for cold climes (aerobics + body heat), and also highly entertaining when the whole crowd is doing it: it looks like a sea of bobbing heads. Last night Adriana and I spontaneously decided to attend another dance, in our very own neighborhood of La Junta, and we danced with Eduardo, Fierros and Freddy.

I am so fond of all of these people! I am so fortunate to have met them! I often wonder what my life would be like right now if I had decided not to live with Adriana, or if the good-hearted people who showed me around during my first few weeks hadn't introduced me to their friends. All of my present happiness is due to the kindness and generosity of strangers -- strangers who are now friends. Gush gush gush.

As I've been writing, the clouds have been doing all sorts of wacky things. Right now they look like seaweed, or hair in water. In another part of the sky they look like cotton balls that have been pulled apart. And Nina the Lopsided Kitten just jumped through the window and rubbed up against my legs. It's a glorious day! I'm going to get dressed and venture forth into it aiiiiiiiie!

A guilty feeling -- part two (Ocampo, Mexico)

2009-11-20T23:02:00.002+01:00

I haven´t written in almost a month! And this is not a real post, either -- just an acknowledgement of my failure. I get last place in the Blogger Olympics. I´ll write within one week about: the Day of the Dead, the arrival of the butterflies, and today, November 20, Mexico´s most important holiday (the beginning of the Mexican revolution). Until then, be well, amoebos!

A continuation of the last post (Ocampo and Angangueo, Mexico)

2009-10-27T11:24:00.003+01:00

It is appropriate that I'm starting this post with Marifer's explanation of time -- a human invention -- because on Sunday most of Mexico "gained" an hour during the switch to the winter schedule. This means that, while last week it got dark shortly before eight, now it gets dark shortly before seven, and my poor body is so confused that I conked out at 8:30 last night. That doesn't make too much sense, because my usual bedtime is not 9:30 (I do suffer from Old Grannie Syndrome, but my case isn't that severe) -- but I can at least say that I find it amazing that everyone in this country, and most people in other countries, have such trust in clocks that they will alter their biological rhythms to fit them (dinner in the dark?). Also, I fully understand the riots that the switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar caused in Britain and its colonies in the mid-18th century -- 11 days "lost"! If I were told that tomorrow was going to be the 28th of November instead of the 28th of October, I probably wouldn't feel a month older, but I would feel that the year was a month shorter. How strange that we listen more to calendars and clocks than to the universe! We try to make uniform and constant something that varies in nature depending on location and season (I'm not saying that time itself varies -- maybe it does! -- but that natural cycles do).

Now back to my interview victims at El Bosque Village: I left off with Marifer, who said that time doesn't exist, but rather was invented by humans. What do exist are events and processes, like the different stages of life, which are different for every person. All cycles of life are relative to each other -- there is no single basis for comparison. So, we measure not time, but changes and differences, without which time makes no sense. She said that we can experience "timeless" states, such as dreams, in which you can be thrown out of your life cycle, which reinforces the idea that time is mere perception and not a tangible reality.

Marifer also told me about something that I found fascinating, prefacing it with the disclaimer that I would think she was crazy. (I don't think she's crazy at all.) When she was young, she discovered that, whenever she imagined something, it didn't happen. If, for example, she imagined going on a walk with her father after swimming at the beach, she'd come home from the beach to find that her father had left the house and wouldn't be back until after dark. She said that she can "manipulate the future by creating it in her imagination," but in a negative way, and for this reason she tries not to imagine good things in the future and live only in the moment. Oof! Not only is that the most interesting reason I've heard for living in the moment, but what a way to live, no? To be scared of imagining good things because you know that, as soon as they pop into your head, they won't happen? I think that I'd go crazy. Marifer is a toughie!

Margret, with whom I went to the bread class, told us that she thought that time was an experience, and one very much linked to our bodies. When her body is moving quickly, time seems to pass quickly, and when her body is moving slowly, time seems to pass slowly (so, if she is sitting and thinking, time drags). For this reason, people are able to manipulate time by controlling their bodies. We can choose to live slowly or quickly, for time to linger or rush. Like Brian, Margret said that age affects our perception of time; she babysat back home, and she found it amusing that the children were always rushing, trying not to lose time by filling every moment with activity. Margret, older than the children, was capable of sitting and doing nothing -- she knew better than they how much time they "had". Margret also drew a distinction between different scales of time. Humans can understand time as a lifespan -- we have a sense of what that means -- and also as a day-to-day experience. Some people around the table thought that animals were capable of the latter but not the former, and we wondered what it would be like to live for several centuries rather than just one. Desirable or tragic? (Basically: Would we want to be bitten by a vampire?)

Finally (actually, this was the first thing that she mentioned), Margret brought up the coil or spiral theory of time. This is the idea that our lives are spiral-ish in nature, that we go through cycles but each time at a higher level of understanding -- a combination of repetition and progression. Those are the two things that I have the most trouble reconciling in my head, and I liked hearing about them in the context of our lives (much easier than in the context of, e.g., the universe). Before moving onto Forest, Margret's boyfriend, here is a snippet of the conversation with Margret that I appreciated enough to write down verbatim:

Margret: "Words are so . . ."
Irene: "Limiting."
Margret: "Well, you just have to pick the right ones sometimes."

Yes! Exactly the issue!

Forest was quieter than the other three, but, to my pleasure, based many of his ideas on observations of outer space. He said that he did believe in a universal time, because we could witness the birth and death of stars (whose lifespans are more or less predictable), but that our time, on our planet, was cyclical. The Earth spins around its axis and orbits around the Sun, giving us the days and the seasons. When I asked if there was a universal point of reference for time -- something against which to measure our cycles -- he said no, but then mentioned lightyears. (It's funny: the phrase "speed of light" sounds so spacey and sciencey to me that I fail to connect it to the light that my computer screen is emitting, or the light coming in from the open kitchen door. But it's the same deal!)

The observation that I found most interesting didn't actually have to do with outer space. When I asked Forest how his perception of time had changed since coming to El Bosque Village, he said that time was the same, but how he used it was different. He's slowed down, in large part because he is confined to a smaller space. When he lived in the city, he had to get places, and those places were far away; he spent two hours a day biking to and from work. In El Bosque Village, everything is within walking distance. It sounds obvious, but I hadn't made this connection with my own experience here. I spend most of my time in or between Ocampo and Angangueo, which are only fifteen minutes apart by bus; my functional world is much smaller here than it is in Washington, D.C. And the people who live in Ocampo spend most of their time there. They never have to rush to work, and (ha ha) nobody worries about arriving late, because they know that the person they have to meet is somewhere in town (maybe even looking for them already). The pace of life here is anything but frenetic -- because life is confined to a small volume! (Well, now it sounds even more obvious. I often wonder if I am really stupid. Oh, I am, I am! What a bummer.)

Also, I finally spoke with somebody about butterflies (after all, the point of my stay here)! On a walk to the outskirts of Angangueo, high up in the mountains, I met a man named Salomon and his father, Vicente. They have lived in Angangueo all of their lives, and, after Salomon showed me a book about the monarch butterflies, Vicente shared some of his memories of the butterflies when he was little. They were nothing special then -- the migration pattern hadn't been discovered, and no tourists came -- so he and his friends thought nothing of killing them for sport. Over the course of the winter, many would die on their own and cover the forest floor with a carpet of orange and black; farmers would bring their cows to the forests to eat them. Since those days, and even after the two sanctuaries were created and tourists started coming, the forest has been diminishing in size (due to legal, and a lot of illegal, logging), and the resting place of the butterflies has been shifting. Before, they could be seen in many parts, but now they go almost only to the sanctuaries, and there are fewer of them. Salomon expressed anger at the government for not doing anything about this -- it's bad for the people, too, because the tourist industry suffers -- and predicted that things would only get worse this year, with H1N1 influenza hysteria and the economic crisis. I am curious to see how many tourists do end up coming -- and from what countries. I bet a chocolate bar that there won't be many Americans.

I'll wrap up this post now. I think that I've more than made up for not writing in my blog for three weeks, no? Now I wish that I could show you the pictures that people have drawn in my little blue book! Someday I will scan them all and put them in my photo blog, which has sunk into an even deeper coma than this one. Someday, someday . . .

A great deal to report (Ocampo and Angangueo, Mexico)

2009-10-26T13:42:00.002+01:00

WELL. It's been a while. In fact, it's been so long that this blog post is intimidating -- I want to write about so many things that my fingers are cringing in apprehension. Don't worry, fingers! The suffering will end by 11:30, when I'll leave for Ocampo for my now daily English class with Karina -- we are learning the present progressive (just like that!) and I have to walk and hop and run and stand around town, asking her, "What am I doing, Karina?" ("You are walking, hopping, running, standing," I hope she will say.) These exercises are good for me, because -- oh pain and suffering! -- it is getting colder and colder every day, and if I'm not walking and hopping and running around town, I'm blowing on my hands to warm them up. Who knew that I was such a weather wimp? California spoiled me.

The classes are also good for me because Karina and I usually go to visit Anaisa, her niece, afterwards, and we do things like go on walks to Las Cruces (Ocampo's lookout point) (also its makeout point for those romantic young couples with nowhere else to go) or relax in Anaisa's house. We've also gone on a longer afternoon trip to San Jose del Rincon, a town in the state of Mexico, where we visited Anaisa's aunt and uncle and cousins. The highlight of that day was an unexpected rainstorm that caught us on the drive back to Ocampo -- we were riding in the back of Anaisa's parents' pickup truck and were soaked to the bones by the time we got home. We giggled hysterically between shivers.

A while later, Adriana and I were standing at the kitchen door, watching the backyard river flood. Oof! We renamed it the Rio Bravo -- before it was the Rio Miranda -- and lamented the fact that our backyard would be full of garbage again by the time the flood ended. It is amazing how much trash accumulates by the riverside, and sad to think that, after we pick it up, it is just going to end up accumulating somewhere else. What will future archaeologists say when they find our giant piles of plastic bottles and bags? ("Pigs!") Plastic bags are the worst. I have done some planting in the backyard, and, everywhere I dig, a few inches down, I find a layer of plastic bags that I have to pull out with my herculean strength (they are ornery! and I'm sure that I can hear them laughing when I slip and fall on my butt). Now when I look at a pretty green field, I think, "Plastic bags!" They are probably there, beneath the grass, snickering, not decomposing as well-behaved things do. Readers: avoid them! Or reuse them a thousand times before throwing them away. Also avoid products with lots of packaging, and give away your old things instead of throwing them away, and . . . well, you know, the three R's. LOVE THEM.

On to other things: Adriana and I have continued to live in harmony together with Nina the Lopsided Kitten (who is now so bold that she stalks and chases the sheep that graze in the neighbors' backyard and also their large dog, to whom she is snack-sized). We sit and talk and watch movies -- I am now acquainted with world-famous Mexican actor Cantinflas, who is hilarious -- and look at the stars when the sky is clear and cook (she does) and eat (both of us do) (I do the dishes, though, so as not to mooch shamelessly) and drive to Angangueo or Ocampo to do social rounds or eat tacos. When we're feeling more ambitious, we go to Zitacuaro, where we shop at the market or at a giant grocery store, and I have started to frequent the Thursday tianguis (weekly market). Adriana's friends drop by occasionally for an evening visit, meal, or smoke, and also to help us with things around the house. We call it "the perfect house (with defects)," but there are so few defects now that it may soon be upgraded to "the perfect house (defectless)." We have a constant water supply, electricity where we want it, a fridge (!), a mirror in the bathroom, doors that mostly close, plenty of kitchen utensils . . . all that's missing is a jacuzzi, and someday we plan to fill up the concrete water tank in the backyard to serve that purpose. Then even rich celebrities will be jealous of us!

In addition to cohabitating our perfect house harmoniously, Adriana and I have discovered that we are excellent travel mates. A few weeks ago we drove with a friend, Brian, to a "balneario" near a town called San Jose Purua, where we spent the day swimming in the green, murky waters of what used to be a luxury swimming pool in an abandoned private club. Well, almost abandoned -- it is now run by a staff of about three, one of whom charges a minimal entry fee at the gate and two of whom sell potato chips and instant noodles at the bar. Adriana and I spent some time exploring the decaying buildings, some of which already had plant-covered floors, and walking along a road in the surrounding forest. We gaped at the Mother of All Trees (enormous, old, beautiful), oohed and aahed at interesting flowers, and speedwalked back to the main facility when we heard suspicious whistles and hushed men's voices coming from the nearby vegetation. Later, Brian and I went along another path that overlooked a great green canyon and had been taken over by a stream, so that our feet were always wet. We realized at some point that the wall above us was full of eroded stalactites and rock curtains -- we were walking in what used to be a cave! We thought about how many other caves we had walked over unknowingly and bounced in excitement.

This past weekend, Adriana and I went to Los Azufres, a forest with natural hot springs. I laughed at Adriana for bringing what I thought were the entire contents of our perfect house (including the stereo) on a camping trip, but insisted that she share her blanket that night when my extremities were numb and I couldn't sleep from the cold -- then she laughed at me. We walked, read, lounged in the warm pools, built a fire with Gabriel and Ricardo, two friends who visited, admired the stars, and came home smelling like rotten eggs. The smell lingers; even after scrubbing away at my clothes like a madwoman, using detergents and softeners that smell like "roses and jasmine," "fresh spring," and "fiesta" (?), I catch a faint whiff of sulfur every time I walk past the clotheslines where they are drying. I consider it a souvenir -- essence of Los Azufres.

Adriana also invited me to attend her school's anniversary celebration last Wednesday. We arrived late to the footrace from Ocampo to the school (about three kilometers, I think), so Adriana had to cheer on her students from the car instead of from her assigned spot by the side of the road, but she made up for her tardiness when we got to the school. Her job was to organize the students welcoming the visitors -- mostly members of the municipal government and students from primary schools -- and they were very welcoming indeed. Even I got to wear a little badge, and I was introduced around by Adriana's friend Luis as "a fellow English teacher." The morning ceremony was predictably boring; I don't understand why people think that speeches have to be humorless and dry, especially ones directed at junior high school students. There should be jokes! There should be music and dancing! There were, in fact, music and dancing, but they came after the speeches. The school's drama club, dressed to the nines in long colorful skirts and suits, the boys with black mustaches painted on their upper lips, danced a little routine, which I applauded wildly. I also watched Mexico's important historical figures (well, small and adorable impersonators of them) march by; I was the most enthusiastic spectator for this part of the show, too.

My absolute favorite event, though, was the hot air balloon competition. Several groups of students constructed big balloons out of crepe paper, and, after filling them up with gas, lit the wick at the bottom opening and let them fly! Most burned instead of flying, which was tragic, because they were so beautiful -- a red heart, a multicolored star with tassels on the points, a multicolored cube, among other works of art. And sometimes the flaming pieces of balloon fell in the midst of the students, and I'd think, "Well, that's it. Somebody's hair will light on fire and things will turn gruesome." But nobody's hair lit on fire, nobody died, and, if someday I work at a school, I will try to convince the higher-ups to let our students play with gas and fire and highly flammable materials.

And, finally, I have to write about something that I did alone, but which was certainly a highlight of these past three weeks: I spent four nights and three days at El Bosque Village, a planet-loving community in a forest near Patzcuaro (if you Google-image "Patzcuaro", you will see that the people living at El Bosque Village are lucky ducks). It is run by Brian and Marie, who are from Washington and Wisconsin, respectively, and several volunteers from all over the place who live there for periods lasting from several weeks to several months. I spent the first morning helping to build a chicken coop out of cob (a thick mixture of dirt, sawdust, pine needles and water) with Judith from Germany and Margret from Oregon, and that afternoon played legos with Gonzalito (the son of Soco, a woman from the nearby town of Zarzamora, who comes every Saturday to help cook) and Brenda from Mexico. In the evening I sat in a sauna with Brenda, Trevor from England, and Marie. The next day I walked in the forest and read, played volleyball, failed miserably at archery, and learned basic trapeze tricks with Judith, who has done trapeze for ten years! And on the last day of my visit, I spent most of the afternoon in Zarzamora, learning how to make and bake bread in a wood-fired stove with Soco's mother, Alicia. My fellow pupil, Margret, and I were exhausted by the time we got back to El Bosque Village -- making bread is not for the weak of spirit! We kneaded like it was our number one purpose in life, and, when our empanadas turned out deformed and bleeding apple butter, we did not despair but rather rejoiced, because we could eat them (the good ones were sold). Poor Alicia. She is patience and tolerance embodied.

All of that sounds decadent in a hippie-dippie way -- and it was -- but it was also an invaluable learning experience. In addition to working on an eco-friendly building with my own hands, I read about eco-friendly architecture in El Bosque Village's relatively extensive library (it rivals Angangueo's public library), and was inspired by all of the neato things people have come up with. As a result, I have revised my Future Fantasy: I'm not only going to live in New Mexico, the state of states, geographic apple of my eye, but I'm also going to build a house there out of bags of dirt. Yes, dirt! Bags of it! You can come visit. (If you are intrigued, look up "earthbag building" and be amazed.)

I also learned from the people there, and this was the best part of all. Brian, Marie, Margret, Forest, Marifer, Brenda, Judith, and Trevor were all interesting and open and friendly, and we talked about a variety of things that made me happy. We also talked about . . . time! And finally, after all those paragraphs about happenings, I come to my project.

After writing about my Watson project anxiety in the last post, I was possessed by Watson project fire and started "interviewing" people with a vengeance. I informed Anaisa and Karina that every time I saw them, they had to draw a different picture in my little blue book (they took this well), and talked with several Ocampo friends and acquaintances at length about my project. The most interesting conversations were the ones I had with Gabriel and Jacob, who had vastly different opinions about humans' interaction with time. Gabriel mentioned linear time (we age), cyclical time (we eat at around the same times every day), and then said that, now that technology allows us to "control" time, we are the ones losing control. We are lost without our cell phones and watches, and we think little of hopping on a plane and emerging in a different world a few hours later -- travel is losing its meaning. We are getting used to being able to be wherever we want to be whenever, and think that we are "wasting time" when we're not there (e.g. when we're in the car). That time wasn't "wasted" before.

Jacob had a very set view: the world is governed by cycles, but humans are exempt from these cycles. We are different from animals and other living things because we can control our activities, and even our lifespans, while they are the slaves of instinct. I asked if this was true of evolution -- if humans weren't a part of that, either -- and he said that he believed in evolution, but that humans weren't a part of it. Humans were made in God's image, and we were not subject to the same rules that govern other things in the universe. This was fascinating to me: a mixture of science and religion, with humans set apart from the rest of the universe. I discovered how close-minded I am when I kept having to bite my tongue to keep from arguing with him -- I am so convinced that some things are true (like the Big Bang, even though it is such a wacky theory, and evolution, and our un-special status) that I completely discount other possibilities (humans created by God, not part of evolution). I don't think that I should believe everything -- I'd explode -- but I should at least be able to listen to everything.

At El Bosque Village, I spent the last evening interrogating Brian, Margret, Forest and Marifer, with whom I practiced my goal of listening to everything. It was the first time I talked with a group of people, as opposed to an individual or two people, and it was great! Brian said that time was like the third dimension to beings in Flatland -- we can't point to it. My questions (like, "How would you explain time to an alien?") invite BS, because they encourage people to wax philosophical and say things that don't make sense, but, in a real, down-to-earth sense, time is simple: we are born, we get older, we go through a number of biological phases, and we die. As we age, we discover the ratio theory of time -- the older one is, the shorter a day (or a month or a year) seems because it is a smaller part of the whole. When he did wax philosophical, Brian said that he did believe in a universal time, and that he thought of it as a bunch of vectors -- the present is the intersection of the past now and the now-now and the soon-to-be-now. The past doesn't exist the way the present moment does, but rather as a remnant; the remnants of the past are the now. And the future doesn't exist, either, until it becomes the now. Brian was convinced that all humans had to believe in the past and the future. How could people make plans, or think about their lives, without placing them in that framework?

Marifer, in contrast, said that time doesn't exist, but rather was invented by humans. And -- shoot! -- my watch tells me that it is 11:39 in the morning and I should be heading out the door to my English class with Karina. In fact, I'm probably going to be late. What an anxiety-causing invention! I will finish writing this entry in the afternoon and post it the next time I am online. It is long enough already, no?

A guilty feeling (Ocampo, Mexico)

2009-10-25T14:53:00.000+01:00

My poor blog has sunk into a coma. But fear not -- I have high hopes for its recovery. In fact, tomorrow morning, after planting some green things in the backyard, I plan to write a long post about everything that has happened in the past three weeks -- in Too Much Detail! Our favorite! I am ensuring the success of this plan by announcing it online, here in my blog. If I don´t write tomorrow after promising to today, I will suffer from guilty feelings, and nobody likes those. My plan is foolproof!

Hasta bananas, then, amoebos. I hope that you are doing well!

A successful settling-in (Angangueo and Ocampo, Mexico)

2009-10-05T19:37:00.001+02:00

I'm sitting on the floor of the kitchen with my legs sticking out the back door onto the spiral staircase that leads into our yard. Nina the Lopsided Kitten (she has hurt her left hind leg twice already in her five months of life, so it sticks out when she sits down, and she is slightly cross-eyed -- but don't be deceived! she is a fierce huntress, the bane of all insects in the Diaz Villanueva-Toro Martinez household) is sunning herself lopsidedly on the third step down, and a black and white sheep is staring at me from the neighbor's yard. Hello, sheep. The sky is blue, and the hills beyond the little river that runs behind the back yard are covered with patches of magenta and orange-yellow flowers, pine trees, and other green beings that are just thrilled to be living in this most hydrated part of the state of Michoacan. Behind me I can hear cars and vans and buses and trucks whizzing (or crawling, if it is a truck) along the road connecting Angangueo and Ocampo; soon I will be in one of the buses on my way to Ocampo to give an English lesson to Karina, whom I met last week with her cousin Anaisa and who took me on a ride in her dugout canoe in the Laguna Verde. We did not drown -- one of my successes du jour that day. My success du jour today might be forcing some unwilling victim to draw his or her conception of time in my little blue notebook.

Now that I am settled in, I'm starting to suffer from Watson project anxiety. "Am I doing this right?!" I think to myself in the wee hours of the night, sweating, eyes rolling wildly, gripping the sheets in my white-knuckled fists and wringing them like wet towels. That's a lie. But I am a bit worried, because, to my dismay and great amusement, nobody with whom I have spoken about the butterflies thinks about them! That is, almost everyone I have asked about them says something along the lines of: "Oh, the butterflies. Yeah, they come every year. You'll see them in your yard. No, I've never been to the reserves. It's only the tourists who do that. Stories or legends? I don't think there are any. They're nothing special to me; I grew up with them." One man has told me a sketch of a story that has to do with the butterflies -- they are drawn to the gold in the hills near Angangueo, which were mined intensively until the early 20th century -- but I have yet to hear about the souls of orange-and-black-clad warriors returning for the Day of the Dead or harvest time markers I read about online. The most important things that the butterflies bring with them are not dead souls but living ones -- tourists like yours truly. Several people have told me that, in the past ten years, more tourists have been coming than used to, and the towns' economies clearly depend on the tourist dollar, which rolls in between November and March each year. There are empty hotels waiting to be filled, monarch butterflies painted on many public walls, and the names of businesses in Angangueo, the more touristy of the two towns, are even decorated with a common butterfly motif. This is also interesting, and I hope to meet more people who were around before the reserves were reserves and the tourists came in flocks. Watson project anxiety, begone! (Right?)

I am living, as I wrote before, with Adriana, whom I like more each day (and I liked her to begin with, so this is a great thing!). We cook and eat together, and often have people over for late lunch or dinner -- I am still getting used to socializing every waking moment of the day and night, which is the norm here. Actually, I crack sometimes and retreat to the bedroom or backyard staircase to look at the sky, which is always doing something exciting. Among the things we have cooked (to say "we" is somewhat dishonest -- I generally chop and follow the directions that Adriana, Master Chef, gives me) are: tamales, pozole, pork with pumpkin (this was all her), quesadillas, soup, and . . . and . . . shoot. So many more delicious glutton-satisfying dishes. And I am such a glutton. We eat a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables, including some that I had never seen before, like sapotes, which look like shiny deflated green rubber balls (i.e. unappetizing) but taste like capuccino when blended with milk. That, at least, is my opinion. 10/10 stars. I plan to weigh at least ten more pounds when I leave Mexico than I did when I arrived.

When we're not cooking or eating, we are usually doing things around the house. I'm acquiring practical skills, like learning how to make a water pump start, and washing the water tanks, and setting up a water boiler (I didn't set it up! I watched and cringed when Jacob, who did set it up, was fiddling with the gas tank; tanks make me think pressure makes me think explosion, and loud noises are one of my weak points -- take note, enemies). A lot of plumbing knowledge, it would seem. We have set up clothes lines in the backyard, and picked up more garbage, and will soon plant more green beings that will be just thrilled to be living in this most hydrated part of the state of Michoacan. The house is very homey now, thanks in large part to Adriana, who is a stickler for detail and whose adoring friends -- the many young men I listed in the last post -- happen to be handymen who all want to contribute to the effort by fixing doors that don't close properly or awkwardly placed electrical cords.

We have also gone on excursions! Last last Saturday, Adriana, Edwin, Ricardo, Jacob and I drove four hours to Uruapan for a wedding. Luis, another teacher who lives in the hotel where Adriana and Edwin used to live and I almost lived, was married for the second time, a Christian-style ceremony which, to our disappointment, lacked happy music and dance (also funny was toasting with grape juice instead of wine). It was lovely to see proud families and little kiddies throwing rose petals on the ground before the bride, though -- especially lucky for me because I had met Luis exactly once before attending this most important and holy event in his life. Adriana, Edwin and I have also gone to Zitacuaro several times. Zitacuaro is the city closest to Ocampo, and where we do our major shopping in a giant grocery store and in the markets. This past Saturday we stayed until the early evening to eat at the booths along the Calle del Hambre, inaptly named because it is really the Calle de la Gula -- we booth-hopped and stuffed ourselves until another bite would have meant a sudden and tragic explosion. I also went to Zitacuaro's enormous Thursday tianguis, the weekly market, and finally bought clothes for cold weather. Bring it on, Father Winter. Irene the Finally Appropriately Clad can withstand your frosty mornings and snows-upon-the-mountain. (Actually, since I bought the sweaters and coat it has been gloriously sunny and warm, and I am sunburnt. Go figure.)

