Spring Break gracefully met it's end yesterday, and it was not entirely disappointing to see it go. Uneventful, it was, and frustrating - we lost both phone and internet service, which explains the lack of communication and the rather infrequent updating of this venerable forum - but it wasn't a total loss; indeed, tho I did not do a terrific lot, I did do some sporadic terrific things, like read for fun for the first time in ages, and adequately keep track of the things that I read. Amongst those one finds the following:
The Collected Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. (Not all of it, yet.)
Black Ass at the Cross Roads. Sabotage efforts by allies against retreating German forces in D-Day France.
A Train Trip. Really beautiful beginning, describing a lake house, as well as the process of getting up early to leave it definitively.
Night Before Battle. Started to read this during the Jonathan Dickinson camping expedition; finally finished it a couple of nights ago. Excellent picture of everyday evening life for a foreigner in Civil War-era Madrid.
Under the Ridge. A day in the collection of battle film from a hidden position for Hemingway and pals in Spanish Civil War-era Madrid. Likely based on experiences during filming of The Spanish Earth.
The Good Lion. Fanciful tale about a lion that does not prey on poor animals and Hindu traders and has the great Lion of St. Mark’s as a parents; allegory on going there and back again?
The Faithful Bull. A stud bulls that stays faithful to his mate.
Che Ti Dice La Patria. Snapshot of interwar Italy and the growing fascist presence in the nation.
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. A very pleasant reverie on precisely that; another Madrid bar story, it would seem.
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. Brilliant story of an upper-class fellow on Safari, his relationship with wife and guide, and the changes one act of cowardice and another of bravery inflict upon his life.
The Capital of the World. Best of the collection, methinks; perfect series of vignettes showing life in a second-rate boarding house on a quiet day in pre-war Madrid, from the bullfighters and priests that stay there, to the anarchist waiters and the antics of the servant boys.
The Revolutionist. Short tale about a professional agitator and his ramblings around Italy.
Mr. and Mrs. Elliot. Pretty good tale about a rich couple settling abroad. Perhaps commentary on actual members of the 1920’s-30’s American expat community?
The N°1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Alexander McCall Smith. Delightful, good humoured book about a woman detective in present-day Botswana. Has charming lines like, “She felt terribly sorry for people who suffered from constipation, and she knew that there were many who did. There were probably enough of them to form a political party - with a chance of government perhaps - but what would such a party do if it was in power? Nothing, she imagined. It would try to pass legislation, but it would fail.”
The Tenth Man. Graham Greene. Ah, always a pleasure to run into him, especially with the work he did for the motion pictures. This is a lost film treatment he wrote in the 1940’s and which was rediscovered and published about twenty years ago; deals with a rich man who, while in a concentration camp in occupied France, trades away the entirety of his earthly goods with another in order to switch places with him before the firing squad.
El Fotógrafo. Narrated and photographed by Didier Lefèvre, Illustrations by Emmanuel Guibert. Pretty interesting tale of Lefèvre, a French photographer who accompanies a Doctors Without Borders group into Afghanistan during the 1980’s war with the Soviets; the book combines his actual photographs with drawings to tell his story, and I’m liking the idea of drawn photos a lot, especially in terms of doing something similar with the strip I’m developing for school.
Cuentos Sin Cámara. Edited by José Luis Borau. Rather clever idea: get 15 of the greatest living Spanish film directors and commission them to write short stories which may or may not be filmable. Some are rather good, while others are total crap, and some are recognizable because they’ve since been filmed (the last section of Isabel Coixet’s Amables Cadáveres = her part of Paris, Je T’aime - the bit about the cheating man who finds out his wife is dying and ends up falling in love with her all over again). Amenábar’s submission (El Cuadro) is pretty lame and thus understandably as-yet unproduced, but Chus Guitiérrez’s El Deseo could easily have been filmed by now; Almodóvar’s La Ceremonia del Espejo was a silly and too-dark story of a vampire staying amongst fanatical monks, while Santiago Segura’s Amores de Cinewas a charming recollection of how many times romantic love has coincided with his visits to the cinema, monologue which might make for a good short film but which seems to be well enough left as a short story. In short: one won’t find any Citizen Kane’s in here, and most of them have been left unfilmed for good reason, but it’s still interesting enough to see their attempts, and some (Coixet’s, again) really are pretty excellent.
