hello folks,
a chapter of my life has closed neatly. now, like the new year of 2009, a brand new chapter is dawning upon me. keywords in this chapter: embarkation, discovery, fear, confidence, leaping, solitude and education. it will be a time of much healing. 2008 drowned me in its unfair expectations and unwise judgments, but i have a curious suspicion that the new year is going to love me. i will be enveloped. there will be affinity and plenty of socks. there will be dreams and self-sustenance. it will be just me and what’s important.

i’m actually in Barcelona right now. gorgeous, gritty Barcelona with the grumpy old people and dizzy structures, where i will be ushering in the new year. it’s been a most haphazard and disorganized trip; i found myself here quite by chance and almost didnt make it. but now i’m glad i’m here. Barcelona is vast and labyrinthine - the wide streets beg to be skipped across, there is an infinite number of crooked cobblestone alleys to duck into, and even the massive throngs of people dont fully permeate all that Barcelona has to offer. you grasp, but you dont quite get your fistful. quite disorienting, but very exciting. i also had the best chocolate gelato i’ve ever had in this lifetime; Lygon Street has been dethroned.
but what i love most about Barcelona is the languid attitude towards time. everything here operates a couple of hours later than the rest of the world - dinner starts at 9pm, partying starts at midnight and ends at 5 in the morning, people sleep in late and stay up late. 2pm to 4pm are the siesta hours, where shops close and people halt work to head out for a lazy lunch and drinks or go home to take a nap. it’s so indulgent, i absolutely love it. growing old feels a lot less scary in Barcelona. here, it is a cultural and social norm to give yourself time to breathe. and sleep. and take bubble baths should you feel like it.
today i went to Parc Guell. how do i describe what it is? in a nutshell, it is a park featuring Antoni Gaudi’s architectural works that turns that little chunk of hill into an amalgamation of a theme park, the world of Alice in Wonderland, underwater, and a gingerbread house - all within the shell of a normal, everyday park with trees, grass, dogs and other parkly things. one day i’ll tell you guys about the trippy world of Parc Guell; just not today, because i want to talk briefly about bubbles for now.
so i was at Parc Guell, and in the midst of the main terrace, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers, was a man making huge soap bubbles from a pail of soapy water and a hoop of rope. i suppose he works for the park authorities, and his purpose is to make Parc Guell feel even more fantasylike with his big, colorful rainbow bubbles that are reminiscent of Gaudi’s work. they’re just bubbles, i know, but everyone - myself included - was very mesmerized. the sight of huuuuuge curvy bubbles wobbling through the air and catching sunlight is a strangely soothing one. but what disturbed me were the two little children, a boy and a girl, running in circles around the man and trying to pop every bubble that he made. they were young, maybe 8 years old or so, but so destructive for all their blonde hair and blue eyes. it was shocking that such beautiful creatures could be so vicious - they were clearly enjoying themselves while destroying each bubble with their outstretched index fingers, completely ignorant that they were ruining the fun for a hundred other people who genuinely loved the bubbles and all their beauty.

but isnt that the thing about beauty? i dont dare say everyone, but i do think that the more ambitious of us yearn badly to be one with beauty, to be associated with it or even to have some fleeting form of contact with this ethereal concept. and so we stretch out our index fingers to touch, so engrossed in our own thrilled feelings and lightheadedness that we dont realize we’re innocently destroying the very thing we worship so. we all want to leave our mark and impose our influence on beautiful things, eager to carve our legacy into this beauty, but really, we are ruining these things forever with our selfishness. no one beyond us can then partake in the joy that was once brought to the world by that ephemeral beauty. and how do we live with the guilt, if ever it occurs to us? how do we make amends?

it’s kind of sad. and only 8 years old or so.
but then i’m 20 and still learning.
here’s to a happy 2009, everybody :)