(Day xii)

I am glazing sugar skulls with chocolate and Raul is cooking chiles down into mole. Lisa has come with tequila and is salting rims on four glasses. The room is filled with chicha music and interspersed laughter. Megan wets her hands and chops onions and cilantro, clumping them in growing mounds of green and white.

Few of us have anything to do with the Day of the Dead and neither does Baltimore, nor chicha. However, it's early November and Raul had the idea for a theme party for my visit. I think mostly he wanted to try out his mother's recipe for mole. Well, so did I.

From a woman on a street in Upper Fells Point we procured a bag full of tamales. In a few hours, twenty people will come, trickling in bearing guacamole and beans, rice and plantains, and more tequila.

The smell of chocolate fills the room. We drink sweet from salty rims, and the chicha whistles while we work. Megan is crying, but it's only the onions.

(Day xi)

Tonight there will be a dinner party. Raul requests my help with the seating arrangement. There will be 24 guests including us. The guests are roughly of five types:

1. Smokey, slightly hot. Comfortably sociable.

2. Sweet. Often prefer to be alone, need more persuading to mix.

3. Fiery, sometimes controversial.

4. Very sweet and occasionally colorful.

5. Sweet and relatively predictable.

We decide:

1. One or more per table.

2. One and only one per table.

3. No more than one per table.

4. At least one per table.

5. At least one per table.

Table

A- 2 3 4 5

B- 4 2 1 5

C- 3 1 2 4

D- 1 3 2 5

E- 2 3 1 4

F- 5 4 3 5

(Day x)

Michael Phelps was on the wall with more medals than we had pancakes. If you counted also the sausage links, coffees, and orange juices, we had more things than Michael Phelps had medals. But who's counting.

The place had bag hooks under the bar. The woman sitting next to us had hung her bag from the hook, as had we. Her bag was a brand name logo bag, and she also had a brand name logo wallet, the former tan, the latter pink. She had a friend to eat with and a friend to talk on the phone with, but she had fewer pancakes than we had, and no sausage links. To the right of her were two youngish men. They had heaping plates of food and sparse conversation. They had a beard and a baseball cap between them. They had no bags, but maybe they had wallets. They may not have noticed the hooks.

When my friend and I had finished our marathon brunch, we took our old gossip and new eavesdropping elsewhere. There were many places to be in Baltimore, and people were waiting.

Seven Days in Baltimore (Day ix)

Baltimore is, among other things, a city of row houses. My friend, who was living there at the time and had grown up nearby, said some rows were more dangerous than others. I often found it hard to tell the difference, but she knew, block by block.

Some of the row houses were near the water. Although the people living near the water seemed neither to be fisherman nor port workers, real estate prices of waterfront property were high. People wanted to live close to the water for other reasons, it seemed.

People also wanted to eat there, and drink there. On a sunny afternoon such as this, you didn't mind if you were among rows and rows of people, drinking a beer or glass of wine and looking out at the parked boats. While I am not sure why, I felt the parked boats to be more attractive than the parked cars.

Like the houses (and the people and the cars), they were in rows.

(Day 7)

Marielle and I are sitting on a bench in a fashionable part of Barcelona. Our trip is on the verge of coming to an end, and we have that feeling, the wanting-to-see-everything-while-it's-still-near feeling. We are sitting on a bench with our guidebook, planning for everything that remains to be seen. It is around eight thirty am, and we have been here for a few minutes.

Marielle is eating a ham and cheese sandwich, and we are both drinking cortos. Someone is playing opera. We can hear it in the distance, softly at first. The voice announces that her mother is dead. She was killed at night. The woman recounts how she found the house of her birth burning. With her mother dead, the woman was completely alone and felt that she was surrounded by nothingness.

As the music builds in passion and volume, we find the window. It is stained glass and sun lit. When the woman's story ends, we have finished our cortos but not the planning. Marielle looks at me without saying anything. I say, "shall we?" Without a plan, we start walking.

(Day 6)

Wei is the kind of woman who is significantly more striking in person. She has quick eyes and high cheekbones that lengthen as she speaks. You would know she is petite even in photographs, but the extent of this cannot be understood until you have other things nearby to put Wei in perspective.

Wei's passion is tai chi, even though she left Beijing for Barcelona when she was eight. Still, somehow, something of the old country remains. Wei says she is not sure why but tai chi is starting to become de moda in Barcelona these days. She can not complain, she says.

Still, Wei works as a waitress. I meet her at a hotel bar with Andrea and Marielle. We see her first as a stylish woman behind a large tray of martinis. We strike up a conversation with her, first about olives. Later, she gives us a card and tells us about her other life.

(Day 5)

I was fond of offering to take photos of couples or pairs of friends. I never like to have my photo taken, but it seemed most people enjoy some documentation of the people with whom they'd traveled or the place to which they'd been. When they got back home presumably they would want to convince friends and family that they had traveled with their friend, lover, sister, brother, that they had really been to such-and-such a place. What better way than a photo? they must think, I thought. While I was not sure I understood them correctly, I was fond of offering to help them.

Mike and Charline were a couple from Arkansas, I later found out. They had been together for three years and were traveling to Barcelona, Paris, and London and had just begun their trip. I took a few takes of a photo of them in Parc Guell and only later found out that I rather disliked them (Charline had a high pitched voice and kept fixing her hair; Mike barely spoke a word and couldn't seem to smile).

I thought how I liked that mosaic but only from far away. Still, I was fond of offering to take photos.

(Day 4)

We had traveled to Barcelona with a motive, or motives I should say.

Andrea had spent most of the trip shopping. Each year, before New Year's Eve, she would travel somewhere new and buy gifts for all of her loved ones. She didn't believe in giving ordinary gifts, nor in giving them on the ordinary holidays. This coming year, each of her dearest friends and family would be wearing, eating, drinking, hearing, or viewing something from Catalonia.