I have to stop writing now to stand outside and wait for the next bus to Ocampo, but there is much more that I want to mention! I didn't write about how "punctual" here means showing up, and "very punctual" means showing up within an hour of the prearranged time, and I haven't described the people I see most often, and I haven't raved about the backyard fauna, which includes cows and sheep and lizards and butterflies and all sorts of interesting insects and spiders and caterpillars and worms and grubs, and I haven't said anything about Angangueo, which I finally explored thoroughly. It will have to be next time if I want to be "very punctual" -- and I do, because that part of my upbringing is too deeply ingrained for a few weeks in Mexico to vanquish it. I hope that somebody draws in my little blue notebook today! Maybe Karina will do it in exchange for the English lesson.

A cold and colorful place (Ocampo and Angangueo, Mexico)

2009-09-24T17:01:00.004+02:00

Well, I am already behind in my weekly Mexico updates! Not too much of a shocker. And this one will be a shortie -- I started a longer post in a document on my computer, Toby, but he had a bout of grouchiness (my ability to break computers just by touching them has not diminished) and I couldn´t finish it.

Now I am writing on a nameless computer in Ocampo, where I arrived a week and a day ago to a parade with music and colorful banners -- not welcoming me, but celebrating Mexico´s 199th year of independence. It was lovely. I got to see most of the town´s adult residents lining the streets, proudly sprinkling confetti on the heads of most of the town´s schoolchildren, who were marching in step, looking proud or confused. Since that auspicious beginning to my stay here, so much has happened that I can hardly keep it straight in my head. Here is a list:

- I decided to move in with Adriana, an English teacher at a nearby school, instead of spending three months in a dark hotel room. Excellent decision. Adriana is wonderful, and we have spent the past few days cleaning and organizing the house (she more than I, since she moved to the house about a week before I arrived). Among our successes are: a garbage-free yard and river (at least the part of the river that we can see), a mostly functional kitchen full of food, a fixed ladder, and a compost bin with some fruit peels in it, which we plan to use on what will soon be our splendid garden.

- I met Adriana´s friend Edwin, who is the leader-type of a group of about ten young men (sometimes a few more, sometimes a few fewer) (a few fewer?), with whom I have gone to a dance, played soccer (´played´ is perhaps misleading -- I jogged around and dodged the ball), and hung out on several nights in Edwin´s room and in Adriana´s house. The young men -- Isaac Fernando, Javier, Gabriel, Eduardo, Chafai, Brian Alexis, Ricardo, Fierros, Freddy, and others -- are friendly and funny, and I´m glad to have been adopted by the group, even if I am still quiet and awkward around them.

- I met, went on walks with and/or had meals with several other people (a woman named Carla, her father Don Manuel, and her mother Dona Remedios; a girl named Anaisa who works at a taco stand; a man named Jacob who works at a telephone store; a woman named Angelica who is the director of a kindergarten) in Ocampo.

- I saw 1200-to-800-year-old pyramids with Adriana in Zirahuato de los Bernal. !!! We then went to Zitacuaro, the nearest city, to go grocery shopping and drink fruit nectars.

- Now that I´ve mentioned fruit nectars, I should also say that I´ve eaten: tacos with beef and pork and nopales, mole, rice, Michoacan mushrooms, chicken, enchiladas, pumpkin seeds, atole (a hot soupy sweet corn beverage), pan vaso (bread dipped in chili sauce, fried, and stuffed with your choice of meat), a lot of tropical fruits, and . . . well, chocolate, of course, but that´s not nearly as exciting. I´ve only gotten sick to my stomach once. Made of steel (I am). Adriana is going to show me how to cook other delicious things, among them tamales. The thought makes me salivate.

- Learned the Mexican names for many words! I hadn´t realized how different the vocabulary was.

That´s it for the list, I think. Now I should describe the places! I`ve spent the most time in Ocampo, which is flat and surrounded by tall forested hills (where the butterflies gather starting in November). It is a tiny town, with one main plaza, one main street and not too many others, and a river. There are always people in the streets, and there are always food vendors selling tacos, so some parts of town smell delicious. There are several wood processing shops, which turn wood (legally or illegally logged) into crates and sticks for mops and other such things. There are a lot of arcade game rooms. There are a lot of homeless dogs. There are corn fields and farm animals at the outer edges of town and beyond. There is a lot of rain, and there is visible breath in the mornings (it is cold! and humid) (the first few days I felt like I was in the rainy period of ´100 Years of Solitude´). There is a big market on Saturdays.

That description doesn´t do the town justice, and I think that I achieved my goal of sounding like a third-grader who doesn´t want to put much effort into her English homework. Yes!! I´m actually living much closer to Angangueo now, which is quite different from Ocampo. It, too, has one main plaza, but this plaza has two churches and they are taller and grander than the one in Ocampo. Angangueo is much more colorful and much more vertical than Ocampo, since it is located higher up in the hills; walking around is good exercise (for legs and eyes). In general, it seems better cared for than Ocampo, and has more hotels and nice-looking food businesses (the ones in Ocampo are nice, but not nice-looking) -- it is the more touristy of the two monarch butterfly reserve gateway towns. I have yet to meet people in Angangueo. Next week I will wander around looking friendly and eager to make the acquaintance of anyone who is nearby (but only if that person looks at least half as eager as me -- I don´t want to scare anyone).

´This one will be a shortie.´ I am so funny! I will write another update within the next, oh, ten days -- one better organized and more informative -- and send best wishes to you, kind reader.

A chapter ending (A Corunha, Spain)

2009-09-14T22:24:00.006+02:00

Oh, shameful neglect of blog! But I plan to write weekly (that's not too ambitious, right?) updates when I am in Mexico -- I leave tomorrow morning! In fact, this post is largely an attempt to put off packing, not because I have to rack my brains deciding what to bring with and what to leave behind (I am bringing everything with, of course), but because zipping up my suitcase tonight will be an awful lot like closing a chapter in the Book of Watson Adventure, and I am in a state of disbelief. Leaving Spain already? Quoi?!

The past few weeks have gone by incredibly quickly, and I've met more wonderful people than I can mention and describe. In Santander I spent every night with a group made up of Germans (there are a lot of these in Spain), American (just one), Cuban (also), Argentinian (also also), and Spaniards; we walked around, drank chocolate and ate churros, and admired the light of the moon on the water. No joke. It was really pretty. In Madrid I stayed with Rosa, who was the friend of a friend of my mother's and is now my friend (a shorter and nicer title), and with whom I felt completely at home and happy. She introduced me to her friends -- more feelings of comfort and happiness -- and pointed out every cute thing that her two young cats did. During the days I explored the city (enormous! grand! overwhelming!), went on a day trip to Toledo (narrow-laned, beautiful and touristy), and spent an afternoon with Alberto, my Foz friend. This past weekend I've been back in La Corunha with Sylvia, Juan and not-so-little Giulia, who has grown a lot since I met her three months ago! Her favorite word is "agua". You say, "Hooola, Giulia" and she responds, "Aguaguaguagua. Agua. Aguagua." (There are infinite variations of this exchange.) I wonder what she thinks she's saying.

All of these people have been incredibly good to me and admirable. I love admiring people! And I've been sad to say goodbye to them.

The topic of time has come up on many occasions during my travels. Almost everyone I meet is willing to talk with me about it, so I have learned oodles from people. I have also noticed that artists are obsessed with time -- many museums that I've visited have exhibits with creative titles like "Representations of Time" and equally creative artwork (that I often fail to get, like a painting of a cute little dog face that was supposed to make me consider the meaning of "instant" and "present"; it made me consider the weirdness of dog breeding). Historical museums, too, are filled with interesting time-related things; I like to see how different ones set up exhibits that span many centuries. I hope to write about these things in my journal when I am less computer-averse, and I'll post something more concrete in this blog (as well as a summary of my fishing knowledge!).

I'm not sure what my internet situation will be like in Ocampo, Mexico -- I'm not even sure what my living situation will be like! -- so I'll publicly apologize to anyone who tries to get in touch with me but doesn't hear back for a while: I'm sorry.

Now I'm going to go back to packing, and at some point I will zip up my suitcase (my personal soundtrack will be playing dramatic orchestral music, lots of violins). Ciao now, Spain! Hooola, Mexico!

I hope that you are doing wonderfully.

A collection of very old art (Santander and Puente Viesgo, Spain)

2009-09-06T10:51:00.000+02:00

A one-paragraph update, because I am getting behind in my blog duties (but am also increasingly computer-averse)! Yesterday I went to a town called Puente Viesgo, where I saw, for the first time in my life, prehistoric cave paintings. The experience ranks high in my List of Mind-Boggling Historical Experiences. Over the past many millions of years, dozens of caves have been carved by water into the rock of Monte Castillo, the big hill by the town, and in the past century, people have found cave paintings in five of them. Two of these -- la Cueva de las Monedas and la Cueva del Castillo -- are open to the public. La Cueva del Castillo is the main attraction for paintings. Excavations in the opening of the cave have revealed twenty-six layers of human-produced materials, ranging in age from 150,000 years to about five centuries. This cave has been a home for a long time! The paintings themselves, deeper inside the cave, date from about 12,000ish years ago, and are of bison, deer, horses, hands, and symbols that haven't yet been deciphered. What I found most fascinating was that the painters used the contours of the rocks as part of their art. They didn't say, "Oh look, a flat wall -- I will draw a horse there!" They said (something like), "Hmm . . . those cracks look like a horse's hind legs . . . and look how the rock protrudes here, that could be the horse's head . . . I will draw the horse's torso and front legs." They saw the pictures before they drew them! My favorite one of all involved shadows. The guide pointed out a painting that looked pretty odd to us -- a large pair of legs with no body attached. She asked us, "Why would they do that?" We failed the pop quiz -- nobody knew. Then she put the lamp in a certain position behind a rock formation -- and suddenly there was an upright bison body to go with the legs! The people had seen the shape of the bison in the shadow and added legs to turn it into a shaman. That's the theory, at least. WOWEE!!! I almost bounced up and down (might have actually). I think it's so exciting that we can see the same thing in a shadow that people saw ten thousand years ago. The other cave was more geologically impressive -- stalactites and stalagmites and curtains and organs and falls and other beautiful formations galore. Our planet is so great!

That's it for this update because it is breakfast time. In nine days I will be in Mexico -- holy shamoley.

An exultation (Picos de Europa and Oviedo, Spain)

2009-09-01T18:37:00.002+02:00

I think that I must be the most fortunate person in the world. My legs, on the other hand, consider it a great misfortune that they were paired up with me, and went on strike yesterday to protest the abuses to which they were subjected during the weekend excursion to the Picos de Europa. They haven't lifted the strike yet, so I cringe every time I go down stairs -- but all I want to do is go back to the mountains and abuse them all over again.

I arrived to Oviedo on Friday evening and was met at the station by Chus, my CouchSurfing host, who also studied physics (but is now an independent graphic designer) and with whom I have another 79348579345 things in common. Any attempt to describe him and his hospitality will end in gushiness; suffice it to say that I am glad to have a new Friend. He had organized our weekend excursion into the Picos de Europa, a vast mountain range about two hours from Oviedo, and that night we won the gold medal in Last-Minute Preparation -- when I confessed that I didn't have hiking boots ("but my sandals should be all right, no?"), Chus said, "Impossible!" and we drove to a delightful outdoorsy store at a suburban strip mall (Spain has these, too) to buy a pair. Castor and Pollux, my new spiffy boots (and trusty steeds), would end up saving my life, or at least my ankles, many times during the next few days. We also bought food for our hikes; in retrospect, two loaves of bread, five packages of sandwich cheese and meat, and 725 grams of chocolate (my idea) was overdoing it a little, but better that than (e.g. and oh horror!!) a chocolate craving left unsated. We had a late dinner at home and conked out after looking at an Ansel Adams book -- photographs of big wild spaces! We would be in one soon!

The next morning, we picked up Alina, a German student who is spending eight months in Spain and who came adventuring with us, at the bus station, and we all set off for the mountains. Alina, too, is gush-worthy, and almost the same person as me because 1. she spent a year in Minnesota, 2. she speaks Spanish, German and English, and 3. she will be doing her master's at Boston University either next year or the following one (in International Relations, though, not Science Journalism). Twins! Upon reaching the mountains, Alina, Chus and I left the car near a lake and hiked up to the refugio, where we would spend the night. Alina and I were delighted at every turn -- mountain walls of gray stone with purple flowers! cows with gently tinkling bells munching on the grass! some pretty trees! -- and Chus, who had visited these mountains many times before, said, "You'll see what the places we hike to are like!" Also auspicious was the almost sudden disappearance of gray clouds and fog that had hung over us until we stopped for lunch and Chus said, "We just have to hope that the clouds clear up." Lo and behold! They did.

Not everywhere, though. After dropping off two of our backpacks at the refugio and filling the third with water bottles, we hiked to a nearby mirador (passing the occasional cave in a wall or in the ground) and sat on a ridge that overlooked a valley, presumably forested but so completely filled with clouds that we couldn't see the trees! All around us, we could see mountain tops and ridges in the hot sun, and to our left was a steep mountain wall, wet from the water that seeps out of the rock, but below there was a cloud sea. At one of the edges of the cloud sea, I watched the fog spill over a low mountain ridge into another valley -- it is absurd what beautiful things this planet is capable of creating. Way to go, Planet. We reluctantly hiked back to the refugio and arrived just in time for our eight o'clock dinner, which was exquisite and especially impressive because the three people who run the refugio have to bring up all of the supplies on horseback. That night, after a peach-rainbow sunset over another cloud sea, the fog around us cleared up and we saw the stars. Ugh. We are part of such a big universe.

The next day was our Big Adventure (the one for which my legs still haven't forgiven me) -- a full-day hike to the top of the highest mountain in the part of the Picos we were in, complete with crawls up steep slopes of sharp, football-sized rocks, slips down snowy valleys, and scales up walls that were significantly more vertical than horizontal and significantly higher up than Safe Falling Altitude -- but we didn't fall. Castor and Pollux, and Alina's also-brand-new-but-six-times-as-expensive hiking boots, saw to that. I'm passionately in love with the Picos de Europa, which I feel incapable of describing. Such a big part of being in the mountains, and particularly these mountains, so big and harsh and dry (I kept thinking of Mars and the Moon on steroids), is emotionally responding to their presence. I can't write about what I saw because it wouldn't explain what I experienced. So: go to the mountains! Have a mountain experience! It will be super. (And even more super if you have companions like Chus and Alina.)

We made it back to the car at ten at night, now a company of four, because Javier, Alina's CouchSurfing host from Gijon, surprised us at the refugio! On the way home, Chus introduced me to Bruce Springfield, who is now on my List of Artists to Discover and Admire, and, after showering, we went to sleep in the wee hours of the morning. The next day was decadently relaxing. We slept in and spent the afternoon strolling through the old part of Oviedo, sitting at a bar and a sidreria (a place to drink sidra, or cider), eating gelato and fine chocolates, and sitting again at a park . . . "watching life pass by," as Chus told me Arturo Perez Reverte puts it. Watching life pass by is delightful. The park was full of elderly people who walked slowly and sat together or alone on benches, and parents with children, some of whom were entertaining themselves by chasing and popping the giant bubbles a man was making with a sticks-and-string contraption. We were surrounded by big trees, which were around before we were born and will, I hope, still be around after we're dead, and I'm sure that the park will be full of the exact same people doing the exact same things then (there's no "then" word for the future!).

In the evening, Chus and I cooked mofongo (plantain balls with garlic and pork) and fried okra, my attempt at an introduction to Puerto Rican and Southern U.S. cuisine, and Javier and Alina joined us for a lovely and long dinner. I have learned so much from so many people in the past week! Chus, Javier and Alina all indulged me by starting conversations about time, but these always morphed into conversations about life philosophies, ways of living, trends in society, goals for the future -- and I am forming a clearer and clearer picture of how I'd like to lead my life. Two concrete examples:

1. Alina told me that she had recently become interested in Zen and Buddhism, and that, several months ago, she had started meditating and making an effort to be present in the moment (a mentality that both Chus and Cristiano also shared with me). If she is doing the dishes, she is DOING THE DISHES. If she is walking in a park, she is WALKING IN THE PARK. It doesn't make sense to be stressed about what awaits her at home while she's walking in the park, because she can't do anything about it in the moment -- instead, she should enjoy the park. Since she started focusing on this way of living, she is happier. Moments are fuller, and sweet ones are less bitter; before, she wanted to hold everything close, and the knowledge that good things would disappear was painful, but now she is trying to accept that all things come and go, and they are no less wonderful for going. It was helpful to hear Alina (and Cristiano) talk about this, because I have struggled with it, too, and especially during this trip. It has been very difficult for me at times to be fully in the present when so much of what has shaped me, my family and friends and familiar environments, are far away. I miss them, I think about them, I fantasize -- and my mind ends up being somewhere different from my body, clinging to what is not there. Part of the reason that the mountain excursion was so glorious is that this didn't happen -- it was so easy to be exactly there, in the mountains with Chus and Alina, and not somewhere else in my head. I have to keep working on this!

2. Javier talked, among many other things, about his dissatisfaction with this society's consumerist ways. We're so used to consuming that it's what we do with our free time (think going shopping), and we value things that cost money more than things that don't (in his opinion, people don't go to the mountains because they're free; if they were fenced off and a 30-Euro entrance fee were charged, crowds would flock to the gates). We've become slaves of industry giants, who survive because we fall into a consumption-need cycle -- the more we consume, the more we need. Javier is currently working on freeing himself from this cycle -- a long, multi-step process -- by needing less. Last year, he looked around and said, "I have enough stuff! I'm not going to buy anything this year." He gave his fancy motorcycle to a friend, and is trying not to buy clothes, furniture, music -- material clutter. I admire this greatly! And I, too, am going to try to need as little as possible by consuming less. Also, when I do consume, I want to consume better. If I can choose between an imported apple at a grocery store and a locally-grown apple, I'll pick the latter, so that my consumption habits better reflect my philosophies and ethics. I think that this is much easier in theory than in practice, but it is also how I am (indirectly) relating to many parts of the world -- and that is pretty important! A life-long Thing to Work On. Those are the best.

Now I'm in Llanes, where I'm spending just a day, and tomorrow evening I go to Santander. So much so fast! I can almost feel myself growing up.

An uninspired haiku series with questionable grammar (Gijon, Spain)

2009-08-28T10:57:00.002+02:00

My last few posts have been so long that even I am intimidated by them -- so this one is going to be a shortie. I considered writing it in haiku form, but . . . wait, that's an excellent idea! Genius. Here goes:

MONDAY:

Jesus at the docks
shares the history of Foz,
does not like pizza.

Ex-seaman Pepe,
friend of Alberto's, tells me
about Moon's effect.

Full moon: fish spread out.
New moon: fish stick together.
Plankton glow in dark.

He knows, too, about
life cycles of anchovies --
now almost fished out.

Fishermen seem all
to have a firm grasp on each
species' life cycle.

Later, evening-time,
Alberto introduces
me to old cousins.

They see love sparks where
there are none. They wink and smile.
Wonderful people.

TUESDAY:

Bus to Gijon -- five
hours. Once here, I see two
art museums. Then

I meet host Daniel,
who takes me on a great tour
of non-tourist parts.

Daniel is a vet
with well-developed views on
politics, world, us.

I learn much from him.
(Bifidus mystery solved:
yogurts not suspect.)

WEDNESDAY:

Hours among plants
at botanical gardens.
I really love plants.

Then, motorcycle
ride to nudist beach below
glorious cliffs. Wow!

I hike, fully clothed.
Sun is bright, people outside.
Drink water or die!

At night, dinner with
another CouchSurfer named
Cristiano. Hmm. (Is "Cristiano" three syllables or four? Ergo "hmm.")

Also mmm: good food.
Italian politics
outrageous, I learn.

The late-night habits
of the elderly also
surprised Cristiano. (This time it's three.)

Girlfriend's theory is
that old women have worked hard;
now this time is THEIRS.

THURSDAY:

Two-hour walk to
the industrial port, which
is like a city.

Another Jesus,
kind-eyed man, tells me about
seaweed collection!

Fascinating, but
alas! I do not see it.
Maybe in Llanes.

Long conversation
with Cristiano that evening.
He is so thoughtful!

Impossible to
sum up life philosophies
in haikus, but here:

Live every moment.
Find beauty in the small things.
Material things fade. (Oh no. Is "material" mah-tee-ree-al or mah-tee-rial? Probably the former. I'm a big-time haiku cheater. Also, I need to go back to elementary school and learn about syllables.)

Made me think a lot.
Lucky to meet people who
make one think a lot.

FRIDAY:

Gray and rainy day.
Soon my toes will be chilly
as I walk around.

WEEKEND:

The plan is to go
to Picos de Europa
with a CouchSurfer!

Big mountains, big sky,
trees and rocks and bugs and birds --
my friends. Peaceful breaths.

Well, I would call that a dismal failure. But I'll bet it took a lot less time to read than my usual posts!

A boat ride and a very old cathedral (Foz, Spain)

2009-08-24T11:31:00.004+02:00

(I wrote this last night but have wifi this morning.)

Seasickness: no laughing matter. I spent most of my twenty-hour fishing excursion from Thursday night until Friday evening as horizontal as possible -- spread-eagled on a bed (so as not to roll over while the ship rocked) or clinging to the deck railing and leaning on the flat surfaces in the bridge in a most undignified manner. And this in perfect weather, with the sea "like a plate." "It doesn't get calmer than this," I was told numerous times by Jose, who was probably thinking, "NEVER AGAIN will I say yes to someone who wants to get on my ship as part of a wacky 'project'." He also said, though, that there was more "mar de fondo" -- deep, long, smooth swells that make the ship tilt in all sorts of wild angles -- than usual, and other sailors told me that they had also been seasick the first few times they'd been at sea. They, however, jumped right back on the ship to get over it, whereas I am appending to my name the words "pathetic landlubber" (as in, "Irene Toro Martinez, Pathetic Landlubber") and chaining myself to a tree the next time someone suggests a boat ride where there might be "mar de fondo."

Whines aside: I did learn a lot about the work of a trawling fisherman. We left the port at Celeiro at around 10:30 pm on Thursday night, after the fishermen on the Pino Ladra had spent an hour taking the previous day's catch out of the hold with a crane and shoveling ice over each box (upwards of 400 boxes per ship, for a total of about 10,000 kg of fish). Jose and the captain of the partner ship decided, by scrambled radio, upon the night's course, and, as his ship is only five years old and equipped with the latest in fancy-shmancy technology, Jose simply put it on automatic pilot and pointed out the line on the screen that we would be following. He didn't rest easy after that, though; almost all of the times I saw him in the bridge, he was talking over the radio with his partner, alerting him to the presence of other ships in the area and discussing possible changes in the plan for the day.

It was at about this time that most of the ten-person crew were eating two "floors" down at the tables near the kitchen and the sleeping quarters. Jose told me that he would join them soon, shortly after eleven, and I made my first disappearance, deciding instead of eating to try to sleep until 6:00 am, when the net would be released. Before going to bed, though, I went out to the deck to look at the stars -- oh, glorious! Wowee! Oof! Not a cloud in the sky, and I even saw a shooting star. I love shooting stars!! I went to my luxurious private room, one "floor" down from the bridge, where the four highest ranking men on the ship sleep (the captain, the second mate, and the mechanics, one of whom was spending the night at home and in whose room I'd been placed), and clung to the raised sides of the bed for dear life (remember: "pathetic landlubber") until I fell asleep.

A 987245984524579-decibel siren sounded at 6:00 am to announce that the net was going to be released. Jose and most of his crew had slept about five hours (one man had stayed in the bridge, because there is always somebody in the bridge), and Jose, at least, wouldn't sleep again until the next night. We were now far from any shore, near the drop-off of the sea floor into deeper waters, surrounded by darkness and comforting little splashing sounds (presumably waves and not monsters from the deep). There were still stars in the sky (wowee! oof!).

Releasing the net is not as easy as it sounds, particularly for a two-boat trawling operation. To begin with, the net is enormous and has various clips and cables that have to be checked as it is unrolled (by machine) -- it takes a long time, and several people on the deck, to get it into the water. Then, since the net is strung across two boats, the other boat has to maneuver close enough for the fishermen of the main boat to toss the other fishermen a rope connected to an end of the net. This is simple enough in good weather; I can't imagine how nerve-wracking it is when the waves are strong. Finally, the two boats have to travel side-by-side, a set distance away from each other, in the same direction in order for the net to be effective (easy when you have a ship with cruise-control). They do this for several hours in the late morning and early afternoon, hope that the net sensors indicate that the net is full, and, at 2:30 pm, the same deafening siren sounds to call the fishermen back to the deck for what ends up being a full afternoon of work.

(Side note: I know that nobody cares about this insignificant detail, but, lest I give an inaccurate account of the mechanics of trawling, I wanted to say that I'm not actually sure when the net is joined from the main ship to the secondary ship. I vaguely remember the other ship approaching in the early morning, but it seems strange to me that they would be catching fish from then until 2:30 pm -- a long time. Since I was mostly out of commission between sirens, they may well have joined later in the morning without my noticing.)

It was more exciting to watch the net come in than it was to see it go out. When it was mostly rolled in, Jose pointed to the surface of the sea and said, "See? Look there. That's the fish." I could see a mass of something just beneath the surface of the water (this is very unnerving -- masses of something just beneath the surface of the water), and, when the other boat came close and took the net, the mass turned into a bag of fish the size of . . . oh gosh, I have no spatial intelligence. A big bag of fish. Really big. The fishermen pulled this really big bag of fish to the side of the boat and used a crane-assisted scooper (like a giant butterfly net) to pour fish into the hold of the ship. The idea is that each ship takes about half of the catch and prepares the fish for the sale; Jose and his crew complained, loudly enough that the other crew heard and laughed, that they always ended up with more than half. The really big bag of fish (now half as big) was returned to the Pino Ladra and its contents poured directly into the hold, where the fishermen spent the next four hours sorting fish by species (mostly bacaladilla and pescadilla) into boxes with the help of shovels and gutting the fish that needed to be gutted. Long and dirty work; Jose told me that they usually finished just as the ship was pulling into port.

