cape town chill

It is a Cape Town night all chill I am next to a heater writing an article about barcelona this is what I just wrote to a friend still living there:

Dear Heike,
I am back in South Africa and there is a chill in the air and I have an assignment for mon...it feels uncomfortably like Real Life! Also happy to see some lovely old friends and tread old haunts here but I miss Barcelona tangibly I am remembering little pieces all the time they stick to my hair and dreams a soft tune behind my eyelids a new context for my life what a thoroughly wonderful time was had.


I am trying not to moon for what is past that is in bad taste when you are in a place like Cape Town and when you know the people I do

And Barcelona left a sweet sweet taste unmoonworthy more celebratory.

The experience has made me think of the (unbearable)transience of everything how something can happen that is so wonderful and the only thing possible is to enjoy it succulently while it is there and then enjoy the next thing when it is not

photos and gifts and pieces of souveneir are so hollow but sometimes comforting I have a t-shirt that says barcelona 2007 made for me by my friends it hangs from my cupboard.

I was happy to see my flat in cape town it is lovely

thank you for everyone for reading my blog and being part of my travel community

lots and lots of love.

It has been a looong time since my last blog-principally because there has been so much happening that I haven´t been able to translate it into words!

Today is my birthday thanks for all the greetings!

Last night as the clock struck 12 I happened to be ambling along the street by myself-a set of circumstances I thought very appropriate for the coming into being of my 24th year.

I went to a festival of urban dance in the centre of my courtyard which had just dissolved and people streamed out and the dregs sat in the warm air and watched clips of dances on a big screen. I bought a cold beer and I sat happily and snugly among the dregs wide eyed watching the many absurdities that does the dancing body specially when it wants to shock. Do you know how much "contemporary" art drama dance is judged successfull on its ability to estrange its public which lets be honest isn´t difficult except the estrangement is now so expected it is a known strange which maybe isn´t strange?

A secret about me: I curl up in glee when watching bad art that takes itself seriously it is my favourite past-time. Or even if it doesn´t. Like there was a video I saw of a tongue curving a pattern in salt. Repetitively it looped,over and over this tongue and the watcing crowd stood cold and dignified quiet watching and a guide deliverd 100 unsubtle complex metaphors in explanation of this poor pink tongue(immigration displacement...) and I shrieked with laughter inside it was wonderful. Or there was a line of a fresh-writ play that said "I want your maggot infested hands to carress my supile body"(she was talking to a ghost), and it was delivered without a glimmer of mirth! For me this is artistic expression, freedom of speech total

so anyway watching some prime off-cuts of this estranging contemporary dance was a perfect place to start this 24th year.

Now my mom is chatting to my cousin and my father and brother are snoozing peacefully the siesta on adjacent couches after a long family meal ...it is so nice to have my fam-damily with me for these 3 days I will write more details tommorow of our exploits

Storm cloud

I was perched on a sofa last night gingerly eating a salad and talking to an intense Alicantian girl dressed in black. OUr conversation took a few quick bounds from where do you live and what is your name to land on a Spanish version of a kind of Dr Phi crossl existential reality conversation. I don´t know if you´re familiar with those but they seem to happen to me quite often. We were talking about the weightlessness of travel and moving places and leaving history and circumstance behind. Aha she said knowingly but you bring your problems with you - aqui dentro - and she tapped her heart emphatically- because they´re inside you. And she was right.

I had brought the aforementioned salad to the dinner party of a boy student from Valencia called Raúl who is studying environmental science and who had carefully explained to me how close Muizenberg is to submergence under the sea water if global warming continues.

He is a lovely boy and I had been thrilled to be invited to this a genuine student Barcelona gathering but that day I was feeling awful. All day a bit queasy and a bit sad and a bit like the boy frolicking with the baguette vibe of little barcelona streets was not as charming as usual and these were not my friends so I couldn´t really say so. They were the lovely people who had magically adopted me and I started feeling with riduculous doom that my expulsion was surely emminent. This is something I think often.

It comes from a foggy place probably lodged in Std 3 but it is so strong. It has no interest in logic or reason and clouds out everything. It makes my throat hurt and my stomach quease and all other symptoms of the like. Probably being here so baldly just me, context-free with only my talk and my looks and my laugh and my warmth to encourage people into my company instead of any bounds of loyalty making it extra strong.

