The Life in My Years

Banner photo: Barcelona, after the rain.

May, 2023

I walk the streets. Aimlessly. Desperately. I’m looking for everything – and – nothing really. Oh, but there is that one magnificent place, or colorful stroll, or enduring taste that I have to experience just one final time.

Is there something that I missed?

Of course there is. I’ve missed what I ran out of time for and I’ve missed the hundreds of things I’ll never even know that I missed, until someone mentions something two months from now and then I’ll say, “No, I missed that.”

“We can’t see everything.” That’s what I tell Cora every time the itinerary is too full to squeeze in anything else.

This desperate exploration has become a tradition that occurs on every final day of a trip.

Back at our hotel, Cora is feet up, relaxing. She’s traveled-out, and walked-out, and ready to go back home.

Me? I’m the one who never wants to go back home. If it wasn’t for the dog waiting for us at home I’d be sorely tempted to stay. But right now I’m trying to squeeze the last drops of juice from the fruit.

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The rainstorm is as violent as it was sudden. A few trial drops and then meteorological shock and awe that sent the crowd dashing on the now ice slick cobblestones for shelter. I’m under the awning of a clothing store with my new temporary friends and we’re squeezed together like Spanish sardines looking out at pounding sheets of rain. We all share one thing in common – none of us brought an umbrella. Passersby, dry under their own umbrellas, look at us with mocking smirks.

As quickly as it started, the spigot shuts off, a few hands come out tentatively from under the awning and eyes turn skyward to make sure that the break in the weather isn’t a fraud, and then we all scatter towards our various destinations.

The street is packed again and despite being a part of the mass, I feel as if I’m partitioned from it. I know what it is – envy. I’m leaving the party early. Or maybe it’s the feeling that the party is leaving me. I’m not one of them anymore. Tomorrow I’m going to be crammed in economy and they’ll still be here, wobbling on cobblestones, staring up at cathedrals and stopping at bars to nibble tapas and sip an Aperol spritz. Lucky bastards.

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I find my way to La Zona Artesanal to walk the honeycomb of alleys and take in the murals one last time, and then I loop back to the Gothic Quarter and Plaça d’Isidre Nonell for one final look at El Beso De Joan Fontcuberta. It’s my third visit to the tile mosaic created from the photos of 4000 residents of Barcelona. The first was at the end of a winding odyssey that seemed fruitless. Did they move the mural or was I just too stupid to find it? Just as I was about to give up and move on to something else, I turned around and there it was. I was overwhelmed, brought literally to tears by its beauty and intense portrayal of love and love of life. The second time was to bring Cora.

And here I am, no less moved than the first time. If I take nothing else from Barcelona, El Beso will always remain.

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I’m looking for a last taste of everything.
The last jamon.
The last croqueta.
Another pan tumaca
More manchego …
and patatas bravas please.

Chocolate and churros. Oh God, chocolate and churros. I know of a chocolateria nearby but when I arrive I find it packed. I’m not looking to join a convention. Suddenly chocolate and churros loses its appeal.

My mood requires a quiet place.

Try to find solitude in a Barcelona bar – try to find the winning Powerball ticket.

This isn’t America where you can find a dark, divey little place with one or two old sots at the bar staring into the abyss of shot glasses filled with whiskey and their own depression. Do sots staring into whiskey shots even exist in Barcelona?

Walking up Carrer de les Magdalenes, back to the hotel and I notice a little place that’s empty save a woman at one of the tables, which are actually wooden barrels, talking to a stocky man who sports wavy, shoulder length salt and pepper hair. Guy could’ve just stepped out of a Hemingway novel. All that’s missing are the beret, the wire rimmed glasses and a carbine.

I peek through the window of the little Celler Cala del Vermut and the woman cranes her neck out the door and waves me in. She’s smiling, jovial, and welcoming and that’s exactly what I need right now. I hesitate for a moment, checking out the menu above the brick bar. It has all my needs so I let her point me to one of the few barrels in the little bar.

“¿Hay cerveza sin alcohol?” I ask.

She answers with a lusty, drawn out, “Siiiii!,” and then hurries off behind the bar and returns with a bottle and a glass. As she pours my beer, Hemingway gets up and leaves, wishing the woman a good afternoon as he steps out.

The woman takes my order for patatas bravas and croquetas de jamon and she gets on her phone and calls it in. I’ve never been to a restaurant that Door Dashes the order in from another place but if the tapas are good and fresh I don’t care if they bring them in from down the coast in Sitges. A minute or two later she gets a call back. Jamon is off the menu for today.

“¿Hay croquetas de bacalao?”

A pause as she poses the question to the mystery chef in the undisclosed kitchen.

“Siiiii!”

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A short wait until my food arrives and I’m ready for another beer. The woman brings me a tall foamy glass, sets it down and then palm slaps her forehead. It’s the genuine alcoholic brew.

In Catalan, a dialect that, but for a few words could just as well be Russian to me, she tells me that she’ll get me a zero beer and drink the mistake herself. In my clumsy high school, Latin American Spanish I tell her that I’ll buy her the beer and we can drink together.

We clink glasses and toast “Buena vida,” and exchange names. She introduces herself as Magdalena and I wonder if she plucked it from the name of the street, trying to maintain some anonymity.

Our conversation over beer sputters along in unequal parts of English, Catalan and my dusty Spanish. Maybe that’s the magic of the moment. The desire to communicate pierces the language barrier. Tomorrow I will have returned home to America, a place where communication has become disagreeable. I need to embrace the harmony of the moment.

I remark to Magdalena that the Spanish people seem so happy. She responds with an incredulous expression, as if I’ve just revealed the fact that jamon is derived from pigs. “Of course we’re happy,” she says. “We have good food, we dance, we enjoy music, we live.”

She asks me, “Aren’t people happy in the United States?”

My response, “We’re an angry people,” brings a look of sadness.

It turns the conversation to the inevitable – Donald Trump, who’s already announced his bid for reelection. The mention of his name darkens Magdalena’s mood. Furrowed brow. She looks like she wants to spit. Of course. If all roads led to Rome, all the angry ones lead from Trump. She asks me what I think of Trump.

The only Spanish I know to describe Trump is what I picked up from the narco/cartel movies, “pinche cabrón.”
Fucking asshole.

A brief pulse of shock on her face and then she laughs and then leans in, and in a serious quiet tone, as if it’s only between the two of us, “He’s a miserable man. He has no respect for anyone. Not women, not men, not the young and not the old.”

It’s still cloudy when I step outside. The sky is charcoal black turning the late afternoon streets to dusk. I wind through some little used streets, alleys mostly, on my way back to the hotel, stopping to take some photos.

Tonight we’ll go back to La Cuina de Laietana for dinner and I’ll have paella negra, and then we’ll find ice cream someplace because we never eat ice cream at home. We’ll take a final longing look around and then go back to the hotel and finish packing before an early bedtime.

Tomorrow morning, instead of enjoying a caffe latte and fresh pastries at a sidewalk table in Barcelona, I’ll be shoehorned into seat 28E, with two biscotti in a film wrapper and a cup of bitter airline coffee.