4 September 06

There, and Here

gathering rose petals while we may There was Madrid. Growing fast, unrecognizable, a chaos of consumerism and people coming back from their month at the beach. There was the sun, the fans whipped out the minute any woman over fifty broke a light sweat. There was the metro, now pristine and on time. There was the queue—a queue! in Spain!—at the bus stop.

There was the wedding, chaotic again and multilingual, fans handed out to both men and women and which my goddaughter and I used to scoop up rosepetals. There were the foreigners in Madrid, the ones I grew up around, some still there though creaking now.

There was the new anti-smoking ordinance.

teapot in Sweden Here is the green. The red barns. The opulence of conifer forests broken by fields with huge granite boulders that would turn a plough into splinters. The wind and the draughts and the need to take your shoes off before going indoors, no matter what.

Here, finally, is some decent tea.

We are filling sketchbooks…

Posted by at 01:49 AM in Nature and Place | Link |
  1. Glad you like the tea…!
    — Jennifer    4. September 2006, 03:12    Link
  2. I’m glad to hear from you! I’ve been looking for your posts since you left. Can’t wait to see the sketches.

    Love,
    Karen
    — Karen    4. September 2006, 16:03    Link
  3. I like your “creaking” image of the past friends. Looking forward to having a glimpse of your sketches if that would be possible.
    — Jenny    5. September 2006, 03:01    Link
  4. Damn, that sounds like fun. Here’s to more, and good traveling between!2

    I’d love to see your sketches, both of you. We’d buy you dinner for that, in fact.
    — Ron Sullivan    5. September 2006, 08:55    Link

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