So I did what I do when I abandon myself so wantonly. I phone a parent or a friend who never abandon me, who like me with consistency. And they give me back the pieces of me in little bits of warm words until I am nearly whole again still soft like the inside of a pigs ear

ginger

Hello dears

I am seated in the internet café of my school with the scratchy throat and eyeballs that comes from drinking too much chardonnay! Lat night an old friend of mine Adrian Devant took me out to a champagne bar called Ginger which was very warm looking with leather chairs and wood pannelling and a big fluffy sheep dog on the floor. We drank a delicious wine called clot om and generally caught up...many years ago when I was 17 my parents took me and Gabi out of school for a few months and we embarked on a European tour following where my dad was working. We went to ireland and stayed in a a small country cottage for 2 weeks, then went to barcelona. In my 17 year old state I was melodramatically perishing for lack of friend and then popped up as if like a present Adrian and Sarah, a brother and sister living in Barcelona. They spent 10 days taking me to restaurants and discos and breakfasts and generally making me so happy I could squeal! The instant comfort we had then is still here after these gaps of years...

Oh the left over party evidence last night was actually from bullfight and the winner got three bull ears as symbols of his prowess in the fight - so primal somehow like the indian scalp idea. And there were 3000 protesters, I read in the paper, against the bullfight. I didn´t know so many people cared so much. I heard there is a festival where a bull or a goat is thrown off a building or a churchtop. Maybe I am wrong but it is a very vivid image. I can see a trembling goat all fluffy edging to the ledge and looking down like on a diving board. And then the jubilant brown spanish villagers give him a shove, all gathered on the roof, and he falls among cheers and trills of the tambourine

lo que sea

I don´t have any particular subject just lots of bits. Today I tried to get my brain into thinking about thesis mode and my thoughts rebelled and frolicked frivolously no they said we´re in barcelona!

I did mangage to send an important e-mail to my bosses though. The office is so peaceful when I go in in the afternoon to my desk with computer and I am left to my own devices to e-mail and research and make little notes and the 4 hours go by very quickly. I think 4 hours may be a good ration of time to work for I don´t even get twitchY! I can see why companies are so keen for their staff to stop smoking some of my colleagues jump around for cigarette breaks often! Many of you might not know what I actually DO at the desk apart from look professional and drink water from the fountain. Well this centre this CCCB has asked me to find South African participants for 2 of their annual festivals. One called KOSMOPOLIS is a festival about words in all their incarnations- rapped, written, comicked,sang, academiced, theorised etc. The other one (that I have to still wrap my head around completely) is called NOW about how advances in the internet and sciences and activism and performance all change and shape people´s perceptions of their identity and place in the world. There are many complicated spanish metaphors (I think abstract even for a spanish) that boil down to the idea of having an identity that acknowledges the local(in this case Catauña, the language etc) while at the same time having the idea of being a global citizen, a person of the world without borders. I´ve been reading all their back material and programmes to try and get into their heads and see exactly what they´re looking for and the way in which I need to phrase my writing so that it is perfectly in tune with their main plucks and understandable. Out of my understanding I can pluck suggestions of possible participants out of my memory and the net...there seem to be a few family members in the mix but that is only because they do nice things...ahem.

Tonight to sleep...I have started a spanish class in my free mornings which means an 8:30 rise every day instaed of 11 or 12! How terrible! And it is a small intense class where you get asked a question every 5 minutes by a sweet enthusiastic teacher so you have to pay attention. I am learning about the past subjunctive though which is good because it means I can be wistful. A whole new emotion accessible in another language! I can say oh! That he would have walked down another path! And stare into the middle distance.

dias de fiesta

Another Barcelona night

how satisfying tonight there´ve been speckles of rain and its a bit cooler but still warm enought to walk around in a dress. I took the doggies for their midnight hour stroll along the pavements and strewn along especially outside the bullrink are little stubs of paper and empty beers and bottles and all the signs of a party fresh passed. Today is St Juan and every so often a loud firework goes off like a gun.