I had been looking forward to this -- pulling into port -- for many a long hour, and, when we finally did at 7:30 on Friday evening, I was a happy camper. So were the fishermen! After unloading the boat, they had two days of rest to look forward to. On Sunday night they'd go to sea again. I took the last bus back to Foz and was grateful to the universe for solid ground.

My time in Foz has been wonderfully calm. I decided to take it easy on Saturday (I was dizzy until Saturday morning!), so I spent much of the afternoon sitting on a bench in front of the sea. An old woman named Leonor stopped and talked to me for a while (she said that she will be my first interviewee when I come back to Spain as a journalist -- I said, "Okay!!"), and, later, a young man named Alberto walked by twice and on the third pass started a conversation with me. A nerd after my own heart. We talked for a while (about nerdy things), then he invited me to go to a concert with him that night, and I said, "Sure!" The concert ended up being a bit disappointing, and we went to a club that he liked, where we awkwardly stood and watched a few people dance. Eventually, he asked if I had a boyfriend, and I said, "Nope. I'm gay!" He told me that he wasn't (I'd figured), that he liked girls ("Me too!"), but that he had a gay friend (good!), and then he said, "Well, we can be friends, then." Oh, Alberto. So now I have a friend in Foz, and I'm meeting with him again tomorrow afternoon so that his father can introduce me to a fisherman friend of his. We also agreed to have coffee when I'm in Madrid, where he lives (he's in Foz on vacation for a month). Excellent.

Today I spent walking in the countryside to a small chapel called O Bispo Santo, and then to the oldest cathedral in Spain, the Basilica de San Martin, which dates to the sixth century! Of course, the sixth-century parts have been mostly (but not completely!) covered up by further construction in later centuries; I saw stones that had been placed in the ninth and tenth centuries, and frescoes and murals from the eleventh, fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is mind-boggling to me that this church has stood through so much history. So many people have lived their entire lives -- birth to death, with love, knowledge, jobs, original and unoriginal ideas, hopes, failures, und so weiter -- while this church has stood, and I don't know about any of them! I can't even imagine their lives! It is exciting to me that I will be one of these mystery hypothetical people to somebody in a thousand years. Maybe they will think about it upon entering the same church.

The church also made me think about something that I love thinking about: What will remain of our time in a few thousand years? Few buildings, I think, are made to last (we just don't use giant rocks anymore), but maybe the road systems will be preserved, or, smaller-scale, things like plastic or glass bottles, airplane parts. Ooh, back to large scale: I can't wait for future archaeologists to unearth particle accelerators and neutrino detectors! Or mirrors from giant telescopes. And satellites -- those will be relics in the sky. And spacecraft on the Moon and Mars -- someday they will have been there for thousands of years, and people will know that. Ours is the time that they will have an abstract understanding of as the "breaking of the space frontier." And here we are now, living it!

A pretty fish (Burela, Spain)

2009-08-19T20:51:00.001+02:00

I had been told to come to Burela to learn about bonito fishing, and oh boy have I learned about it. Not only did I go on a tour of the official bonito museum (which floats -- it is a boat), but I have seen boxes of bonito at the pre-dawn bonito auction and, what's more, "interviewed" a man who used to own a bonito boat. In short, I am a bonito expert. That's a lie; I am no expert. But, thanks to Tono (there should be a tilde over the "n" -- the name is like "Tonio"), the gracious man who chatted me up at the lonja (reversal of roles!) and invited me to come and talk with him this morning at his office, I know much more than I did before I came to Burela. Allow me to write at length about this fish:

Bonito is, true to its name, a pretty fish. It is also a migratory fish, and travels in shoals from the Azores Islands towards the northern coast of Spain between June and September, making its way to the region near the British Isles called "Gran Sol" by October and then, mysteriously, disappearing. Its movements have everything to do with the temperature of the water, and are therefore, to a certain degree, unpredictable; the climate refuses to do the same thing twice. You have to look for bonito to fish them, and every year you end up looking in new places. Burela has always been economically dependent on the costera, the passing of the bonito, and its float had up to eighty ships at some points in the past century. Now there are about thirty, and, although they are made of metal instead of wood and sport fancy-shmancy tech toys like global positioning systems, the method of fishing bonito remains (almost) exactly the same as it was fifty years ago.

On the Galician coast, bonito is fished with hooks, fifteen of them, which are attached to lines strung to an elevated horizontal bar at the stern of the ship, which allows for the bait to appear to swim through the water as the ship moves. The bait is not live, though -- it is a little bundle of ribbons covered with a jiggly, squid-like piece of plastic. Back in the day, when artificial materials didn't reign supreme, fishermen used corn husks to make the bait, but to their disadvantage; apparently the fish are more likely to bite certain colors of bait on certain days (which makes the rainbow that plastics offer a boon to modern bonito fishermen). On cloudy days, light-colored bait is used; on bright days, dark-colored bait. And on good days, this is how the fishing happens: A boat comes upon a shoal of fish, and they, liking the color of the bait on the hooks (I imagine: "Neon pink?! I've never eaten anything THAT color before!! I wonder what it tastes like!"), start to bite. Quicklyquickly the fishermen pull the lines with fish on them towards the side of the boat, grab the fish by the tail with a long hook, and whack it on the head with a wooden club with the intent to stun. If they hit it too gently, it thrashes its way to an ugly demise, and if they hit it too hard, blood might fall into the water and frighten the other fish away. This is the last thing the fishermen want, because they will continue to make passes through the same shoal until they stop catching fish.

The boats go out for a maximum of twenty days at a time, but come back sooner if they get lucky with the fishies. Tono recalled that when he first started fishing for bonito, at age fifteen, they knew that they had gotten lucky with the fishies when they saw whales; both whales and bonito eat shrimp, so, where there were whales, there was likely to be bonito, too. (He didn't say anything about whales these days, but many people have told me that they keep retreating farther and farther into the deep ocean; I wonder where and how often modern-day fishermen see them.) (I would really like to talk to a whale.) Tono also said that overfishing is not as grave a problem with seasonal fish, like bonito, as it is with fish that stay in the same place, like merluza/pescadilla. However, fishermen at other ports catch bonito with circular nets (that don't just catch bonito, but anything else unlucky enough to be swimming by), which he looks down upon because it is "industrial" and the quality of the fish decreases immensely. Also, until a few years ago (ten?)(ish), it was legal to fish by stringing long rectangular nets in the water, but, of course, some ships were caught placing nets that were eight times longer than the legal limit, and the harm to non-fishy species, like dolphins, was so great that the practice was banned entirely. Before the ban, bonito did suffer from overfishing; now they seem to be doing all right.

Well! I hope that you are impressed! It is really an interesting form of fishing, particularly because it's changed so little in the past fifty years. In addition to learning about bonito fishing, I have formulated a plan of attack against my recent moodiness (I'm lonely, but I deserve no pity, because 1. I am having an adventure and 2. it is a learning experience) (3. and it builds character! I don't think Calvin ever bought that, though): I will go on day trips to nearby towns! Yesterday I spent the entire day in and around a town called Mondonedo (the second "n" has a tilde over it), which is tucked between green hills a ways south of Burela and which used to be much more important than it is now (now it is a tourist hub; it used to be the capital of a province). I saw the impressive cathedral and the exteriors of several other churches, a convent where nuns still live, many an old beautiful building bathed in sunlight, which makes everything old beautiful, and much more in the way of camera fodder. I also went walking around the neighborhood called Los Molinos, through which artificial water canals run (some houses are accessed by little bridges!), and explored the rural surroundings. Narrow dirt paths bordered by trees and bushes that sometimes formed a dense ceiling -- ugh. Beautiful. In the spirit of my guide book: charming.

Something else charming that I've been meaning to mention: In several of the towns I've been in, I've stumbled across the Place Where the Old Men Meet. This is an unofficial landmark -- usually somewhere near the water, and usually somewhere with benches or steps -- where something vital to the functioning of the town takes place: old men reminisce! When I found the Place Where the Old Men Meet in Burela, I asked a man nearby what the building where I had seen them gathered was called. He said that it was a social room of sorts, but that everyone called it "the story benches." Isn't that lovely? In every town (or at least many towns), every afternoon, old men gather to tell stories, or, if the words aren't flowing, to sit in silence (but also in company). Routines of the retired. May we all enjoy them.

In other news, it is looking like I am going to be able to go on a fishing excursion with Jose (the man who had agreed to let me go with him last week, but whose ship broke) tomorrow night. I am nothing if not persistent (and BOLD), and on Friday, as I was returning by foot to Viveiro from San Ciprian, I passed by the port at Celeiro and decided to leave a note for him at the main office of the lonja. It read something like: "Oh hey there, Jose! I hope your ship is fixed soon! If it is, think I could go with you sometime next week? I won't be far away and I'm great at taking buses! It's okay if you say no! Well, let me know! Great! ~Irene" but sixteen times more formal and maybe only half as obnoxious. I didn't expect him to write -- because half as obnoxious is still pretty obnoxious -- but yesterday I got a one-line e-mail from him, all capital letters, telling me to show up at the dock any night this week. I'm tempted, at this point in my writing, to go wild with exclamation points, but I've resolved not to reveal my inner enthusiasm, lest the sea gods notice and cause the ship to break again (I already saw the weather forecast for tomorrow: rain all along the northern coast of Spain) (i.e. waves!). To that end, I'll say: If I do get to go on the ship, maybe it'll be sort of interesting. I probably won't learn that much, though. Honestly, I'd rather stay in my hostel room and watch TV or something. At least I wouldn't get seasick. And who wants to be around a bunch of flopping dying fish? Probably only weirdos. Lord knows I am not a weirdo! (Do you think I fooled them?! Oh probably!)

A couple of months already! (Burela, Spain)

2009-08-16T17:29:00.001+02:00

My two-month anniversary with Spain! Still no serious relationship problems; we continue to discover new things about each other, and the butterflies haven't gone away.

I did end up going to a fish farm near the town of San Ciprian on Friday, but discovered that they are no less paranoid here than in Camarinhas. My brief conversation with the Head Honcho revealed why: industry secrets! (Not, as I had thought, worries that I would contaminate one of the tanks or end up being an undercover Greenpeace activist.) The type of fish at the farm, rodaballo, has only started being raised intensively in the past five years, and nobody has quite perfected the process yet. Different companies use different kinds of pools (I've now seen both an array of small circular pools and a line of long tanks accessible only from the sides) and distribute the fish differently (some fish hatch in the same farm they will mature in; others are shipped to the farm after reaching a certain size at a separate hatchery). Surely the feed and countless other aspects of the process are still being developed, too -- the experimental phase of what will probably become a freakishly efficient industry in the next few years. Head Honcho did let me see one of the pools full of fish before escorting me off the grounds, and, though I smiled and said "thanks" afterwards, I was an unhappy camper. The fish looked like a pile of pancakes that had been tossed in the water -- overlapping, hardly moving, pale (I think that they are pale anyway, but at the time I thought, "Sickly pale! Fish farm pale!"). I had rodaballo for my birthday dinner -- going to this fish farm was like somebody snatching back that birthday present.

I also walked to the toxic waste dump of a nearby aluminum plant (which dominates the San Ciprian landscape and skyscape both -- it's huge and smoky) after asking the fish farm security guard about an artificial-looking cliff at the top of a big hill. That cliff ended up being part of a wall that goes around the perimeter of a multicolored (but not like a rainbow is multicolored) lake of who-knows-what-deadly-chemicals. It was enormous and had obviously once been forest, because there was a single black trunk sticking out of the water near one of the edges, and there were piles of rock and dead dirt at the shores that made it look like even the hill had suffered (suffered as in "ouch," not just the obvious damage) (don't worry, I know that hills don't go "ouch"). I was angry when I took photos here -- wished I were a Greenpeace activist! -- and became sad when I talked to a man who lived nearby. He told me that the dump site had been there for thirty years, and that the adverse effects on the surrounding environment were noticeable. Fruit didn't stay on the trees anymore; the soil was bad. I wondered about all of the people who lived in the area, and especially the children; what happens when you grow up on toxic land, drinking (possibly) toxic water? Ugh! Industry!

I decided to walk back to Viveiro, which took me six hours and was good for the soul. So many trees! Such green fields! The vast blue ocean, yonder between those hills! Not so good for the soul was the Swedish thriller I had invited myself to, which has a different title in Spanish and English. In Spanish it's "Los hombres que no amaban a las mujeres" (which means "Men who didn't love women" -- I think gay) and in English it's "Men who hate women" (I think misogynist). It's the English title for sure! I walked out of the theater in shock -- so much sadism, rape, violence, cruelty. I hope it's only the Swedes, and I'm safe in Norway. (I hope it's not because they didn't get enough sunlight!)

Now I'm in Burela, a town which people in Viveiro had assured me I wouldn't like. I can see why they said so -- there is no historic center, and the city is lacking in architectural charm, museums, cultural activities, sculptures and monuments (the woman at the tourist office circled exactly one thing in Burela on the map and then about five others in nearby towns) (ha ha) -- but I certainly don't dislike it yet. The port is impressive, and some people have smiled at me. That's good. And the surrounding landscape is beautiful! I went on a long hike to a mirador on a mountain this morning (this is becoming the Year of Solitary Hikes) -- pine forests on cloudy days are an excellent idea. Ten points to Mother Nature! Tomorrow I will hang out at the docks, as is my wont, and boldly start a conversation with anyone who wanders within a ten-foot radius. "Bold" is my adjective of the month. Irene the Bold. Maybe bold will get me on a ship.

An unpleasant realization (Burela, Spain)

2009-08-16T17:26:00.002+02:00

I mentioned earlier that I wanted to write about my desensitization to fish death, which I should really call "desensitization to all damage caused by fishing." This broader term covers individual fish deaths (poor guys); the decimation of entire fish populations; harm to other non-target marine animals; the pollution that the boats produce; the pollution that the trucks that transport the fish to other cities produce; the pollution and diseases that fish farms produce (because these are growing in number and size as a response to overfishing); and much more.

The first item on the list -- individual fish deaths -- is first because it is what was initially most shocking to me when I arrived here. I had just given up my vegetarianism to be able to fully enjoy the cuisine of the countries I'm visiting, but I wasn't prepared to confront the seeming disregard for life that dominates at the fishing ports. The lonjas were full of little fishy corpses, kicked about and bleeding, handled dispassionately; at the docks, I saw live and writhing fish being eviscerated; and I am still horrified when I realize that some of the octopi waiting to be sold, in boxes that contain so many that they look like they are full of liquid, are moving. Well, no. That's not quite true. I'm no longer horrified. And I have gotten used to seeing hundreds of boxes of fish without thinking, "Boxes of dead life!" Now they are just boxes of fish, and it's not as unsettling to me that they had to be killed to end up there. (Furthermore, I have eaten all sorts of seafood, and sometimes also chicken and pork, and I no longer think, "You are eating an animal!" with every bite.)

So far I sound like an animal rights hippie -- the reason I didn't eat meat before is that the poor animals suffered -- but that's not (fully) the case. The boxes of "poor animals" are just representative of the more worrisome consequences of modern fishing, namely, that entire species are being fished to near-extinction, and that fish farms are seen as the solution (instead of a serious reconsideration of fishing practices and: action!). I just read "Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan (good book!), in which he traces four meals back to the origins of their ingredients and reveals their "true cost" -- in damage to the environment, damage to human and animal life, damage to the economy. A fast-food hamburger, for instance, is reduced to retired milk cows that spent their entire lives in industry farms being fed genetically modified corn (they are ruminants, though, and aren't biologically equipped to handle corn) that comes from fields in the Midwest that are fertilized with nitrogen and other chemicals created in plants that require huge amounts of energy (so: petroleum) and which flow into rivers that provide drinking water for cities downstream. It is scary when he goes back to the bare essences, no?

So: what worries me about my desensitization to fish death is that I am becoming desensitized to these bare essences! I am seeing overfishing in action (those boxes of dead fish are a LOT of boxes of dead fish) and I am watching the demands of industrial giants being met (the people who buy those boxes of dead fish sell them to processors and grocery stores), and each day I think less and less of it. Pollan says that you can either choose to look away from the true cost of your meal or choose not to participate in the process that produces it -- but I am not doing either. I see, as firsthand as possible, the true cost of fish (the destruction of the oceans, pollution, fish farms), and I keep eating it. It's not all about the eating, though -- it's about my emotional response. I'm no longer reacting strongly to these experiences that should be spurring me to some sort of action. How does that happen? What to do about it?

Well, I'm not sure how clear this was, but I'm adding desensitization to fish death to my List of Unpleasant Realizations About Self That Will (Hopefully) Change the Way I Live in the Future. And I'll probably start eating less fish.

A lesson in disappointment (Viveiro, Spain)

2009-08-13T23:08:00.000+02:00

Well shucks. EXPLETIVES. It's Thursday night and I'm not on a ship. The Pina Ladre never came into port tonight -- its equipment broke and it stayed at sea. That should teach me to use the word "psyched"! Juuust kidding (really) -- it should teach me that the sea is fickle and the life of the fisherman unpredictable. I asked three other ship owners if I could go to sea on their ships, but they said, reasonably and not unkindly, "Not without a permit you don't!" And the people I had met yesterday night and early this morning were so nice to me. Francisco and others were the ones who pointed out the other ship owners and said, "What's another rejection? See that man? He owns that ship. He's a good guy. Go ask him."

I have a Plan B (suggested by Francisco): Tomorrow I will take a bus to a nearby fish farm owned by Pescanova and learn about pisciculture! The last time I tried visiting a fish farm, in Camarinhas, I was kicked out (they told me to go get a permit in a town about an hour away) -- perhaps they are less paranoid here. And in the evening I am going on a date with myself to the movies to watch a Swedish thriller. I might even invite myself to an overpriced bag of popcorn to hide behind when I get scared. Maybe my hands will accidentally touch when I'm reaching in the bag -- how cute.

Now I will try to sleep (my body is thinking, "What?"). I'll try to dream about being at sea!

Aaaaaaaghdf;lahdf;lkyjfasdf!!! (Viveiro, Spain)

2009-08-13T14:58:00.003+02:00

I'm writing this a little past noon -- in ten hours I will be at sea on a boat, embarking on a twenty-something hour fishing excursion! Whoa! Aaah! Thrilling! adflajdpfoiuare;lkjfasdf. This post will probably be short and possibly incoherent, since I went to sleep just a few hours ago (my first post-college all-nighter!) and, according to my Master Plan, am not even supposed to be awake right now. In a perfect world, a world in which Master Plans are followed, I would stay up all night again tonight to be able to witness every activity aboard the ship; in order to do that, I need to be well-rested. Alas! Imperfect world! We'll see how long I last on the boat. Maybe I have vast reserves of adrenaline, like Alaska with its oil, and I can tap them unsustainably.

The past two days have been eventful, as you may have gathered by now. Well, no -- the past two nights have been eventful. I arrived to Viveiro on Tuesday evening (already a change in my itinerary! I could find exactly zero cheap pensions in Carinho), and that night, after exploring the old town, happened across preparations for a concert in the main plaza. Wonderful! I sat in the same spot for four hours, watching people pass me by before the music started, and then watching people dance and nod their heads after the music started, and felt pretty lucky to be alive and human. The music was great (pronounced "ga-rate!", with exclamation point) -- a fusion of folk (bagpipe and fiddle), jazz (saxophone and drums), and Caribbean rhythms, so people weren't sure whether to sway or shake their hips or folk dance. I tapped my foot and patted my knees with my hands -- classic solution to the which-dance? problem.

The next day, despite my steely determination to sleep in, I woke up early and walked to the port, which is enormous and technically in Celeiro, the next (tiny) town over -- a forty-minute walk from my pension, which is, as I'm learning many cheap pensions are, far away from the Places I Want to Be. It's called Pension Martinez, though, so, like the Restaurante Martinez, has an automatic 4-star rating. There was little happening at the docks -- not a single fisherman! -- so I wandered around Celeiro for a while, enchanted by the narrow streets and grape vines growing over tool shed roofs and countless (actually probably countable, because it is a tiny town) abandoned and decrepit buildings that looked older than most of the abandoned and decrepit buildings I'd seen so far. The towns, Viveiro and Celeiro, and the region itself, feel different from everywhere else I've been in Galicia, but, aside from the obvious differences in location, landscape, and history, I couldn't tell you how. I love the intangible qualities that make each place unique, that make the Galician coast seem to span several countries that just happen to share a language and culture. (That may not have made sense, but smile and nod for now. Remember: I am running on little more than the chocolate I had for breakfast.)

I had been told to go back to the docks at around eight, when the trawling boats that go out daily come into port and their fish is auctioned, so that is what I did! In fact, the boats arrived closer to nine, by which time I had accumulated enough boldness to walk up to the owner of two ships and say, "Hello! Excuse me!" And that was all I said, because he immediately responded, "Let me guess: You want to see the inside of the ship." Mind-reader! I said, "Yes!!!" and he called the nearest ship's captain over. Francisco, the captain, gave me a world-class tour of the ship -- a big ship (perhaps 25 meters long?) -- and explained how the nets worked (the boats go out in pairs and string a gigantic net between them), showed me where the fish were cleaned and stored, briefly led me through the loud engine room, and then took me to the bridge (I think that this is what it's called -- the window-walled room with the steering joysticks and so much more), where he described in detail the computer technology that makes navigating these days so much easier than a few years ago. "But this is a poorly equipped vessel!" he said. "See that ship over there? It's brand-new, just five years old, and has state-of-the-art technology. I know the owner. Want me to introduce you to him?" Mind-reader! I said, "Yes!!!"

Jose, the owner of this larger (over thirty meters long and eight wide) and noticeably higher-tech ship, told me to wait for a while -- the fish had to be unloaded before we could board without getting in the way. Then -- THEN -- we went aboard, and I had the longest and most intense question-and-answer session of my life (and I was the questioner!). Jose is intimidatingly intense, but I held up my own against his piercing continuous eye contact and pretty soon he started giving me more than simple explanations about the functioning of the ship and the lives of the people aboard it. The technology is impressive indeed! My goodness gracious me! At any given moment, he can see: the exact shape of the ocean floor, the weather and wind forecasts, currents, any objects around him (if they are ships, he knows which ship it is, in which direction it's headed and how fast), shoals of different kinds of fish, the positioning of the net and how much fish has been caught in it already, the period of the waves, the meaning of life -- you name it. Just about the only thing that the technology can't do is tell you exactly where to find fish; for that, he told me, you need a "sense of smell" (which he apparently has). He explained that they fished in a certain zone in the summer and another in winter, both near the place where the ocean floor drops off into the deep, and, at the end of the long conversation, when I finally managed to tell him what my project was about (he's a talker), immediately exhibited prodigious knowledge about every natural cycle that could affect fishing.

Some of the information was not new -- migrations, spawning -- but some things I had never heard before! For instance: the power of the moon. Until now, I have always linked the moon to the tides, and hadn't heard a thing about how it affects fishing far from the coast. Jose assured me that it does, and most dramatically. When the moon is full, certain kinds of fish rise to the surface, thinking it is day (or at least sensing that it is light), and others sink farther into the depths, taking advantage of the greater visibility to feed in more richer zones. Other species behave differently when the moon is waxing than when it is waning, although I didn't understand why this was (what factors other than amount of light?). Well, those two sentences surely don't do justice to the moon's role in fishing (which is more obvious on the coast, where the magnitude of the tides changes over the course of the lunar cycle and also over the course of the year -- when the Earth is closer to the Sun, the tides are greater), but I was thrilled that these were connections that the captain of a state-of-the-art ship had made. Jose also told me that many fish populations follow a four- or five-year cycle -- after one good fishing year, there are usually three or four bad fishing years before the next abundance -- but he couldn't explain why. His closing remark on natural cycles was: "Even with all of this technology, we're still subject to the exact same things that our forefathers two hundred years ago were subject to" -- those things being the patterns and whims of nature.

I had one last question for Jose, and asked it in characteristic awkward form: "Jose -- I have a question to ask -- butpleasedon'tfeelobligatedtosayyes -- it'sreallyokayifyousayno -- okayhere'sthequestion: do you think that I could go out with you on the boat tomorrow night?" He didn't say, "Yes!!!" but he did say, "Yes," stressing that there was going to be bad weather (I promised that I don't get seasick -- I am pretty sure that this is true) and I wouldn't see the boat or ten-man crew working at its prime. No worries! I get to see them working! Sub-prime or not, it's so exciting! The boat leaves at around 10:00 pm each night and comes in the following evening -- probably 8:00ish on Friday, Jose told me. Almost a full day in the open sea! I almost skipped away.

I wanted to see the large boats come in at around 2:00 am, so I decided to walk back to Viveiro to watch another open-air concert in the main plaza (there are concerts every night for two weeks). This time it was rock -- a group called Burning, which has been around for decades -- and I sat, as I had the night before, alone in a crowd of couples and families. Sob. But: miracle! The empathetic capabilities of children! Out of the blue, an adorable little boy came and sat next to me on my step. I said, "Hi!" and he said, "Hi! What's your name?" His sister joined us soon afterward, and I spent the next hour or so getting to know Jorge and Marta, who are six and eight, respectively, dancing with them, and waging sunflower seed war against them. They are from Madrid. Jorge's best friend's name is Victor. Marta's best friend's name is Celia. Jorge thought the music was too loud. Marta plays the flute and thinks English is hard. She asked me what my mother's name was. Instant intimacy. They were the most delightful children I have ever met. They were like miniature versions of adults (except for the sunflower seed wars), complete with typical Spanish hand gestures combined with the appropriate meaningful eyebrow movements, and I couldn't stop laughing. Once again, and in the same place, I felt pretty lucky to be alive and human. I met their parents, also extraordinarily open and friendly people, who told me that they couldn't get their children to shut up or stop engaging strangers in conversations (this with big smiles on their faces), and -- ugh. The world is full of such good people! I hope that Jorge and Marta have beautiful lives.

When the concert was over, I walked back to the docks (the walk was scarier each time I made it, because the street was darker and more deserted), and spent the next four and a half hours in a zombie-like daze, watching boats that had been out at sea for two weeks unload their cargo and occasionally talking to a worker or to the director of the lonja, who was bent on making me feel as comfortable as possible. It was interesting to see the boats unload, and less interesting to watch the 5:00 am auction, which was exactly like every other auction I've seen (if at a larger lonja than most, and spread out in four separate halls). The main reason I stayed at the lonja all night was so that I would be able to sleep today and stay up again tonight. FAILED PLAN. Perhaps I'll manage to conk out this afternoon after posting this.

