SPRING FEVER ESPAÑOLA, part 2; or, DONDE ESTAN LOS TODOS CHICOS AT, part whatever

they were all hiding at the factory stores. and don't ask, because i have no idea what cruel twist of temp agency fate condemned them to the side of the highway by the coca-cola depot (and the awesome farm with the hay bale towers that look like the ruins of a cappadocian termite city). but don't worry, because reason or not for their being there, there's a free bus that will take you to visit. and you'll probably want the roberto verino jackets too, but half off still means a hundred and fifty euros, and your friend didn't spend so much on gas that you feel quite so obligated. and even if there's no zara, the rest of the conglomerate's brands are available in an array of price-quality combinations. the jackets at lefties ain't got nothing on the roberto verinos, but damn if they don't fit with unexpected smartness nonetheless, and even if you don't think that polyester is worth the thirty-seven euros, you might as well ask the sale staff for some help getting another size or color out of one of the displays. and damn if those asses aren't doing a fine job of filling out the back of them pants (which aren't from lefties). bend and stretch. do they recommend that their customers buy their shirts as small? theirs probably wouldn't button at the neck, but it's better that they're open anyway. these guys must have done something wrong though you're sure. unless they've been sent to model jail wrongly accused. there's another strip of conglomerate stores at the mall in front of the stadium, and i have no idea who would have to do what to get to work in one of those. but i'm distracted by the wave of barcelona jerseys heading the opposite direction down the avenue. they get their two goals in twenty-five minutes, but i don't realize that the home team had played the international favorites until the late night television recap. piqué did those ads for the recently relaunched menswear line by mango, but the mango store at the outlet mall only has stuff for women. well, here in seville we only buy galician anyway. and who dresses guardiola? "our love," scream the fans. but it's probably more like his wife's... shit, though, did he just throw a water bottle at one of the medics? and in our own house. and i start thinking about insurance, but less because of the dangers posed by visiting football clubs than because of the commercial. if i buy from bbva, maybe iker will ask for my autograph too...

SPRING FEVER ESPAÑOLA

after the concert, at dinner with the quartet, it wasn’t difficult to convince the musicians that i was crazy. and that without even having gone through with the plan to convince them that i was a concert pianist. it’s in the air. but i would have had trouble feeling embarrassed in front of a group of classical musicians living in vienna, because even if i hadn’t my own concert career, i had read “the piano teacher” (and seen the movie too). who were they to think me strange? it was true, however, that i didn’t know anything about the music. but for the second consecutive week i hadn’t managed to get myself to the free monday night “pianos de la primavera” concert at the san bernardo campus of the university, and so i felt happily obliged to accept an invitation to one of the performances in the contemporary music festival happening at teatro central. and just crossing the barqueta is much easier than walking all the way to nervión. although we must not have seen the programs as we were going in. thankfully though, the woman on the viola announced as soon as the musicians were on the stage that the program had been shuffled and that two of the quartet’s regular members had been replaced by substitutes. at least we’d be somewhat less less prepared. but then, and whether it came from the audience or from the stage (from a musician or from his or her instrument), then apparently there was the fart. and she started laughing…and so i did as well. not having identified the sound as such myself i laughed because she did…and moved my glasses to my knee so that i could cover my face with my hands to wipe the tears and stifle the sounds. but without my glasses I wasn’t able to focus on the movements of the musicians, which made the stifling easier but not my appreciation of the show. how was something like this (meaning any of the four pieces played by the four musicians) scored? with stage direction? (how the musicians moved as they played was apparently just as important as what they were playing, and, to be honest, i wouldn’t have purchased the soundtrack to listen to.) but was the moth flying in the heavy white light stage light above the quartet throughout the two pieces before the intermission part of the act? the broken bowstring so deftly removed and cast away by the woman on the first violin? this is what i asked at the intermission in order to gauge the stupidity of the questions before putting them to the musicians themselves (although i more or less approximated answers to most of them for myself when the woman on the first violin showed me the score to the final piece at the restaurant.) still, we had the second half of the performance to go and needed to comport ourselves intelligently after having met the festival programmer. but regardless of how the majority of the crowd seemed (to want) to interpret it, the man on the cello was hilarious in that one scene. and this time it was the woman behind us who started laughing, and this time i decided to let myself enjoy it. i mean, it was funny. we were the ones with our tickets paid for and invited to eat with the quartet. (don’t look at me like that: it’s funny.) but i did feel bad for the young man sitting next to the woman who started the wave in act two, surrounded by laughers but finding nothing funny himself. he, however, took advantage of the muffled noise to try to muffle the noise of his opening a bag of something much ruder than a laugh (if the laughter was rude at all). then i though i’d take advantage and try to silence him by reaching back and grabbing his crotch (were these pieces maybe scored for audience participation?). but for as much as i realized right then how much the first piece had made me focus on his package where it was behind my left shoulder one riser up, i also realized in my contemplation that i had become particularly sensitive to smells and that the smells in the theater seemed to have made me sick. i needed to be careful: i might already be pregnant. it was in the air. but it would seem that with these things, as with most, you like what you like and you don’t what you don’t. more specifically in this case, you hear what you want. “um, i don’t think you’re listening.” “no,” she said, “this is the man with whom…” “no…no. this is the men’s restroom. you probably shouldn’t follow me in.”

