2004-11-10 - 8:59 p.m.

uh, better update this thing soon or it goes out of business I bet, maybe I can start using it again, have a backlog of old material I could post, though in reality depressingly little. I could post every little assignment from my classes from the beginning of the year I suppose. Meanwhile, here's an account of my trip to spain, if anybody's out there reading:

A Day in Toledo

The first night in Spain was fine, only something threw us for a loop. First it was the darkness we fumbled through in the hallways, the doors never seeming to work. The next day we dumped off our bags at whatever hotel would take us. They had to slide two beds together, but other than that it was fine. We could crack open our bathroom window and see the carousers sipping their cervesas under umbrellas down below.

Only Aaron had to sleep on the crack, so he woke early. He just lay there half-asleep and pronounced himself ready to go. I was in and out of the shower, but Tom was sluggish from the long-awaited rest. �I�ll just be downstairs filling out these postcards,� I said and headed down.

So far I had been hiding behind Aaron�s knowledge of Spanish for even the simplest interactions, so sitting myself down at a stool for breakfast felt like a bold adventure.

�Un caf� y un croissant, por favor,� I mumbled. Miraculously the woman behind the counter understood me.

"Caf� con leche?� she asked me. Coffee with milk?

�Si� I answered. I was proud.

She came by a minute later with the coffee and croissant and I pulled out my postcards. As she lay down my breakfast, I hit her with my big question.

�Tienez une plume, por favor?� I asked, gesturing as if to write on my postcards. Reluctantly, she found a pen on the counter and handed it to me. I had communicated a complex thought in Spanish. Well, in Spanish and in gestures, anyway.

Basking in my victory over language, I set out to write my postcards. I felt a sense of entitlement and ownership of these few minutes sitting here and doing not much, simply enjoying my breakfast and jotting down my thoughts. I was grateful of this woman who had simply served me breakfast. By acknowledging me, answering my questions, taking my money, lending me her pen, she had welcomed me to her country, made me exist.

--

It was the travel without end. First the dragging of our bags halfway across Madrid, stopping into every hotel we passed, �Complet, complet.� We would have to find a place in Toledo to stay. Then we got to the station and wandered around, no trains to Toledo, take this subway to the bus station. The subway was so packed that Tom had to yank his duffel bag out from the mash of people.

We got to the wrong bus station and had to ride back on the subway. I couldn�t believe the man in the bus station was telling the truth. So we got back on in the other direction, went up the stairs to the street, where a young Brazilian lady was staring at the bus map. �Perdone me, por favor,� Aaron said to her. She answered back in English that she was heading for Toledo too. I looked up at the map. �We need to go under the railroad,� I said, overruling Aaron, who wanted to head in the opposite way. I was right. From then on, I would be known as Map Boy.

(There is something enjoyable about reading maps. Being able to look ahead at something, identify it, and seek it out. So many destinations to be sought out on a trip like this: little winding parks, palaces, museums and cathedrals, strange geometric symbols waiting to be made real. With each step I create the world that my map has plotted.)

I wasn�t sure if Bia, the Brazilian, was really with us or not, but she was walking with us. We had implicitly invited her along as we searched out the buses together. At the end of the ride -- in which we were separated, each sleeping fitfully along the way -- I looked over and wondered if we would go our separate ways when we got off.

�Did you fall asleep?� I asked her as she slid past us on the way out. She smiled and nodded, and we all exchanged a few more words, and soon enough she was helping us to find a hotel on the ourskirts of Toledo. By then, I suppose, she was safely integrated into our group.

Bia and I broke off from the group and tried a hotel down the hill. �You can talk to them, right?� I asked her as we passed a coat of armor in the lobby. �I will try,� she said, laughing. The attendant said he was booked, but if we try again in the afternoon�

But when we got out, all was well, as Aaron had found us a room.

So for that day, we had this strange city to explore with this strange girl from Brazil. Up and down narrow winding streets, roaming the home of El Greco, gazing up at the cathedral walls, stopping into a restaurant for a paella and sangria. Each of us chatting with Bia for a bit, for we needed a bit of someone else, someone to entertain, not us stoics. Someone a bit different from us.

After Bia had gone, after we had lingered at the edge of the city long enough, she headed for the bus to Madrid, and we back to our Toledo hotel for a nap. We would have fun for ourselves, even if they had no room for us back in Madrid, we would find the night life in Toledo.

--

Such a quiet, dusty town after dark. We wandered into the first restaurant, a little outdoor Italian number where the waitresses came by every half hour and the birds pooped on your table, and we spent a dull hour waiting for my food to arrive.

By the time we walked out, Aaron was ready to make up for it by finding the perfect spot. We wandered past place after place, some half-empty spots, an Irish pub, the lounging whoevers at the town square, a bustling set of picnic tables. Aaron said we wanted �lively, not bustling,� and we followed along. Tom was saying less as time went on. I kept looking fruitlessly at the map.

�They say that in Toledo, you have to open your senses,� Aaron professed. �So we just have to stop looking at the map and start opening our senses.� So we wandered by instinct, and soon we came upon a fine space, lively but not bustling.

And it was fine. We sat there, still not talking to each other much, still just sipping our cervecas in the corner, but there were people here, and it seemed like a place to be. Tom unfurled his theory of the golden age of film in the 80s, the age of Stand By Me, The Karate Kid, and Fletch. We sat around and drank, and God knows why we didn�t have another.

If only we had stayed; if only we had even just gone into the other room. But instead we veered off on another strange adventure, down empty streets and empty bars, more people wandering like us than in any one place, only where did they go? They seemed to disappear into thin air. There was nothing lively nor bustling, only haunted darkening street after street, finally dragging our heels, realizing we were going in circles, ready to settle for anything, if only anything was open. The guide told us there was one place, this outdoor terrace bar, where the young folks went to party, only we went up and down the street looking for it and could never find it, winding down the road to the end, where we found no bar, only our sleepy hotel, where we stumbled into our beds, defeated.

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