THE RAIN IN SPAIN, part 2

the season has now certainly changed. after one week of autumn gave us respite from the oppressiveness of late summer, the winter-- as it seems here -- seems here to stay. that’s what they told us would happen, and, sure enough, now the thermometers dip under fifty during the night (if the thermometers here work, which isn’t to be expected because none of the clocks do), and even the midday sun can’t raise temperatures much above eighty. but there are chills in the air (if exaggerated to justify a citywide change of wardrobe), and, even if they don’t ever manage to stick around for the entirety of a day, there are clouds, and those clouds, the winter clouds of which we were warned, make rain.

monday morning, it squalled until almost noon, and the sun wasn’t able to reassert itself until after two o’clock, at which time it had already had to resign itself to being the background image for the day’s entry in the weather tables. but the rain stayed away on tuesday -- perhaps because the home team had another late away game. on wednesday though, despite a clear and brisk morning that warmed into a perfect afternoon, the rains made a late evening appearance, and, since those rains weren’t of the southern spanish variety as we’d come to know them but rather more akin to an all too familiar lingering spray, we walked.

and on the way down calle san luis, a friend, and it was one of those nights on which you would have needed one; or i did, anyway, and this one, from paris, invited me into her nearby apartment for tea, tea and cookies, french ones flavored like orange flowers, which were the perfect compliment to her artistically rustic apartment, straight out of montmartre, at least as far as I knew from that movie, having never actually been inside an apartment in montmartre. But we did talk about movies, the spanish ones she’d bought that day along with some books of spanish poetry, although none by poets with whom i was familiar.

we did, however, get around to one I knew, or, rather, we’ll get around to him here, because in that conversation with that parisian friend i hadn’t the temperance (mind you, though, we were only drinking tea) to admit that i hadn’t much enjoyed paris the one time that i had been there, if only because on my self-guided the-life-and-times-of-andre gide reality tour i’d been so disappointed not to find any sort of commemoration in the rue de…medici?...where gide was born that I’d spent most of the rest of my time there reading (holding strong to a twenty-two year old’s prideful grudge) in the luxembourg gardens in (both the good and the bad kinds of) ironic protest.

and it happened this week that i spent a considerable amount of time looking for a book, a book called ocnos by an author named luis cernuda who was born in sevilla, had been a colleague of lorca’s and all the rest of those, had gone into exile after the beginning of the civil war and taught in the united states, but most applicably had been an avid admirer of gide’s and whose work, as a result, was typified by an undeniable frankness when it came to matters of desire. (i was assured by a friend after complaining that i hadn’t been able to find the book at any of the stores i’d visited that no bookstore in sevilla didn’t have a copy and that i all i needed to have done was ask. i did end up asking, and in fact there wasn’t a copy at the bookstore where i swallowed my pride and asked after book in spanish with demonstratedly poor communication skills in that language. the book wasn’t there, but i did manage to gather that cernuda was a poet and not a novelist -- as i’d assumed when whoever it was had made me the recommendation -- and then found ocnos -- granted, a collection of poems in prose -- at the next bookstore i tried.)

but it wasn’t until this morning that i realized what i hadn’t realized until then, that i’d known cernuda’s name before i’d known it, or had read it at least, when i’d happened on a commemorative plaque in calle acetres weeks before and stopped to attempt a read, if only out of respect for the city’s efforts to commemorate things with plaques. when i saw the same plaque today, having set out with an address specifically with a mind to laying eyes on the commemoration before writing anything about it, i recognized it, and the sign for the crystal dealer above it, and then nothing, i guess, nothing except for the ridiculously unprofound realization that i would have remained in the city to read my copy of ocnos had sevilla been proud of its significance or not -- and then a bit of embarrassment at my poor treatment of paris.

or maybe i won’t read my copy of ocnos, because in my excitement over having found one i bought it without much consideration, and the one that i bought is spectacularly white with luxuriously wide margins. for what it cost, i’d already decided not to mark it up, even for the sake of exercising my spanish education, and i’m at a complete loss as to how to keep myself from soiling that spectacular whiteness (the bad kind of ironic protest), especially since i’ve become accustomed to reading in parks, which, here, don’t provide any shelter from the rain.

somehow, though, (ironically?) the rains and the winter have brought the parrots back to town, parrots about which we were also warned, but weren’t prepared to be prepared for until april when they come back north and are said to occasionally drop lucky feathers from the trees. and the palm trees in the plaza de san lorenzo were full of them this afternoon, although they weren’t dropping any feathers. now, in the present season, they’re on their way out. the parrots have to leave. and if i wasn’t struck by any profundity other than that of my own silliness at seeing cernuda’s commemorative plaque earlier in the day, i did open my notebook to where i’d copied its inscription and thought about…something. “el poeta ejemplar de amor, el dolor y exilio.” what’s someone have to do to get remembered with words like those? And i thought…something, something much better than simpering about those stupid birds.