ANY GIVEN TUESDAY

both pois café and café tati are closed on mondays, but having missed them just means more reason to go back. kaffeehaus might have been open, but my things had already been deposited in a coin locker at the station beyond the praça de espanha and so it was away from rua anchieta and back to the place on cruzes da sé. and it was probably for the best that i had a tea with my cake instead of a second cup of coffee -- which, if you ask them, they'll serve you in a really big mug at that place on cruzes da sé (just up an easy hill and around a bend from pois). as it was, even after sharing that bottle of wine and having a beer with the sandwiches i made from the bread and things i bought from the convenience store, i was still in a panic at the station throughout the hour i spent between opening the coin locker and finally deciding not to change my ticket. and it's possible that the melancholy of that night has just lingered, or that maybe it's just finally setting in, although it could be too that after passing two consecutive sundays evenings in such oblivious enjoyment it was just time that the melancholy caught up. it sounds as if the architectural association is going to change its name to something less hazardously abbreviated, and at the party i met someone else for whom the city recalls san francisco. and it might also have been the aftereffects of the party, but it's good that today was off for the commemoration of the establishment of the autonomous community of andalusia, because that at least made it easier to explain away not straying too far from bed. for a tuesday, it was almost overwhelmingly infused with that sunday feeling. lucky for me that the things that needed doing needed a day spent not so far from bed. and that may not mean what you think although it turns out after i write it that there's an irony there (although not necessarily in my bed), and although, ironically, it meant not straying too far from bed, i would like the record to reflect that i showed up for my part of the job.

A TALE OF TWO CHAUVINISMS

the beer is better in portugal. ...right: the beer is better in portugal than in spain. or, rather: the worst beer available in any given restaurant in lisbon is much better (and more varied, which is to say there exists a variety) than the only thing they're probably serving (which is to say cruzcampo) at any restaurant in seville. and in portugal they'll serve you your better than bad beer -- which does have the potential to be very good -- in a u.s. pint glass (and for no more than twice -- but probably much less than -- what they'd charge in seville for your eight ounce glass of mostly cruzcampo foam). just don't try to order it in spanish, because that's not what they speak in portugal (even if they'll tell you in spanish that, no, they speak portuguese). and of course they shouldn't have to, but one might be hard pressed not to be nonplussed at why english passes more easily on the streets than that other unspeakable language from the peninsula. (you can also try your hand at butchering french, the older portuguese understand it well.) for their part, the passing spanish tourists (and the andalucians are particularly unmistakable) are happy not to speak anything at all.

the coffee, i have to admit, is better in portugal as well. they must just make it better -- or it might just be fresher in the cafés in the port city than in the cities of inland spain. after all, the coffees produced in the countries of either former colonial empire have their respective merits. no, portugal did not invent the astrolabe, but the portuguese certainly used it to amazing effect. and alfonso x (the wise) knew that there was going to be some serious competition on the peninsula and ordered the construction of the reales ataranzas in seville for the building of his fleet -- the year before he captured the algarve (and gave it back as soon as portugal acceded to marrying his daughter), and well before spain (no, it was portugal!) discovered most of the rest of the fucking world. as soon as the moors were out, the race was on to see which emerging nation could make itself the better, grander, more sophisticated -- while also the most artisanally authentic -- even if it was impossible to distinguish the two on the basis of sovereign ruler. the king of spain and portugal was half the time getting elected the king of germany too, but that's just christendom for you. the people on the ground were still busy making their daily bread the best they could, regardless of who was sitting on which throne (and i have to admit that the bread is much, much better in portugal).

it makes a kind of funny sense that it was the treaty of lisbon that established the most recent constitutional basis for the european union, the establishment of which was based on the hope that europe shouldn't have to fight within itself any longer, and the result of which on the iberian peninsula appears to have been a simple shift away from the game of kings to a game of passive aggressive economic and cultural one-upmanship. spain pretends not to care. that's the privilege of the wealthier player (and spain should know because it's playing on the opposite side in a similar game with france). but the two newest democracies of western europe do seem to have something especially bitter behind their disregard for each other, and if portugal has been generally poorer, maybe that's just the price it's had to pay for being proud of actually deposing its dictatorship instead of just letting it die and then passing the reins. lisbon, as it were, has the better view.