THE STREET WHERE WE LIVE

calles torres, gonzález cuadrado, divina pastora, pedro miguel, clavellinas, infantes (and then right onto infantes and left onto infantes) onto calle castellar onto espiritu santo, jog left onto sister ángela de la cruz, right onto alcázares onto plaza de la encarnación. off the plaza to the southeast and onto that one street with the cluster of boutiques and that street art outfitter before there's the one interesting looking restaurant with the white stools and then the bars just north of plaza de la alfalfa. plaza de la alfalfa where the one guy, that is, some guy who works at bar whatever is playing the typical sevillano and tearing into some other guy (a customer?) about how could he not be familiar with santa cruz. for all he's concerned, there's only that neighborhood and nervión, which is where that other guy should go and see the stadium, the stadium where sevilla f.c. plays, because for all he's concerned (the first guy) there are only two teams in spain, sevilla...and...barcelona? on down toward santuario (fuck santuario) and left onto cuesta de rosario, leaving behind all of the women who've left work early to get a late start beginning the fittings for their feria dresses. straight hipster tapas, gay hipster pizza. calle argote de molina? (abades goes further down behind the cathedral.) the alley of the texas lone star with the view of the giralda. the fountain. plaza del triunfo! (and then right onto plaza del triunfo and left onto plaza del triunfo.) miguel mañara? ...vincent van gogh? avenida de la constitución. to the right, down the grand avenue behind the puerta de jerez, a grand view of the torre de oro. ha. coño de. was the center so picaresque before? around the back of the hotel alfonso xiii (almost refurbished) and left across the entryway to the san telmo palace, a statue of velázquez balanced on the opposite side of the entryway with one of daoiz. (daoiz appears again in plaza de gavidia, but which plaza belongs to velázquez?) in the park across the avenida de roma a statue of cayetana, which someone has graciously labelled for spanish speaking tourists as seville's monument to inequality. palos de la frontera! almost to portugal. across maria luisa and into the park. was the architect of the plaza de españa the same as the one who did all those buildings in nervión? the occupied church? la catolica. and then we've arrived. it's the street where we live. and his bust faces the plaza through the trees. to his left the three graces, seated, swoon at each other's shoulders as cupid takes aim. to his right, cupid, aged, dead by his own hand: the third grace, the love that dies. the man himself, thirty-four when he died. the poet dies young, looking old for his age. the park was so beautiful in memory -- and almost perfect in its presence -- but nothing makes a good picture. the buildings and the pillars and the fountain of the plaza de las americas: too much sky. the shade plantains. too much shade? but still, outside of this sunlight, was the city ever so beautiful? the love that lives...although they've drained the moat around the bird island. fountain maintenance. la catolica. palos de la frontera. avenida de la constitución...

LA KOUTOUBIA

the design for the tower of the koutoubia mosque in marrakesh was not based on the tower of the mosque in córdoba. if i had ever seen it, i wouldn't have made the bet, she said. as it turns out, the tower of the koutoubia served as the model for the design of the giralda in seville, and it goes without saying that having seen the both of them i probably shouldn't have made the bet. i was nonetheless sure that i had read something or other about córdoba in one or another explanation of the history of the koutoubia, and as it turns out (or as i remember reading in one or another description of the koutoubia on the internet after i lost the bet), the pulpit of the koutoubia mosque was in fact built in córdoba, and the order for the building of the entire structure was handed down by abd al-mu'min, the first caliph of the almohad empire, which by the time the building of the koutoubia was first ordered in 1147 might have been on its way to having its capital at córdoba as well. my memory, evidently, isn't perfect. still, it was true that i hadn't seen the mosque (the mosque-cathedral) in córdoba, and i'd lost the bet so i thought that i should.