And so that was good because, honestly, ever since I came to college I've done far less reading-for-myself than I would care to admit. Emily (who is visiting me until Sunday) and I were talking about it a couple of nights ago, and we both lamented how university seems to kill such persuits, despite the fact that we both immediately noted that the school literature had hardly supplanted the leisure stuff by bulk or it's obligatory nature (tho I guess during the first half of this year my reading was actually both sizeable and monopolized by the Spanish Civil War, only I liked the topic so I didn't mind terribly, either). Much less, things just seem to get in the way, be it just normal distractions (ah, the perils of Wikipedia) or social things or what-have-you. The break, tho, was rather depressingly free of those - not so much the social, but pleasant distractions (like the morning perusal of The New York Times or the while-cooking listening of the BBC) were so abysmally absent that I was basically obliged to desperately seek refuge in my books.
I did some other things too, aye, and went to some splendid exhibitions, visited with a couple of friends, tended to my illness and drew a whole lot, and I walked the city several times, but...dunno, something was missing in all of it, which was unfortunate, as Spring Break generally supposes a mega-productive as well as replenishing period each year, and this year it certainly was not.
All in all, tho, it hasn't been an unpleasant time and, indeed, it's been kind of a great month. The 6th through 12th brought the second state visit of the Republican Consort, which was customarily delightful. He was sick for a chunk of that - atleast, officially. In reality the Consort had fled from the official residence and snuck into the city, spending a day in the company of an American foreign correspondent (played by Gregory Peck) and his photographer friend, seeing the sights, getting a snazzy new haircut and attending a rollicking party on a boat on the river later that evening; it really might have been quite a scandal, had not Mr. Peck decided to forgo writing the tell-all story about the Consort's antics, and had not the photographer gratiously returned the pictures documenting the day's events at the official press conference on the following day. In addition to these adventures, visits to several museums, as well as the Rastro, El Escorial and the usual Madrid wandering marked the visit, and save for the momentary terror that accompanies having someone faint before you, it was nonetheless a pleasure to host.
Immediately before the Consort came there was alot of panic, tho, and it was a bit of the beginning-of-a-month from hell because of the jam-up of an exam recovery, a huge midterm (History of Spanish Journalism - I did well, I think) and several last minute interviews I did of a couple of Civil War survivors I stumbled upon (I didn't need to do it then, but my conscience made me feel obliged rather than regret it if they went on to die on me). And after the visit it's been like I've mentioned - Spring Break. Le Bink was here momentarily, and I managed to catch a few others, but it's been largely sedate, tho curiously not terribly relaxing. It was really good to be alone - not because I don't like people, but because sometimes I just need to be alone and think for long stretches of time - but that was interspersed with ocassional oh-too-bored loneliness and missing spells, and that wasn't awesome, tho it is really cool to ache for someone, and to really get what people of meant before when they said that the pined and burned for someone. I've had a concept of it before, of course, but this (in general, this year, really) is really the first age of my life when I feel it in a good and happy way, and the missing is intermixed with just happiness and smiling. So, yes - lots of being alone, some degree of happiness, and a terrible bit of monotony. Which has recently been broken, as school resumed and Emily is visiting now and it is nice (both to have her visiting and to be back at school, curiously enough - Spring Break, by the way, came ridiculously early this year; I was definitely in Paris until atleast the 15th of April freshman year, so I'm shocked that it's done-with and we aren't even through March yet); on Easter we had breakfast at home, and then brunch at her friend's flat, and then churros, and then cookies, and then we went back home and I cooked a whole chicken for the first time and it turned out violently delicious, no doubt because Maddy called me (because she is basically primus inter pares of the coolest people ever) while I made it and gave me directions and her culinary amazingness trickled from her mouth to the reciever and throug the transatlantic lines across the ocean and spilled onto my kitchen counter in Carabanchel. That same night a very drunk Clemens did say we could take the car to go to Segovia, so provided he hasn't changed his mind Emily and I will do that tomorrow, and shuffle away on this several hour trip in nothing less than a Smart car, which should be A) fascinating, and B) potentially deadly. If it A) happens, and B) we don't die, I shall make sure to duly update on the travails. Back home things aren't ideal, and the communication problems have been pretty much fucking wretched in terms of following the situation, but nothing much could be done; here-wise it's been a bit of a headache monitoring things at school and work, but overall one cannot complain (I was able to win over tha professor that was giving me trouble, and the weather is nice enough to run to school in the morning, tho I'm aching for podcasts once again).
