Getting back to work...

 

Time is slipping away...

It's been a while since I've blogged, although I've been thinking about doing it a lot lately.  Some of that is down to having a series of house guests in fairly close succession, which means getting to be a tourist and going around with people and showing them fun stuff (and also four wonderful days in Alicante, which are probably worth several entries that they probably won't get).  Some of it is exhaustion after writing a lot quickly to try to finish a piece of fiction so I can get back to my thesis.  And some of it is (surprise!) actual thesis work -- which I've realized I can't put off any longer, since tomorrow marks the two month count-down to my return to New York (though I'll probably be back in Madrid over the summer, especially toward the end of July to finish up dealing with apartment stuff, as well as just enjoying being here without work, as always).  So this is a transitional entry, mentioning briefly a bunch of stuff that has happened, and acknowledging that I won't get all of it down, and hoping to do better going forward, in the very small amount of time that is left.




It's a weird feeling to think about being home in two months.  I say "home" and I mean home, and when I think about it (which isn't too often) I do miss New York, and my little apartment there (with a kitchen that will seem tiny when I go back), and the parks and stores, and people in my neighborhood.  I'm looking forward to showing off how much better my headstands have gotten when I go back to my home yoga studio. 

But Madrid is home now too.  Among the minor things that have happened over the last couple of months (any one of which would have provided fodder for a full blog entry had I been less busy) are several home appliance issues which I have proudly resolved, including applying silicon to the bottom of the shower (after my landlord attempted to and had somewhat ineffective results for a variety of reasons) so it no longer leaks (hurray me), having the dishwasher stop working and succeeding in fixing it by cleaning the filter and running it with anti-lime dishwasher cleaner available at the supermarket here, likewise cleaning the washing machine (I've never owned a washing machine, and thus never knew that they needed to be cleaned regularly too), plus all the regular maintenance and cleaning issues.  I love my apartment, and love it more now that I have been able to take care of it and keep it as clean and in as good working order as ever.  I love my neighborhood and my neighborhood supermarkets, and my polideportivo and the people in my bachata class there.  And of course there are all the people at the Complutense, professors and students, and fellow grad students, and my conversation students, and all the people I've met here who I work with and who have been so kind to me. 

I joke that my social life is much more active in Madrid than in New York, and that's really no more than the truth.  I feel as if my roots in Madrid are like a potato's, fast-growing and branching out in all directions, and tremendously fruitful.  My New York roots are like a dandelion, just one puny-seeming stalk, with none of the profusion or fertility of the shoots I've put down here...but deep deep deep in the ground, and damn near impossible to kill.  But much as I like tortilla de patatas, dandelions are pretty too, and their greens can be good for salad.  So I suppose in the messy garden of life I'm a New York dandelion, and maybe if I'm lucky a small Madrid potato.  (I realize this is a somewhat odd metaphor.  But I kind of started with one thing and ran with it.)  In any case, I think I will be a little homesick for Madrid when I go home.  And homesick for New York when I come back to Madrid.  Still, there are worse things than to have two places to love.

Leaving aside food based garden philosophizing, I have spent some happy time at the BNE lately, reading the original of the book that Richard Wright quotes extensively in his book Pagan Spain, the Formación Política: lecciones para flechas of the "Sección Femenina" of the Spanish Falange.  The book can charitably be described as creepy (I'm glad I was at the BNE in daylight, with natural light pouring through the skylights and windows, rather than in darkness as in that past for reading it), not least because of the insistence that the highest duty of a girl who wishes to form part of the Falange is "alegría."  It is the definition of "and you'll stay in detention until you decide to cheer up and smile."  However, it is certainly interesting to see what Richard Wright made of the book (almost literally "made" since he translated huge sections, and essentially glossed them), and also what he left out.  Continuing my pursuit of Richard Wright (Peterson and Hughes and Schomburg are a little to one side at the moment), I am headed tomorrow to the Archivo General de Administración (which sounds like Yes, Minister's "Ministry for Administrative Affairs" but is a real thing) in Alcalá de Henares tomorrow to track down what the Ministry of Information (again, not Orwellian but actual) wrote to or about Wright's stay in Spain.

This is actually my second trip to Alcalá, since among the things I have been meaning to blog about was my guest lecture there, courtesy of the US embassy, who did indeed set up a very nice class for me.  I also owe an entry about the lectures I did at the Complutense.  But that will be for later (and I may combine the two Alcalá entries shortly).  For now, I will end with a fun fact: I have been taught to play mus, an absurdly complicated Spanish card game which involves betting on whether other people have various types of cards.  I suppose it's kind of related vaguely to poker, although I'm not a poker player either, so I couldn't tell you the exact rule differences.  (I'm still not sure on the rules of mus.)  A professor friend at the Complutense kindly invited me to lunch last Friday, and her six year old joined us, as he had a cold and was therefore staying home from school and being sniffy.  He was sufficiently recovered by Friday afternoon (with no prospect of school until Monday) to bounce cheerfully around the apartment while we chatted, and to finally suggest playing mus, a card game his father has taught him.  His mother declined, saying she didn't understand the rules, but I volunteered, and had the rules carefully explained to me in the process of the game, which I honorably lost 30-31.  (Apparently it ends when someone has 31 points.)  The scoring sheets were missing, so my little host and instructor kept a running tally of both my points and his in his head, all the while explaining who was gaining what, and politely asking what I bet, and taking or not taking my bets.  All I contributed was teaching him how to shuffled cards properly.  If you're talking about learning a game with a bunch of abstruse rules, you can't do better than a six year old boy who has spent a while being bored when it comes to patience and persistence.  I still don't really understand the subtleties of the game, but if I ever read a novel where there is crucial betting scene and the characters are playing mus I will understand what is going on more or less.  My humble thanks to my little teacher (and my apologies that I was unable to present him with a dreidel in person and give him the instructions, because fun as dreidels are by themselves, he would certainly have enjoyed learning any game with complicated rules).