If you came here hoping for one of my witty posts about my mishaps and mis-adventures in which I'm the butt of all my own jokes, I suggest you check back at a later date. This is not one of those posts. This post is a downer. I've been listening to heartwrenching Ani Difranco songs from the period when all she wrote were unrequoited love songs to make you cry. It's not so much that the mood has rubbed off (I was already feeling like that), but some of the poetic histrionics may find their way into my writing. Sorry if that threattens your manhood.
As I told you in my last post, I'm going home next week. What's been germinating for months that I haven't had the balls to share with anyone until Sunday is that I'm so incredibly homesick. Now that I finally have what I've been working for for so long I'm getting cold feet about committing to years and years of service in the Spanish work force. Sunday night found me sobbing in bed next to my girlfriend, wanting so badly to go home, and not wanting to lose her. But she'd taken a sleeping pill and although she woke up, her there theres didn't quite hide their intended purpose of getting me to shut up so she could just go to sleep.
For months the only thing keeping me here has been her, but I guess life had different plans for me. So yesterday, amid so many tears we made the decision to go our separate ways. (God, just to write it makes me start crying again). This wouldn't be our first breakup dress rehersal, and I have no idea whether it will be our last, but this time something in me was different. Maybe not different, just stronger. Something inside was saying, Claire, do NOT fuck up this chance. "Chance" is a weird word for the situation, it implies that I'm some sort of abused or neglected. No, it's not that. And it's not that I don't love her, if I didn't I wouldn't be in this situation. It's just that it seems like lately, ever since last March I'm making one bad decision after another: drinking (my achilles heel), skipping training sessions to do things of absolutely no emotional, physical or intellectual return, and gradually, by degrees, giving up things that are important to me in order to save the relationship. There's something about being in a situation where your emotions/problems are constantly being overshadowed by someone else's. It puts you in a desperate place because no matter what you do, the problem is still in someone else's head, and there's no way you can get in there and fix it. I moved well beyond the quantum physics type, pro-active type "all this is in your head and for you to change it you have to work actively to change it" rhetoric months ago and have resigned myself to trying to work behind the scenes and do anything I can, which usually takes the form of just being there and being strong. The chance I needed was a chance to think about me. And somewhere between the feeling of being kicked in the stomach and the feeling of being about to faint, I had this soaring sense of relief.
When I was in California it seemed like everything was an incredibly enlightening adventure where you learned something new around every corner, like a science museum. Everyone I surrounded myself with seemed to be on the same page of making life a journey of self-discovery. Maybe it was just that I was in college and that's what people do in college, learn about themselves, but I felt like I was getting somewhere. It's been a long time since I felt that I was getting somewhere. And then, stupid as it sounds, I saw Little Ms. Sunshine and there was this scene on a pier in Long Beach and it brought back this enormous sensory memory of the piers in Santa Cruz and Capitola and how happy and excited I was every time I went there. In fact, I was excited every day in California. The feeling from Little Ms. Sunshine was so strong I couldn't shake it, even after sleeping on it. Then Girlfriend came at me with Enormous Girl Drama X, the kind of thing that you read about in a 3-page human interest article in a women's magazine, and she needs my help.
So then push came to shove and I heard myself saying, I'm really homesick. I'm not happy. I think I want to go home. It was what needed to be said, but it wasn't what I'd expected to say. So when I found myself alone for 10 minutes and had time to think I thought, Don't fuck up this chance, Claire. Oh God, give me strength to follow through with this. Many tears were shed last night, conversations were had, thoughts were exchanged, and phone calls were made. But the important thing was that I finally gave myself permission to stare in the face the possibility that I might go home. If that's what I want...
... So what do I want?
So today I had an unorthodox workout. I wanted to be out in the city, but I wanted to pay attention to more than just my breathing and my heartrate. I wanted to take it slow, see the world around me, and be able to think. So I decided to walk the length of the city (Barcelona's not that big) from the sea to the mountain, let the sensations wash over me, and just be. I don't know why I always think this is going to work, because it hasn't ever.
Here you can get an idea of the rout that I walked. A Microsoft Paint line on a blurry photo can't really match up to the accuracy of all y'all's GPS devices with internet flair, but there's something to be said for using a picture I took mayself this afternoon.
Anyway, I took the train down to the beach where I was planning on walking on the path behind the sand, but then Creep (Radiohead) came on my iPod, which starts "When you were here before, I couldn't look you in the eye. You're just like an angel, your skin makes me cry." Then I remembered that Silvia and I met a little ways down this same beach and our first kiss was on one of the stone breakwaters that punctuate the coast. I wanted to cry. Instead, I took off my shoes and socks and walked barefoot through the waves. There was something symbolically necessary about touching this sand (which is imported, by the way) and walking through the Mediterranean in my bare feet.
