This weekend at a local market, I came across a book about Gaudi and burst into tears as I realized how fuckin' far away Barcelona is, and how unlike Barcelona L--- is. The nature is beautiful here, and as I learn to accept all of the creepy-crawlies, only getting more so. But down there in the market, which the city holds in the parking lot of a local shopping centre, I just felt so surrounded by civilized ugliness and people who don't give a fuck that their city is a million times uglier than Barcelona that I just got overwhelmed. I'm planning to see my family and friends in Canada soon and I'm not missing most of Europe, but these days missing Spain and Berlin is just fucking gutting me.
The culture shock has well and truly hit, as you can tell, and having expected it in the abstract doesn't feel like it was actually any sort of preparation for feeling it. Oh well. Still reasonably happy to be here and even if I wasn't I'd stick it out, if only to spite the people who reckoned I couldn't and that I'd be crawling back to the crowded, dirty, annoying, but beautiful cities of Europe within a year. And of course keeping the lines of communication with the F-word well and truly open about the mental turmoil. If I can't hack it here he's suggested we try one of the cities that aren't Sydney before calling it quits on the country, which is a reassuring fallback plan; Melbourne, during my brief visit there, resembled a much prettier and warmer Toronto, which was charming. Anyways.
In other and better news, jogging is still fun. The best thing about being a winded maggot is that once you get going the payoffs are so immediate and dramatic; scarcely two weeks in and my tummy is already clefting in two in the promise of a future six-pack (I really don't want one though, I reckon they're ugly on girls - on boys too for that matter except for the ectomorph, heroin-addict types I think are just fucking beautiful during the last five days of my menstrual cycle - thanks for fucking me up in pre-pubescence, early 90's grunge) and I have more energy generally, although I'm just jogging 15 minutes a day, and that still in reps.
And another good thing about being here: the sub-tropical climate is fucking beautiful. I love it. It's perfect for me - the humidity makes my hair and skin feel like they've been let out of jail, the temperature is perfect, and I can wear sarongs and mumus all the time. And enjoy smoothies every morning - finally the right climate for it - and I've figured out that if you put some hot chili flakes into the smoothie it makes it a good bit better.
So complaining, complaining, and complaining will continue, and I doubt I've shed my last tears over the prospect of not seeing the moon over Barcelona from the Guell Park for many more years, but life is still better than a kick in the tits.
Visualizzazione post con etichetta Barcelona. Mostra tutti i post
Visualizzazione post con etichetta Barcelona. Mostra tutti i post
domenica, gennaio 16, 2011
mercoledì, aprile 22, 2009
Big Things in life
As we left tai chi last night, the sun was setting over the maison communale, bringing out all the lovely little eccentricities of the Art Nouveau neighborhood in a orange and golden light and basically looking enchanting, and I wondered, how could I be so keen on leaving Brussels? As I wondered, the F-word made spectacular last-minute save to stop me from stepping into a massive turd. Sigh. In the springtime, this city is like a beautiful, divinely sexy man with epic cock cheese - just as you're about to fall in love, or at least fuck, it disgusts you back down to earth. But I'm realizing, batshit as this place drives me, I'll miss it almost as soon as I leave.
In a more general sense, mild terror in my heart at the thought of leaving Europe. It's such a strange balance here that I've gone on about before, I think, but I will again. There are too many fucking people here and no solitude or fresh air - but there being too many people means there's a lot of man-made beauty and architecture. Australia looks even more backwards than Canada in that respect - they're even more into the Big Something things than we are, and I can't help but feel that basing your national landmarks on Big Things shows a certain lack of architectural and cultural imagination.
But then that leads into one of the complicating factors - sometimes it seems like the parts of Europe where I speak the language are out of ideas in that respect - that enjoying the Francophone and Italophone parts is like enjoying a museum - and everything that's been built since the last war is no more culturally daring than Ballina's Big Prawn. After all, the most recent successful tourist attraction here in Brussels has been the Big Iron Crystal - interesting, to me, mainly in terms of how the image copyright fight about it illustrates some of the more futile and ridiculous behaviour that gives Belgians their international reputation for stupidity.