Or maybe I am just too psyched (I haven't used that word in so long! it is a great word!) about the upcoming boat trip. I hope that watching the fish die isn't too traumatic an experience. That's something I've been meaning to write about: desensitization to fish death. But it will have to be another day. My "probably short" post has turned into a chapter, and I doubt anyone has been able to read this far. What's an appropriately nautical way to end this post? Thar she blows! Land ho! Yaaaargh! Thus shall I speak tonight.

A reunion with (month-and-a-half-)old friends (La Corunha, Spain)

2009-08-10T19:26:00.001+02:00

I'm so glad that I planned to stop by La Corunha for a few days on my way east along the north-facing coast of Galicia, Asturias, and Cantabria! I'm staying with Simon, who was my one-man welcoming party when I first arrived to Galicia and with whom I spent that lovely afternoon on the coast (ancient stone dwellings, ancient burial site, long sand dune, and friends: Almudena, Sylvia, Juan, and little Giulia) long ago, when seagull cries were still novel and exhilarating. Now when I hear seagull cries I expect to see a box of dead fish nearby (association), but Simon remains extremely welcoming and kind. He, Almudena and I went walking yesterday night and had a light and very Spanish dinner at a restaurant in the older part of town, after which we came back to the apartment and, by turns, admired and chased their cute chubby rabbit, who is named either Cocky or Cookie. I hope it's Cocky.

I have seen other friends, too! I spent all of this afternoon with Guillermo, Mirela, and their children Nicolas and Nicole, at their home, where we had a very Spanish lunch (featuring olives, pimientos de padron, ham, chicken, bread, ice cream!). Guillermo is the fisherman without whose guidance I would have been totally lost at the docks; Mirela is his wife, without whose help at the early-morning fish auction I would surely have managed to get impaled by a fish hook -- an undignified death. I caught them in the middle of a move; last week they left their apartment to live in the upper floors of a storage unit at the docks, the first floor of which is Guillermo's workshop, where he was making octopus cages today. They are setting everything up themselves -- sinks, tables, shelves, kitchen -- and, during breaks, providing so much attention to their black cocker spaniel that he must be the happiest canine in the world. I like to judge families by the friendliness of their pets, and both Cocky/Cookie and little Hyperactivity Embodied (he has a much nobler name, but I've forgotten it) are excellent representatives for their respective households.

Guillermo and Oscar, the man who drove me from the lonja to their place, told me that fishing has gotten considerably worse in the past ten years. Oscar said that, five years ago, he used to catch five kilos of a certain type of fish; now he catches two kilos on a good day, and good days are few and far between. There are no fish! The type of fishing that he does, minhos, which are long rectangular nets hung vertically in the water so that fish get caught in them, has a theoretical (and legal) maximum length of net per boat. However, Oscar, and every other fisherman who has to support himself and a family, has been increasing the length of net that he puts out every year, only to catch the same amount of fish or less. Oscar attributed this diminishing catch to climate changes and, more importantly, overfishing, about which something should have been done years ago. Now, both he and Guillermo said, the only thing to be done is to wait for the sea to set its own limit; when there are no more fish to catch, the fishermen will have to stop fishing. A lose-lose situation, downward spiral, no good no good.

I haven't yet written about the rest of my stay in Malpica, which was mostly uneventful (in the most neutral sense of the word) but spattered with interesting characters, to whom I'll briefly introduce you! I spent a lot of time at the docks, mostly attending the fish and percebe auctions; at the latter I met Dona (imagine the "n" with a tilde over it) Carmen, an elderly woman who sold her two sons' percebes, and three strapping young lads, Richard, Yarmin, and Ivan, with whom she tried to set me up. Dona Carmen was initially cold towards me -- no smiles, little eye contact -- but I decided later that this was probably due to a hearing impairment; when I spoke very loudly directly into her ear, she responded immediately and with a lot of hand-patting.

Even speaking very loudly directly into her ear might not have been enough to achieve total comprehension, though, because our conversations tended towards the incoherent. For example, I might ask, "Oh, so, you have a son who lives in La Corunha! Do you get to see him a lot?" and she might respond, "I have two sons. One of them is single -- but he's good-looking. And it's not just because I'm his mother! He's a handsome chap. The other one is married, and his wife's name is Maria. But my eldest is single." Being single seemed to be a problem, because when I told her that I was single and traveling alone, she immediately recommended that I find a boyfriend. Later, when I introduced myself to Richard, Yarmin, and Ivan to ask them about their work as percebeiros, she came up to us, patted my hands, and told me, "There, see, now you've met some nice boys." The nice boys took it well. They are a few years older than I am, and have been gathering percebes as a full-time job for several years. Knowing the people who had collected the percebes made watching the auction a much tenser experience. Every time a buyer passed by one of their boxes without displaying the least bit of interest, I booed at them inside my head, which didn't help at all but made the whole affair seem a lot more like a basketball game than a transaction of goods. I was also reminded of the hardships of sea-bound livelihoods -- Richard's father had died eight months ago doing exactly what Richard does almost every day: gathering percebes.

And another anectode: Another afternoon at the docks, I met a man named Paco, who, with minimal prompting, volunteered his life story. He had been, he said, the best percebeiro in Malpica in his day -- I could ask any older person in town! -- and had fulfilled his duty as a parent by providing each of his six children with a place to live. Two of his children still lived at home, but hadn't spoken to him for three years, because he had fallen in love again four years after his wife's death. His children disapproved of the relationship because it had blossomed too soon after their mother passed away, and also because they found the age difference between their father and his new companion appalling: they are 80 and 64, respectively. (I find it so funny that this is an appalling age difference!)

But he was very much in love, and had even proposed to his "amiga" that they move in together to spend the rest of their years building a new life. She also had children, but one of her daughters had turned out "bad." I thought, "Drugs, prison . . . lesbian?!" Yes! Lesbian! Ten points for me! She was, in his words, "lisbana -- I don't know the word -- but, you know, she got together with another woman." I almost laughed out loud, because I immediately thought of a Capitol Steps sketch I heard months ago in which "Sarah Palin" lauded Dick Cheney's foreign relations experience because his daughter is Lebanese. How exciting that Paco's amiga's daughter was Lebanese, too! We talked a bit about parental love, and how it was sometimes difficult to accept that children hadn't turned out quite as expected; at some point, Paco said, "Well, everybody's different." With this he won my heart (he was halfway there already with the late romance). Also, much to my joy, he told me that the Lebanese daughter and her partner had adopted a little girl who was the apple of her grandmother's eye (and Paco's, too, I could tell). Even though the mother and Paco had trouble with the idea that the daughter's romantic partner was a woman, the family was whole. I hope that Paco's children start talking to him again, so that his family becomes whole, too.

Oof! All of these people living their lives! It makes me want to meet everyone in the world.

In other news: I think that I know where I am going to live in Mexico! More information forthcoming.

A difficult profession (Malpica, Spain)

2009-08-06T08:39:00.002+02:00

(Once again, I wrote this last night but am posting it this morning. Soon I will go meet with Elisa and Gloria!)

Percebeiros have it rough! The barnacles they scrape from coastal rocks grow precisely where it is most difficult and dangerous to reach them -- where white-capped waves break even at low tide. At the trickiest spots or on especially windy days, the percebeiros tie ropes around their middles, which they then attach to higher ground or a strong and trusted friend; between waves, they rush down to scrape as many percebes (goose barnacles -- the Spanish term is about fifty-nine times more appealing) off the rocks as they can before the next wave hits, by which time they have (hopefully) rushed back up. In calmer areas, they still have to avoid big waves by occasionally running up to higher ground, but the rope is unnecessary. It is heart-thumping work! I got a thrill from just watching the big waves crash and break apart on the rocks from a good ten meters up the hill; the wet-suited percebeiros were getting drenched.

The work environment is one thing, but percebeiros also have fascinating work schedules! Like most Europeans, they work ten and a half months out of the year, but a mix of natural and human laws makes their work weeks vary in length from one to five days. Percebeiros can only go out at low tide, which occurs about an hour later each day (today it was at around 11:00, and tomorrow it will be at around 12:00) -- the natural law, gravity -- but they are also only allowed to gather percebes between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm -- the human law. On days that low tide occurs later than 5:00 pm, there's no work and no money. (The five-day maximum work week is also human-imposed -- weekends!)

On a shorter timescale, the rhythm of percebe-gathering varies according to the weather. Diego, a young percebeiro I met (and interrogated) at the lonja this afternoon, told me that, in good weather, there is a pattern to the waves: three or four big waves in a row are followed by a calm during which one can go down and scrape the percebes. In bad weather, there are more waves, but it's the days with neither good nor bad weather that are the most dangerous; it's easy for a percebeiro to get overly confident and be hit by a sneak-attack wave. I have been told that, every year, somebody dies gathering percebes. Diego said that the last percebe-related death in this area happened seven years ago.

Percebeiros are not all men, nor are they all young! In fact, most of the people selling percebes at the lonja yesterday evening (and this evening, though I didn't stay for the auction) were women, and several were well into their sixties. The women always work on shore, though, while the men sometimes go in boats to the nearby Islas Sisargas, and the older people work in the least dangerous places (and collect the least valuable percebes, which are still in demand and expensive!). Also, though it is not done here, percebes can be gathered underwater by divers -- these are of lower quality, because they haven't been exposed to the sun. The best percebes are, of course, the ones that are hardest to get -- crashing waves! aiiie!

And now for something percebe-unrelated: I spent a good deal of the afternoon talking with Elisa and Gloria, two net-menders who talked over each other to give me more information than I could process about the history of Malpica and other nearby ports; the effects on fishing of Spain's joining the European Union; their work on the nets; the repercussions of the Prestige oil spill; their opinions on schools being taught in Gallego instead of Spanish (they are anti); places I cannot miss in Asturias and Cantabria (I foresee more feverish poring over my guide book and maps); und so weiter. They also told me that, since the winds are going to start blowing from the north tomorrow, it's unlikely that the night ships will pull into the Malpica port in the next few days; rather, they'll take shelter in La Corunha. (This means that I can sleep later!) And Elisa offered to lend me a book on Malpica's history and a CD of new and old photos of the city -- I'm meeting them again tomorrow morning. (Not that much later, though.) Wonderful people!

A new favorite town (Malpica, Spain)

2009-08-05T08:56:00.004+02:00

(I wrote this last night but have internet this morning. I was just at the docks -- the night boats didn't come in! They went to La Corunha instead. Now I will go look for percebeiros along the coast!)

Oh woe! Morpheus has forsaken me! The past few nights have been somewhat sleepless (or somewhat semi-sleepless, which is even more frustrating -- lying in bed in the wee hours and drifting into and out of conscious thought processes, most of which culminate in: "Irene! You need to go to sleep!"), and tonight the wakefulness continues. Agony! I must suffer more than anyone I know. (I just finished reading "Middlemarch" -- I'm channeling Rosamond.) But don't worry -- I've decided to fight back by staying fully conscious and writing in my blog! I know. It is a pretty great idea.

I'm incredibly happy to be where I am right now! During most of this trip, my "favorite town so far" has always been the one I find myself in, for obvious reasons (I'm closest to my most recent good-hearted acquaintances). However, my stay in Camarinhas wasn't as pleasant as I had hoped it would be. I can think of several reasons for this:

1) The port was devoid of relaxed old men standing around holding fishing poles and shouting things at each other. In fact, the port was mostly "empty" when I tried to hang around and make friends. I put the word "empty" in quotation marks because there were people -- secretaries and port authority officers behind desks in the buildings, and, at the auction in the late morning, a small group of women and men who were selling their clams -- but very few of them seemed interested in answering any of my questions. Since the fishing takes place mostly at night, I only first met fishermen on Monday evening, and even then it was just one crew (an extremely friendly crew, though!). (Side note: My theory about the lack of old fisherman community is that, since the port is fairly new, and sardine fishing fairly boat-contained, retired fishermen don't have docks to go "back" to, nor are their services sought out by working fishermen.)

As I had already planned to leave on Tuesday morning (and I was a little bit desperate to), I ended up feeling that my visit to Camarinhas was largely unproductive. Positive Irene would say, "No! You did get a sense of the place! You thought a lot!" But Irene Who Worries About Squandering this Opportunity, who can talk at least six times louder inside my head (she has learned to project), would lock Positive Irene in a closet.

2) I felt a lot like a tourist after having spent the first two days hiking along the coast and walking through town wearing my conspicuous adventure backpack, Fabio, and I think that people already saw me as one of the many landscape-admiring passers-through by the time I started loitering (first at the docks, then in other social spots).

3) One homophobic remark, directed at a man whose long hair was gathered into a pony tail. It wasn't particularly hateful (as far as such things go), but it was completely unnecessary (as all such things are), and it ruined for me what would have otherwise been a nice meeting with a nice group of nice old men -- it turned into a disappointing meeting with a suspect group of prejudiced old men.

During the weekend I had noticed this (adjective-free) group of men sitting on some benches under the ceiling of an unfinished building along the main street, and had decided to sit on one of the benches early on Monday afternoon to chat up the first ones to arrive. My plan worked! Francisco was the first to show up, and he sat next to me and told me about his life in Camarinhas -- he had been a farmer, and now that he was retired and had little else to do, he spent every afternoon sitting on these benches with a group of men he'd known since childhood. They'd been at these benches for three years; for thirteen years before that, they met at a road crossing near a soccer field a ways up the hill. He had five children, nine grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren, to which Manuel, the next man to arrive, said, "Now you can die happy!" Manuel had been a fishermen and a farmer, and had spent some years working in construction in Switzerland -- he occasionally rubbed my head like it was a dog, and he told me what kind of man I wanted for a husband (thank you, Manuel). He was also the man who made the homophobic remark; and shortly after he made it, I said, "Well I'm going to go take a nap!" and left.

I think that I reacted strongly (in my head) because I have been feeling the pressure of heteronormativity since arriving to Galicia. Especially in the small towns that I've been visiting, there are no signs of queerness anywhere, and I've been hit on by many men under the age of forty and given love advice by many men and women over the age of forty -- all of whom assume that I am interested in men! (I'm not!) I know that this is Most of the World, and that I'd have this shock going from my Pomona bubble to just about anywhere else -- but I'm having it here.

4) PMS. Really. Starting to cry a few seconds after turning on the news should have tipped me off. This, combined with NO CHOCOLATE FOR TWO DAYS (a lot of Nutella, but that doesn't count), probably threw all of the chemicals in my body out of whack and may also be responsible for my entire "mood" regarding Camarinhas -- maybe I was just seeing things through PMS-tinted glasses!

5) Anxiety regarding my living situation in Mexico. Where will I live? How much will it cost? Shouldn't I know this by now?! (This last question is the killer.)

Goodness! So far this entire entry has been a complaint! You'll be relieved to discover that I'm in an infinitely better mood tonight (even though I know that I'll be groggy tomorrow morning), and that I would only use positive adjectives to describe my first impression of Malpica and my experience here so far. The town is beautiful -- worn down but colorful, with some houses built on the edges of cliffs -- and, by far, the most vertical one I've been in so far. There are narrow alleys everywhere, most steeply inclined, and long flights of stairs serve as shortcuts in some places instead. The port is full of boats and, more importantly, people! At the fish auction today, where I saw several species I'd never seen before, many of these people smiled at me, and some even talked with me! When the fish auction was over, I sat through the entire goose barnacle auction (highest price 74 Euros/kilo, lowest 14.25/kilo), and a woman who was chewing on them raw noticed me looking at her and gave me one to try! The point of all of these exclamation points is: human contact! The point is not: raw goose barnacle. That may well be my only sample of goose barnacles, cooked or uncooked, since they are prohibitively expensive both ways, and I'd be fine without seconds. I do hope, however, to see people collecting them along the coast. Low tide is at 11:00 tomorrow morning, and I was told that if I start walking west at 9:30 am, I am bound to come across some percebeiros. That is my morning plan!

My living situation is also ideal. I'm staying in a comfortable room above a restaurant in Seaia, which was probably once its own town but is now an extension of Malpica. It takes me about twenty minutes to walk to the port (downhill) and thirty minutes to walk back (uphill!), which is great! A disincentive to take an afternoon nap! And a reason to spend many an uninterrupted hour at the docks.

Now I just have to fall asleep. Morpheus!

An itinerary (Malpica, Spain)

2009-08-05T08:53:00.000+02:00

On the evening before one of my somewhat semi-sleepless nights, I feverishly pored over my guide book and map to create the following itinerary, which I hope duly impresses you ("duly" being an amount proportionate to the fireworks of brain energy that went into it):

* Malpica, Galicia -- 8/5 - 8/9
* La Corunha, Galicia -- 8/9 - 8/11
* Carinho, Galicia -- 8/11 - 8/15
* Burela, Galicia -- 8/15 - 8/20
* Foz, Galicia -- 8/20 - 8/25
* Gijon, Asturias -- 8/25 - 8/28
* Oviedo, Asturias -- 8/28 - 8/30
* Llanes, Asturias -- 8/30 - 9/2
* Santander, Cantabria -- 9/2 - 9/7
(Note: From Santander I will also be visiting Anselmo and Angel, the two men I met at the waterfall in Ezaro, in their town, which is called Soria.)
* Madrid -- 9/7 - 9/11
* Toledo -- 9/11 - 9/13
* La Corunha -- 9/13 - 9/15 -- and then I fly to Morelia, Mexico via Barcelona, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Mexico City, because my carbon footprint isn't big enough already.

!!! We'll see how much this plan changes. But I like it for now!

A long walk with two Germans (Camarinhas, Spain)

2009-08-01T18:32:00.003+02:00

I am writing on a bed in a hotel room – oh no! My strategy of inquiring about available rooms in bars failed here in Camarinhas (it was bound to sometime, I guess). The upshot is that there is a giant column about two meters to my left, right in the middle of the room, and I feel a little bit like I’m in Greece.

Camarinhas is larger than Muxia, and there are more boats in its port! However, since it’s a weekend, there’s almost no activity until Monday, and even then it will be slow compared to Tuesday (the night fishermen will go out for the first time on Monday evening). The main type of fishing here is sardine fishing, and, as I understand it, boats sell the fish directly to buyers, who load their trucks at ungodly hours of the morning (even more ungodly than 5:00 am, when some of the big fish auctions have taken place). My plan is the following: On Monday morning I will hang out at the docks and chat up whoever is looking particularly eager to talk, and by Monday evening I’ll know if I’m feeling masochistic enough to wake up and watch the sardine boats arrive in the wee hours. A two-step plan – doable. I’m excited to see a port in action again, and to smell like dead fish.

The past two days I’ve been extremely fortunate in finding non-fisherman subjects (victims) to interrogate! In Muxia I expected to watch the sunset alone, thinking about, you know, the meaning of life, but instead I ended up talking with two French women for about an hour! We met when I asked one of them if it was possible to see Camarinhas on the other side of the ria, and, after the obligatory small talk (“Where are you from? How long are you here for? What have you done?”), I ended up telling them about my project. They seemed interested, so I asked if I could “interview” them (I also put quotation marks around that word when I’m talking), and they said oui! I wrote about our conversation when I went back to my room that night, and have retro-posted the entry, so it appears as though I posted it on July 30th when really I’m posting it along with this one. Manipulation of facts! But I’m confessing so that I don’t feel too dishonest.

Yesterday, Friday, I took a bus from Muxia to Camarinhas, and, after hostel bargain-hunting for Too Long (and with the end result that there is a column in the middle of my room), ran into a German woman and girl I had noticed on the bus in the tourist office. They were having serious communication problems with the young men behind the counter and were about to resort to interpretive dance when I offered to translate (too bad!). We had the cliché tourist conversation (they are from Muenchen and Spreewald, here in Spain for a few weeks, and had just finished the Camino de Santiago), then decided to go on a hike together to a lighthouse called Faro Vilan, about eight kilometers away. Gaby, the woman, was very religious (Christian, Protestant), and asked me about my faith even before I asked her about hers as part of my project! She, Linda (the 15-year-old daughter of a friend of hers, whom she had taken on vacation, and who is Catholic), and I ended up talking about theology and spirituality for most of the five hours that we were walking together. I learned so much! And I was impressed by Gaby’s willingness to share personal thoughts that she had obviously been developing over the course of her life. Linda, too, was candid, and told us about both what she’d been taught in her religion classes (e.g. that the meaning of life was to find one’s soulmate-of-the-opposite-sex-and-gender – not the kind of meaning of life I would want to reach watching the sunset!) and what she found questionable (the same).

That night, Gaby, Linda and I agreed to meet and go together to the Fiesta de la Juventud at a nearby beach, which Juan, a worker at the port, had told me about. We ate grilled chorizo, ribs, and pimientos de padron (no spicy ones), and I taught Linda what little I knew about dancing! She had obviously been repressing the dancer within for some time, because she kept dancing alone even when I occasionally got distracted watching other people and stopped. When we walked back to town, Gaby gave me two German poems as a parting gift – what a super gift! I am inspired to start giving poems that I like to people along my travels! Just have to find a printer (or let loose my inner scribe).

This morning was rainy and gray, and I walked around in my rain coat with the hood up, seeing only what was directly in front of me. But I heard an interesting sound! Camarinhas is known for its lace, and I happen to be here during its first annual lace contest! It is an impossibly complicated-looking process – a bunch of pins stuck into a pillow with many dozens of wooden bobs hanging from them by strings, and the women toss the wooden bobs back and forth from hand to hand faster than the eye can follow. It looks totally random, but somehow little lace flowers and arcs emerge from the madness (like monkeys at typewriters producing Shakespeare, but consistently and with good spelling). And when the little wooden bobs bump against each other, they make a soft little “click-click-click” sound, which I heard every now and then from the open window of a house as I wandered through town. Super! Now it is sunny, and I will wander again without my raincoat and with a much wider field of view.

A good hilltop (Muxia, Spain)

2009-07-30T23:23:00.000+02:00

(I am retro-posting this entry – I wrote it on July 30th and will manipulate my blog’s date and time marker so that it reflects that fact!)

I just met several interesting people at the top of the boulder-covered hill that dominates the Muxia landscape! Francoise and Danielle are two French women who are driving back to France along the Spanish coast and camping along the way. They were extremely pleasant, very kind faces (I automatically trust people with very kind faces), and we talked on the top of the hill for a good hour.

For Danielle, time and life were the same thing, or bound to each other. Time existed to mark the progression of life; if there were no life, there would be no time. I asked if she thought time would exist if the planet were devoid of life and nothing changed, and she said no. There must be change in order for time to exist. She further described time as a number of helices – cycles with direction – like many “escargot” making patterns on the dirt. When asked how she measured time, she laughed at pointed to her sunspots. As she aged, she got more sunspots – that is the passage of time. She said that she first became aware of the passage of time when she was eighteen or so, taking a philosophy course in her last year of high school. Before that, she had always lived in the present, and after that had started thinking about time. When thinking about her life, she divided it into several twenty-year cycles. From 0-20 she was a child and student; from 20-40 she was working; and she was currently towards the end of the third cycle. She looked forward to the fourth! “What will it be like?” she wondered. I asked if time occasionally went faster or slower, and she answered “No no no no no.” As she got older, she lived more and more in the present, and time never seemed to go quickly for her. This was effortless; she wasn’t doing it consciously. I asked if she did meditation, and she said that she did occasionally in a yoga class, but that that was artificial. It is impossible to be wholly aware of the present if you are sitting in a room with good posture; when she was really in the moment was at times like this, sitting on top of the hill, watching the sun on the ocean and talking.

For Francoise, time was “the hours, the days . . .” She said that she also divided her life into different chunks, but they had more to do with where she was living than a set period of time. She had lived in Brittany as a child – one tome – then had studied there – second tome – then had moved to Paris – third tome – then had moved to the center of France – fourth tome. She said that she became aware of the passage of time when she started working; furthermore, since she started working, time started going faster and faster. I asked if she remembered planning a lot for the future, or fantasizing about it, as a child and as an adult, and she said that she had often fantasized but not planned. She liked to think about what would happen, but didn’t consider any of her plans solid. Francoise did not think that time was inextricably linked to life or nature – it is something that exists regardless. I can’t remember if she said that it existed since the beginning of the universe or always.

I also met a young Hungarian couple. The man works as an interpreter, so his English was excellent, and he found my project fascinating. He asked me a lot of questions about the questions I asked other people – so, of course, I started “interviewing” him as an answer. He said that time was a way of marking the passage of life, both human and non-human. It is divided into arbitrary artificial units like hours and seconds because humans thousands of years ago thought to do so. That’s all I got from him, because the sunset turned pretty and he went to sit with his girlfriend. I was sitting behind them, and I took a Hallmark-romantic picture of their silhouettes against the sun (“CREEP,” you might think – but they were genuinely pleased when I showed it to them, and I am going to e-mail it to them), of which I am immensely proud.

All in all, a heartwarming evening-turned-night. And I really want to visit Francoise and Danielle in the middle of France!

A happy birthday (Muxia, Spain)

2009-07-30T19:13:00.003+02:00

I am a changed woman! A few days ago I was 21 and young, ignorant of the cruel ways of the world, flitting about like a carefree butterfly – but as of July 28 I am 22, and you may address me as Wise Grown-Up Irene (like “Queen Irene” sans royal blood) (you can call me Queen Irene, too), because I am wise and grown-up. Not so wise that I’ve stopped binging on chocolate, though. I just had most of a 150-gram bar and I’m hoping that my stomach won’t notice until after I go for a walk, lest I explode before getting a chance to appreciate the Costa de Muerte. And not so grown-up that I will start calling myself a “woman” instead of a “girl” – I’m still wondering when that will happen. (The first sentence of this paragraph doesn’t count.)

The past few days have been lovely. Asmus and I spent many an hour exploring Cambados and the area immediately surrounding it, developing our nose tans (why don’t faces burn evenly?) and making Temporary Friends. Asmus mentioned that “the people really are very sweet,” and we were lucky to run into more people who, in addition to their very sweet natures, had a bit of time on their hands. On Monday afternoon, as we were setting off to explore Cambados, an exercise outfit-clad man almost bumped into us on the sidewalk and said, “Excuse me!” I took the opportunity to say “Wait, wait -- excuse me” back as he was passing by, and asked him how to reach the ruins of the Church of Santa Marinha. He thought for a moment, then said, “No, you won’t start with that. Come with me. I’ll show you something.”

