back in BCN

After eight months of being over it, it took an intense three weeks back in the states and a consequential good hour just now rummaging through old posts and photos, to get me back to my senses..

As much as I have sort of come to despise everything that is "the blog"--some people's self righteousness, others' obsession with self promotion, etc--it is just so much fun, mainly for me.  The otherwise solo process of writing, reflecting and then looking back can also be enjoyed with others.  Plus it forces me to dot my i's and cross my t's.

Anyway...an update.  I was here last in February.  Fast forward eight months later and I am sitting in my cavernous and cave-like Barcelona apartment, jet lagged and nostalgic.

For what? Oh you know, just the normal things, like Ibiza in January and Lucas's and I's co-unemployment; my mom and her aura and her house, even though I at one point in this trip said I would never return there; a heartbreakingly beautiful short story I read at 4 am while flying over the Atlantic Ocean this morning, and the hour that followed in which I could do nothing but skim those eight pages over and over; the smell of my Sophomore year dorm room, which smelled like my roommate's DKNY perfume which she sprayed without abandon every morning before taking off for the next 12 hours; the smell of this very house that I sit in, and I wonder how a person can be nostalgic for something that is literally right under (or in) their nose.

It's actually quite the rainy, chilly fall day in Barcelona, even though it's technically still summer.  I attribute the nostalgia to this:  I ventured out and zombied around a bit ago when it had stopped raining, and coming back in, with my leather jacket on, I had a deja vu of March and April, the first months here, the dark, damp and chilly front-of-the-house that never invites you to hang up your coat on the coat rack. You walk around in jacket and scarf for a good ten minutes before you realize you're inside and should probably put a sweater on instead.

I can't help but be a little disappointed by this non-welcome home that BCN is offering me.  Not only the cold, crappy weather but also today happens to be a holiday, one of the biggest here in Catalunya, being the National Day of Catalunya and all, and the streets are filled with aggressive anti-Spanish signs and people dressed like superman in the Catalunya Independence flag.  They are making a human chain all around the Catalan territory to show their support in the movement for independence.  Trying to see it from an objective point of view, I can't help but feel a certain negativity, the masked hatred that is brewing up in the crowds.  I'm all about patriotism, I'm from the US, how could I not be?  But this anti-patriotism, against Spain, overshadows the Catalan's pride in being from Catalunya, and for me, as an outsider, probably because I'm an outsider, it's a huge turnoff.

But nonetheless, aside from the rain and the reminder of my ex-patriotism, I am happy.  I nearly teared up at the airport, looking through its floor to ceiling windows at the mountains to one side and the sea to the other.  It's rainy, the perfect excuse to hole up in my room, reach out to the world via web (I have probably sent over 150 emails today) and wait for Lucas to get home from his trip to Copenhagen.  I feel like I've been away for ages.