this is dinner conversation. and yes, the food is good in portugal, but it isn't exactly what you could call cuisine, and i make that appeal to reason to the frenchman across from whom i'm dining, but he refuses to acquiesce. i don't care, he's only been to barcelona, and we all know that catalonia might as well be france (or portugal). but surely he must understand my point. that restaurant on the alameda, i tell him, was perfectly fine, it was even rather good. the portuguese were only complaining to complain (and even the portuguese said so). but no, he complains, he's tired of being greeted and thanked in spanish because that really isn't at all what he speaks (although he does speak all three languages of portugal). ok. i just thought he should know, you know, because chauvin was french. and we decamp.

later, on the streets of bairro alto, it's true: the spanish aren't doing much to make a better reputation for themselves. the neighborhood is still, in general, a bit shabby (if charmingly so), and the andalucians have felt enough at home comport themselves that way and disturb the native calm. but it might not be long before the neighborhood gets the treatment. for their part, the portuguese seem to have fostered a national complex after the earthquake that leveled the central flats of lisbon in 1755. the city and the country might need to be rebuilt at any moment, and so the city and the country are full of architects. but the frenchman doesn't find it at all funny when i point out that for all its english education and proud internationalism portugal wasn't able to supply its national association of architects with a design consultant that could keep it from emblazoning its headquarters all over with such suspectly nondescript aa's.

ugh. so not that i really have any allegiance one way or the other, but when the man trying to sell me oversize sunglasses between the bars hears mention of seville and smiles "de mi alma" in my direction i decide to give him two euro just because. it might not have been quite the grand gesture in spain, but at the bars in bairro alto two euro can buy quite a bit of better than bad beer. and after a couple of hours of drinking on the people watch, the borrowed rivalry between the frenchman and i is friendly again, but it doesn't mean that the game isn't still on. ultimately, what's two euro to me. i mean, you're the ones who didn't have fireworks at christmas.

maybe it's because it's carnaval weekend and the harder party-ers are off in setúbal or sesimbra, but the crowded, narrow streets of bairro alto on a saturday night are strangely bucolic. i wonder out loud if in a similar situation of drunken outdoor proximity there wouldn't already have been a riot were we in spain. but it isn't as if the portuguese are silent, and there are signs of protests and demonstrations planned for throughout the weekend. beer may still be cheap in portugal, but that's not exactly the reality of the austerities. lisbon isn't just taking to the streets at night. and neither, for its part, is spain. even beyond the noise of the valencian spring, sanitation workers are fighting city hall in seville and the agricultural unions are demonstrating for strict control of the use of transgenic seeds in front of the andalucian parliament building. not that the portuguese and the spanish are so ready to admit that they might be in the same boat (or to agree on which is the better boat builder), but there's no denying that french-portuguese or american-spanish, we might all soon be greek.