And another complicating factor is that, despite being a bit of a snob, I really like Big Things. Hipster Irony Not Included. I love driving past the Big Apple on Highway 401. I love the Big Canada Goose in Wawa. I love the idea of a big fibreglass prawn. I couldn't tell you why. It just makes me feel good to look at them, and I'd go out of my way to look at them. I think it's because they're things people built so that other people would enjoy them, but I'm not sure. It just appeals to me, and I think it's the same emotion I felt when I was a little girl and got really excited about garbage trucks and dinosaurs, and there's something just as satisfying about that emotion, if I'm honest with myself, as there is at geeking on a magnificent building by Horta. Not Gaudi, though. Gaudi's religious. But he's only in Barcelona and we can't afford to live there.
In a larger sense , the upshot is there'll be a push-pull wherever I go. In the New World I'll miss the Old World, in the Old World I miss the New World. That's life. I may as well accept that it's always going to drive me crazy and always make me second-guess myself and my choices.
In a more general sense, mild terror in my heart at the thought of leaving Europe. It's such a strange balance here that I've gone on about before, I think, but I will again. There are too many fucking people here and no solitude or fresh air - but there being too many people means there's a lot of man-made beauty and architecture. Australia looks even more backwards than Canada in that respect - they're even more into the Big Something things than we are, and I can't help but feel that basing your national landmarks on Big Things shows a certain lack of architectural and cultural imagination.
But then that leads into one of the complicating factors - sometimes it seems like the parts of Europe where I speak the language are out of ideas in that respect - that enjoying the Francophone and Italophone parts is like enjoying a museum - and everything that's been built since the last war is no more culturally daring than Ballina's Big Prawn. After all, the most recent successful tourist attraction here in Brussels has been the Big Iron Crystal - interesting, to me, mainly in terms of how the image copyright fight about it illustrates some of the more futile and ridiculous behaviour that gives Belgians their international reputation for stupidity.
And another complicating factor is that, despite being a bit of a snob, I really like Big Things. Hipster Irony Not Included. I love driving past the Big Apple on Highway 401. I love the Big Canada Goose in Wawa. I love the idea of a big fibreglass prawn. I couldn't tell you why. It just makes me feel good to look at them, and I'd go out of my way to look at them. I think it's because they're things people built so that other people would enjoy them, but I'm not sure. It just appeals to me, and I think it's the same emotion I felt when I was a little girl and got really excited about garbage trucks and dinosaurs, and there's something just as satisfying about that emotion, if I'm honest with myself, as there is at geeking on a magnificent building by Horta. Not Gaudi, though. Gaudi's religious. But he's only in Barcelona and we can't afford to live there.
In a larger sense , the upshot is there'll be a push-pull wherever I go. In the New World I'll miss the Old World, in the Old World I miss the New World. That's life. I may as well accept that it's always going to drive me crazy and always make me second-guess myself and my choices.
lunedì, luglio 14, 2008
She's back, and this time, she's rested
It would be a big lie to say I'm happy to be back, but we had the good fortune to spend a night in Paris on the way home, so at least I'm happy to be in Brussels, which for all its imperfections is not and never will be Paris. Thank god. I'm not necessarily opposed to big cities, but I suppose because of my history there Paris makes me feel like a cockroach struggling through a pile of cockroaches. If we had gone straight from Barcelona to Brussels, it would have been torture. Like 90% of the adult population that's visited, I fell deeply in love with it - swallowed every one of its clichés hook, line and sinker and was hungry for more.
