Me. My Selves. and Barcelona.

1: Guys — do not invite a girl out, especially around dinnertime, if you have no money (we can at least split it!) and food is not on the agenda.

Me: I’m hungry.

Him: Ooooh (puzzled and panicked look).

Me: Let’s go get something to eat.

Him: Where do you want to go next? Sagrada Familia, to the sea?

Myself: Maybe I’m not being clear.

Me: Let’s go to a cafe or something.

Him: You want to go to McDonald’s?

Myself: Is he insane?!

Me: No! I don’t even eat McDonald’s at home (of course he has no knowledge of my prior indiscretion).

Him:  Where do you want to go?

Me: I don’t know, this is your city.

Him: Let’s go to the beach.

Me: (Exasperated) Fine, we’ll go to the beach.

2: Be realistic about your chances if you’re simply going to ride a girl around on your motorbike (which is nice), starve her (not nice), and ignore her unwavering refusal of your advances (deplorable).

Him: I like you.

Me: Mmm hmm.

Him: Do you like my muscles?

Me: Uh sure, muscles are nice.

Him: Come closer (pulling)

Me: I don’t think so.

3: Learn to take no for an answer; begging isn’t cute (at least not in this instance).

Me: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, etc.

Him: Why, why, why, why, why, why, etc.

Myself: I take back the whole splitting the check thing; if he’s going to insist on holding my hand while bombarding me with requests to go back to his place and occasionally throwing his arms around me, he’s gonna have to pay.

Because 3am is as good a time as any to be inexplicably ravenous.

I feel compelled to go into each Zara I encounter.

The utter surprise of hearing “Low” by Flo Rida playing at the local grocery store.

There are an inordinate amount of babies here; be sure not to drink the water.

I went to Mcdonald’s. I know. Me. Mcdonald’s. And it wasn’t awful!

The water and/or air is doing unfortunate things to my hair.

I found my favorite Kinder!

I burned the toast. No surprise there.

Where the hell is Juan Antonio?

It’s raining. Again.

Here I get to indulge in one of my favorite pastimes; walking in the street!

I think I got sunburned. Not impossible, I know, but it’s in very odd places (I won’t go into detail).

My flatmates are allergic to or somehow otherwise incapable of buying toilet paper.

Stop staring at me!

And while we’re on the subject, why are you touching me? No touching!

I’m beginning to think more in Spanish, which makes it infinitely easier to communicate. Some days are easy – I can understand the signs in Catalan, communicate in Spanish, proceed through the day with little to no English. Initially I found myself cycling through the languages in my mind to arrive (haltingly) at the right thing – first Greek, then French, sometimes a bit of Portuguese thrown in for good measure, and finally Espanol (or Castellano, as it’s referred to here). But Spanish is a language that I feel more than think. And because I have a long-standing love affair with quotes:

“In Spanish I hear things with my body, my senses, my blood, not with my mind. It reaches me through subterranean channels of atavistic memories.”           Anais Nin

I love the bilingual (Castellano/Catalan) culture. Both are official languages of the region, integrated and woven through the fabric of the city – signs, posters, restaurant menus, speech – Catalan has some similarities to Spanish & French, making it at times decipherable and confusing:

Me: What the hell are they saying?

Myself: Maybe you should stop eavesdropping.

Me: Did I say that out loud?

My first foray to the city’s famous central thoroughfare came to a frustrating halt amid an impenetrable mass of tourists. The second one went something like this:

Spanish, Catalan, French, Danish, German, Japanese (and on and on…); flowers and flower seeds; the curious sell of birds & chipmunks, turtles & gerbils, chicks & roosters, fish & hamsters and other unidentifiable things. Pigeons on the ground aggravating the pigeons in the cage. Living statues with tiny voice buzzers to draw your attention their way; the girl who asked me to take her picture but seemed a bit concerned that I might dash away with her camera; the fairy who tapped me on the head with her wand when I placed money in her tin – a blessing, a thanks, perhaps granting a secret wish; vendors with the quintessential tourist garb – magnets and t-shirts and coffee mugs and why do people buy this sh*t? I digress. Artists, paintings, caricatures, sketches; images of cobbled alleys & cafes, Obama, Johnny Depp.

And the rest – a plaza tucked away among the winding paths, a square that’s a triangle where the locals hang, drink coffee, roll tobacco; the dogs which tumble and play, pretending they don’t hear their owner’s whistles, the sound of their names.  The occasional khaki-clad tourists who wander and stumble away. Dreadlocks and piercings, elaborate tattoos, shouts from balcony to balcony; a trio of men, rough-hewn, sharing a meal on the pavement.

“Sometimes the earth spun too quickly and therefore the sun rose and set swiftly. In roughly an hour. Maybe forty minutes.”                 Yoel Hoffman

An accurate description of my first days: the nights, confused and restless, sudden jolts at unfamiliar conversations – doors creaking and slamming, shutters rising, electric tools from the shop downstairs, cars and horns and that bird each morning which sounds like and owl but why would it be talking now? Perhaps it too is confused. Waking only to find the day departing, struggling with my body to shake off the slumber and it seems I’m finally beginning to emerge from this fog of disorientation and convoluted time.

So today, no breakfast at 5pm; can it even be called breakfast then? My flatmate and I shrugged our shoulders and resumed, yogurt and tea, terrace and sun.

Ok, so I sort of borrowed the blog title from a certain well-loved movie. But I’m really bad at naming things. Except, of course, when it comes to applying new monikers to people whose names need some fine-tuning — Troll, Chipmunk, Stay Puff (whose doughiness seemed to expand when he got mad). In any case, it suits me perfectly — me, my many selves (no, I’m not insane, just multifaceted) and an incredible city.

The beauty of Barcelona is difficult to describe. The intricate architecture, the patterns carved into the sidewalks, the constant play of shadow & light, the……oooh, H&M! Yes, I know I can go to H&M at home but I didn’t bring sunglasses and it’s really, really bright. Maybe just a quick look…

Now,  adorned with huge new shades (an undisclosed amount of time later), I blend in with the  effortlessly chic style of the local women – hobo bags, eclectic accessories, bohemian ease & flow – or so I will continue to tell myself each time I look in the mirror to find these glasses attempting to swallow my face.

Most evenings I’ve spent sampling tapas on La Rambla, the local pedestrian walkway, observing, absorbing the slowly shifting light, natural softness to an artificial glow as the bulbs under the canopies begin to buzz, cigarette smoke swirling, walking, talking, sangria and beer, the woman in the wheelchair with her missing teeth and leg brace and animated exchanges with anyone who looks her way (or doesn’t), the smile that doesn’t leave her face. Drink the wine, feel the warm night air, eat the gelato….aaah.