MORNING WOULD

"in spring it is the dawn," begins the pillow book, "[it is the dawn] that is most beautiful. as the light creeps over the hills, their outlines are dyed a faint red and wisps of purplish cloud trail over them." it goes without saying that sei shōnagon, the court lady who served empress teishi in heian japan at the turn of the eleventh century, had never seen the light of dawn creep over the hills of lisbon. she wouldn't have known lisbon at all -- but then neither had i apart from having heard more than once that it was a city in which to lose oneself. and so i did. and i started early, so to speak, as the light of dawn was creeping over the hills, dying them a faint red as they were, at the same time, trailed over by wisps of purplish cloud making their way toward the other side of the water. the night bus is always a risky proposition as the promise of saving time by sleeping en route to the bus' destination is, at best (usually -- which is to say if you're lucky), only restlessly fulfilled, and the afternoon hours of the following day are spent wondering whether it would have been better to have wasted the afternoon of the day before in transit instead of having to agonize over rallying the strength to stay awake and enjoy the one in front of you. and then enjoying the night might mean a next morning even more vicious than the previous afternoon. but in spring (and for sei shōnagon, whose writing was done under the influence of the lunar calendar, the spring meant february), it is the dawn that is the most beautiful; and even if the weather isn't permitting of literary analogies, the night bus is, for all of its potential hazards, always the perfect way to meet the city at dawn. and even if on through successive encounters she turns out to be not exactly what you'd thought her to be at first, the city at dawn is yours for falling in love (with), with all the naivety of wanting just to fall in love. and in the dim light of dawn, with hardly anyone else on the streets to interrupt the playing out of her fantasy, she accepts you touching her, clumsily, perhaps, but well intentioned -- excited but respectful -- before any of her better acquaintances (or the internet) have a chance to fill you in on her history and her reputation and perhaps thereby ruin the better image of herself she'd helped you create in your shared romantic imagination. that image, of course (of course), could get better too in time, but for the time it's nice to imagine. to fall in love with...anything. and although the hilled streets that every so often (but each time sooner than you would have expected) open onto narrow vistas of the water, and the streetcars, and the big, red suspension bridge that leads over onto the wooded hills across the water are all reminiscent of past romances (not to mention the open arms of the redeemer), i try to keep myself to the possibilities of the moment. and that moment is silent in the glow of the creeping light until the silence is gradually broken as i approach someone playing his guitar at the edge of a ridge that drops from one neighborhood onto another. then the guitar player too falls into silence as i accidentally kick an empty glass bottle over the paving stones of the park and off the ridge. then a group of three passes behind me and in front of the art nouveau lampposts outside the gate of the whatever building and i take that as a cue to take myself down another hill. and the two policemen at the top of the hill above the tiered staircase where i stop to take a picture of my shadow in the faint red light think i'm suspicious. i would like, anyway, to think that they think i'm suspicious. i would be anything for love. but the light is getting stronger and there are more people on the streets, one of which i take and it takes me in front of the four seasons, and i wonder if i'm not too poor to be going for a love like this one, or maybe, rather, that my love is cheap. there is, however, enough exuberance left in the morning -- or just enough, rather -- to keep hope alive. before the gathering crowds on the streets remind you that you've only dismissed the pain in your feet for the aching in your knees and that your face has been all night on the night bus and wouldn't stand for loving anywhere, before your image of that very real love -- even if it was only imagined -- is ruined (and it's possible that it will be ruined by you, that you are ruining it), you need to immortalize it in correspondence. before it's ruined, you can tell them that it was beautiful to be in love with the city before it was ruined. there are places selling cards and places to sit, and inside you can't see that the hills are completely illuminated, but you can imagine it, and the contrast of the full morning light with the faint red and the purple wisps of your clumsy good intentions fills the morning now completely with the exuberance of a fond -- if clusmy (but well intentioned) -- longing. a dawn like that one could only give way to a morning like this one, even if its exuberance doesn't stand a chance against the afternoon. and this kind of morning would -- it can't but not, because this is your love story -- be conducive to grand, sweeping lines. they'll believe them if you do, even if you won't later believe them yourself. but this morning would. and in spring, i hear myself say it knowing that i might wish the line annihilated later along with my exuberance. in spring...cruzes credo...in spring it is the dawn.

MEN AT WORK

comparative chauvinism contest. who ruled the world first? who can name the face? details after the weekend.

HOW TO SURVIVE THE GREAT SOUTHWEST FREEZE

of course the swedes insisted that the weather was fine -- it's been an average of minus twenty where they had come from -- and their countrypeople, or at least the people of whatever countries send their rowers to train on the guadalquivir in the winter, were out training today like on any other on the river that never freezes. still, even if the southwestern end of the iberian peninsula wasn't blessed with the curse of unexpected snow, the second siberian cold front did have temperatures below freezing for the second consecutive weekend in seville, which was enough to get the people talking about the freakish weather -- and talking, freakishly, inside. so maybe it was just the freak coincidence of so few people being out on the streets that made the trip so lonely for the woman from bilbao last weekend, but it is also true that it can be difficult to get sevillians to open up and talk about anything but the weather -- even under non-freak circumstances. and so she talked to the "interesting" looking...american (was what he turned out to be)...at the cafe. she's gone back to the basque country, though (where it actually did snow), leaving seville behind to talk with itself about the weather. sometimes there's just not much else. the dance show at cicus on thursday, even if the dancer was undeniably talented and the choreography undeniably "interesting," was just too reminiscent of the cliched modernism of the cafe scene from "funny face." (although you know you know people who would have really liked it.) he was even in all black, just like the swedes when they left for the rock show at fun club (jesus christ, seville), but it's only fair to suppose that maybe the dancer's palette was an aspect of the flamenco he incorporated into his performance. and, undeniably, the flamenco touches worked in places, although the symphonic piece to which the choreography was set seemed to limit a flamenco interpretation rather than encourage it. and what was the music, they ask when you say that you might rather have listened to a symphony play it than watch the dancer dance to a recording. but although the performance was titled "le badinage," the music as you recall it wasn't anything like the baroque piece by that same title by marin marais. not to worry, because it suffices to say that the performance wasn't bad, and it also happens to happen that the discovery of marais turns out to be the perfect soundtrack to another cold friday night at home.