He led us a few blocks to a nearby pazo, a mansion for the nobility of days past (and rich people of days present), said to the woman at the desk, “I’m just going to show them around quickly!” and to us, “I know her – she’ll let us in,” and gave us a tour of the grounds. He explained that the horreas, the stone grain storage units found in the yard of almost every rural house, were anti-rodent by construction and a show of wealth; that the grape vines were grew horizontal to the ground because it kept them well aired in this humid climate; how the wine was made; how the garden was watered; and more! It was his favorite pazo – very nice, very nice. He then led us a few blocks farther to the church, which is now mostly walls and ceiling arches, as it was ransacked for valuables and stones (a century ago? two? Wise Grown-Up Irene is still not Historian Irene) after a government declaration that expropriated a lot of church land and property. Our tour guide never told us his name, but it was probably something ending in “the Generous.” Jorge the Generous. Something like that.

The next day we took a bus to O Grove, a much larger city to the south of Cambados, and walked around the island of La Toja and through brambly forest paths to the Mirador de Siradella. We got a bit lost towards the top of the mountain, and ended up losing a battle against these awful prickly plants that seem to follow me everywhere (Asmus had shorts on, but he didn’t complain, so I, in long pants, was forced to become the designated whiner – I am really good at it!!). We did make it to the top of the mountain, though, and feasted our eyes on the surrounding landscape (very nice, very nice) before starting to head down the road. Enter next round of very sweet people! Having had a successful semi-hitchhiking experience in Santiago, Asmus and I decided to try and hitchhike for real back to the city. I held my thumb up at the first car that passed, and a man with a little boy in the backseat stopped! The little boy was suspicious of us (rightly so, I thought – we were hitchhikers), but his father was not, and he dropped us off close to the bus station. How kind!

That evening, Asmus invited me to the Restaurante Martinez (minimum 4-star rating for its name), and we had a delicious birthday dinner. We ate pimientos de padron, roasted peppers that are exciting to eat because occasionally you get a really spicy one (I did!!), raxo con patatas, and a type of fish called rodaballo. I also had an obligatory sip of albarinho wine from Asmus’s cup – but my taste buds still aren’t sophisticated enough to appreciate any kind of fermented beverage. The fancy night out was the perfect ending to my day of instant wisdom and grown-up-hood, and we went to bed stuffed in the best possible way and exhausted.

So far I’ve only written about what Asmus and I did together, but I also spent two early mornings and part of an afternoon at the docks alone, and I was happy to see more women than I had seen at any of the other docks! On Monday afternoon, after watching the mollusk auction and speaking for a long time with Carmen, who purifies and sells clams and mussels, I went to another building where I saw two women working on darning nets. They noticed that I was interested in what they were doing, waved me in, and then explained to me that they had been in the net business since they were children, like their mother before them. The nine-year-old daughter of one of the women was also in the room, already learning how to make nets! I was so excited about the idea that the women of the family had been doing the same thing for generations that they pulled out a number of frames full of old black-and-white photographs of the docks at Cambados! They pointed at the pictures and said, “That’s our mother at our age. That’s our mother when she was a girl. Did you see the woman darning nets just outside this building? This little girl is her. She’s 67 now. This is our father. This is my father-in-law, bringing a boat in from the countryside, where it was constructed. Look how the fish are kept in the boat – they didn’t have those boxes back then. This is me when I was little.” It was wonderful! When I left, they gave me a little booklet on Cambados fishing history and a net needle “to show my parents.”

I also saw women on boats in fisherman suits the next day after the morning fish auction – an absolute first for me. They were working on the mussel-boats, and I approached one to say, “Wow! Women on boats!” (In more words.) She explained that it wasn’t uncommon here for women to work with their husbands at the bateas if it was the sole source of income. Most fishermen, she said, offered their labor at other people’s bateas to make extra money, but were first and foremost fishermen. When families owned bateas and did nothing else, everyone helped out.

Yesterday, Wednesday, Asmus and I left Cambados in the morning and spent a few hours in Villagarcia and Carril (which my tour book does not deem worthy of even a single descriptive sentence, but both of which I liked a lot) before hopping on a train to Santiago, where we had plans to spend the night at Marcos’s house so that Asmus could leave Spain early this morning. We had also made plans to meet up with Sylvia, Juan and their daughter Giulia, my friends from La Corunha, whom I was so happy to see! We sat at a café together and then walked around in Santiago’s infamous fine drizzle – Sylvia and Juan practiced their English on Asmus, and Asmus worked more on his Spanish comprehension skills, which have progressed considerably since last week. I’ll see the family again in a few weeks, when I pass through La Corunha again, and we’ll probably go to the Playa de las Catedrales, the thought of which makes me bouncy. After dropping Sylvia, Juan and Giulia off at the train station, Asmus and I went back to Marcos’s house, where we met a cycling pal of his and ate. Friends!

Now I am in Muxia, but I will only spend one night here. The first thing I did when I arrived was go to the docks to ask when the fish auction would be – and there is none! The lonja is closed, and there are few boats in the harbor. The man I asked told me that all of the fishermen were going to other ports to sell their fish, and suggested that I move on to Camarinhas, which I will do tomorrow. But I’ve been on so many buses the past few days, and have unpacked and packed so many times, that I am looking forward to a quiet evening by the sea (after a walk to use some of the chocolate energy). I’ll find an internet café to post this . . . hike up a big hill . . . watch the sun set . . . and conk out.

An addendum (Santiago de Compostela, Spain – but really Cambados, Spain)

2009-07-27T15:11:00.003+02:00

I didn’t want to steal Asmus’s blog thunder, so I’m adding something Santiago-related a few days after the fact. On Saturday, we went to the Museo o Pobo Galego, which had excellent exhibits on Galician fishing (yes!!), music, architecture, art, etc. One of the halls that we walked into had an introductory board that caught my eye; here it is translated from Gallego (be impressed!) (but not too impressed – written, Gallego and Spanish are very similar):

The practice of measuring time was imposed by the need to organize quotidian life. There exist two ways of understanding time: as something that repeats periodically or as something linear that does not repeat. Traditional societies conceive of time in its cyclical form, based on natural occurrences: every year there are the same seasons, the same solar movements, and the same agricultural cycle. In this cyclical conception of time, the unit of measure is the year. To organize the different temporal rhythms, one needs to put markers on time. These markers are the festivals.

There are religious festivals, defined by the liturgy of the Church, and secular festivals, which revolve around seasonal labors. There are also cyclical festivals that are celebrated in all parts of the same region, albeit with local particularities. Among them are fixed festivals (Nadal, Reis, San Xoan, Defuntos), which always fall on the same day, and variable festivals (Entroido, Semana Santa, Corpus), which depend on Easter, which is fixed according to the lunar year. Other types of festivals are the patron saint festivals, celebrated in honor of the titular saint of a parish, and romarias, which consist of a pilgrimage to a sanctuary.

The distribution of labors and festivals is not uniform. In the spring and summer the good climate and the longer days make them the seasons in which the most work is done, agricultural and maritime. For the same reasons, it is in the summer that most of the patron saint festivals and romarias are celebrated.

It’s my project! The exhibit went through the stages of life of 19th-century Galicians – birth, childhood, young adulthood, adulthood, wise old age, death – and duties and special events associated with each. But the reason I was so excited is that I have already participated in several of the summertime festivals (most notably, the Muros party-hardy with Pepita and Candida and the festival in Santiago de Compostela)! And they do make summer special – several people have said to me, “Oof! In the summertime there’s always a party somewhere! Summertime is party-time!” Maria of Muros, who is apparently responsibility-free until the school year starts, had adopted a totally nocturnal schedule, and slept all day long so that she could dance all night long. (Her mother, Mariloli, didn’t seem to understand this mode of existence, and always woke her up in the early afternoon to inform her that it was daytime – surely Maria appreciated the update.)

Something else exciting is brewing: housing possibilities in Mexico and Norway! In those two countries I’ll be staying in the same town/city all three months (Angangueo, Ocampo, Donato Guerra, or Tlalpujahua in Mexico and Tromso in Norway), and a few days ago I thought, “Irene! You should get on this housing business!” I wrote to the director of the WWF monarch program in Mexico (the only non-hotel e-mail address I could find) and posted a message on CouchSurfing – and already somebody has written back to tell me that his aunt used to work in Angangueo and “knows people there.” Yes! That is exactly what I want! People who know people somewhere! The Norway possibility was even more a matter of chance. On Saturday night, Asmus and I got together with Fabio (Brazilian), his friends Richard (NORWEGIAN!!) and Chris (German), and Chris’s friends Thomas (German) and Christanne (German), to watch a bagpipe band at the Praza da Quintana and have hot chocolate. (We know how to spend our Saturday nights.) Well, I gave it away with “NORWEGIAN!!” – I told Richard about my project and future stay in his country, and, after making a mysterious phone call at the café, he came up to me and said, “You might have a room in Tromso!” Providence is plopping should-be real estate agents all over the place. Obviously neither the room in Mexico nor the room in Norway is final yet, and I have to do a lot more research before showing up at the door with my bags (student housing in Tromso might be a better idea) – but it’s fun to start fantasizing.

Now I am in Cambados! Yesterday afternoon Asmus and I wandered along the coast and through vineyards and farm fields, and today I got up early to go to the docks. Since it’s Monday, there was little activity (early morning is when the nighttime boats come back with fish – but they don’t go out on Sundays), but I did meet Rosa, who works at the lonja, and Vieito, who was going out to gather clams. This afternoon, after exploring Cambados with Asmus, I’ll go back to the docks to watch the fish auction, which starts at 4:00, and make fisherman friends.

Official Cambados blog entry forthcoming.

A guest writer! (Santiago de Compostela, Spain)

2009-07-25T15:31:00.001+02:00

This entry comes with the guarantee that it will be short! Why that is? Well, Irene decided to hire a ghostwriter! Okay, this is not quite true – actually I’m a friend of Irene from Germany, my name is Asmus, I am visiting her for a week and guess what? It is my honor to write today’s blog!! Wowowow, what a tough act to follow… So instead of trying to copy Irene’s entertaining and extensive style, which would lead to epic failure for me, I will try to give you an idea of my impression of Galicia during the last two days.

The people really are very sweet. Just to mention two occasions, we asked an elder man for directions and instead of explaining them he joined us for a couple of minutes during which we learned that his son is working as a heart surgeon in Munich and became a father recently. Later on the same day Irene and I were walking back to the city coming from a hike to the so-called stony mountain (named after ancient stone artwork which we unfortunately didn’t spot). Since we took the road walking back (hm, why did we do that?), it took quite a while. Reaching the suburbs of Santiago we asked a couple for the right way to go, and after we went on that very couple drove up with their car and asked us whether we want a ride. They practically drove us directly to our hostel then (which by the way is a very nice one!).

Guess I should also mention that we had the pleasure to see two very Galician events. Firstly, we were among the lucky crowd in front of the cathedral to witness the famous fireworks during the festival, around midnight on July 24th. Was it 5.000 or 10.000 people on that square? We couldn’t guess, but it was a tight pack of people for sure! And it was worth it, the fireworks turned out to be very beautifully combined with music and video-like projections to the cathedral’s front side – a very intense experience! The second occasion was today on the early afternoon when we “joined” a demonstration for Galicia’s independence, followed by a nice procession with flags, drums and bag pipes. In-de-pen-den-cia!!

Did I mention that I don’t speak any Spanish? Yes, you right, what am I doing here then? Well, I am lucky to have such a care-taking and fluent friend as Irene with me, so I am not completely lost. I really like it here, but I am also looking forward to the coast of the Rias Bajas where we will move to tomorrow!

A few interesting conversations and a lot of rain (Santiago de Compostela, Spain)

2009-07-22T23:52:00.007+02:00

I’ve been in Santiago since yesterday afternoon, and so has the rain! Usually I don’t mind getting a bit wet if it means exploring a new city, but the amount of water falling from the sky makes it necessary to put my rain hood up, which gives me about the same scope of vision as a horse with blinders – so I am sad to say that I have only seen about half of the old city, the glorious cathedral, an exhibit on photography of the easternmost parts of India, a Bach concert in a church, and a Cuban and Brazilian music and dance party in a tent in a park.

In list form, it looks like a lot of doing, but most of the past day and a half has really been taken up by conversing – with Fabio, with whom I stayed last night, and with Marcos, my host for tonight, and Shey, an American visitor who is also staying with Marcos and who just spent a month walking along the Camino de Santiago. Some of these conversations have been about time! And they have been very interesting! I also had a chance to interrogate Manel and Zoraya while we were hiking up Monte Pindo on Saturday, and I will (roughly and in a disorganized manner) summarize what they, Marcos, and Shey have told me:

Manel:
The first thing that he told me was that the future does not exist. What matters is the present moment, although the past is also important, because it gives the present form. I asked if the past existed still, as a reality, or if it existed in our memories, and he leaned towards the latter option, although he also mentioned that, with things like photographs and video cameras, we have evidence of the reality of the past. Continuing in this vein, he told me about his memories of childhood, when his grandparents told him stories of their own childhoods – this was how he knew about the past before photographs and video cameras. He said that there was a rich story-telling tradition in Galicia, and many myths and legends were told to the younger generations as a way of preserving the past and keeping it a part of the present. And the present is all that one can know; the future is unpredictable and uncontrollable (chaotic might be an appropriate term), a result of every present moment, but not “real” because “the future” doesn’t ever exist.

Zoraya:
Zoraya was very thoughtful and careful in her response, and distinguished between two kinds of time: “real” or “absolute” and “psychological”. The psychological perception of time, she said, was simply the sense that time can go faster or slower depending on the activity -- time flies when you’re having fun, right? And absolute time was measured entirely by cycles of varying scales. All things are part of small and large cycles, and repetition is the key to the universe. As an example, she mentioned the seasons, and said that she felt very much in tune with their passing. When she looked at a tree, she saw its buds, and its leaves, and then the leaves falling, and then the branches covered with water or ice, and then the whole show all over again. She also imagined other trees taking the place of her aging tree – multiple cycles of different scales (the yearly cycle of the individual tree and the cycle of the lives of all of the trees in the forest). I asked if there was a basic cycle, one against which all other cycles could be measured, or if the cycles were just relative to each other, and she said that, as far as she was concerned, we couldn’t really care about anything more than the galactic rotation as a cycle. Everything else is too big and doesn’t connect in a real way to the cycles that most define our activities.

Marcos:
Marcos also immediately resorted to cycles to explain his perception of time, and particularly the seasons. He said that he could never live anywhere without seasons, because he needs them to know how to feel throughout the year – he described, in beautiful poetic language, the opening of buds on trees in the springtime, the rain in the winter, and how these affect his mood and relation to the outside. He also said that culture and customs, like food, are dictated by these cycles. He had the idea several years ago to photograph, over the course of the year, the vendors at Santiago’s open-air market; he only did it for a week (and hopes to start it up again), but explained that, over that week, he felt connected to the cycles of the market (or more aware of them during the year). He knew when mushrooms would appear, and chestnuts, and he felt that he could see the cycle of life in the aging faces of the women selling them. He also mentioned natural cycles in relation to religious festivities – for instance, and one that I myself experienced, the sardine’s role in the Noche de San Juan. It’s an inextricable part of the celebration, which takes place at a time when the sardine has the perfect (for the taste buds) amount of fat in its body. No coincidence! Marcos found it very difficult to use words to describe time (one of my mean questions is: “How would you describe time, using words, to somebody who didn’t know what it is?”), and said that he felt it much better than he thought about it.

Shey:
Shey told me that time was a river, and with elaborate detail explained what each physical aspect of the river corresponds to. The river of time has many passengers, each of whom travels at his or her own velocity, and each of whom is subject to its currents and turns. She said that, when one is in the river, its motion is impossible to perceive – one could only do that by removing oneself from the river and looking at it “from above”. However, one has a certain agency in that one can predict or avoid certain consequences. She described large events in history as boulders; one can look at boulders that lie ahead and, based on past experience, maneuver around them differently. This is an interesting mix of inevitability (the boulder is THERE) and free will (you can still choose to move around it). Also, history is created by the river of time in that every ripple can affect the water far away. If there is a rapid, the course of the water changes – repercussions are long-term and whole-river. The control aspect of her description also went even further, because she said that she had purposely chosen a difficult-looking river for her life (so there are multiple rivers of time?). She picked the one that looked like it had the most rapids, and, as a result, feels older than her thirty years, because she has already had to navigate (metaphorically) so much all of the time.

Shey also spoke to me about the psychological effects of participating in different activities over given periods of time. She is very active, and said that when she did a lot of things in a row, she was surprised that any time had gone by at all – she loses sense of time when she is always on the move. Seemingly contradictorily, though, she was always surprised to discover that she’d managed to do so much in so little time (i.e. it felt like it should have taken a lot of time). Shey also told me that, without motion or some sort of event, there is no proof of time. If you are looking at a box, and nothing happens inside the box (absolutely nothing – no molecules collide, no neutrinos travel through), you can’t prove that time is passing or exists. Time depends on change, on motion, so it is inextricably linked to space, where events can physically take place. A more human example she gave was that of solitary confinement: people who have been in solitary confinement for long periods of time, in windowless rooms where nothing happens, forget how long certain activities take. When they return to society, they don’t remember the pace of things – how long is a meal? How long is a waking day? Without events by which to set their time scale, they lose the sense of time that the rest of the people outside maintain.

I also have a notebook in which I ask people to draw time (“How would you describe time, using pictures, to somebody who didn’t know what it is?”), and, interestingly, every picture has been different so far! Granted, there are very few pictures (I have drawn more than everybody else combined), but I’m excited by how differently people visualize time and what aspects of it they find most important to communicate (aging, a person’s agency, time’s essence, etc.).

I’m reading a book on the biological structures of memory – and this is related to time, too! But I don’t know enough yet to report. My favorite thought for now is that I can make my synapses fire by thinking about my synapses firing. I’m doing it right now!

A difficulty (Ezaro, Spain)

2009-07-20T15:24:00.001+02:00

This entry is not events-related, but rather something that has been on my mind. I wrote about it in an e-mail to a friend, and, since it’s something that I’m learning, I figured I’d share it in my blog, too. I had been worried before leaving on this trip that I would turn “sad” during this year – that traveling alone, and always meeting new people and saying goodbye immediately, would have some adverse effect on my emotional state. Now that seems silly; those are precisely the things that are giving me pleasure and allowing me to learn so much.

But in Muros I was sad for a different reason, the one that I should have foreseen from the outset. For the first few days of my stay there I felt vaguely disapproved of by the old people I spent so much time with – I seemed to lack some of the things that impressed them, like flawless social grace and talkativeness, which it seems every Spanish woman is raised to possess. I realized, though, during my time with the kind and caring sisters Candida and Pepita, that the uneasiness went both ways. They had had very little education, and had hardly traveled outside of Galicia, and they weren’t rich – as they showed me their houses, I realized that they were self-conscious. They were worried that I would judge them – and I had thought that they were judging me!

There’s a sense of superiority attached to education, and to something like the Watson (both of which also imply money). It’s impossible to tell somebody who didn’t finish high school that I’ve graduated from college without the fact just sitting there, being intimidating. And that I’m traveling for a year – what?! Unimaginable. That’s what’s making me sad: That, by having had what I’ve had, I can make other people feel intimidated, self-conscious, or somehow inadequate. That’s the last thing I want! I FEEL humble – I know that Candida and Pepita can teach me a lot about many things, I love and respect them and their lives, and my behavior reflects those feelings – but it’s hard to communicate that humility when I also have to tell people what I’m doing. There is very little humble-sounding about a college degree and the opportunity to travel the world for a year. That’s what I’m currently struggling with: other people’s reception of me, and how I can make it as comfortable as possible. It is not simple! Feeling humble doesn’t cut it, and neither does feeling sad about it.

A steep ascent and a waterfall (Ezaro and O Pindo, Spain)

2009-07-20T15:23:00.002+02:00

(I wrote this yesterday, but have internet today! Tomorrow morning I leave for Santiago.)

I did not end up going to the countryside! Instead I took a bus away from Santiago, towards Cee and Finisterre, and got off at a tiny town called Ezaro, which looked interesting because it is at the mouth of a river. It is also right next to the Monte Pindo, which Sylvia, my friend from La Corunha, had recommended that I hike – I thought, “Excellent! I will experience tiny-town life and also get to go up!” I love going up.

My first walk through town revealed that there is exactly one fishing boat in the port, but many wooden rowboats in the river water just next to the bridge. The rowboats were drifting happily on their lines in the water; the fishing boat bobbed in the waves at the port, probably feeling both superior and lonely. The point is, though, that there were no people in the boats; I have to wait until Monday morning to see the solitary fishing boat in action. The nearby town of O Pindo has a larger port (four fishing boats!), and I will go there in the early afternoon, when the catch comes in.

On my second walk through town I more fully appreciated the landscape – enormous boulder-covered hills loom over the houses, and on Saturday, when I arrived, they were covered with fog, so that the peaks drifted in and out of vision. Nine-year-old Irene would have thought, “Oh boy! There’s probably a hidden entrance to another world in some boulder on one of those fog-covered hills! There’s probably a witch!!” But, tragically, I’ve lost my capacity to imagine (and temporarily believe in) the supernatural when I am in mysterious and old places. So I just thought, “Oh boy! I can’t wait to walk around!”

Ezaro also has artificial large-scale beauty! The river Xallas has been dammed for over a century, and there is an electrical plant up the river a ways, next to huge rocks that used to be covered by a waterfall and are now covered by a trickle. (I have this problem of finding things that I know to be environmentally destructive or exploitative of people somewhere down the line beautiful. Dams are an example – I really think that they are neat to look at! Technologically impressive, and generally aesthetically pleasing, if only for their scale. But this dam took away one of very few waterfalls in Europe that emptied into the sea, and has also been responsible for wreaking havoc on fish populations; last year many died when too much water was released at once. The docks are another example: I love seeing fish coming in, the auction, the boats, and in Vigo I was fascinated by the huge rocks, stacks of aluminum ingots, rows of cars, containers, giant cranes, cargo ships – but I know about overfishing, and mining destruction, and pollution, and that people somewhere down the line are being worked too hard and paid too little. How to reconcile awe and fascination with knowledge of exploitation?) I went into a small museum about energy that the company has set up, and a man there took a liking to me and showed me the actual machine room, which also contained many machines from the past century! Very cool.

I was told that the waterfall would be “opened” at 11:00 that night, so I went back at night and sat with dozens of other people on the wooden benches next to it. While we were waiting, I met Anselmo and Angel, who were visiting from Asturias. They were very friendly, and told me about Spanish history, their work (they train primary school teachers), Spanish food, good Spanish science magazines (excellent!), etc. We watched the waterfall when it opened up – beautiful! loud and misty! I love waterfalls! – and afterwards had drinks at a bar in town. Friends!

On Sunday morning I walked to O Pindo, the town across the bridge, to start my hike up to the top of Monte Pindo (A Moa) from the church courtyard. The first forty-five minutes were toughies – a very narrow, steep path with tricky footing, and the fog made everything just a bit depressing. But then I ran into a family that was farther along the path, and another hiker with two dogs ran into us, and we spent the rest of the day together! Manel (I’m not misspelling it – it’s “Manuel” without the “u”) had explored these mountains thoroughly, and carried not only a fancy contour map but also a bar of chocolate, so we knew we could trust him to be our leader, and mother Pilar, daughter Zoraya and father ____ were full of energy and cheer. We spent a total of six hours climbing up and stumbling down, and it was one of the most wonderful hikes of my life. The fog cleared up as we neared the top of the mountain, and there were rounded boulders everywhere, and little creeks, and green grass, and everywhere we looked we could see distant coast and more green hills covered with windmills (I find these beautiful, too! but I feel better about finding them beautiful). The only misfortune was that one of my flip flops – the most faithful shoes I have ever had, explorers-with on many wild adventures – broke on the way down. I tied it onto my foot with a hair binder, but it was too loose by the time we got to asphalt, so I put socks on and (STUPIDLY) tried to go shoeless on the asphalt. Now the bottoms of my feet are burned (ouch) (really no joke). But I’d do it again! It was a glorious day. When we got into town, we had drinks at a beachfront bar and then stripped to our underwear and bras and swam! Cold, cold water! Yeeeeaaaah!!! I will sleep well tonight.

A party-hardy and many adoptive grandparents (Muros, Spain)

2009-07-17T16:50:00.005+02:00

Since Wednesday the entire town has been celebrating the festival for the Virgen del Carmen, who watches over fishermen. There are four nights of music and dance in the main square – I have attended two so far – and numerous religious activities, like noon masses and the procession of the Virgen from the main church to the docks, where she is carried aboard a boat and taken out for a spin, and then on to a smaller chapel. There the townspeople sing a hymn, solemnly, and then very unsolemnly rush to the Virgen’s stand to take one of the white carnations or gerberas that adorn her feet and, having been blessed by her, provide good fortune or something else immensely desirable. I am no good in crowds, so I went “whoop” and tried to walk the other way, but I got a flower anyway! Candida, one of the seventy-something-year-old women who make up my social circle here in Muros, handed me one as I was going down the stairs into the street.

She and her sister, Pepita, and their friend, Loli, adopted me at the party on Wednesday night when Susa (the next door neighbor who forced clothes pegs upon me and with whom I’ve had several coffees now) introduced me as a solo traveler, all alone and needing attention and instruction in dance. The sisters are intimidating – after two nights of dancing, Candida has yet to smile at me (I still categorize facial expressions into smiles, which are good, and non-smiles, which elicit concern on my part; I should know better after a month in Galicia), and they dance like it’s their God-given duty – but very kind. One of them was always holding my hand or petting my arm and singing into my ear, and we danced for hours. Well, they danced for hours. I can only claim to have danced for the last half hour or so, because when I started out I just stepped on their feet, kneed them (they are much shorter than I am), and apologized constantly. I could see Segundo, Susa’s husband, laughing at me, but by the end of the night he said, “Irene – there’s hope for you yet.” Flatterer. My body has no intuition – I am doomed to stumble until I figure out a pattern, and it’s hard to figure out a pattern in Candida and Pepita’s tight and unrelenting embraces. I can say now, though, that I won’t step on your feet dancing a cumbia, paso doble, waltz, a dance called “el polvorete” (sexual innuendos! I was totally oblivious to the meaning of the song until somebody acted it on stage), merengue, salsa, or tango. Last night I hardly danced at all, preferring instead to watch the show – the bands are impressive. There are two of them on separate stages, and they take turns entertaining throughout the night. Lots of flashy lights, costume changes, props, and audience participation. One singer, seeing that I was trying to take a picture of him, even serenaded me for a little bit; the picture turned out well.

