Microfilm is an invention of the Devil

Will some clever inventor please figure out a way to print 3D reproductions of all the things that were put on microfilm in the 1970s and are now totally unsearchable?  Pretty please?

It's late, so this will be a short entry.

Things that went wrong today:

1. I forgot to set my alarm, and slept somewhat later than I planned (ok, about two hours later).
2. I forgot my goggles when I went to the pool in the morning, and had to swim without them.

3. The notebooks of Rafael Alberti that I requested at the BNE today in the "Sala Cervantes" (where all the cool rare manuscripts are) are "fondo reservado" and therefore unavailable, except they let you consult the microfilm.  Just like Schomburg's papers.  Oh joy.  So my poor chlorined eyes had to read microfilms of someone's private scribblings in a small notebook, and the machines are the old fashioned kind not like the computers at the Schomburg Center, so it's white on black instead of black on white unless you print stuff (which of course you have to pay for by the page).



Things that went right today:

Basically everything else.  I did swim, and then I got to yoga, and did an unassisted headstand, and then I had a quick lunch and headed to the BNE, where I promptly ran into one of the Fulbrighters from the Saturday Hangout Group, who was just leaving to get some fresh air before going back to work.  After wishing her luck, I went to the exciting Sala Cervantes.  Everyone was very pleasant there, and it was kind of a kick to get assigned to a pupitre (a desk, far larger than the ones in the general reading room, and far better lit), and see that at the one across from me a woman was looking at an illuminated manuscript and jotting notes on looseleaf.  I did try to get the Alberti notebooks, but was kindly told they were "fondo reservado" and that only microfilm were available.  So I had to leave my nice pupitre with the cool desk mate, and go sit at a machine.  Sigh.

Still, I requested two rolls of microfilm and then went through one.  It's actually even more fun (sarcasm) than looking through Schomburg's archives, because this roll of microfilm is a combination of various short manuscripts, which as far as I can tell are randomly ordered by ascension number.  I will say that the BNE kindly divides the manuscripts with a clearly visible page labeled BNE and then the old folder number, so at least you can find things by folder.  But the folders in this box were such an odd random assortment that I swear I thought I'd requested the wrong call number.  It was labeled (call number) and then (folders)1-43.  Of course Rafael Alberti's notebooks were number 43.  So I scrolled through the handwritten notes of a bunch of 19th century authors who I know because they have streets named after them, plus a few others: Larra, Gaztambide (street), Hilarion Eslava (street), Ramon Campoamor (presumably a relation of Clara), Manuel de Falla (one postcard), random floor plans of 19th C Madrid theaters, a bunch of musical scores, and then finally at number 43 (which I almost gave up on) Rafael Alberti's notebooks.

There was nothing in them about the people I was interested in.  (Though they were interesting as drafts of several poems I ended up looking up in finished non-handwritten form online.  My favorite was probably the depressed one from Paris in 1939 called "Pis."  It is about Parisians not curbing their dogs, and also world events.  In our degenerate age of Twitter it would probably be summed up by the acronym FML.)  It was kind of cool to see the poems and lists and occasional jotted down addresses, and also lots of wonderful sketches.  Alberti was a pretty good artist, so the sketches are more like an artist's sketchbook, but he uses them to illustrate what he's writing about in a way that recalls Daddy Long Legs, although the art is far more sophisticated.  It's quite sweet, really.

Tomorrow's plan is to rinse and repeat, with the added diversion of heading to the university to audit a class on the Celestina.  Life is busy, but pleasant.  Please, please, please let the pain of the microfilm yield up some jewels.  (If you want to hide something, you can't do much better than putting it toward the end of a long roll of miscellaneous documents on a microfilm.)