Author: Paul

We flew through cotton candy-like clouds before landing in Madrid at 8 AM. The guy in front of us on the plane was reading “The Promise of a Pencil.” I made a note to look that up. We had forgotten that Peggi requested a wheelchair at the airport gate and then we heard a man say my name the way a Spaniard would say my name. I was wheeled to a small bus that cruised around the back of the airport and dropped us off on the street where we waited for a bus (5 E) that took us to Cibeles in the center of the old city.

From there we walked to our hotel near Plaza Santa Ana and they let us in early. We slept for a few hours and headed back out for some café con leche and Tortilla Española. They served the coffee in small glasses, almost too hot hang onto. We had seen signs for an art show, one of those Fundación government sponsored things, when we got off the bus so we hobbled back down to Cibeles. On the any we found another, free, government sponsored, art show by Bernardi Roig, an artist from Palma de Mallorca. The show near Cibeles was a real slice of Spanish culture by José Suarez, a Spanish photographer who went into exile during the Spanish Civil War.

We kept looking up at the Círculo de Bellas Artes building and wondering why no one was up there. When we got up there it was actually more crowded than we had ever seen it and we quickly realized why it didn’t look crowded from the street. They had installed a stainless steel railing around the entire perimeter so you could not possibly get out to the edge. Although only six stories up you can see right out beyond the city, to the mountains and into the country and hillsides where Madrileños celebrated the feast of San Isidro, the scene Goya painted so vividly. And you get a great view of the black domed Metropolis building that is featured in the Grand Vía production credits of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.

Our planned trip was in doubt for a bit with my injury but I have decided to move forward with what is now a pilgrimage to Madrid. I will hobble into the city and leave my crutches there just as the faithful do across the border in Lourdes, France.

When Josef Albers left the Weimer Bauhaus in Germany to teach at the Black Mountain School in North Carolina he was asked what he planned to teach. He responded, “To make open the eyes.” My limited mobility issues had me thinking about this and I can’t think of a better time to work on it. Instead of walks in the woods I’ve been sitting on the couch with an endless stream of my photos on the tv. A few big doors are closed but others are opening.

It is a toss-up as to whether the dictation tool on my iPad is any better than my typing skills. Of course, I don’t really know if it is the tool’s listening skills or my poor diction that causes so many errors. In my down time I’ve been transcribing the handwritten journals from our previous nine trips to Spain. Peggi and I take turns at the end of each day recording what we did that day. We’ll take short notes during the day with the name of a menu item or a painting we saw but we collect our thoughts at the end of the day in the form a short journal entry. The last few trips were entered on an iPad. I’m transcribing a handwritten entry now from 1998, the year we spent a week in Granada following Semana Santa processions, and I just spoke “down the street to the Monestario de San Geronimo.” My iPad heard “down the street to the monastery all day sun hey Ronnie mall.”

Once each year we try to rid our property of the the invasive galic mustard plant. We try to get it just before it flowers when it is big enough to identify. It would cover the hillside out back if we let it go. I spent a lot of time standing on that hillside and I overextended my calf muscles.

We took a walk in the woods yesterday and on the way back I decided to run up the last hill the way my friend in San Francisco does. I felt like someone shot me in my calf and I crumpled to the ground.

I borrowed my neighbor’s walker and hopped into Urgent Care where I was diagnosed with either a strained or torn muscle. Only time will tell. They wrapped my leg with an ace bandage, gave me some anti-inflamatory medicine and a pair of $35 aluminum crutches. They are still in the shrink-wrap. My leg is too sore to stand on so I’ve been crawling around the house on my knees and getting along fine.

One of the residents at my mom’s place was hunched over a book, intently adding yellow crayon to a geometric pattern. I told her it looked really nice and she thanked me. She said, “I’m not really an artist. I’m a colorist.” Matisse was a colorist. Bonnard, Josef Albers and Wolf Kahn were all colonists. They use color as a tool. Their work speaks with color. A very small percentage of artists are colorists.

We did a lot of balance work at yoga this morning. Standing dancer to tree to eagle. We were inside because rain was forecast and we were downstairs because some sort of event was happening upstairs. The students were spread out in front of the bar and our teacher was standing in front of a big window that looked out over the lake. About halfway through the class the bartender started setting up for the evening. We were on our backs in some sort of triangular position and I noticed the yacht club had some local, micro-brews on tap. And I spotted a pennant behind the bar with the Rochester Yacht Club logo on it and the years “1877-1977.” This place has some history.

After class I was making small talk with the bartender and I said, “I see you have eight beers on tap.” He said “Yeah. Would you like one?” I looked at the choices and said, “I’ll have a Guinness.”

Does anybody else miss the Paul Bunyan statue that used to hover over the intersection of Portland Avenue and North Street? Ah, but that is what black and white photos are for.

The local gas and electric monopoly came down our street a few years ago laying new gas lines and moving every house’s gas meter outside. Easier for the meter reader to keep to see[ track of your usage. Fr some reason thy were unable to move ours so the guy rings the bell every couple of months and goes down in our basement with a flashlight. Today when he got here I was outside playing horseshoes with Tom Burke. The meter reader, with dreadlocks, was dressed in day-glow and Tom asked him if he wanted to throw a few. He did, two down and two back, but he never hit the pit. I thought about taking a photo but I wouldn’t want to get the guy in trouble.