Some notes:
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This is potentially very exciting.
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This (credit to Justin) is fucking awesome.
- She-Whose-Name-Ought-Not-Be-Mentioned is apparently definitively to do her grad school at the Complutense, and so I am pleased that I shan't be entirely abandoned next year (what with the departure of Claire and Sarah and nearly all of the other worthwhile originally-SLU kids); she'll be here possibly around my birthday to turn in her papers, which should also be exciting.
- Clemens, meanwhile, has been promoted (which is good) but to a position that places him outside of Madrid definitively; the flat will this time certainly be sold, and so June will mark the definitive end of the Empire of the Sun, the Age of the Hammock, the time of Carribean Colonialism upon Carabanchel. It was a longer reign than we expected, and a happy one - but sweet jesus, how little do I look forward to flut hunting again come September. The mighty Prussian, at any rate, will be heading off as soon as a couple of weeks, it seems, so it looks like I'll likely have filler flatmates to write about in the coming months before he finally begins to remove his things.
Also, some movies:
Constantine. So silly. Really, one would think Rachel Weisz would have a better offering of films to have to do stuff like this. I did like the part when the devil removed Constantine’s cancer with his bare hands.
The Bourne Myth. Or something. I saw it dubbed over, and I could have sworn the American title was “The Bourne Supremacy” or something, but it was put off as “The Bourne Myth” here. Anyway, also silly. It was nice to see Berlin, tho. Gah, that Julia Styles just gets uglier by the year, doesn’t she?
La Vida Secreta de las Palabras. Isabel Coixet film about a weird, semi-O.C.D. nurse that goes to care for a fellow after a horrible accident on an oil rig, with Sarah Polley and Tim Ribbons. Good, if depressing? This is the same director that did My Life Without Me; I like Sarah Polley and all, but this really was just a sorrow fest - if you’re okay with a downer, tho, fine film. Very stark and lonely and etc.
My Beautiful Launderette. So take Daniel Day Lewis as a pseudo-closeted gay right-wing hooligan and then mix him up with a bizarre, power-hungry extended family of upwardly mobile Pakistani’s and set in the more rundown parts of 1980’s London and you get this film…which was interesting, and often fun, and kind of pretty, but also at times rather silly, and hmph.
Hannah and Her Sisters. I remember hating this the first time around, but it was quite pleasant this time. Hurrah neuroticism and New York; hurrah Woody Allen having a nervous breakdown and it never getting old.
Hannam: The Turkish Bath. This was like soft-core gay porn without any actual visible sex. Lots of innuendo, lots of confusion, lacking plot. Something about an Italian guy who finds out he’s inherited his aunt’s Turkish bathhouse in Istanbul, goes to sell it, ends up refurbishing and finds out that he’s gay along the way (much to the annoyance of his cheating wife, for no explicable reason). Lame, lame, lame.
El Crimen de la Calle Fuencarral. Silly? Sure. Public television film about a murder that happened here in the 1890's. But guess who plays the murderess? Carmen Maura. I could watch that woman clip her toenails and still come out completely entranced.
For good measure I was going to put up a bunch of street art shots, but the likely thing is that I'll get distracted and take too long, and that would be awful as I have to head out in about 15 minutes in order to make it to a class I have to give this evening, so I'm going to be responsible and sign off now.
Happy days, kids.