so here i am squinting away on a sunny roof in cordoba with new friends... i just put this up but this glorious day actually took place 3 weeks ago, before the cold wind from the north pole decided to make us wait just that little bit longer for the winter to be over... click on the pics to make them bigger the resolution should improve...

migue's rastas

manzanilla

konso sleeping

pasta queen

calle tres (avi's photo)

la carboneria (avi's photo)

under the bridge there are pretty pictures that i might just keep posting

tigers

clay

ecole d'art

c'e' una foschia luminosa che copre siviglia stamattina, e un sole caldo contrasta l'aria fredda che esce dalla mia bocca mentre cammino. esco da castilleja de la cuesta, un pueblo piccolo e bianco e arabo in particolari, come la maggiorparte dei villaggi andalusi, compro una mela e metto le cuffie: vasco rossi a palla perche' oggi ci sta bene. passaggi di archi e polvere, di odore di caminetti e pesce fritto, di piedi di nonnetti antichi e rauchi, di finestrelle con quadri esagerati della madonna, di scritte sui muri lourdes te quiero o bush fascista, messaggi universali senza voce.

there is a strange haze covering the entirety of seville this morning, and a warm sun that contrasts the spiral of cold air exiting my mouth as i walk. i leave castilleja, this odd sounding village composed of white wash and cobblestone and arab particulars as in the oldest tradition of andalusia, i buy an apple and put on chunky headphones... passages of arches and dust, of the smell of fireplaces and fried fish, of the ancient feet of old men, of raucous voices, of tiny windows looking into exagerated paintings of the virgin, of scribbled walls: lourdes i love you or anti bush propaganda, universal messages without voice...

today is new.

there is a blinding whiteness to the walls in the juderia, the old jewish slash muslim nucleus of cordoba, and there is the glittering of copper and gold trays in a tea house and the blue white yellow tiles lining the inside of a patio coronated by a palm tree. there are hundreds and hundreds of orangeson the street. there is me, armando and conso walking past a pile of discarded coat hangers on the footpath and decorating a tree with them, there is the twirling hand of a flamenco dancer and the clapping clapping clapping from the next room. there are three rooms, from the first comes the strumming of paco de lucia, from the second comes the slow reggae of jacob miller, from the third comes some unknown hardcore punk band, followed by the emerging of conso's mohawk, still standing from the night before. there is a small light in the right hand corner of this boy's eye, there is the rooftop and new friends and pasta and an abundancy of cerveza in constant circulation and really, who could ask for more right now?
...there is the pervasive missing of certain little ones... which is kindofnice.

gitanos put flowers in front of an oversized cross...

there it is... these final days here stretch out and expand and retract and snap back into a crumpled form as is the usual fashion of time in the context of consciousness. time, flexible, static, hallucinatory time. and there is a spinning of faces in a vortex and i am about to enter another flux of a life. and the changing of forms that takes place during the days sorrounding departure and arrival, the morphing of images and the once again ironing out of the platform of the everyday is a strange thing. when you begin to live again as if nothing had happened, and percieve things again, and eyes become a clear lucid thing, a vitreous acqueous thing through which the sun shines. and right now there are plates of salmony sauced penne and bottles of cheap red and americans eating cheeseburgers next to us and me trying to figure out why oh why these kids would opt for burger and fries when they could have this instead, there is walking on cobblestones and the feeling of feet arching over, there is the piggybacking at marco's expense, there is the blurring of lights in trastevere and the warmness of hands and coldness of noses on cheeks, there is the reappropriation of rome after too many days spent inside one's own head...
and its ever so beautiful.
bella roma!