The flight from Palma, Mallorca, Spain, to San Francisco, California, included a long layover in Barcelona. I landed in the city of Gaudi at 6pm and would be on another plane from the same airport at dawn. I could easily have “killed time” at the huge airport: shopped, ate, read, slept in uncomfortable chairs. I considered dropping some Euros on a hotel in town. But why kill time, when time is all I have?
I place my luggage in a large airport locker and get on a bus to the center of the city. No plan, except to see where in the world I am tonight.
I’ve been to big cities: New York, LA, London, Lisbon, Paris, Mexico DF. Barcelona, too, is huge, a sprawl, with miles of concrete and uncountable numbers of people. Twelve hours had seemed like a really long time and now I see it is a single half-moon on the face of the ever-cycling clock of eternity. No amount of time could be enough to absorb what is here: true of any lifetime, in any place: never enough time.
But I try.
I see right away that I will not be able to cover much ground on foot. The blocks are long, the buildings loom, imposing shadows and blocking views. The double-decker red city tour bus pulls into line at the downtown square and I become exactly what I am: a tourist here.
I step up with the others and pay the price for a guided drive through the city on the open-air upper level of the bus. Three beautiful young British men help me with the headphones and point out where we are on the map: a dot inside interlocking circles. They have tour-bus passes that allow them to step on and off buses for three full days: stay, linger, view, walk, hop back on elsewhere, return each day for more. I will not be here long enough to make full use of my one-day pass, just long enough to take full advantage during this fortuitous, out-of-time interlude in Spain.
Dusk in Barcelona. September. The air is perfect. I am dressed just right with a light sweater. And I am alone in the world.
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Mallorca, too, was an interlude. Yachting around the island, six of us, three couples. I was part of that, coupled for the week. I made the captain happy, I smiled, was pretty; we bantered, got drunk, took off our clothes, made love in the V berth. Separate people, back home he and I had been dating maybe a year, broke up, got back in touch, got together a few times a week now, otherwise on our own. A loose arrangement, desirable for those who’ve been burned by love, still paying for the last arrangement, smarting, on guard; meeting new mates, we proceed without commitments, with caution, so the heart won’t break again if this, too, should end. Must all love end? All lives end. We pass through, touch down, connect for a moment, move on, leave so much behind. And it matters so little, our cracked little hearts, in the grand scope of things? Big Barcelona makes that obvious. I pass hundreds of couples out on the town, fighting and kissing.
The coupling was good but I had to get back to California, to teaching. I’d already played enough hooky at the start of the new school year. My guy was staying on, renting a Ducati and motorcycling through the Pyrenees for another week. I was invited to join him for that as well. But there was school. And I also knew he’d be happier alone on his bike in the landscape. He is happiest alone. I understood that; it was not something about him that could be changed. We had our week, glorious, then we kissed goodbye at the yacht harbor and I tried to leave any feelings of wanting more from him there.
Is this true of myself as well? Am I happiest alone?
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The dusky light gives way to streetlights on the gaudy Gaudi structures erected incomprehensibly in the middle of, next to, juxtaposed with, the surrounding architecture that looks nothing alike. Where were the city planners when this city was built? Barcelona is a wild conglomeration of architectural styles, shapes, heights, and colors. I breathe it in, adjust my eyes to the shifting twilight, move the tiny headphone buds deeper into my ears to learn the history, where to focus my eyes and thoughts, as we pass through this chaos of sights-to-see.
I hear bits and pieces:
The Olympics were here in _________.
There is the Jewish Hill….
The ______ Museum, ______ Library, _______ Theatre.
In the giant downtown gazebo, are those Russian ballerinas pirouetting?
A series of fountains spew color-lit water bursts in sequence to a Bartók symphony!
Now, fireworks explode into skies between buildings.
Hundreds, no thousands, of people are out walking the streets.
Wow, Barcelona! It is ALIVE! Is every night like this?
No, of course not. I happen to have a 12-hour layover in Barcelona on a festival occasion, a night when free ballets and symphonies and theatrical performances are taking place all over town, lending a glow, heightening our pleasure, focusing the eye out of the chaos of so-much-to-see into the framework of the arts: dance, music, language. Over there, young spoken-word poets are rapping hip-hop beats; here, it’s Shakespeare in Spanish; now, a celebratory speech; in my ear, the stories of Barcelona’s past and future. I see it all from my perch on top of this slow-moving red bus.
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Having circled one loop of city highlights, I step off the bus and enter the strolling crowd of pedestrians on La Rambla. On any night of the year, I had heard, what you do most especially in Barcelona is walk La Rambla with its outdoor cafés, restaurants, shops, and galleries. It is nighttime now and I am on my own in the teeming city, fearless.
I have walked on fire.
The worst things I could have imagined when I was a naïve and arrogant young woman all have happened: robberies, rape, death of my baby girl, death of my marriage, death of myths of how life is supposed to be. There’s no such thing as supposed-to-be! I know this now. There is only HOW IT IS and (like Barcelona) life is like this: chaotic, unpredictable, dynamic. And, it is also orderly (like symphonies and ballets), predictable (there will always be hundreds of pedestrians walking La Rambla), and energized (life is forceful, changeable).
I’ve changed. I never thought I’d feel this kind of free joy again, this loose/liberated ability to couple and part, this independent willingness to enter the stream of strangers, strong, happy, one of them.
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Near midnight I find a pleasing restaurant – a clean, well-lighted place – with more people than you’d think would be out dining at midnight (unlike at home, where everyone is ready for bed by 8pm, my bedroom community of early commuters and high achievers).
I order red wine and a bowl of soup. The bread arrives with the wine and I serve myself my own holy communion. I chat with a Dutch man dining alone at the next table. He’s living here for a month, studying art and Spanish.
“How long are you here for?” he asks.
“Twelve hours. And it’s half-over.”
We smile and talk across the space between us as we eat, then I head back out into the streets and join the crowd.
Half over, like life? Not over yet.