One thing about Barcelona is that you can't walk 20 minutes in any direction without finding yourself in a totally different world from where you started. That was what was important about my walk. I wanted to get a good cross-section of the city, not only in that I would go from the sea to the mountain, but also that I would see all the different layers of this city that I was trying to decide if I would stay in or abandon forever. When I put my shoes back on I began walking through the port which was crammed with tourists milling around trying to find their way back into the city in a maze of roads that all end in docks. I took Via Laetana up towards the center since no sentimental mood was worth elbowing my way up the Rambla which is stuffed building-to-building with tourists, kiosques, street performers, and pickpockets. At the Gothic Cathedral I moved in to the old gothic streets. I saw a couple in breathable linnen clothing holding hands and meditating on a bench next to the cathedral and wondered why I couldn't think like I wanted to. They were restoring the façade of the cathedral and over the scaffolding was a giant advertisment for a bank, "0 euros interest, 0 euros comissions, 0 commitments". People were taking pictures of the cathedral anyway. This seemed to have some ironic significance, but I couldn't make any metaphorical sense of the scene. Then I walked through the gothic streets for a couple of blocks to get to Plaza Catalunya, an enormous square filled shoulder-to-shoulder with all kinds of people in a hurry to get wherever they're going and no one getting anywhere very fast for the crowds (I don't think anyone passes through there on purpose except the tourists, but I needed to walk through on this particular excursion). I then walked up Passeig de Gracia, the Rodeo Drive of Barcelona with shops like Gucci, Burburry, Luis Vuitton, and McDonalds as well as 2 of the city's most famous buildings. I passed a Scandinavean family eating a picnic lunch right there in the middle of one of the most congested sidewalks in Barcelona and wondered what the hell would possess someone to do that, even a tourist. Then I made a left, and only one street over, the language of the street changed from people speaking English, German, French, and anything but Spanish to solid Spanish and Catalan. This is a beautiful pedestrian street with sidewalk cafes and musicians, but it's like a well-kept secret for everyone in the city to be able to walk downtown without having to walk down Passeig de Gracia and all the duck-and-roll tactics involved with passing through crowds of tourists. Then I crossed Diagonal, the central artery of the city (2 guesses in which direction this street cuts the city) and the hustle and bustle was gone. The only people left were smartly dressed business men smoking cigarettes in doorways and the occasional pijo (posh/rich person) milling around. Here I was in familiar territory in that I had worked around here teaching English to snot-nosed kids in their beautiful homes in beutiful neighborhoods while I could barely afford a sandwich in the bar downstairs. The irony of this situation is apparent, but a familiar story, so I'm not going to waste anyone's time beating a dead horse. Finally I trapsed up past the absurd decorative houses of Av. Tibidabo which are feats of modernist architecture occupied with such unlikely candidates as a dance club, an eating disorder clinic, the Chinese embassy, and a nursery school. And then I was out of the city and onto trails up to a flat fire trail that snakes its way like a hula-hoop around the mountain with views of the city. I found an electric box with a good view of the city and sat there staring at the hazy city splayed in front of me. I tried so hard to call up some emotion sitting there staring at all of it, but all I could do was try to recognize buildings I knew from way up here. I listened to a few sad songs and gave up and set off back to the train.
I was walking for a total of 3 hours, I'd been through no fewer than 9 prominant parts of the city, and didn't know how I felt any more than I did when I left the house this morning.
It's a big decision, a decision that's really hard to go back on, no matter which way it goes, and most of all, it's a difficult decision. I know what you're thinking, 'God, who wouldn't want that kind of experience, to live in a foreign country with beaches and woods and public healthcare and a beautiful climate (or at least that's what you think till you see August)'. But you know what, it took moving to Europe for me to understand how great America is. Sure, you may scoff and spit, or you may pull out your stars and stripes and put your hand on your heart, but I assure you that my patriotism is neither of these. It's not for America the empire or America the symbol that I'm heartsick for, but America itself in all the little details that we assume are normal. I miss:
- Being able to eat lunch and dinner every day of the week at 14 different restaurants from 14 different countries (all of which have vegetarian options on the menu... that is, if you're not in Oklahoma or something). Call it "lack of national cuisine" or "cosmopolitanism", but there's something to be said for a country where you don't know the menu simply by walking through the door.
- The concept of space. There's something phenomenal about a place where people from Concord, NH commute to Boston for work, or where the 7 hours from San Francisco to Los Angeles is something that no one blinks an eye at. Love cars or hate them, Auto Nation keeps everything within reach, and that's a beautiful thing.
- That feeling of being "in the popular clique" where everyone feels like they're part of something important. Americans assume that since our TV, movies, music, books, politics, and products are shipped all over the world, that everyone is watching our every move and envying us. What you find when abroad is that people generally don't care one way or another about the Great U S of A. But even though that celebrity is all imagined, it's nice to feel important.
- The fact that individuality is valued. Marching to the beat of a different drum is the golden standard in the US, we like and look up to the odd ducks. It creates a giant, nation-wide brainstorm, I guess. In Spain people are bred to be sheep - don't stand out, don't say anything contradictory, keep the peace, keep the conversation comfortable. As someone who can't help but be an oddball, I feel like a "octopus in a garage" 90% of the time.
- There are so many different dialects and accents in the US that hegemony is the norm. Here, the second I open my mouth people's body language changes visibly. Yes, I have an accent, but no, I'm not stupid. I have friends who were born in the US and still have latino accents. If people can belong in a country even when their accent is from somewhere in between, why can't Catalans deal with an accent from a region 300 miles away? People from Madrid and Andalucia are called "foreigners" here.
- I understand exactly what people are saying at all times at home. You get to value that when you're living in a different language and they hand you your loaf of bread but you don't know if you actually said it right, or if they just got what you were saying. It DOES hurt when I say something obscure like "armpit" and give it the wrong gender and people laugh at me.