we didn't set out for there directly upon arriving to the city, but all the roads in the center of the old city more or less lead there -- with a guide, anyway -- and the route we took to the plaza that might as well have been the alameda of córdoba led us directly past the ruins of the roman temple. before the mosque-cathedral was a mosque, the visgoths had something there, but for whatever reason they decided to start their own tradition and build closer to the river than the romans had. the government of córdoba at one point found the site of the roman temple suitable enough, however, and it was on the plot adjacent where it built its current city hall, a middling sized building in the architectural tradition of the developers who filled florida with resorts and retirement communities in the second half of the last century. across the street, the wall painted with the anti-capitalist mural has been re-tagged with an anarchist love poem made of letters from a label maker. also, something in french.

the pillars and foundation of the roman temple in córdoba certainly form something more easily imagined into a complete structure than the three pillars near the giralda that were apparently once part of the much grander roman temple that once stood in the city that is now seville. but maybe it's exactly for their nebulousness that the pillars in seville work more magic in the imagination. plus, they're larger. córdoba is -- and to say so isn't at all to diminish it -- is in many ways a smaller seville, and its concentration into a smaller population and geography has, in some parts of it, made its character all the stronger. the albas may only have a small park bearing their name in córdoba (which might not even be the size of the driveway at the casa de las dueñas in seville, but the smaller city definitely has more (creepily) androgynously (fascistically?) dressed toddlers. the building across the street from the albas' park is deserted and ramshackle. it probably reminds me of lisbon, she says. and it does.

earlier, we'd talked about the similarities between córdoba and seville in a place called café málaga where the coffee we were served was from portugal. the tapas restaurant where we had a fine, fine lunch (other than the flamenquin, my guide said) is named for its specialty dish, which i really couldn't distinguish from morrocan shakshuka. the couple that had been standing behind me at the bar had a good laugh with us when the waiter returned my card and told me it had been an honor to serve a family member of the chancellor's. i told him that i would pass the kind words on to my cousin, but the joke hadn't made up for all of the elbow jabs i got in my back throughout my meal. i can't remember what was across the street, but odds are (and we all know i'm betting) that there was a church on the adjacent plaza.

we didn't see the plaza de toros, but if the interior of our lunch spot (think la estrella in seville?) would lead you to believe that córdoba has a hardened soft spot in its heart for its local talent. and that would definitely have led me to wondering over lunch why the duchess didn't have more of a presence here, but we hadn't yet seen the albas' park. but for all i know, although that's an exaggeration because everyone knows what the duchess looks like just like everyone who doesn't like bullfighting knows about the famous bullfighting dynasties of córdoba...but for all i know she might have been walking around the city that day with us, because the other day in seville i wouldn't have been able to tell that noble from one of those darling toddlers if a friend hadn't pointed him out to me in the plaza del salvador. i don't think that you can see the giralda from there.

but there's a grand view of the mosque-cathedral of córdoba from across the guadalquivir, and i was told that the newly restored bridge and rampart are roman. we, however, approached it from the city side, earlier, although we did eventually make our way across the bridge. (the arch on the mosque-cathedral side is not original.) and we were near the other bridge later as we were looking for another coffee, not far from the plaza where cervantes once lived and which was featured in "the greatest novel of all time." (the plaque in seville only commemorates where cervantes was in prison.) we had also been able to buy a single stamp (the city was sold out of stamps for cards to any other country than portugal) and after only a little trouble had found the postbox too. and although we ended up at the famous cake shop and ice cream parlor on the other side of the center, córdoba seemed to be full of stylish (ironically cosmopolitan city style) cafés where clients seemed to be encouraged to linger over what they'd ordered -- a certain rarity in seville.

i might even have said that people seemed encouraged to read at the cafés there, because then i would have had my transition back to the koutoubia, the booksellers mosque, but then i remember that the mosque and córdoba (or at least the mosque in córdoba) have almost nothing directly to do with each other. you really do have to see it, though. the one in córdoba. and we had, much earlier in the day. i would have said something earlier, actually, except that you really do have to see it. the photos hardly do it justice at all. and it's not just that it's incredibly more massive than you would have believed before getting inside, but that writing things like how incredible is the light from the renaissance cathedral built out of the center of the thing (and how strangely different from but seamless with the moorish arches of the muslim prayer hall it is) really, well, it just doesn't shine with the same incredibility. and on that point my memory is keen.