I had a lot of thoughts about happiness this weekend. I went to an electronic music festival SONAR with some sublime djs and throngs of people from all over Europe. I noticed how intent they were on photographing each other-in exaggerated dance moves and intimate clusters all party life is recorded, a stylised fun. The subject smiles more broadly, looks more intently, dances more frenetically than is really happening. Then I thought what happens to these photos? Are they shown among friends? Displayed publicly on the net or on walls of houses? And where does the enjoyment of the party lie? Is it a happiness that exists in the retrospect, in the perfect stylised symbols in the photos and the admiration of the audience? Or is it a happiness created by the very act of the photo taking like in that moment there is a focus and intensification of emotion and purpose resulting in a happy moment that is "captured." I am sure this is connected to my visual history photo course, this line of thinking

salsa

It was with a lot of trepidation and not a lot of faith that I accompanied my cousin to a salsa club tonight. For one thing I had to tack on about 5 plasters to my feet to stop my new sandals hurting. Susie also warned me that all the people would be dancing salsa in pairs, some professionally but she said kindly she could dance with me sometimes and show me the steps, playing the boy part. ´´No no no´´ I wanted to cry at the prospect of all this learning.

However it is a Thursday night in Barcelona. It is hot. I had spent my workshift being terrorised by the beckoning beats of a music festival taking place in the courtyard of my centre. Music was all around and I was hungry. I knew that watching a video would not be a happy option.

Also my dad had said to me that very afternoon on the phone that I must aprovechar - take advantage-of the fact that Susie is steeped in salsa. He said emphatically its a very useful skill in the same tone as he uses when he talks about touch typing or learning first aid so I knew it must be important. I tried to imagine the situation that could arise that could only be solved with a dose of salsa.

After all this hmming I landed up at the Bikini club near the beach. It consists of 2 big sections, one salsa and one very vile indeterminate techno. The techno had fun dancers on the bar though. They flailed around, staring glassily into the distance over all our heads

The salsa part had much better music that instantly got my toes tapping. It is also very entertaining to watch. I was way over-dressed, the style was skimpy and gaudy mini skirts and high heels and in one case gold aladdin pants with slits. As promised Susie showed me some steps and it was surprisingly easy and fun, led by the beat of the music.

Then someone asked me to dance and I said yes because I´ve decided that it is very bad form to say no if someone musters up the effort to ask you to do something like that (this is also my rule for the ´playing´in pairs in capoiera.) So yes yes yes I say as I am invited to partake in unknown physical feats. Yes I say and I am deeply happy

Susie met a friend there David, pronounced Da-veeeeeeed. He is extremely cute with little glasses and is the type who shows you he likes you by making a million jokes at your expense. Seeing as it was noisy and I couldn´t really hear him I just grinned a lot and nodded. He is a taxista - taxi driver. He told me proudly that 2 years ago he bought his own new shiny taxi. Then he said that meant he couldn´t buy a flat and had to live with his parents. Not to worry I said and I crudely translated the give a man a fish saying with a lot of mime for the fishing rod. The taxi is your rod! I finished enthusiastically. He seemed encouraged.

David has a friend, another girl called Susie. She has just come back on Saturday from a six month stay in Sheffield and she has post-Erasmus blues. I miss I miss she says sadly! They have such a good quality of life there! I party every night! A Barcelonian keening for Sheffield.

Sleepy Sara

I must warn you this entry should be shuffled around I´ve just re-read it and there are paragraphs which should come later or earlier or be together which I can´t do cause this program doesn´t cut or paste! Here it is anyway!



I am a sleepy Sara. I´ve had an evening of making asparagus soup-there is beautiful green asparagus everywhere you look here in tight bundles. Then just now I took my cousin´s 2 dogs for a walk. I´m not very fond of dogs at all but I try to hide it because I am their guest. I like walking with them though. I take them for their midnight walk I wear my house clothes which are a faded summer frock and some sandals of my cousin(there is no barefoot here) and stroll along the blocks with those 2 scuffling dogs as if I belong here. The night is so warm and there are other walkers and I feel safe like the street is my domain.



The centre I´m working in is really glitzy. I could see why people could be addicted to working in those kind of centres forever. It is made from an old nunnery with a huge courtyard. Yesterday I went to a lecture in the Sala Mirador which is a room on the 4th floor designed with wrap-around windows so that you can see all around. The lecture was about how cultural institutions have transformed the once very ghettoish neighbourhood of Raval(in which they´re situated) since they opened in 1994. I thought it was funny somehow that it was the SA election year too.