EN TORNO DEL ARTE...Y COSAS; or, SIN TÍTULO (subtítulo: LAS ADICCIÓNES)

por casualidad, yo estoy en girona con un amigo arreglando unas cosas de su herencia, y como hace unos años que no hemos quedado, llamo a javier cercas para pedirle una reunión. nos conocimos en el funeral de roberto bolaño, y aunque no puedo decir que seamos amigos, él siempre ha estado dispuesto a responder a mis peticiones de consejo. él contesta al teléfono. ya sé que va a decirme que tiene mucho que hacer para preparar para sus clases en la universidad, pero sé también que él nunca va a rechazar una invitación para ir a le bistrot.

cuando llego después del mediodia del día siguiente, cercas ya está sentado en un velador con una cerveza en la mano. hace sol en la escalera que sube hacia la universidad, y yo le pido si podemos sentarnos un rato afuera. me dice que sí. la verdad es que me molesta el sol del mediodia en la cara, y aunque he oido que cercas sigue intentando dejar de fumar, yo sé que voy a querer un cigarro cuando el camarero me traiga el café. yo lo enciendo mientras cercas está diciendome algo sobre un estudiante suyo que le parece completamente inutil para hacer un curso de literatura. no he fumado desde que vine a girona y sé que probablemente el cigarro va a ponerme nervioso. tampoco he tomado cafeina. pero de todas formas me pongo nervioso pensando en que probablemente voy a parecerle tan inutil como su estudiante cuando le diga a cercas que de repente he vuelto incapaz de escribir. así que, pienso, por qué no con el cigarro? de hecho, con mi café y el cigarro podría desempeñar mejor el papel del artista frustrado, y luego puedo unirme a cercas en unas cervezas. hoy me da igual la comida.

todavía no se ha consumido la mitad del cigarro cuando cercas me dice que ha invitado a otra persona, a una amiga suya que también se queda en girona unos días por casualidad. pfft. qué…casualidad? pero no. yo no conozco las peliculas de isabel coixet. y no: “vicky cristina barcelona” es de woody allen. mierda. eso yo lo sabía. menos mal que he preguntado de antemano. ¿pero qué voy a hacer con mis consultas cuando llegue ella?

y cuando hace su aparición bajando la escalera yo inmediatemente lamento haber llevado mis gafas. estoy seguro de que le parezco como uno de los pateticos artistas frustrados que quieren afectar un aire como el de la directora española isabel coixet. me levanto y le doy la mano. lo lamento inmediatemente y me disculpo. soy americano. me siento y después de pedir una cerveza al camarero fumo otro cigarro. y después de llegar la cerveza fumo un otro.

hablamos. hablamos sobre el arte y…cosas. pero en realidad estoy sentado, callando mientras hablan los dos. de la nada cercas me pregunta si puede usar mi nombre para algún personaje en una nueva obra. no sé si ha intentado asustarme o si quiere que contribuya más a la conversación, pero no quiero discutirlo y así que le digo que sí. coixet bebe un trago de su vino. yo pido otra cerveza.