There were a lot of things I loved about it, but especially I fell in love with Gaudi, that beautiful batshit crazy man. Up at the Park Güell, I had a little cry as we gazed over the magic-mushroom-and-crucifix-ornamented houses to the city beyond. I think I was upset that the whole world couldn't live in Barcelona, or maybe that every city in the world didn't have an architect like Gaudi in it who could make such lovely spaces with such commonplace materials. There's just something so friendly about what he built - so welcoming and so sympathetic - that I couldn't believe it. Really called to mind that other batshit crazy man who I love, Hundertwasser. Though I suppose Hundertwasser didn't have Gaudi's sense of structure, and Gaudi didn't have Hundertwasser's sense of nonsense.
I know there's a cost factor involved, but it made me hate most modern designers and architects for their apparent inability to build things the people who use them find pleasant. Catalan modernists had an aesthetic humanity, or humility - they didn't seem to want to seem clever so much as massage your tired eyeballs, and cater to your need for something beautiful to look at. Domenech too - we couldn't believe our happy eyes when we saw the Saint Pau hospital. And as Robert Hughes wrote, unlike Sagrada Familia, that was finished in the architect's lifetime, and has done and will do far more good for the people of Barcelona than Sagrada Familia is ever likely to. Sagrada Familia is a can't miss, though . . . it's fascinating to see the work being carried out before you, and a real bafflement to try to figure out how the fuck it has been permitted to install some of the things that have been installed since Gaudi's death.
By the way, I sincerely recommend the Robert Hughes book I was going on about before I left, whether you intend to go to Barcelona or not - it's a great read. But if you do intend to go to Barcelona it's indispensable - like having a clever, sarcastic, enthusiastic friend whispering in your ear as you go from place to place. And he goes on about Gaudi better than I could. But there was one thing I wanted to mention that Gaudi did, to help him get those strange angles that make his arches and elements look weirdly alive - catenary string models. He would hang weighted arcs of string, appropriately connected to each other, photograph the intricate result and turn the photo upside down to get an approximation of what he could do to a roof that would allow it to bear its own weight. Fucking - fucking - genius. Pictures to follow.
There were a lot of things I loved about it, but especially I fell in love with Gaudi, that beautiful batshit crazy man. Up at the Park Güell, I had a little cry as we gazed over the magic-mushroom-and-crucifix-ornamented houses to the city beyond. I think I was upset that the whole world couldn't live in Barcelona, or maybe that every city in the world didn't have an architect like Gaudi in it who could make such lovely spaces with such commonplace materials. There's just something so friendly about what he built - so welcoming and so sympathetic - that I couldn't believe it. Really called to mind that other batshit crazy man who I love, Hundertwasser. Though I suppose Hundertwasser didn't have Gaudi's sense of structure, and Gaudi didn't have Hundertwasser's sense of nonsense.
I know there's a cost factor involved, but it made me hate most modern designers and architects for their apparent inability to build things the people who use them find pleasant. Catalan modernists had an aesthetic humanity, or humility - they didn't seem to want to seem clever so much as massage your tired eyeballs, and cater to your need for something beautiful to look at. Domenech too - we couldn't believe our happy eyes when we saw the Saint Pau hospital. And as Robert Hughes wrote, unlike Sagrada Familia, that was finished in the architect's lifetime, and has done and will do far more good for the people of Barcelona than Sagrada Familia is ever likely to. Sagrada Familia is a can't miss, though . . . it's fascinating to see the work being carried out before you, and a real bafflement to try to figure out how the fuck it has been permitted to install some of the things that have been installed since Gaudi's death.
By the way, I sincerely recommend the Robert Hughes book I was going on about before I left, whether you intend to go to Barcelona or not - it's a great read. But if you do intend to go to Barcelona it's indispensable - like having a clever, sarcastic, enthusiastic friend whispering in your ear as you go from place to place. And he goes on about Gaudi better than I could. But there was one thing I wanted to mention that Gaudi did, to help him get those strange angles that make his arches and elements look weirdly alive - catenary string models. He would hang weighted arcs of string, appropriately connected to each other, photograph the intricate result and turn the photo upside down to get an approximation of what he could do to a roof that would allow it to bear its own weight. Fucking - fucking - genius. Pictures to follow.
domenica, giugno 29, 2008
Uninterrupted barrage of awesomeness
So Barcelona is one of his non-shitty books! That having been said, he devotes a section to the Catalan scatological obsessions. Apparently both of Barcelona's rivers are named after the turds that used to float down them, rendering them undrinkable even 500 years ago. And in their Christmas Bethlehem créches, Catalans always include a figure of a peasant taking a big dump - the caganer.