Today I was given my first proper cccb e-mail address of which I am extremely proud. I had to keep the glee off my face it would have seemed unseemly but this is my first job e-mail. The office is large and open-plan and covered with interesting pictures and posters there is that air of opulence that these people can dream up nice ideas and there is a well-oiled and moneyed machine of translators and accountants and graphic designers who will create it presto!

On my first day I was terrified I tried on so many pieces of clothing and none fit right I cussed and agitated and was jumpy in my own skin. In the end I tried to mantain a dignified terrified silence as I sat at my little desk. Short experience has shown me that silence is quite a valued entity and leaves you with lots of options when you are finally comfortable enough to talk. Silence could even be mistaken for being enigmatic or intelligent. Then I went to the evening lecture I mentioned and things improved.

I chatted to an international motley of students, mainly Italian, one of whom I work with in the same department. They are all incomers to the city staying for the long-term and they came to find work and build a new little Barcelonian life. They invited me to come back to their flat for a drink which I did and we walked through the crooked little streets of the ex ghetto in the nearly dusk. Monday is the day that Barcelonians throw out furniture they don´t want so the Italians scooped up 2 nice wooden chairs and other young studentesque people staggered past us with armchairs and TVs in hand



The Italians (and one Tenerifan) made a salad with pear and honey and bits of the epically large chunks of parmesan their mothers had brouht them from Italy. They were very easy to get on with and I felt comfortable with them, I think because mensches are mensches the world-over there is an international community of decents and lovlies which supercedes any idea of cultural difference.

he vuelto

I have just returned from a week at my gran´s farm and read a note from Jonah riñendome for not posting a blog sooner. This means nagging, tuning, berating, on those lines.

The ñ is prounced nye so it has an apprpriatly grating sound for its meaning.

I have these words circling my head. I´ve learned some new expressions one is

¡Tierra tragame! This was uttered twice by my gran this last week and is accompanied by a rolling of eyes to the heavens. It means Earth swallow me! She used it once to say how embarrassed she was when she stayed with us in Giyani and I told my mom that she could never make bread as well as she could.

The other time she said it in great exasperation when her great grandson Dylan refused to eat his daily 5 spoons of grated carrot. So you see it is adaptable.

The other expression is ´tampoco era nada del otro jueves´ which means ´neither was it anything like last Thursday´ and it was in a book I´m reading called Cosmofobia and it was talking about a mediocre date and the english equivalent is something like ít wasn´t mindblowing´or ít wasn´t out of this world or something like that.

Anyway dears I will write more about my farm week tommorow. Then I start work on Mon...

love xxx

mi primer blog

It feels very funny to have a blog. But seeing as I am here in españa and I like to think there are masses in England and Joburg and CT hungry for news it does make sense! I am sitting here in a grimy internet cafe around the corner from the flat where my family live on Granvia. I have reminded myself not to bite my nails because it seems so grimy! After another large lunch my great aunt and aunt and cousin are all dozing happily the siesta. When they wake up it will be time for tea and biscuits! I was very happy to discover that the local supermarket the Carrefour stocks chocolate digestives. Sorry, it seems that all thats coming up in this first historic post is miscellanea. No architecture no stirring tales just chocolate bicuits! Maybe I should also be having the siesta.

I arrived in this city on Monday. I had met my english aunts and uncles and my uncle Dov at a hotel in London for tea and croissants in between flights which was lovely, and then my Barcelona family met me at the airport and they were veru warm so with so much family I missed that feeling of forlornness you can get at being alone and jetlagged in a new place and everyone wanting you for your euro. In fact I am so well taken care of by my great aunt who makes sure I have at least 5 meals a day which is much more than I do in my spasmodic student existence in C.T!

Very soon after my arrival I got a letter from the centre of contemporary culture to say there was a place for me. I´ll be working from 3 to 7 every day in this centre which is next to the Museum of Modern Art in a beautiful old part of the city with two vegetarian restaurants close by! I had a meeting with the director yesterday and I was very nervous for how my Spanish would hold up when talking about things like culture and concepts of boundedness but in the end it was fine. The director, Juan, is very interested in making links with South Africa and most of my work will be researching good South African peformance/spoken word poets/graffiti artists/young authors with a view to importing some to take part in the various festival the centre hosts - something I feel very well placed to do!

As I only start on the 11th I will go and visit my gran before in Alicante for a few days and I´ll write more on my return...love to everyone.