Yesterday I ate lunch (which was so big that it ended up being dinner, too) with Mariloli, her husband Juan, and their daughter Maria. At Mariloli’s insistence, I had two servings of what I thought was the main course but was actually the first of several, so that by the time I left the house I had had generous portions of ensaladilla (cold egg salad with seafood and vegetables) and bread, lamb (mmph), potatoes, flan, brazo de gitano (a bread dessert eaten during the holidays), and orujo tostado (very strong alcohol – whoo! Maria said, “Now you’ll have no trouble taking a nap”). They are very hospitable, and Juan has seen the whole world by ship! He was a merchant in his younger years, and now shudders when anybody suggests that he travel somewhere.

I have discovered that I require a certain degree of anonymity to feel comfortable in a place – no possibility of that in Muros. Not only do Susa and Segundo know my exact schedule, since they call out to me every time I enter or leave the apartment, but Maria (the daughter of Mariloli, who is renting me the apartment), told me at lunch, “Oh, did you know that I went to school with Felipe’s daughter?” I thought, “Who is Felipe? Do I know his daughter? Why are you telling me this?” Two seconds of high-speed processing in my brain led to the realization that Felipe was the man who had taken me out to see his bateas; he had told his daughter about me, and his daughter had told Maria, who told me -- I had no idea that there was any connection between Maria and Felipe. I wonder how many people know exactly where I’ve been and what I’ve done every day. Small towns give rise to naturally occurring and freakishly intense Neighborhood Watch programs. I’m sure that if I bought condoms at the grocery store, one of my adoptive grandparents would be lecturing me within the hour.

-- Very funny: As I was typing, Mariloli came into the apartment and said, “Come have a drink with us.” Not a question. The life of the retiree is jam-packed with social engagements! I’m not sure if I’ll be able to handle it. –

Tomorrow I leave Muros, but I still don’t know exactly where I’m going. I may just ride the bus towards Santiago until I see a town that looks interesting and hop off. I am intrigued by the countryside. Exciting!

A month already (Muros, Spain)

2009-07-15T17:17:00.007+02:00

I have spent a month in Spain already! So much has happened that it feels like several years have passed, and at the same time I’m sad that only eleven twelfths of the Watson pie are left -- it is a very tasty pie.

I am writing in Muros, a town of about 10,000 in the southernmost region of the Costa de Muerte (or perhaps south of the Costa de Muerte? I’m not sure where the death begins). When I left Vigo I was hoping for a change in scenery, and Muros has not disappointed – the coast feels longer, since the town is not deep in a ria, and the cloud-topped hills are covered with dark pine trees and gray boulders. The town also feels much smaller than anywhere I’ve been; everyone knows each other, greets each other on the street, and is on the street in the first place – people spend a lot of time outside despite occasional and unpredictable rainshowers.

It is thanks to people knowing each other that I find myself writing this on a sofa in my very own apartment right in front of the port (really!) instead of in a hostel room six kilometers out of town. When I realized my mistake in making a reservation at a place so far from where I wanted to be, and also realized that every hostel in town costs more than my strict budget allows for, I asked the bus driver for suggestions. He took me to a bar and told me to ask the woman who owned it for a room – other drivers sometimes spent the night there – but the bar was closed. I went to the store next door, where two kind women insisted that I leave my bags and explore town while I waited for the bar to open, and when I came back, I spoke with the bar owner. No room! Alas. I went next door again to retrieve my bags, and asked the women there if they might know somebody who could offer me a room (or sofa or floor) for a few nights. They thought for a few moments and then said, “Mariloli!” (Auspicious name.) One of them walked with me to a barbershop, where I met Mariloli, who said that I could spend a few nights at the apartment that she usually rents, since the next renters don’t arrive until August. Luxury! I don’t expect to have this much room to myself again for the next 15 or so years, and it’s a minute’s walk to the port.

Now every time I pass the bar, the owner and I enthusiastically greet each other through the window, and Mariloli has invited me to eat with her family tomorrow, Thursday, which is the celebration for the Virgen del Carmen (three days of festivities start tonight – I think that it will be difficult to sleep). I’ve also met the next door neighbor, Susa, who saw through the second-story window that I had tended my clothing on the kitchen chairs and forcefully offered to give me clothes pegs (“Oh no, don’t worry, it’s fine like this.” “NONSENSE. Look, I have a whole bucket-full; I’ll lend you some.” “Please don’t trouble yourself – my clothes are almost dry already.” “I’M COMING OVER.”). When I went to her house to return the clothes pegs, she and her husband pulled out a chair for me and gave me coffee – like Mariloli, the bar owner, the women in the store, and everyone else I’ve met, they made me swear (stopped just short of telling me to sign my name in blood) that I will not hesitate to come to them if I need anything.

I have been equally fortunate at the port! That evening, I met Manolo the net-mender, who was working on the long nets for drag fishing (trolling? I’ll look it up) (I looked it up! TRAWLING). He explained how other nets worked (minhos and betas, which hang in the water from buoys and differ in the number of layers that they have) and introduced me to several other net-menders. Yesterday I spent most of the day at or near the port. I first met Felipe, who owns 14 bateas (rafts where mussels are raised) and was overseeing his three workers on one of the many ships with a large crane in the middle of it (to lift up the ropes full of mussels). I asked him if I could go out with them someday, expecting him either to say no or “come back tomorrow,” but instead of either of these he said, “We’ll go right now!” I was shocked, and felt terrible getting in the way of work, but he assured me that it didn’t matter if the boat was in motion or not – Francisco, Carlos and Nando, the three men on the boat, were just fixing the ropes to put more seed mussels on them. The water has had toxins in it for over two months and they haven’t been able to sell any mussels; all the work that they are doing now is maintenance. They took me to three different bateas so that I could see baby, teenaged, and eating-aged mussels – we clambered along the large wooden beams (they more gracefully than I) and pulled up some ropes (for the last group, the mature mussels, Felipe used the crane – one rope full of mature mussels weighs 300 kilos!).

Back at the port, I talked with Manolo again, who told me that most of the drag-fishing (TRAWLING) boats were docking in other ports, since the fish was in other areas. Most boats (80% of them) are fishing octopus now, which I confirmed later in the afternoon at the fish auction, where there were crates and crates of dead or dying octopi (I think that I had nightmares because of this) (I empathize strongly with octopi).

Before the fish auction, though, I was told to go to the beach, and soon! before the tide came back in, to see the marisqueras, women who rake or shovel the sand for clams. I put on my wet-shoes and squished through seaweed and liquid sand to the area where they were working – many dozens of them, and even more waist-deep or more in the water (but I didn’t follow them there). They are allowed to gather clams at this beach from July until September, and then they move on to another beach; this rotation allows the clam populations to replenish themselves. I asked how they knew when to come out -- i.e. when the tide was at its lowest – and they said, “Oh, we have calendars. The calendars tell us the time, and we watch the clock.” Yesterday the low tide was not very low at all, because the moon is not full or new, but they go every day to gather what they can. The fish auction was at 5:30, and I was proud to know what most of the fish were called before being told the names (learning!). I think that I’ll go again today – I have yet to talk to a fisherman of fish (or even of octopus).

This morning I walked to the nearby town of Louro, where I climbed up Monte Louro to look at the coast to the north and the open ocean. I worry that my legs will go on strike one of these days – but so far they are tolerating my abuses admirably.

A lot of sharks, a sail boat ride, and Eden (Vigo and the Islas Cies, Spain)

2009-07-12T15:13:00.003+02:00

(I actually wrote this yesterday. Tonight is my last night in Vigo, and tomorrow I'll go to Muros!)

I am writing this in a tent! Since yesterday morning I’ve been on the larger of the two Islas Cies, a natural reserve with, according to a British journalist, the world’s most beautiful beach (I share this only because it’s what everyone – EVERYONE – tells me when I mention the Islas Cies; that British journalist has made many a Galician proud), and other Eden-like qualities. Unfortunately, the Islas Cies, and the world’s most beautiful beach, are crawling with tourists (Eden only had two), and my tent is surrounded by about fifty others, so I can only pretend that I am alone in an isolated forest when the flap is shut, and then it gets too hot. LIFE IS HARD. But it’s not, because I have been hiking along the forest paths in the early morning and evening, when they are deserted, and today I even quasi-meditated on a hill! I have found a hidden sea cave, been dive-bombed by seagulls who thought that I was too close to their offspring (flashback to my younger days, when I was traumatized by a five-minute clip of the movie “The Birds” – I’m still sure that these seagulls were going for the jugular) (and I have to admit that I did not react in a dignified manner at all: I ducked and ran, saying “Chill out! I’m not going to eat your babies! Leave me alone! Geez!” out loud), and watched the sun burn mist off the sea. I feel calmer than I have in weeks.

I have also finally caught up on sleep – my last few days in Vigo were hectic! Thursday especially. Let me tell you. I woke up at 4:30 in the morning (ungh) after a three-hour nap, and took a taxi to the lonja, which, like the lonja in La Corunha at 6:00 in the morning, was bustling. I first went to the smaller of the two buildings, the one for local catch, where fishermen along the dock were unloading dozens and dozens of sharks. Nothing else – just sharks. They were pulled up from the hold by their tails and flopped onto big carts, which were rolled into the building, leaving behind rivers of blood. I went inside and saw, alongside the sharks, swordfish and a few other biggies, including tuna (they are so pretty). The other half of the building was filled with more familiar fish – congrio, rape, lenguado – and it was already being sold. The bigger building, the Gran Lonja, was impressive in scale, but almost exactly the same as the La Corunha lonja in products (although octopus is in season now, and this was the first time I had seen it being sold) and proceedings (although screens on the walls posting rates at other international fish markets reminded me that this was world-scale commerce).

The few fishermen I managed to engage in conversation told me the same thing regarding their schedules: they leave at around the same time every day, but only come back after having made a sizeable catch. This means that they can be out for six hours or ten; it depends entirely on their luck (and skill). In the smaller ports, and even in La Corunha, the people with whom I spoke seemed readier to come back without a catch. If they returned late to the port, it was because of weather or problems with their equipment, not because they had been chasing an invisible school of fish. They shrugged off no-catch days -- “the fishing is bad now” – and hoped for more the next day. The important thing, they told me, was constancy, a dedication to routine. Interesting: Before coming I had thought that the larger ports would run like machines, that their connectedness to international commerce would force fishermen to live by clocks and rigid plans, while the smaller cities and villages would have more leeway in terms of schedule. I see now that I was right in assuming that there would be a difference in practice due to the difference in demand, but I was totally wrong in my conclusions! The fishermen in smaller villages can afford to have set routines precisely because they don’t feel the pressure that the fishermen in larger ports do; it’s the latter group whose schedule is most determined by the sea.

After taking a one-hour nap back at Zoulaikha and Juan’s apartment, I went back to the city center to see an exhibit called “Erase una vez . . . !la vida!”, where a preachy man told me all about the human body through earphones while I looked at plasticized corpses (preachy because he went on at length about the dangers of tobacco and not eating enough fruits and vegetables). Did you know that we exhale half of the water we drink? And that our all of our blood vessels, put end-to-end, could circle the Earth twice? I learned more than factoids, don’t worry, and I might start eating more fruits and vegetables (ha!).

I went to the San Gregorio docks at 4:30, where I met with Amable and several others who build and sail traditional Galician vessels! The others were named: Luisa, Sito, Suso, Javi, ____, and ____. They spent a good while preparing the square sail for our trip – they had to weave rope through holes at the bottom, attach a wooden beam to the top, adjust the angle of the main beam, roll up the sail because it was a windy day, etc. The “etc.” is maybe five more things that I have forgotten. Luisa explained that every single rope (and there are many) in the boat has a specific name, even the ties to hold up the rolls of the shortened sail. This vocabulary, this nautical language, is being lost, since nobody uses traditional sailboats anymore. BUT THEY SHOULD. It was a wild ride. When we got out to the Ria, we made for open sea, and the wind was strong! There were eight of us in the boat, and we were almost always all perched on one side of the boat, trying to keep it from filling with water on the other side. The waves soaked us in minutes, especially Luisa, who was lying down at the bow and stood up dripping. She combated hypothermia with the contents of a leather wine flask, which was passed around; the men talked about other people’s boats; there was laughter and contemplative silence (ooh, here is something pretty to think about in contemplative silence at sea: my friend Mary at the AIP in Germany thinks of humans, and anything else physical, as “ripples in matter” -- !!!). Four hours later, after having navigated through the bateas (rafts where clams are raised on big hanging ropes) and won a race back to the dock against a modern sailboat, we stepped on dry land. Terrible. I was ready to move in. I am so grateful to this group of total strangers who let me ride with them in the boat that they built. I raved about them to Monika, at whose apartment I stayed that night, and felt like a gas-guzzling cheater the next morning on the ferry to the Islas Cies. But now I’m here in Juan’s tent, relaxed and watching the sky darken, and – a vampire insect is trying to suck my blood aiiiie. Life is good.

After much hand-wringing (making decisions is not one of my strong suits), I’ve decided that my next stop will be Muros, which is farther north than I expected to go so soon. But time is flying (ha . . . ha). I’m meeting my German friend Asmus in Santiago on the 23rd, and after the big festival on the 25th, we’ll go to the city of Villagarcia, two rias up from Vigo. I figure that I can finish up my time in the Rias Bajas then and move on to the Costa de Muerte – Muros is my middle-point between the two.

A busy few days (Vigo, Spain)

2009-07-08T23:58:00.004+02:00

Oh, mensch! I have been a busy woman this week! On Monday afternoon I did end up meeting with Francisco (who has been promoted from “brother of a friend of a friend” to “friend” – shooting up the ranks!), and he gave me the royal tour of the Vigo port. He works in the Port Authority, so he didn’t just know the names of things, but also numbers that were attached to them (e.g. “All of the cars on this dock are made by the Citroen factory here in Vigo, which produced 250,000 cars in 2008, 80% of which were shipped through here.”). Ouch, that parenthetical note makes the tour sound mind-numbingly boring, but no! It was fascinating! The port (the largest in Galicia and eighth or ninth largest in Spain) has so much flowing through it every single day. We saw:

- refrigerated buildings that hold fruit, like big grapes from Chile, on its way into the country
- giant cubes of rock waiting to be exported (pink and gray Galician granite) and imported (greenish-black, dark pink, and deep gray rocks from places like Finland, India, or Brazil)
- large hills of Galician salt, which is used to make a supersaturated saline solution that is taken aboard the large tuna fishing vessels to preserve the tuna in the holds after it is caught
- wind turbine parts (Galicia produces the most wind energy of all of the Spanish Autonomous Communities)
- dry cement reservoirs and trucks being loaded with the powder
- aluminum ingots (lots of, and very shiny)
- various kinds of wood
- and one dock full of containers (5000 of them, Francisco told me).

At the fishing docks we saw boats of all sizes, including tuna ships, which are grand, beautiful, high-tech things. There are several lonjas in the Vigo ports. The most impressive of them is the Gran Lonja, where fish from all over the world are sold. The auction takes place in the wee hours of the morning (I was told to arrive at 4:00 if I want to see the ships unloading and the fish being labeled – oh absolutely sure! I want to see everything) and fills a room . . . I don’t even know how big it is. It’s enormous. Probably the size of a small country. There are separate lonjas for mollusks and non-fish catch, and there’s another lonja for the local fish.

We passed ships that had been impounded for drug trafficking, and ships that were being repaired, and ships that were being built, and ships that were being painted . . . And while we were looking at the ships, an interesting bit of physics came up! Since the salinity and temperature of water affects its density (saltier and colder = denser) and therefore the buoyancy it can provide, ships will sit lower or higher in the water in different regions of the world. There is something called a Plimson (sp?) disk which is painted onto the side of a ship (we saw these on the grand, beautiful, high-tech tuna ships) so that the people know how much they can load onto it. It looks like a circle with two horizontal lines, the top one labeled “E” for equatorial and the bottom one labeled “R” for something else, but we couldn’t figure out what. If a ship is traveling to a region with denser water from a region with less dense water, it can be loaded up more that it would normally be allowed to, because once it gets to the new region, it will sit higher up. The same things (salinity, temperature) affect the magnitudes of tides! Wooooowoow!

The port as I am seeing it is not the port as it was two years ago. The international economic crisis has caused port activity to decrease by 44%, and the city’s metalworkers have been striking for several months now, which is taking its toll on shipbuilding companies (they are losing current jobs and future business). But I still think a whole lot is going on, and I find myself wanting to understand it all! Ports are complicated creatures.

On Tuesday I had an excellent experience with the Spanish medical system (I’m not sick; wanted to know if I should worry about my moles because I’d much rather die by asteroid or alien invasion than of undiagnosed skin cancer). Zoulaikha, my immensely kind CouchSurfing host (also promoted to “friend”), took me to the medical office in the morning, where we went up to the receptionist. I told him that I was an American tourist, and that I had international health insurance; he scowled at me and my international health insurance cards and told me that I wasn’t covered by the Spanish national plan (which is free for everyone! but slow-moving for non-urgent conditions). I must have looked devastated when he told me how much an appointment would cost, because he softened up a bit. “Okay, I’ll tell you what,” he said. “You know a man named Juan Toro Fernandez?” I said no, and then realized that it wasn’t a question (he probably thought, “IDIOT.”). “He’s your brother. When you come here for your appointment, tell the doctor that you forgot your ID and just present this receipt.” The receipt said, “Irene Toro Fernandez”, and I had an appointment at 1:00. Playing the system! At 1:00 I went back, waited just a few minutes before my turn came up, met with the smiling doctors in a private room (“I’m sorry, but I forgot my ID.” They probably thought, “IDIOT.”), and left comforted and educated. My moles and I are on speaking terms again.

In the evening I met with Tonio, the friendly man from the park, at the San Gregorio docks, and he badgered his friend Amable (who is, indeed, amable) into taking us out on his sailboat, even though one of the sails was broken and he had to use the motor the entire time. Uncomfortable -- Amable clearly didn’t want to go out, and Tonio clearly never takes no for an answer, and my presence added pressure to the situation (my presence caused the situation!). But: the ride was lovely, and Amable invited me to go for a real sail with him and a group of people who build and ride traditional Galician vessels on Thursday. Then – THEN – Tonio took me on what I thought would be a short tour of the neighborhood where he grew up. We walked to the beach at Bouzas, where we greeted his wife and children and he introduced me to the in-laws and anyone else who happened to be around as “la chiquita,” then we went along a path around the Bouzas dock, then to an art exhibit at a social club, then to watch the city’s rowing team practice, then to his church (he named all of the saints for me and told me about the processions during which they are carried down certain paths, sometimes through water), then all around his neighborhood, to his childhood home (where his sister now lives; she graciously accepted our unexpected visit), to the apartment where I’m staying, up the stairs, into the living room, where Zoulaikha and her flatmate Juan were sitting – I thought, “Hmm.” He had been talking non-stop the entire time (= four hours) – this was great, because I learned a lot about life in Vigo now and several decades ago – but I realized that he didn’t know how to stop. No pause button. Juan patiently listened to him for half an hour, and then Zoulaikha and I said, “Well, time to get empanadillas!” We parted ways with Tonio the Talker when we went downstairs. If I had recorded and transcribed Tonio’s hours-long monologue, I could publish the definitive history of the neighborhood of Bouzas in Vigo!

And then it was today! I spent the morning wandering the docks (I have snuck in several times now, and successfully communicated with a Portuguese fisherman in Spanortuguese), read in a park, and then met Francisco again. My official port authorization has failed to materialize (bureaucracy! it hates me), but it doesn’t matter – I’m going to the fish auction tomorrow at 4:30 in the morning, and if they kick me out, I’ll have seen at least a few minutes of it. Francisco took me on another wonderful excursion, this time to La Guia, a mountain/big hill (the distinction is unclear to me) topped with a small church, and then to the Monte Alba, where I wished I could fly. We listened to excellent music.

This is what I have eaten the past three days: chicken empanadillas, bacalao empanadillas, shrimp empanadillas, shellfish empanadillas, chocolate, bread, creamy cheese. Multivitamin, iron supplement. More chocolate. My tastebuds are in heaven. And I’m so glad that I have a stomach of steel. And friends! Zoulaikha, Juan and Francisco are on my List of Cherished People – I will miss them when I leave Vigo.

A lucky streak (Vigo, Spain)

2009-07-06T10:39:00.002+02:00

This will be a one-paragraph update! This weekend I walked hours on end, to the distant parts of Vigo and back along along rivers and parks, and visited two museums, the MARCO (Museo de Arte Contemporanea) and Verbum, the House of Words, which underwhelmed me (I spent two whole hours there, though, trying to suck everything I could from my 3-Euro entry price). At the MARCO there were two main exhibits, both excellent. The first floor was filled with concrete breakwaters, and everything was left as it was when the workers had finished, so I walked on crinkly plastic tarp, around ladders and rolls of tape and wooden crates, past scratched walls. I liked it. The second floor was a collection of work from various artists, all about culture, identity, nationality, those kinds of words. My favorite exhibit was a documentary video by a Polish artist, who put in the same room a group of elderly Catholic women, a group of young Neonazis, a group of young Jewish people, and a group of young liberal political activists, and told them to express themselves with the materials at hand. They used large pieces of paper, paint, tape, fire, everything they could to display their own opinions and react to those of others (they could change the others´ artwork). I was sitting on the edge of my seat the entire time; very tense. Over the course of four meetings, the groups yelled at each other, covered their ears, walked out, barged in, and very creatively and symbolically manipulated what others had done to ´win´ the opinion expression game.

Okay, two paragraphs, but this one will just be to say that I´m having the best luck with people, again. Yesterday I sat in a park with all of my bags, waiting to move to my next CouchSurfer´s apartment, and a man and his wife started talking to me (now I don´t even have to initiate conversations!)(well, I guess when I look 100% like a tourist I don´t). After I explained what I was doing, the man said, ´But I suppose that you don´t actually want to go to sea?´ I said, ´What? Of course I do!´ He has a good friend with a big sailboat, and he invited me to go sailing with him around the ria and to nearby islands. !!! I´m meeting with them on the docks tomorrow. (They also told me that if I couldn´t find anywhere else to stay, I should call them, and ditto if I needed anything, anything at all.) And this afternoon I am meeting with Francisco, the brother of a friend of a friend, who works in the Port Authority and is working on getting me permission to be on the docks this week! Amazing! The CouchSurfers I have stayed with are very generous and friendly, and every time I ride a bus an old woman chats me up. I like this place.

Tomorrow the docks! Maybe even this afternoon!

A feast and a new city (Baiona and Vigo, Spain)

2009-07-03T12:37:00.005+02:00

Yesterday I went to the docks earlier than usual, because I had a goal that would be difficult to achieve: I wanted to ask Juan Jose if he would take me on his boat the next morning (at 5:00 am!). I felt uncomfortable, because I knew that it was a huge favor to ask and also because, I noticed immediately, I´d have an audience of about seven old men (the retired fishermen come to the docks to help the fishermen who are still working -- a lovely community) whose eyebrows would surely shoot up -- I am, to them, such a GIRL. Lifting heavy things might damage me, as might strong waves or the sight of dying fish. But really: I´d probably be a nuisance at the very least, another responsibility, and a danger at the worst if I got in the way of something. After hanging out for a while and chatting with another Juan Jose (all three men cleaning the hooks were Juan Jose; Juan Jose #1 goes by Galo, Juan Jose #2 goes by Ge-ge, and I never caught Juan Jose #3´s nickname), I finally asked Galo if I could go fishing with him. No! he said. It is against the law and he would be fined: he can´t even take his son with him. Alas! But the explanation made me feel better. I wonder how to get around this in the future . . .

However, Ge-ge (pronounced ´Heh-heh´) told me that he and a friend were going to go collect clams later, and did I want to come? Of course!! His friend ended up staying behind for a doctor´s appointment, but Ge-ge and I got into a little rowboat and he expertly steered us to another dock, were we tied up the boat and got off. We went around looking for clusters of clams on the underwater metal and wood, and, when we found them, he used a special metal-pronged rake with an attached basket to pry off the clusters and catch them as they drifted down. We filled the bottom of the rowboat with clams (a lot of clams!) and then went back out to the water, where we separated and cleaned them and tossed the small (lucky) ones back into the water. Messy work -- my arms and legs were covered in mud and bits of algae by the time we finished. And I kept getting distracted by other animals! Each clam shell was like a little coral reef! I picked off marine worms, sea urchins, star fish, shrimp, fish eggs (complete with little fishy eyes), something that looked like a tiny transparent centipede, sea flowers, oysters . . . Amazing. Ge-ge told me about his life as a fisherman on a tuna boat -- they would be at sea for four months, back home for two, then back to sea for four, etc. He had just come back from his last trip two weeks ago. It seems that most fishermen have done this kind of fishing for a while, at least; it is grueling work (sunup to sundown), but they can retire at 55. Also, Ge-ge told me that the sea was like a hook, and he was caught. I´m sure that the retired fishermen who come to the docks every day would say the same. When we went back to the other dock, the other two Juan Joses were waiting, and we split the clams among us. ´Take these back to your hostel-keepers and tell them to teach you how to cook them!´ Ge-ge told me. So I did!

Pura, Jorge and their daughter ______ (I think that, at first meetings, people should introduce themselves at least ten times over the course of the conversation) were in the kitchen when I got back, and I showed them my catch -- they were very impressed. I felt like such a successful hunter-gatherer. Pura of the Big Heart said that of course she´d show me how to prepare them, and she invited me to eat a late lunch with them and their other daughter, ______ (again!). We steamed the clams with seawater, took them out of their shells, and put them in a sauce made of onions, peppers, and white wine. My big grocery bag full of clams was reduced to a little plate (but a tasty little plate). And then I had lunch with the whole family! They are so wonderful! Both daughters are in their thirties and talk a lot, as does their mother; their father doesn´t talk a lot, but when he does, he talks VERY LOUDLY, and they made fun of him for that. There was a lot of laughter at the table, and a lot of good food (Pura had made meat and potatoes and rice, and we had ice cream cake for dessert -- this was all decadent to me, since I´ve been eating mostly bread and creamy cheese). They told me that now I ´knew´ them -- that I could feel at home whenever I was back.