vamos dentro para coger un sitio para comer antes del café se llene de los colegas de cercas. coixet pide otro vino del camarero. yo pido otra cerveza y dejo a cercas pedir la comida. cercas y coixet conversan hasta que coixet, que debe haber sabido por cercas que yo vivía en japón, me pregunta qué pienso sobre los japoneses, pero yo no sé qué piensa ella ni he visto su película sobre ellos y por eso le digo que no mucho. la comida tarda mucho tiempo llegar. yo estoy sentando, callando, mirando uno de los grandes espejos y pensando en por qué no he podido responder a una cuestión tan simple y seguir con la conversación.

llega más gente y llega la comida. no voy a poder consultar a cercas sobre mis problemas pero, bueno, la comida está muy rica, y si de todas formas yo voy a tener que pagar la comida debo poder sentirme cómodo. voy a disfrutar lo que pueda. pienso, pero tan pronto como he tomado esa decision, coixet me pregunta otra cosa. me dice que como yo había llamado a cercas porque quería pedirle su consejo, me deja con él a solas. ¿no? te dejo hablar un rato con él, dice. pero no, digo, no hace falta, es que…es que…no sé. y ahora el camarero le trae otro vino y lo pone sobre la mesa enfrente de coixet. y ella bebe un trago grande. me dice: ya eres demasiado viejo para morir joven. si tú quieres hacer algo, cualquier cosa, tienes que quitarte ese estúpido miedo.

"LO VERDADERO Y LO VEROSÍMIL"; or, QUÉ HA PASADO CON EL COMUNISMO: CODA

the curbside parking spaces are too large to think that drivers should need help managing their vehicles into any one of them (especially drivers accustomed to driving in central seville), but the aparcadores are busy directing the drivers into the spaces nonetheless, and they collect a few coins in finders' fees for their halfhearted gestures of guidance as the drivers walk away from those spaces that they could have easily found themselves, understanding that the situation with the aparcadores is one from which it's better just to pay and walk away. later, a pile of coins will hold up the closing time line at the grocery store as a cashier totals the change to see how many liter bottles of beer the pile will buy. it's interesting to wonder about the same as i'm on my way to the import bottle shop. but there isn't space for street parking on that stretch of jesús del gran poder. one twelve ounce bottle of american ipa costs about the same as six liters of the grocery store's off brand lager. i need two for the picnic.

we're walking on the east bank of the river looking for a spot to lay the blanket, and i ask what's taking the new public library so long to open as we pass it. she says there's a problem with the name. felipe gonzález márquez is sevillano, but the spanish president was also the secretary general of the socialist party, and the psoe no longer controls city hall. it's a curious coincidence to see gonzález a few hours later at the contemporary art center, speaking with the king seated next to him in a video taken at the universal exhibition of ninety-two for which the city developed the isla de cartuja. before the exhibition site was developed, cartuja was only the monastery, which was then a ceramic factory and is now the contemporary art center. most of the exhibition site remains a modern ruin, but the video of gonzález is not being projected in the lara almarcegui exhibit on urban wild spaces but in the larger, general exhibit on contemporary urbanism. who knows what would have happened after franco if juan carlos hadn't supported the transition to democracy (which included the legalization of the communist party in 1977), but it also isn't difficult to imagine that he and gonzález might have had different ideas on how to manage the fears of the people as they sat next to each other on that stage in cartuja on that day in nineteen ninety-two.

it's too dark to see much on the walk back, but the walls on the east side of the east bank esplanade are covered in street art. some of it was even sponsored by the city. the police that guard the closed gates around the felipe gonzález márquez library by night don't hassle the taggers by day, even now after the keys to the city have been passed. the tags on the buildings in the city center are much cruder. they're graffiti. if things hadn't gotten so difficult in the rest of the world, maybe things wouldn't have gotten so hard for zapatero. the warning that socialism lies isn't far down the street from the reproof that seville was a slave to the psoe (and somewhere along the way anarchism won as well). i would like maybe to be thinking something insightful about, say, the aparcadores when she asks me about the primaries in the united states, but i'm focused on something else. there's another piece of graffiti, and even if it has nothing to do with the others and it's not at all reflective of any sevillian or spanish sentiment in general (which, most likely, it's not), it's horribly unamerican. maybe it was gonzález, and maybe that's why they won't let his library open. and he was speaking so optimistically in that video. i don't want to call her attention to it although i do think it might be funny. yes. i do. "it's my fault."