Doesn't Anyone Understand?

We toured Toledo today. The city is very beautiful, very old but very very beautiful. We saw the oldest synogogue in Western Europe. It's no longer a working synogogue, but now more of a museum. For a long time in Toledo there were three groups, Jews, Christians and Muslims. The three groups lived in relative peace and harmony, as far as any records can tell.

Then Queen Isabella came and ruined it all and had all the synogogues torn down and all the jews basically converted or killed. Very unpleasant times indeed.

The Spanish didn't take part in WWII (from what I recall from high school history lessons), because they were dealing with their own civil war at the time. Francisco Franco, the fascist dictator of Spain from the 30's until relatively recently, being a facist, let Hitler use his country and his people for target practice for testing out bombs and weapons of destruction. That's where Picasso's famous "Guernica" comes in (I'm seeing it tomorrow, I hope I don't weep). Joan Miro, my most favourite artist, has some very insightful pieces reflecting on the civil war and the years of tumolt for Spain. We went to the Miro museum in Barcelona, which was such an astonishing experience for me. The first time I saw a Miro first hand was in Hartford in 2004, I believe, at the Athenium (if you're from Connecticut you've probably been at one time or another, it's very small but it's a cute museum and I believe it's the oldest public art museum in the United States, but I could be mistaken). He is a contemporary artist, and most of his works seem very primitive and unrealistic, but what you really must do is look beyond the figures, the paint, the frame, the palet, and make the painting something for you. I like art that becomes whatever you want it to become.

But this wasn't meant to be a rant about Miro.

In Toledo today, I noticed there to be a lot of graffiti of swastikas. I don't understand how anyone, particularly someone in Europe, particularly someone whose country suffered under a fascist dictator for decades, could possibly promote the fascist way. Don't they know how their parents and grandparents suffered? Don't they know how all the people of Europe suffered? Fleeing from bombs falling here and there, shrapnal everywhere, air raids, no food, never knowing if you'd live to see tomorrow or if your children would live to see the end of the war. Or worse, if you were one of the direct victims of the fascists, if they stuck you in a ghetto and then huddled you into a cramped box car and sent you off to never be seen or heard from again. Spain is a Catholic nation, don't they know what the Nazis did to the Catholics? Don't they know, don't they understand? How can anyone draw the swastika without silently killing their soul?

Sadly those aren't the first swastikas I've seen in Europe. There is a little shrine, with candles and swastikas in chalk on a stoop near my school in London (in one of the most affluent neighbourhoods in London, might I add). I got so angry and sad when I saw it, that I blew both the candles out, and I don't even care if CCTV saw me do it. They're English, the Nazis tried to wipe London off the map of the world, don't they understand?

On a MUCH happier note, I just got word that Obama signed the Hate Crimes Bill into LAW! How awesome is that?

Perhaps there is hope after all. Yes, I'd say there is a lot of hope. Things are getting better all the time :)

http://www.hrc.org/13699.htm


Miro, 1973, "The Smile of a Tear" very appropriate for today

Eleven Months

We are in Madrid this lovely warm evening. It's been a very long day of traveling and touring and eventually eating, so now we are resting for the night.

Today is my eleven month anniversary with Hillary, and it is sad that we have to spend our anniversary apart.

However, we'll be together next month for our one year anniversary. We'll be in Paris then, it will be que romantico.

I can't believe it's been eleven months, it feels like just yesterday we were driving home from Ani, got hungry for Wendy's and spent the better part of an hour sitting in a dark parking lot eating and talking about life, silently telling each other that we couldn't put on this facade anymore.

Love happens and it knocks you right off your feet. It's the best, most stupifying feeling in the world, to be sure. Perhaps numbing is a better word for it. I don't know if I like the feeling of numbness, or fluttering about, but I do love being in love with a wonderful person and I am very glad that we found each other in this big scary world.

There is no one out there who would climb mountains with me on a whim, who would stand by my side from 3,000 miles away, who would so thoroughly entertain me while simultaneously captivating me. I fall in love with every pretty face I see, but I have never been so completely in love with not only a pretty face, but a wonderful mind and a beautiful soul.

Here's to Madrid and eleven months with Mogli.

Barcelona

Welcome to Barcelona!

This city is AMAZING! I wish I had come here to study abroad instead of crumby old London. There is so much here, and the weather is beautiful and there are palm trees everywhere.

And the food... magnificent.

Tonight at dinner we shared our meal with a little black cat who was walking amongst the tables. She was a skinny little cat so I dropped her some of my salmon. But she wouldn't eat any of my salmon, which was curious because she looked hungry. Then she disappeared. A little while later she returned, followed closely by a kitten, who proceeded to consume all of the salmon I had dropped for his mother. I stroked the cat while she watched her kitten eat, and I swear she was smiling at me. I fed her some salmon so I was certain she had eaten, and she ate every last drop. Then another kitten came, and it all got too crazy and we were leaving the restaurant but it broke my heart to part with the cat, she was such a sweet cat, and she knew exactly how to make me fall in love with her (it's probably because I miss my Kitty).

Earlier this evening, we were walking down to the beach so my mother could put her feet in the Mediterranean Sea, when we came across a man on a bike. Not just any man on a bike, though, a man on a bike wearing... only a bike. He was completely nude!

I got pictures. It'll take me a while to figure out whether Americans are sexually repressed (in that we giggle at nudity and think it's obscene) or if Europeans are too sexually liberal.

Barcelona is amazing, we've walked all over the city so far. This morning we went to Monserrat, which is this really interesting old Monastery in the mountains outside of Barcelona, but it's more like Disneyland in the mountains, with music and dancing and food and liquor. It was awesome.

My internet isn't working (I'm writing this on my friend's laptop right now) so I will upload pictures when I get back to Londontown or if the internet in Madrid works after Tuesday :)