The rest of the afternoon I spent walking to and along Playa America, which is very long and shiny. The sand is like glitter. I also passed the Rio Mino estuary, which was full of cranes and ducks and little fishies and reeking mud which had been baking in the sun and boats stuck in the reeking mud.

This morning I left Baiona -- the whole family came to say goodbye, and told me to send them a postcard when I got back to the U.S. (I warned them that it would be a while). Pura was like a mother: ´Do you want food for the trip? Let me walk you to the bus station! Are you sure you´re not forgetting anything? Be safe! Write so that we know you made it back home!´ How kind. When I got to Vigo I trekked all the way from the bus stop to the train station (I would whine but I won´t), hoping to leave my bag there for the afternoon so that I could explore -- but they don´t allow that anymore. So now I am going to explore rolling my backpack behind me! I´ll have the strongest arms in the world tomorrow.

A boat ride! (Baiona, Spain)

2009-07-01T14:59:00.006+02:00

Yesterday I met the kindest, most generous person in the history of kind and generous people (this seems to be happening to me every two or three days -- in addition to learning gallons and buckets about fishing, I´m renewing my faith in my species). After talking a bit with a more-reticent-than-the-day-before Juan Jose, I wandered to another boat, where one man gave monosyllabic replies to my questions (they may have been grunts). Shucks. A bad luck day. But no! False! It was a great luck day! Roberto, who was standing next to the grunter, noticed my difficulty and started talking to me while he sorted nets -- octopus season starts on Monday and most net fishermen are putting away their nets and preparing the octopus cages. Roberto told me all sorts of things: how climate changes were affecting fishing (e.g. the winds are blowing from the south instead of the north, as they should, so nutrients from northern waters aren´t reaching the southern oceans and fishing is bad), how marine life can tell you when a storm is coming (octopi sit atop the cages instead of going inside them and cover themselves with rocks, dolphins leap a lot when the wind blows from the north, moon fish come to the surface), when certain fish were more valuable and why (faneca, e.g., tastes better in January and winter months, because they are carrying their eggs), what kinds of fishing I´d find where and places I should not miss, and when. ´Todo tiene su epoca,´ he said -- everything has its season.

Then! Then he took me on his boat! He had said, ´Oh, but you must go on a boat at some point!´ and I must have salivated or something, wagged my tail, because a few minutes later, after letting me help him clean out his boat (we carried sodden ropes and buoys and crates and rocks up to his storage room in the second story of the lonja), he said, ´Hop on.´ Aaaagagshaklfjadsf. We rode around for an hour, and he let me steer, and told me about navigating in the golden olden days (by land shapes -- ´Aah, yes, when that mountain has this profile and that other hill looks like that, I am here!´) and navigating now (´What does my GPS tell me?´). He told me where there were rocks and what was hidden by the tide. We went close to the rafts where clams -- clams? oysters? -- are raised and watched men shoveling them into boxes. This was a calm day, he reminded me over and over again when I lost my balance or got sprayed by a wave. It was wonderful! I am infinitely grateful to Roberto for that boat ride!

Today I tried hanging around the docks again, but there´s so little action! Most boats are being repaired in preparation for octopus season, and even the old men who lean against the railing and stare out at sea were absent. I wanted to ask Juan Jose if I could go out with him one morning or afternoon, but he was nowhere to be found. Alas! I´ll go back in a few hours for the fish auction, but there will be few people at that.

I have places to stay for my first four days in Vigo (thanks, CouchSurfing! more kind strangers!), and I plan to go camping in the Islas Cies not this weekend, but the weekend after that. I hope that they don´t require me to have a tent. I like to sleep under the stars -- and I don´t have a tent. We´ll see.

I´m reading a book about oceanography. Very interesting!

And I´m out of time!

A quickie (Baiona, Spain)

2009-06-29T20:13:00.006+02:00

I am paying for internet (what?!), and my time is running out, so I´m going to give as brief an update as possible. I am alive and well! Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed! Kicking! Good morning sunshine! Everything in Baiona has gone better than well. Here is a short list of what has happened:

- I arrived yesterday and walked around the exterior of what used to be a fort and is now a hotel (but still surrounded by ancient and imposing walls!). Then I walked around the interior. There is a miniature forest inside! Most impressive!

- Yesterday evening I walked up a mountain to reach the old mills, which looked infinitely closer on the map. They were not most impressive. A few rocks, suggestive of old mills. Maybe I didn´t see them at all. Maybe the signs lied to me. Well, I´ll have to go again! I did, however, keep going up the mountain (it´s so hard to turn around once I´m going up -- there´s always another corner to turn, where I might discover something wonderful), and eventually reached a closed off field. I noticed a gap in the fence that seemed well-traveled and went through -- I discovered something wonderful! A dam and a great pool of crystal-clear and deep blue water, the source for the entire town. I walked along the path that hung over it, and then into a forest, where I wandered along dirt roads for a while. I´m not doing it justice at all, but the clock is ticking so I can´t try.

- This morning I went to a market in a neighboring town and spent a whole hour there. It was enormous and had everything anyone could possibly want, including furniture and stolen watches. I bought supplies for the week (with my appetite, they will last two days) -- bananas and empanadillas with bacalao and tuna inside. Later I bought chocolate, chocolate milk, and fresh orange juice, which is my latest inexplicable and insatiable craving. I´m going to have ulcers by the end of my stay here. But not scurvy.

- Later in the morning I went to the docks, where, putting into action my plan of being fearlessly outgoing, I immediately approached a man who was cleaning his hook line. Juan Jose talked to me a lot! I took many pages of notes (I´ve decided that I have to learn shorthand) (in fact, it is my goal to learn this year, yes yes yes).

- Still later in the morning I met a suave gentleman named Lito, who took me on a one-hour tour around the castle. He told me about everything -- fishing, the history of the region, the history of buildings, politics, his values. He offered to take me up to see the petroglyphs on the mountain in the evening, to which I replied, ´Madsfjasdff´, unsure of whether I should trust him. I spent all day thinking about it and playing out escape scenarios in my head (in case he turned out to be a rapist and murderer). I am great at kung fu and running down mountains in my head.

- In the afternoon I took a nap at Spanish break time. Then I went to the lonja to see the fish auction, at which there were about nine boxes of fish. Nothing at all! I met wonderful people, though, most of whose names I´ve forgotten but who told me that I was oh-so-welcome and that they would help me in anything they could. Guillermo, the seller of the fish, was particularly kind, and went around introducing me to people.

- I decided that I would go with Lito up the mountain (Mami, you can lecture at me if you want), and I didn´t have to use kung fu at all! We saw the petroglyphs, which are 4000 years old, and talked about what things of our civilization would last 4000 years (the road systems -- I´m so excited for archaeologists to discover those). Then he took me up another mountain to the Alto de la Groba, from where we saw everything! I am a sucker for views. We looked at the Vigo ria, where I will be on Friday. Then he took me to the Virgen de la Roca, an enormous Virgin Mary made of rock and sculpted in 1910. She holds a ship in her right hand, and we went up a narrow winding staircase and stood in the ship! Her marble face is beautiful.

- On my way to this internet cafe I passed a small soccer field where a little boy was practicing shots against his goalie father. The mother was standing nearby and holding a little drum, and every time he made a goal, she drumrolled and cheered. When he missed, she just cheered. I beamed.

Here is what will (I hope) happen soon:

- Tonight I will go to a Civil Guard band concert in a public square in town.

- Tomorrow I will go back to the docks and speak with Juan Jose. By Wednesday we´ll be so chummy-chum-chum that he will invite me onto his boat (or: I will ask him).

- In two or so weeks I will camp at the Islas Cies, which I can see from here and which call to me. Nature!

This ended up being a long quickie. Thank you, Mario Teaches Typing -- I have six minutes left.

A rainbow or two and a ferry ride (La Guardia, Spain)

2009-06-27T19:48:00.002+02:00

After writing my last post, I went on a walk to the far reaches of La Guardia (which are not so very far from anything – this is a small town) and saw a rainbow! It was bright and enormous, a whole arc with a beginning and an end, and I got so excited that I looked around wildly for somebody to tell about it – but the streets were empty. I had to enjoy it by myself. That’s becoming the theme of this trip; it will take me a while to get used to it (or I’ll crack and start talking to my imaginary friend Eduardo -- I’m sure that will make it even more difficult to find someone to tell about exciting things.)

The next morning, in the hours before Antonio the fisherman would come to port and his friends would help him untangle and de-fish his net, I went on a walk along the coast. LO AND BEHOLD: another rainbow! This one went right into the ocean, and a ship passed through it as I watched – I’ll have to keep a look-out for extra colorful people these next few days. There were, again, no other people around, so I pointed it out to the snails crawling over the rocks and grass. I’m sure that they sat there for a few moments in awe of refraction. Along the coast, I passed several ruins (yes!), one of which was mostly underwater. It appears to have been some sort of fort . . . but I have yet to ask about it. I’ve also seen many ruins of another kind -- new but empty houses that are beginning to break down. They are everywhere, and every time I see one I’m tempted to move in (“Can’t get cheaper than this! Take that, hostel!” – because hostels here are expensive). It’s a constant reminder, though, that Spain is going through two economic crises: the international crisis we know and love, and also the building crisis. There are half-finished and finished but empty houses and apartment complexes everywhere.

At eleven I was at the docks, speaking with several old men. Two of them told me about the connections between Galicia and the Caribbean islands of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic – many Gallegos have moved there, and many have moved back, so that, as my hostel keeper had told me earlier in the morning, there were “many, and I mean many” Puerto Ricans here in La Guardia. Two nearby streets are called Puerto Rico and Republica Dominicana, and I’ve seen a Villa Borinquen as well as a Café Quisqueya. I spoke with Benito again, and this time tried to tell him more directly about my project, but I think that I didn’t make sense to him. When I asked him if he would make a drawing with which he would explain to someone what time was, he just kept talking, and I felt like a failure – but really I’m learning! I was expecting to approach this topic obliquely anyway, and I’m sure that as I observe and experience more my understanding will become more concrete. I’ve decided that these first few weeks are the trial period – I’ve been in a big city, am now in a small town, and will soon be visiting even smaller villages and another large city. I’ll get a feel for each of the settings and then decide how best to distribute the rest of my time in Galicia (because time is a commodity). And soon I’ll be in a better position to compare! It’s difficult to do that right now, having visited only two ports.

Speaking of comparisons, I do have one to share. Benito said something interesting when I first asked him about time: “The fisherman always leaves at the same time, but he never knows when he’ll come back. It could be the same day or it could be two days later. The sea is treacherous.” He mentioned fogs (and what if the fisherman has forgotten his compass?) and bad weather. I imagine that this happens occasionally here, because the boats are small and manned by only one person (personned by only one man?), but I can’t imagine any of the fishermen in La Corunha telling me this. They have larger ships with built-in computers that tell them exactly where they are, and, while they’re still at the mercy of the weather, they probably manage to avoid getting stuck where they don’t want to be. In La Guardia, things seem a little less certain than at La Corunha – and, because there’s much less demand, it’s okay. Nobody expects perfect delivery all of the time, and, if bad weather or some other treachery of the sea throws a wrench in the commercial machine, at least the machine is smaller.

In the afternoon I walked back along the coast to Camposancos, where one can take a ferry to the Portuguese town of Caminha. (On the way, I was able to climb on the ruins in the water because the tide had fallen!) I did this, and wandered around Caminha for a few hours. It is a beautiful town, with tiled buildings and long stone paths and well-kept gardens and parks, and many churches, several of which I went into. It felt like Portugal, not Spain, although I don’t know enough about Portugal to say why. And it was colder! No joke! I wonder if it has to do with the way the wind blows. Or maybe Portuguese weathermen are meaner than Spanish ones.

I came back to the hostel and read . . . “Dracula”! I’m about three-quarters through now and think that most of the characters need to get with it (and spend way too much time writing in their journals . . . but who am I to judge?).

This morning I went to the mercadillo, where, instead of fish and food, as I had expected, I found stalls and stalls of clothing. I went grocery shopping instead of clothes shopping, then visited the tiny Maritime Museum (reading every single word in it, in Gallego, took me about fifteen minutes) and left to wander the coast on the other side of town – more ruins in the water, and a lot of crumbling stone walls that now encircle bushy wild ferns and prickly plants instead of the gardens that they probably housed before. Tonight there is a public music festival in the town’s open-air auditorium! And tomorrow morning I leave La Guardia for Baiona, after which I will go to Vigo.

A new town (La Guardia, Spain)

2009-06-25T20:08:00.005+02:00

It’s Thursday evening, and I’ve spent a little bit more than a full day at La Guardia, which is one river away from Portugal. (I plan to cross by ferry to the Portuguese town of Caminha tomorrow or the day after!) La Guardia is smaller than La Corunha and much more vertical – the first few times I asked people how to get to the port, they said, “Oh, just go down!” Going down (it is a steep down) always gets you to the port; going up (it is an even steeper up) always gets you to the main road. Around the town are hills covered in trees, a wide river, and the ocean, which is always a different shade of blue and breathtaking. (I am pretty sure that I was a sea creature in another life. Perhaps a giant squid.)

My timing so far has been impeccable. Yesterday I walked to the port and asked when the fish auction was. “Oh! It’s right now!” the woman said. So I walked to the lonja, a small building that sits next to the concrete slide leading into the water. The entrance was guarded by the same signs I encountered in La Corunha --“ONLY AUTHORIZED PEOPLE WITH PORT BUSINESS” – and six mostly toothless and white-haired (or no-haired) men and women who blinked at me. Thinking that it would be rude to try to sneak past them after obviously having read and understood the sign, I asked where I should go to get permission, and suddenly they were all talking at once: “Oh, permission, no no no, just go on in, you’re welcome, you don’t need authorization, right through here, walk on in, go ahead!” People here are so friendly! I will digress for a moment to explain just how friendly they are: In La Corunha, every time I asked for directions, the person would either give me detailed directions and make sure that I understood them or, if they didn’t know, ask somebody else who was passing by. One man walked all around a plaza with me looking for a specific bus and said, “Listen, if we don’t find this stop, I will take you myself by car!” (I’ve promised several people that I won’t be trusting this year, so I said, “Oh, mmm, hmm” and didn’t have to worry any further, because we found the stop.) Last night in La Guardia I asked a pair of women if they could tell me where to find a pizzeria, and they walked with me five blocks and said, “There you go! It’s a block away. Walk up that hill and you can’t miss it!” This is not to mention how willing the fishermen are to speak with me, a visitor who watches them while they work and asks ignorant (getting less ignorant as the days go by!) questions.

Now that we’re on the topic of fishermen I can go back to writing about the lonja in La Guardia, which is tiny. The auction is much calmer and quieter than in La Corunha, because it’s done electronically: a big screen shows the falling prices, and, if somebody wants to stop at a certain price, they push a button on their little individual controls. The fare is quite different, too. Here, most of the boxes are full of percebes, which, Google informs me, are called “goose barnacles” in English. In the north, they are extremely dangerous to harvest – they form on rocks lapped by strong waves, and people tie themselves to ropes and try to time their quick descents well (some inevitably die each year). Here in the south, they grow in calmer waters, and it is women who harvest them! I had been wondering why there were so many women in the lonja. Apparently the percebes that grow along the shore are collected by percebeiras, and those that grow on rocks in the open sea are collected by men, percebeiros. Also interesting is the time of harvest! Because the percebes are only exposed during low tide, they are collected mostly during the full and new moon – about ten to twelve days a month. These days, most of the men with boats are collecting them, so there were few fish up for sale at the lonja. I imagine that this will be different in a week. Also, octopus season starts in the first week of July, and everyone has told me that they are looking forward to it, since they can count on making a lot of money. If they catch octopi, that is. That is a big “if” that keeps coming up in conversation. Whenever I ask about seasonal fish, the fishermen say something like, “Well, yes, the sardines come around this time, if they come.” This year, they told me, they haven’t come.

That “if” is the reason many people have decided not to fish, a man named Luis told me. In the past few decades, the number of fishermen in La Guardia has gone from thousands to around 300; most young people choose to work on land, in factories or other businesses, instead of going out to sea like their parents (fathers) had. He had an interesting life story! He used to work on a huge ship that captured mostly squid in the far north. He and his crewmates would be on the ship for four to five months at a time (!), and, after crossing the Atlantic, they would be dropped off somewhere in South America and given money for a plane ride home, where they’d spend a month or so before setting off again. It was a hard life, but he was able to retire at 55 with a monthly stipend that he finds generous. Now he comes to the docks to talk with his friends – I think that they played together as children!

I met two other people I hope to encounter again: Benito, who is by far the most talkative of the men I’ve met so far, and spews useful information without much prompting (the exact schedules of the fishermen, for example), and David, a much younger man (also extremely good-looking, so in my head I call him “Dashing David”) who told me about fishing while he eviscerated congrios. I tried to put on a poker face, but I may have twitched a little when I noticed that one of the fish was still moving as he cut into it. Aaaagh. I’ve been vegetarian again all afternoon.

If I stay in La Guardia for a few more days (I have to see how things go!), my schedule will look like this: at 11ish I’ll be at the port to see a few fishermen untangling and cleaning their nets and talk with them. At 4:30ish I’ll be back at the port to chat with people at the lonja and talk with fishermen who are putting their nets back into their boats. I really want to get in a boat at some point (at 4:00 am!), but the ones here are built for one person and I doubt that I could “disappear” on command – I’d be too much in the way.

In the early mornings, afternoons and late evenings, I will explore! Today I climbed up to the Monte de Santa Trega, where I saw a 2000-year-old castro (collection of round stone houses) and Portugal (across the river!). I went into an archaeology museum at the top and when I came out, I was inside a cloud! Fantastic. In yet another life I was a bacterium in a water droplet.

A stroke of good fortune (La Corunha, Spain)

2009-06-24T18:27:00.004+02:00

I’m writing this on a train! I’ve just left A Corunha to go to A Guarda, which is smaller by a factor of 25(ish). The ride to Vigo, my in-between stop, takes about two hours, and I imagine that the bus ride the rest of the way will be short. Galicia is very small. (We are in a tunnel. We have emerged! Dense foliage! Rocky walls!)

Yesterday was wonderful. I successfully arose at 5:30 in the morning (unghmmph), and, when I arrived to the lonja, immediately found Guillermo’s wife, Mirela. We soon located Guillermo and their son, who is my age. They explained that the fish sale would be unusual that morning, because, in preparation for the Fiesta de San Juan in the evening, everyone would be buying sardines. (Horses! Houses! We are in Meirama.) It was true! The sardines were expensive and went fast; other fish were neglected. Guillermo and Mirela explained that they usually buy some fish to resell at 11:00, when they set up their smaller-scale operation at the dock, but the fish today were all either of poor quality or of unreasonably high price, so instead of seeing Guillermo in action, I was given a royal tour. He renamed all of the fish for me (this time I took photos in the same order that I wrote down the names, so that I can match them up later in my computer) and told me about his life – when he and his son wake up (it depends on the season; they always wake up about an hour and a half before sunrise, so at about 4:30 now and about 6:30/7:00 in the winter), what they do when they’re on the boat (they usually travel an hour out, then they use their sonar device to locate groups of fish and net them), what factors affect fishing (season, weather, climate – he said that the effects of global warming were noticeable – laws, luck). I also asked him about fish farms, wondering if they posed a threat to fishermen’s livelihoods, but he said that fish farms catered to a different market because the quality of the fish is so poor. (Another tunnel.) The four of us had a coffee at the cafeteria where I first met Fran, exchanged contact information, and parted ways.

The day was gray and I was feeling lonely, so, after taking a nap back at the hostel and filling my windowless room with the smell of dead fish, I decided to go to the beach and read (indulging my moodiness by sitting next to a gray sea). It was deserted! And the tide was low, so that all of the rocks that before had looked like ominous dark blobs beneath the water looked like, you know, rocks. I thought, “I’ll stay until the tide rises!” and almost (ooh the landscape is beautiful) fulfilled my plan. By the time I left, some of my arrival footprints were about ten feet from the new shore, underwater. I had to stand awkwardly by the street for a while, waiting for my pants to dry, and I noticed two things: An enormous sea-themed sculpture that I hadn’t seen before, and a group of teenagers rolling garbage bins full of wood onto the sand. Preparations for the night! The sculpture, it turned out, was made of cardboard and was actually a pyre. The young’uns (being all of 21 and thus infinitely superior to teenagers in wisdom and experience, I get to call them “young’uns”) (I’ve never known where to put the apostrophe/s in that word) were setting up the wood for a bonfire! I wandered on foot until I got lost, as is my wont, then found my way back to the hostel without consulting my map or asking for directions. I know: I am pretty impressive.

Back at the hostel I took another short nap (I think we just passed a corn field!) and then left to meet with Sylvia, one of the people from the day excursion on Saturday (with the husband named Juan and the baby named Julia). Loneliness, begone! Sylvia and I walked-and-talked to the hills with the stones by the sea, and she invited me to join her and a group of friends for the night festivities. Of course I was thrilled and said “YES!!!!!” but managed to keep some of the exclamation points in my head so as not to deafen her. At 8:00 we met with Juan and Julia, Puri and Antonio (who are 60 and 80, respectively, and exactly how I want to be when I am 60 and 80), and Marta, who was so kind that she offered me a ride to Lugo or Vigo or the town where she’s from, which lies on the path to Santiago de Compostela, at any time during the rest of my stay; she travels to those places often for work.

The Fiesta de San Juan is impressive! Every restaurant in the city sets up a grill – many on the street -- where they roast fresh and heavily salted sardines. And every resident of the city walks around to eat the sardines with bread and wine. Sylvia, who is a sardine aficionada, taught me how to properly dismantle the fish with my fingers, although I balked at the idea of eating the eyes, and we feasted first at a tavern and then in a park where there was live music, dancing, and a huge crowd! By that time the sun had set, and shortly after 11:00 we walked to the beach to see the midnight fireworks and the bonfires. The beach was covered in fire! The bonfires were so big and so hot that empty rings formed around them where people couldn’t stand, and we could see the flames on the sculpture when it was lit, even though we were far away. The fireworks were beautiful (fireworks are on the List of Things That Make Me Sympathetic to Humanity). The streets were full of drunken people. The air was cool and smelled of sardines and smoke (soon my room would smell like even more dead fish). The stars were aligned.

This is my stroke of good fortune: I always meet such good people! Sylvia, Juan and I agreed that we would go to the Playa de las Catedrales (google it!) at some point in August or September, and I hope that we make other plans, too! Simon and Almudena have also told me that I am welcome to stay with them the next time I am in A Corunha and not to hesitate to contact them for anything. Guillermo and Mirela were my unofficial (and then semi-official) guardians at the docks. I’m sad to leave new friends behind so quickly, but so happy to have them. Gush gush gush.

And now I’m on the bus on my way to La Guardia! The hills are covered in trees and little houses, and the driver is angry at the teenagers sitting behind me. What does the next week hold in store?! (It certainly holds more photos in my photo blog, but it looks like internet in La Guardia will be trickier than in La Corunha.)

A few long walks and a pondering (La Corunha, Spain)

2009-06-22T18:24:00.002+02:00

In an effort to exhaust myself thoroughly during the daytime so that I fall asleep early and it’s easier to wake up at the godforsaken hour of five-thirty tomorrow, I’ve spent most of the past two days walking. Yesterday I walked along the coast to the hills with the stones (my favorite spot in the city) and on to the Casa del Hombre, a museum about the human body, where I learned that the average person can distinguish between 2000 and 4000 smells and that the insides of our bones look like the scene of a silly string crime. I watched a movie about dinosaurs in Patagonia (which was clearly aimed at children -- but in 3-D!!! so I couldn’t resist) (I was almost eaten by a Giganotosaurus!), then went back to Alfonso’s apartment. He showed me his short film and we talked for a while before I came to the hostel. I had pleasant dreams.

My goal for today was to reach the Portinho, a tiny port beyond the Monte de San Pedro. I took a bus to San Pedro de Visma, a small collection of buildings that used to be a village but is now an extension of the city, and walked along a narrow road through grassy fields towards the coast. Before reaching the Portinho, though, I was distracted by a large hill. Every time I see something that goes up, I feel a strong compulsion to climb it – and so I discovered (the same way that Columbus discovered the Americas) the Parque de Bens, where I wandered for a few hours. Green hills! Some trees! Rocks! Old men with little dogs! Old dogs with little men! An industrial complex yonder in the distance! I eventually made it to the port, where there were zero boats and exactly six people, all of whom were sitting in the restaurant where I had a lunch of twice-fried eggs (a breaded and fried patty made of fried eggs – I think). Mmm. Along the Paseo Maritimo on my way back to the city, I met a scuba diver, who told me about the harm that the construction of the new port was causing the environment. Apparently there are large ships that, in the process of looking for solid rock under the water, displace tons of sand and wreak havoc on the sea floor. “If I had the means,” Jose said, “I’d blow them all up! And shoot all the politicians!” It is sad.

I’ve been reading a book called “In Search of Time: The Science of a Curious Dimension” by Dan Falk, and I find it pretty good. I’ve learned many things – e.g. it was in the 13th century that a number of things that didn’t used to be measured precisely, like weight and currency, were subjected to intense quantification (in Europe); time was one of these. I’ll give a good summary of the book when I’m done reading it, but for now I want to ramble about something that has been bugging me for years. I wrote this a few years ago:

“I'm having trouble thinking of something, or figuring out how to think of it. In the book ‘Flatland’ (which I haven't actually read), a sphere drops into a two-dimensional world, startling a . . . square or a triangle or an octagon or something. The poor little 2-D guy sees a point appear out of nowhere, and the point becomes a very small circle that grows until it reaches its maximum diameter and then begins to shrink again until it's a point and disappears. The square/triangle/octagon probably thinks, ‘Good God!’ My trouble is -- how big is the point at which the sphere starts to pass through the two-dimensional universe? It's ‘infinitesimally small,’ but that quickly turns into ‘small but measurable,’ and I just don't understand that. When does the transition happen? How can something come out of nothing? It's not an uncommon scenario -- imagine, oh, someone turning a corner. At first you don't see the person and in the next instant you can. Maybe the problem is the idea of ‘instant,’ breaking up time into moments, when it's maybe a continuum. I guess that that extends into breaking up space, when maybe space, too, is a continuum. I am not making any sense at all but oh man it's totally mind-befuddling.”