i did, however, also have a certain image of the tower of the koutoubia in my mind, and that image may have been warped by time and intention, but before going into all that incredibility inside the mosque-cathedral i did inspect the bell tower, and really, the two seemed not so unlike each other to me. the giralda could look like either of them. maybe. but i did lose that bet. i'd well forgotten it, though, by the time we got to the synagogue...although now i couldn't tell you exactly when that was.

TRANKIMAZIN; or, HOW TO GET RIDDEN HARD...AND JUST PUT UP

before the beginning of our divorce week festivities, it seemed to me that the leaving of my second wife should have been less difficult. we had, after all, both been around a block or a few, and, what's more, there had been no contention or uncomfortableness over either of us acknowledging out loud to the other that all of the shopping and the dinners and the parties were to be in celebration of our demise. (things didn't go nearly as smoothly during my divorce weekend in newport, which i spent arguing with my first wife over my having unilaterally decided to call it that before suggesting that she might take the bus back to the city so that i could try to fit that ridiculously underpriced mid-century danish chair in the rental.) but that's love (modern, and maybe just differently so in both cases). there might be a few more scuffs now on the patent leather, but for the most part the cameras just got laughter and the funny faces that were made for the cameras. then, however, the contract was over, and as much as the picture of that week might have convinced us that the two of us might have been able to pull off a good picture, we pushed through it laughing for the very reason that we knew that the contract was ending and that we both needed another trip around another block. it was mostly for her, anyway, i tell myself -- and i told myself as she told our mutual friends (which is to say the friends of hers who had met me) to call me from time to time after she was gone. and i think that i had something to tell her, too, something that seemed like it could wait through the shopping and the dinners and the parties, but that left me when she left me her keys. her taxi came to collect her at that very special hour just before the golden one of the evening in the light of which the tablecloth that had been covered almost completely for almost the entire week with dishes, bottles and glasses coming and going from the corridor and the kitchen seemed not just unmagical but disgustingly soiled, all of the walls looked stained, and the dull reflections off the floor showed it to be embarrassingly in need of a mop.

dramatics and hysteria. i hadn't realized that there was so much dust for my second wife to bite. but instead of clearing the traces and taking advantage of my solitude (which had also been forced to wait through the week of shopping and dinners and parties), i escape it. or, rather -- and rather dramatically and hysterically -- i welcome the rest of the world to join me there. (the legacy of my second wife.) there are cakes and dinners and laughter and dancing. the disgustingly soiled tablecloth is covered again with dishes and bottles and glasses. that we should all live every day as if it were our divorce weekend! and it's the last of the last bottle of sherry that our mutual friends brought us to toast our end, but i've just learned that pfizer markets xanax here under the most darling (and very practically straightforward) trade name -- and that they push it over the counter. it's certainly cheaper to get with a prescription, but that (haha!) might require another marriage. you might be living every day like it's your divorce week, but one way or another you're going to pay the price of intellectual property (or just make do with what your friends bring you).

it's funny (and not only the picture of a country popping trankimazin to forget the anxiety of the possibility of developing an anxiety disorder). she left, and, i swear, all of a sudden it's springtime. and the last place in the city that i thought i'd ever be is the one that makes me happy. it's full of foreigners -- and cheese (that special kind that foreigners like) -- and we all know that the authentic core of the city lies in its foreign pretenders' ostentatious denunciations of their other countrypeople's inauthenticity (and especially in the flamenco ring). most blocks, in other words, and wherever you find yourselves walking them, are disappointingly the same. but strangely, that older anybody who played his guitar for the seven or so of us who stuck around la carboneria after the main event was finished on friday night made me wonder if there wasn't something left for me in seville in the wake of my second wife's leaving me. he seemed refreshingly without aspirations to local authenticity. and even unabashed: "ne me quitte pas. ne me quitte pas." and sure he was probably singing it for the two french girls, but i let it work for me nonetheless. you've got to do what you can with where you've got it. if there was a pharmacy on the block, it wouldn't have been open for hours anyway.

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.