This is the Robert Hughes I love - the one whose books read like a smooth, literate compilation of decades' worth of semi-naughty bar quizzes, with the occasional wordgasm over art and architecture. The timing is fantastic, too, because he devotes a big section to Barcelona's medieval history, which actually makes some contextual sense to me now thanks to the stoned wading through the Cantor book.
And besides getting me very, very excited for our rapidly approaching trip to Barcelona, the book has done a few of other useful things in just the first 120 pages:
1. Taught me two new words: labile and palimpsest.
2. Given me the Catalan-Aragonese oath of allegiance, which I'd heard and could never remember properly: 'We, who are as good as you, swear to you, who are no better than us, to accept you as our king and sovereign lord, provided you observe all our liberties and laws - but if not, not.'
3. Given some context to a story which has always stuck in my mind of a medieval Spanish playboy who stalks a beautiful lady; before he can accost her properly she turns to him and bares breasts that have been hideously disfigured by cancer.
That playboy was Ramon Llull, and the woman was one of his real attempted conquests or one of his hallucinations, depending on who you listen to. Llull was a cleverboots who had the revolutionary idea that efforts to convert Muslims and Jews to Christianity should be made through rational argument, rather than, you know, the other ways. Consequently he believed that missionaries should be educated about their philosophies, languages and religions.
4. Given me this sentence about an awful dance club in the city: 'Mariscal and Arribas set out to make your big night on the town an uninterrupted barrage of the clichés of PoMo irony - as though Philippe Starck at his most morbid teamed up with Peter Eisenman at his most hostile to do the sets for Pee-wees's Playhouse.' That sentence alone makes up for the uninterrupted barrage of crap which was Things I Didn't Know.
This is the Robert Hughes I love - the one whose books read like a smooth, literate compilation of decades' worth of semi-naughty bar quizzes, with the occasional wordgasm over art and architecture. The timing is fantastic, too, because he devotes a big section to Barcelona's medieval history, which actually makes some contextual sense to me now thanks to the stoned wading through the Cantor book.
And besides getting me very, very excited for our rapidly approaching trip to Barcelona, the book has done a few of other useful things in just the first 120 pages:
1. Taught me two new words: labile and palimpsest.
2. Given me the Catalan-Aragonese oath of allegiance, which I'd heard and could never remember properly: 'We, who are as good as you, swear to you, who are no better than us, to accept you as our king and sovereign lord, provided you observe all our liberties and laws - but if not, not.'
3. Given some context to a story which has always stuck in my mind of a medieval Spanish playboy who stalks a beautiful lady; before he can accost her properly she turns to him and bares breasts that have been hideously disfigured by cancer.
That playboy was Ramon Llull, and the woman was one of his real attempted conquests or one of his hallucinations, depending on who you listen to. Llull was a cleverboots who had the revolutionary idea that efforts to convert Muslims and Jews to Christianity should be made through rational argument, rather than, you know, the other ways. Consequently he believed that missionaries should be educated about their philosophies, languages and religions.
4. Given me this sentence about an awful dance club in the city: 'Mariscal and Arribas set out to make your big night on the town an uninterrupted barrage of the clichés of PoMo irony - as though Philippe Starck at his most morbid teamed up with Peter Eisenman at his most hostile to do the sets for Pee-wees's Playhouse.' That sentence alone makes up for the uninterrupted barrage of crap which was Things I Didn't Know.
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