hemingway did not eat here.
Thursday, while at the Reina Sofia art museum, there was a giant explosion across the plaza (I am beginning to catch on to the spanish "th" for the "z"...it no longer sounds like lisping). The Reina Sofia, which played the Velvet Underground through the Dali exhibit, is in a very big part of the city and is the main cultural district. People began to shout ¨"la terrorista! la terrorista!" and Bianca and I had to take a cab home because the Atocha metro stop was closed. I still had visions of the Madrid train bombing in my head, as I´m sure everyone else did. An hour or so later, we found out that the explosion had been an electrical fire, and the reason for all the evacuation and closing was because the explosion was very close to a gas line. Luckily, nothing combusted, and I managed to see all of the Lichtenstein exhibit before the museum shut down. Crisis averted. I was proud of myself for not panicking. I will be a good future New Yorker.
Went on daytrips to Segovia and Toledo. On the bus ride back from Toledo I met a Mexican med student named Jessica who is going to be in Italy the same time as me. And then I saw Bob Dylan play in a castle courtyard in a small town about an hour outside of Madrid called Alcala de Henares. It is the same town where I visited Cervantes´ birthplace the day before. The ticket cose twenty-five Euros, which I justified by saying that it was remarkably cheap by U.S. standards and that I really need to see Dylan before he dies, even though he has been dying as long as I´ve been alive. I already missed my chances to see Johnny Cash and Elliott Smith. Dylan was wearing his black suit and the white shirt and black cowboy hat, hunched over the electric piano, harmonica around his neck. He was, of course, unintelligible, but the mainly Spanish-speaking crowd sang all of his songs for him: ¨Just Like a Woman" and "Don´t Think Twice, It´s Alright." Spanish concertgoers do not stake out spots and try to kill anyone who gets in front of them like in America. They will also pour some rum into your Coke for you and speak flawless English. Dylan closed with "All Along the Watchtower," which was punctuated by the four watchtowers, one on each corner of the courtyard, and "Like a Rolling Stone." There was a point where, screaming "How does it feel to be on your own?" with three hundred people, stars flawless above you, where you feel like you are in the closing credits of a romantic movie. Not in the way that the boy kissed the girl and all was going to be happily ever after, but in the way that loose ends were tied and subplots resolved. I will come back to this country.
I read A Moveable Feast for the second time this week: the first was when I was in Paris, when I was seventeen. Then, it was a good book because I was seeing all the places where the story took place, the Montmartre cafes and brasseries. This time, Greensboro rained through the pages. I substituted Tate Street Coffee for the Brasserie Lilas and Elsewhere for the 27 Rue de Fleurus. The book was all the richer in meaning this second go round because I was able to translate the story into my life. It is my book now, my Paris story and my Madrid story and my Greensboro story. "I belong to you and you belong to me and I belong to this notebook and this pen."