Now I’ve read “Flatland,” but I still don’t understand it!! It has everything to do with motion, it seems (that’s what I’ve been reading in the book – Newton and Leibniz’s disagreements about the essence of time and motion) – it is motion, change, that allows one to link time and space, and that’s my question. Now I think this: Space may be a continuum, but matter is not. Matter is made of tiny particles (someone in the 28th century will read this and say, “Ha! Those fools!”) – in fact, it’s mostly made of the space in between them. So if something – say, a ruler – is coming around a corner, some period of time must elapse between position (0,0) and position (1 quark, 0), no matter how “fast” the ruler is moving. The same way there is a minimum fundamental size, there should be a corresponding minimum fundamental time unit. Or shouldn’t there be? The concept of “instant” or “moment” makes my head explode (not really) (eew). Same with “present.” But I'll write about that another day.

A piece of mail?!

2009-06-22T16:49:00.003+02:00

That's right! If you give me your address via e-mail, I'll send you something (postcard? letter? flying pig? flying SAUCER?!) at some point within the next two months. (Note to people who have received mail from me before: You'd think I'd have transferred AddressBook from my old computer to this one -- but I didn't. Please send me your address again.) Aiiiiiiiiiiepoaidfal;kjaspodifuawe.

An auction and a glorious excursion (La Corunha, Baronha, and Corrubedo, Spain)

2009-06-20T23:52:00.006+02:00

I had trouble falling asleep last night, so when my alarm went off at 5:15 in the morning, I firmly told it, “NO.” It ignored me, and I got up, the perfect picture of undeserved suffering (I even groaned) (there was probably a faint halo around my head). The streets were not completely deserted, as I’d expected them to be; a few party-hardiers were still partying (if not so hardily), but I took a cab anyway, which is usually against my principles. I made it to the lonja by 5:30ish, identified myself at the desk, feeling supremely important, and was given Visitor Badge #2. Then I went to the fish sale room, which was enormous and full of crates of dead fish and the people inspecting them. Guillermo and his wife were nowhere to be seen. After walking around for a few minutes (sharks! octopi! monster from the deep with a mouth as wide as a basketball! and many smaller fish – I’ll post pictures tomorrow), I decided to ask an official-looking woman how I might find them, and she said, “Oh, they’re one of our boats! They didn’t unload this morning.” Well shoot – no escort. I decided that the best thing to do was to play the Unobtrusive Game, because there were men with large hooks running around and people with determined auctioning glints in their eyes standing at the ready, and I didn’t want to get in the way of either of those.

This is how the fish auction worked: At about 6:10, a bell rang, and immediately a number of men spread throughout the room started yelling at the top of their lungs (“!Congrio! !Congrio! !Congrio! !Pulpo! !Pulpo! !Pulpo!”). When people started gathering around their crates, they started naming prices per kilo, counting down: “6 Euros! 5.90! 5.80! 5.70! . . .” At some point one of the buyers would imperceptibly signal the auctioneer to stop (the auctioneers must have a sixth sense), claim a crate or two by putting a little colored and labeled paper in it, and move on to the next type of fish. The auctioneer would start to yell again. By the time I left at 6:40, most types of fish in the room had been up for sale, and there were little colored papers in most of the crates. The guard asked me, “Well? Did you learn what you wanted to learn?” And I said, “Yes” but in my head I was celebrating my Unobtrusive Game victory – no hooks for me! On Tuesday I’ll go back; until then I’ll sleep later than 5:15.

Simon and his girlfriend Almudena picked me up at 10:30, and we drove two hours to Noia, which is on the western coast of Galicia, and then on to a spot near Baronha with a partially restored Celtic village – circles of stones on a grassy outcropping covered in big boulders. Their friends Sylvia and Juan, with their almost-one-year-old daughter Julia, met us nearby, and we all walked to the village and had a picnic lunch together on the rocks. Then we clambered – up and down the boulders, to the edge of the sea (cold!), to the top of the hill, around the Celtic circles, through some narrow gaps in the rocks, under the big blue sky . . . preposition the adjective noun. It was wonderful. We drove to a small park to see a dolmen, the type of structure made famous by Stonehenge (large vertical stones topped by a large horizontal one), took a rest under the shade of a tree, and then drove to a natural preserve that has a big dune in front of the sea. The sun was potent, so we had drinks in the shade until around six, when we ventured in search of the sea (hidden behind the big dune!). We found it (surprise!) – a very wide, very flat beach, with clear water that was almost too bright to look at – and got our feet wet. After returning to the little café for post-adventure drinks, we parted ways, and Simon, Almudena and I stopped at a sightseeing point on the way back to A Corunha. We saw all the way to the Illas Cies, which are near Vigo – things in Galicia are so close together. It’s like Mary Poppins’ purse; I don’t know how it all fits. Simon and Almudena marked on my map which places are the most interesting for fishing, so now I have concrete destinations (rather than “the coast”); figuring out transportation is the next challenge. Back to the city at 11:11 (we made wishes!) and then I was too tired to write this whole entry, so I’m finishing it the next day and cheating by changing the time in blogspot so that it looks like I wrote it on Saturday.

The places we visited were glorious, but the best part of the day was spending time with Simon, Almudena, Sylvia, Juan and little Julia. They are wonderfully kind people, and I am so fortunate to have met them. I told them about my project in detail, and we had a good conversation! Juan is a geologist and Sylvia studied a bit of geology in college before turning to biology, and I asked them how they made sense of the ages of things, ones that were in millions of years. They said that they thought in terms of processes – they see a spiky mountain and know that it is young because the top hasn’t been eroded yet, and they imagine something like a fast-motion video that focuses on the important parts (the key moments of the evolution). Sylvia also said that having Julia had changed her perception of time because she was watching a life develop so quickly – it was a wonder that Julia was growing and learning at the rate that she was, and it made her look at her own life differently. Almudena drew me a picture of time – a little dot with double-headed arrows all around it. She wrote: “Everything influences time and time influences everything. Time in itself doesn’t exist; it is a human invention.” And Simon told us that he thought about time in terms of calendars, but they form a sort of ring – January through May are a line, then June, July and August curve up (because they are summer months), then the rest of the months go back around. It doesn’t form a perfect circle, but it is a sort of cycle. We talked about how interesting it was that January 1st feels different to us – a new year! – even though it is just another day, and how humans are capable of putting imaginary boundaries on something so intangible as time.

I’ve put new pictures up on my photo blog (went a little trigger-happy with the uploading), and now I’m going to go explore again! Alfonso lent me his bike, and perhaps I’ll take it along the coast! My plan for Monday is to get to the Portinho, a little port with just a few boats far outside of the city, and talk to people there. On Tuesday I’m back at the docks, and on Wednesday afternoon I’ll probably leave A Corunha for A Guarda, far to the south. I’m sure that something will go wrong sometime soon – otherwise I’ll be upsetting the cosmic balance.

An encounter with bureaucracy (La Corunha, Spain)

2009-06-19T22:43:00.004+02:00

A lot of people seem eager to help me learn everything there is to know about fishing . . . but not everyone. I hadn’t yet received my permission e-mail from Port Authority Representative Luis by 10:00, when I wanted to leave the hostel to meet with Guillermo, my fisherman friend from yesterday, so I snuck into the port again. I walked past the storage garages and trucks and port police officers trying to look, at turns, extremely confident (“I belong here and I know exactly where I am headed and don’t you dare question me”) and inconspicuous (“You can’t see me”), but, alas! I gave myself away. I walked into the lonja building, where the same guard who was there yesterday didn’t smile at me, like she didn’t smile at me yesterday. And when I asked how to get to the waterfront, she didn’t answer but instead said, “You don’t have permission to be here.” Damn! I asked where I could get permission, and she sent me to the upstairs office. The people in the upstairs office said that they only had jurisdiction over the building itself, and not the waterfront outside of the building (that would be the Port Authority, and I have assumed permission from them), so I happily walked around the building to the place where Guillermo and his wife Mirela were selling their fish.

Guillermo greeted me like an old friend, and introduced me to Mirela as “the girl I was telling you about who is doing the study!” Some of the men from yesterday were there again, and they talked with me when Guillermo and Mirela were busy. When they weren’t busy, they told me that I had to come some day at 6:00 in the morning to see the big fish sales – the 11:00 business was small beans, the leftovers. Oh ignorant am I! I continue to underestimate the scale of things. The only problem was that the sales take place inside the building – and, as I had been told by the security guard, I was unauthorized to be there.

We considered several ways of sneaking me in (I could be Guillermo’s sister, another officer’s girlfriend . . .), but in the end the officer said I had better get permission from the second floor office. I went up again. I needed to submit an official petition in paper. I asked for paper. Then I went back down to the dock and composed the official petition standing up and surrounded by dead fish, Guillermo correcting the parts that didn’t sound formal enough (the end of it was “sin otro particular, les saluda atentamente” – I would have said something less inspired like “gracias”). He, my official escort, signed it, and I took it back to the office, where I also photocopied my passport (I was carrying it by chance!) and the nice-sounding Watson letter (also a coinkidink!). By this time the security guard was ready to strangle me – I had gone up and down the stairs enough times to try her security guarding patience – but I ended up being even more of pest, because I loitered in the building for two more hours until the head honcho had time to look at my papers and sign off on my request. I suspect that this usually takes more time, but I said to the intermediary, “Oh, but I am a visitor, difficult to reach and leaving so soon! Perhaps I should just wait here . . .” in many more words. I can go to the fish sales tomorrow, Tuesday, and Wednesday – excellent.

Elated, I rushed back to the hostel to move my things to Alfonso’s apartment a few blocks away, where I’ll be staying for the next two nights. We got in touch through CouchSurfing, and he is . . . (can you guess?) extremely friendly!! He works in the film industry, doing sound and directing, and his short film has been shown in about a hundred festivals around the world! I have yet to watch it; I am full of eager anticipation. Oh BOY. We had lunch and talked (among other things, he told me that the beginning of my last post was inaccurate, because Galicia is not the same as Spain -- i.e. I shouldn't generalize so much), and then I set off again to buy a map of Galicia and sit on the green hills with big stones next to the sea. The wind was blowing so hard that even standing high above the waves I could feel their spray, and when I licked my lips I tasted salt. My scarf tried to smother me several times, but I fought back valiantly. I sat on a bench and watched fishing boats coming back to port (I am so confused about their schedules; must ask Guillermo), the clouds, the sun, the seagulls (that’s how I knew which ones were fishing boats – there are swarms of seagulls around them). I read. (“In Search of Time,” “Watchers of the Sky,” and “Peter Pan.” My Kindle is a gift from heaven.) (Noooo, silly, it is a gift from my mom.) On my way back to Alfonso’s apartment I had hot chocolate with churros, and I’m sure that my blood is sludgy already but oh it was worth it. Life is wonderful! And I’m waking up at 5:15 in the morning tomorrow!

An obstacle overcome (La Corunha, Spain)

2009-06-18T23:59:00.001+02:00

Spanish people don’t smile very much. I, with my indiscriminate and overly enthusiastic greeting habits, must look like a raving lunatic to them. They, in turn, seemed too intimidating to approach (for all my apparent eagerness to make contact, I can be embarrassingly shy). But no! Every single Spanish person I have spoken with has been incredibly friendly – some have even smiled at me. And today I spoke with so many Spanish people! Let me tell you:

My original plan was to wake up at six in the morning to be at the docks when the fishermen arrived with their fresh catches. Two glitches: As I was still awake at one in the morning, I decided instead to wake up at 8:30, and the docks that I saw yesterday were not, in fact, the main docks for fishing boats, but instead the docks for recreational craft, which happened to house a few oddball fishing boats. It took me half an hour to walk to the main fishing docks, which are huge and full of trucks and storage garages and fenced off from the street. It took me another ten minutes to work up the courage to enter through the revolving metal gateway that said “ONLY AUTHORIZED ENTRY FOR PORT BUSINESS.” (My business is port-related. Right?) I saw no boats, because the entire waterfront was blocked by the trucks and storage garages, but I did see a cafeteria. I went into the cafeteria. There were about six other people in it – some of them looked like fishermen (rubber boots, yellow suits – I was the funny-looking one)! After one and half cups of coffee I felt bold enough to talk to the guy sitting next to me, and a one-hour conversation ensued. His name is Fran, and he told me everything he could about fishing. Types of fish (the ones that weren’t already on my list from yesterday), seasons to fish them (the bonitos are passing through now), ways to fish them, places to fish them, his family history (father and grandfather both fishermen), where to find more information. He, too, was a stranger to A Corunha; he is usually on his boat for a week at a time and only gets off to unload and take the occasional weekend break. I asked him if he could show me his ship – he said yes!!! So we went to the docks and he gave me the grand tour of the Ria de Muros Marin. He showed me the navigational systems (very high-tech), the quarters for the crew of eight, the big room where the fish are cleaned, the storage bay, the nets and the cranks to operate them. I met the cook and the mechanic. Very friendly, all of them. They smiled at me.

After thanking him profusely, I went to the Lonja, another dock where the fresh fish are brought by smaller boats at around 11:00 each day (not 6:00! Thank God I decided to sleep in). There were about thirty people crowding around a few crates of fresh fish, and every single one of them wanted to tell me about them. There were chincho and chicharro and jurela (all the same fish, but of different sizes), abadejo (the same as zarreta), bicuda (the same as maragota and merlon), pinto, chaparella, rayas, peces aguja, pezcadillo (same as merluza), faneca, escacho . . . I’ll fail the quiz tomorrow. But there is for sure a tomorrow, because Guillermo, one of the fishermen, offered (of his own volition!) (I didn’t even suggest this to him!) to introduce me to more people and talk to me more about what he does! AND I will have official permission to enter the docks area, because I went to the port authority offices and spoke with a man who should by now have sent me an e-mail (no internet as I write this) that I can print out and wave in the police officers’ faces when they try to kick me out. What a law-abider I am. And how lucky!

In the afternoon I went to the Casa de las Ciencias, a small but very hands-on science museum, where I learned about waves and magnetism and poison dart frogs, and I spent the evening with a man named Simon, whom I contacted through CouchSurfing and who is (also!) extremely friendly. (Everyone here is extremely friendly!) We went to the Monte de San Pedro, which is on top of a big hill overlooking the city on one side and the ocean on the other, and then to Santa Cruz, a distant part of A Corunha with another castle. He tolerated my interrogation about Galician culture and history and his life, and on Saturday I might go to an old village with him and a few friends. He also told me about places where fishermen use traditional methods – I have villages to add to the list! I’d better start crossing other ones out.

I’m no longer feeling lost and insecure – all I have to do is learn everything there is to know about fishing. And a lot of people seem eager to help me do so.

A walk around the city and a plan (La Corunha, Spain)

2009-06-17T19:56:00.002+02:00

(I promise that my entries will get shorter.)

I did not take several thousand pictures yesterday afternoon, but I made up for my sloth today (taking at least 20 – at this rate I’ll have over 7000 by the end of the year). To my great surprise, I woke up past noon, and only because the girl in the room next to mine started moving around – my room has no windows. It’s okay, though; the sun doesn’t set until around ten, so I had plenty of time to explore. My “exploration” was really just a long walk on a path well-trodden – the Paseo Maritimo, which goes, literally, around the city (ha!). I saw:

1) Fishermen on boats! I didn’t approach them, though. That’s for Very Near Future Irene, who will go to the docks tonight at sunset and ask if she can get on a boat. Or talk to someone.
2) Fish in the water! Schools of little silver guys and a solitary few big silver guys.
3) A man fishing on a dock! He told me the names of all the fish, and that he was a ninety-year-old ex-fisherman with grandchildren my age. When I asked if I could talk with him longer, though, he said NO (more politely than that). My first rejection! I’d better get used to it.
4) The Castelo de San Anton, which is now an archaeological museum housing artifacts from many centuries. This island fort (now connected to the mainland) also served as a prison. Now the top of it is a pretty garden.
5) Half-naked people. They are everywhere. There are boulders all along the water’s edge; there are half-naked people on every boulder. The sandy beaches, too, are covered with them. They remind me of nesting birds, because each family has set up their little bunch of towels at a set distance from all the other families’ (~6 feet) – some sort of maximum density law.
6) Baby Stonehenge (of modern-man making and whose purpose I have yet to learn) and the Casa de las Palabras, an open structure with Muslim architechture that serves as the burial ground for soldiers of Muslim descent in the . . . war against the French in 1809? PERHAPS.
7) The Torre de Hercules, a lighthouse built by the Strong Man himself (not). It is the oldest functional lighthouse in either Europe or the world (superlatives are always so tricky).
8) Fish in tanks! At the Aquarium Finisterrae, which was more of a museum than a menagerie. (This is good, because paying to ogle at captive animals always makes me feel rotten.) I struggled to read over the yells of several dozen children, which were so penetrating that I thought they were coming from within my own head (“Oh God, I’ve gone crazy!”). The woman giving them the tour gave me a “shoot me” look as she walked by, so I wasn’t alone. I guess that I am pro-education, though, so I’ll give a belated cheer: yeah little kiddies learning about the little fishies! I’m worried about what they’re learning, though – I saw two interesting exhibits, one of them answering the question “Are the oceans rising?” and the other answering the question “Can all the fish in the oceans disappear from fishing?” The answer to the first one was (in more words) “Yes, but the oceans rise and fall periodically.” No mention of global warming and the melting of the ice caps. The answer to the second was “No, because, just like humans have learned to farm land animals, we are learning to farm sea animals.” Not that fish farms are very damaging to the environment, and not that the fish kept in them live under awful conditions.

Speaking of fish: I decided a while ago to suspend my vegetarianism for this year, so that I can fully enjoy the cuisine of the countries I’m visiting (i.e. eat more than bread and chocolate, which is my usual diet – now I’ll eat bread and chocolate and meat!). I haven’t eaten seafood here yet, but I will soon.

Last night I cuddled up in bed and made a (tentative tentative) plan for the rest of my three months here:

I’ll stay in A Corunha until June 24th (so that I see the bonfires of San Juan on the night of the 23rd – they cover the entire beach!), when I will go to A Guarda, at the southwesternmost tip of Galicia. I’ll either work my way up the coast or spend a lot of time in one or a few places (depending on how my “research” goes), but I will at some point reach Vigo and visit the Illas Cies, an island nature reserve. I’ll go to Pontevedra and take a detour to Santiago de Compostela for the big celebration on July 25th. Then on to the Costa da Morte (ominous) and back north to Betanzos by August 14th, to be there for the festival of San Roque/ Os Caneiros, which lasts until August 25th. I hope to be in Viveiro on the 23rd, though, for the Romaria do Naseiro, and on September 13th I want to be all the way back west in Muxia for the Romaria da Nosa Senhora da Barca. (I got all excited about festivals after finding a guide on them.)

DOABLE?! Who knows? I may end up staying in one village for weeks. But if Restless Irene prevails, I’ll try it.

Now I’m off to eat dinner (fish?) and go to the docks. Wish me luck.

An arrival (La Corunha, Spain)

2009-06-16T15:26:00.002+02:00

I am in A Corunha! It is lovely! There is a museum on clocks! And I can go right up to the fishermen (fisherpeople? fisherhumans?) on the docks in the morning – by 7:00 am, my host informs me. I'm staying at a hostel run by an older couple for the first three nights of my stay, after which I hope to move onto someone's couch or floor (I am a newbie couchsurfer!). Now I'm going to go on a walk, take several thousand pictures, and then pass out on my very own bed, which is in my very own room – luxury.

An introduction (Madrid, Spain)

2009-06-16T15:25:00.001+02:00

Greetings, amoebos and amoebas! And a hearty welcome to this blog, which I will be keeping all of this year while I travel to and through Spain, Mexico, Norway and Chile with a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. Since this is the first entry, I should explain what I'm doing in all of those different places. (People always ask: “Hmm . . .which country doesn't belong?” Poor Norway. But the joke is on the other three, because the fact that they are Spanish-speaking countries is only part of the reason that I'm visiting them.) My project has to do with time – specifically, concepts of time in different natural environments and cultures. Where we grow up, and in what culture, deeply affects our lifestyles, our livelihoods, and our philosophies. I grew up in the United States, where clocks reign supreme and faster is better. I quickly learned to arrive promptly to appointments and turn assignments in by their deadlines. So far, my life has been a series of steps, a cause-and-effect chain, if you will, leading me to the next goal – linear progress – and the steps are a direct result of my doings and the doings of everyone else around me. All of the events that will take place in the next hour will be the result of the events that take place in this hour, a complex, chaotic system, but one with some sort of direction. Things don't just change; they develop. This is, at least, my very western view of things. I am also aware, though, of another pattern, one that shows up at many different scales, namely, the cyclical nature of events. This seems not only to be the rule of the universe – things revolve around other things and rotate about their own axes continuously, so that on the surface of our planet we have cycles like the day and the seasons – but also the rule of life. Individual beings are born, procreate, and die, over and over again (well, not the same ones over and over again); looking at the larger picture, there appear also to be waves of lifeforms (species are born, procreate, and die, over and over again); and even the planet undergoes continuous “birth” and “death” through processes like erosion and uplift. I'm not sure what my place is in each of these cycles, but they have certainly all shaped my existence somehow.

So why, then, am I going to Spain, Mexico, Norway and Chile? Each of these places is home to a different kind of natural cycle with which human beings directly interact. In Galicia, Spain, fishing has been the most important industry for centuries. I will visit several Galician fishing villages and cities ranging in size to explore the extent to which commercialization affects how daily routine is governed by the tides and movement patterns of the fish. In late September I'll travel to the state of Michoacán in Mexico to witness the arrival of the monarch butterflies to their winter grounds after a trip of thousands of miles. Indigenous farmers have used this annual event to plan their planting and harvest schedules for centuries, and more recently, tourism has become a strong source of income for the region. I'm interested to learn about the folklore surrounding the butterflies and see how tourism has changed their significance in the local community. I'll be in Norway during the polar night, when the sun doesn't rise above the horizon. After overcoming my deep SAD-induced depression, I hope to figure out how people measure time and organize their lives in the absence of the planet's most basic natural cycle. My final stop is Chile, where different volcanoes have erupted with different frequencies – some dozens of times in the past few centuries and others only once in 10,000 years. This range of historical precedent makes for the perfect environment in which to study time's effect on individual and group memory, and also to test the possibility of awareness of geologic time. That's a very brief overview of my proposed project. Here are some topics that I find particularly interesting:

- Cycles vs. lines vs. a combination thereof vs. what else?
What role does religion play in this? The Bible is a very linear text, a narrative, and the basis of western time thought. How do people with kinds of religious texts approach time and their part in the greater whole? What does belief in an afterlife imply? Reincarnation?
- Scales of time – how short and how long makes sense to us (we who live mere centuries to the Earth's billions of years)?
How does proximity to active geological changes, like volcanoes, affect our understanding of geological timescales?
Cosmology – how old do people think the universe is? Does it have a beginning or an end? Is it one of many?
What's the smallest significant unit of time? At what scales do people think different (fast) processes occur?
- How do people visualize time? (And how else can we communicate thoughts about time other than with words?)
Spatial paradigms (rivers flowing past, a fourth dimension, etc.)
Counting – ribbons of numbers? Is time discrete?
- Memory (collective and individual)
How do groups of people remember catastrophes?
What folklore and myths are passed on from generation to generation? What effect do they have on people's current lifestyles?
- Physical perception of time
Do we have an “internal clock”? What is counting in our heads? Do we all do it at the same rate? If not, what affects how we do it? A while ago I read a short essay by Richard Feynman in which he times himself counting to sixty while partaking in a number of different activities – walking up and down the stairs, reading, writing . . . singing? Well, I've forgotten exactly what he does, but he consistently counts to sixty in the same amount of time regardless of what else he's doing.

I should explain the url of this blog! Why am I traveling a la Billy Pilgrim? Who is that? WELL. Billy Pilgrim is the main character in Kurt Vonnegut's book “Slaughterhouse Five,” in which the concept of time features prominently. Billy Pilgrim is a more or less ordinary man who not only travels through time (involuntarily and unexpectedly), but is also abducted by a species of alien, the Tralfamadorians, that perceives time completely differently from us humans. In the spaceship, the following exchange takes place:

Billy licked his lips, thought a while, inquired at last: "Why me?"
"That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?"
"Yes." Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it.
"Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."

Tralfamadorians not only know that the circumstances of the universe are set; they can see time like we humans see mountain ranges. When they look around, they see not only different spaces, but different times, and they can choose not to look at the unpleasant ones. Billy Pilgrim finds this unsettling; the Tralfamadorians have wars just as terrible as our WWII, in which Billy Pilgrim has fought (will fight, is always fighting?), but they simply ignore them. Instead of concerning themselves with the unpreventable, they erase it from their minds. They are apathetic to an extreme. There is a beautiful side to the Tralfamadorians' experience, too:

Billy Pilgrim says that the Universe does not look like a lot of bright little dots to the creatures from Tralfamadore. The creatures can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti. And Tralfamadorians don't see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millipedes -- "with babies' legs at one end and old people's legs at the other," says Billy Pilgrim.

The book is excellent, and I highly recommend it. But back to my blog – get it?! I am traveling through time, too!

And speaking of traveling: So far the trip has gone well! I'm typing these words in the Madrid airport; lightning delayed my flight from Philadelphia and I missed my connection to A Corunha, where my journey begins. The man sitting next to me on the plane was a lesson in character building (sent by the travel gods, I'm sure, who are in charge of my education for the next year). He sang to himself, drummed on the armrests and used the metal of his spiral notebook as a percussion instrument, and danced. He also talked incessantly. When he curled up into a ball to sleep he took up more space than he did when he was awake (how?). But I have learned: 1. Deal with cramped quarters or be miserable. 2. “Obnoxious” is another word for “amusing.” I'm ready for anything.

I have to board my flight!