Marielle was following a letter. Marielle's grandmother had died the past Spring and had left a small, though fortunate, inheritance to her granddaughter. In her will, the grandmother had written a letter to each of the named parties. In her letter to Marielle, Marielle's grandmother had written fondly of the travels she had taken in her youth. While Marielle's grandmother had grown up in France, she had always loved to travel outside of the country. Marielle had never left the United States, and she decided on Spain.

(Day 3)

It could be the same woman, but probably it is not. She is the same height and perhaps the same age. Her face is quite the same, but she has a different look, more relaxed. The woman in taupe had appeared formal, even with the apron on. This woman is in the open air, and her hair is blowing in the breeze. She is with a man, who might be her husband or her lover. Perhaps he is both. Both women could be the same woman, but probably they are not.

There is another man on the roof. A strange man, very tall and unusually colorful, and for no apparent reason. His shoulders are sloped, and it seems he must be holding his hands behind his back, thin as that is. Maybe he has something to hide. In any case, I get the feeling that he is not as transparent as he looks. At the same time, he is looking straight at me.

I move my eye to the right, farther and farther from this man and even beyond the woman. There is a city beyond this scene on the roof. It is a lovely day, and my hair is blowing in the breeze.

(Day 2)

My friend and I had been walking through the old town. We had eaten smoked meats and cheese and drank sparkling wine at a tapas restaurant that had felt like a cave, though more inviting. The tapas bar was low-lit, cool, earthen. It was hot outside, and sunny. My friend had gone shopping. I wanted to wander.

I had no idea where I was going and, having only just arrived the day before, every few strides felt like exploring. Along one of the streets I saw a beautiful door. Wood and wrought iron, old and intricate, it was designed to open in panels as well as all at once. I had hoped that while I was standing there someone would leave a glass jar of milk at the person's door (if indeed someone lived there) and ring the bell. The milk man would be gone by the time the hearer walked from the courtyard to the door, and, so, he or she (the hearer) would open one panel of the door first, and then no more, reaching an arm out for the milk.

As I was thinking this (and meanwhile attempting to look disinterested), the door actually opened, in its entirety. A woman, about fifty years old, walked out. I had turned around and could no longer feign my disinterest. The woman was wearing a stylish taupe-colored dress, brown leather heels, and a red and black embroidered apron. Her hair was done up in a chignon, and she was wearing earrings. She saw me standing there and asked, in Catalan, had I seen the milk man?

I wasn't sure how to answer. Before I had the chance to decide, the door had closed.

Seven Days in Barcelona (Day 1)

The arena is under construction. There is a dust from the equipment that moves pieces back and forth, digging under earth. The dust is like a sand, but not like the sand on the beaches of Barcelona. The arena of Barcelona is under construction.

The matador is waiting outside. She is tall, thin, white, and a woman. She wears fashionable jeans and a modern-day shirt. She lures men as much as she lures bulls. Her cape could be made of tulle or organza. It is too dressy to be worn. She lifts the translucent red fabric above her and the breeze moves it, tempting all who see. She is a siren, but she says nothing. The matador is waiting outside, but there is no bull. There is no bull because the arena of Barcelona is under construction.

(Day G)

In the north of the country, Lake Myvatn tacitly made its statement, laying low among grassy mounds and miles of clear sky.

Here, and many other places, the grassy parts of the country had the look of being freshly-mown, as if one massive abandoned golf course. Peering in grass huts and driving along long roads, I half expected to find a cluster of workers with grass stains on their jeans, some evidence of the hard work it must take to look effortlessly pristine.

I decided I should come back some day when they were least expecting it and try to find out: had I only seen the tip of the iceberg? Or, was this the wrong question, the only thing that was keeping the skeptics from staying forever?

(Day F)

In other places the water was much hotter. It burst from the earth looking for air. It dispersed and settled along cool mud and ragged rocks. It attracted the eyes of passersby but went wherever the breeze took it.

The Earth was young in these parts, still active, yet I felt old and still. It took my eye some time to get used to the process of distinguishing gradations of gray.

I thought of being back home and walking through the business district downtown at dusk or the hours before sunrise. Sometimes, when the snow was falling, there would be a white layer, almost translucent, dusting above the muddled sludge of days past. People would walk, but they were fewer than usual: each one could be counted. They would be going somewhere, surely, I thought, perhaps by habit.

It was a bit like that, yet very different. It took my mind some time to get used to.

Meanwhile, the breeze dragged semi-clouds past my feet.

(Day E)

I wish I could say that I found a hot spring full of people relaxing and peering out of the glass windows of my building, set-apart. What I found was more ho-hum, unfortunately--I am sure you can imagine.

Done with the office building I decided I would go in search of a hot spring, a natural one (there were many nearby, I'd heard from a bather at a public pool on the outskirts of town). So, I hopped on a bus full of vacationers and a couple of hours later we were disrobing en masse in the middle of nowhere.

You could feel the rocks and some kind of grass in your toes. The water was warm to hot depending on where you chose, and the air was everywhere cooler. I wondered, if I came here every day--or even every week--would I fall asleep in warmth-induced relaxation, or would it manage to stay this stunning forever?

(Day D)

We walked through the city and up to a square in which we found an outdoor photography exhibit. The stranger was still despondent, but I looked at each photo for a minute or two, sometimes more. The images were beautiful, I thought. Cold. Set on days unlike today. Transporting.

On one end of the square was a building set apart from the rest. It was glassy and narrow and had an assymetrical roof. I wanted to know this building. So, I left.

When I neared the building I realized it was not set apart after all. It was just an embellished arm of a much larger structure, perhaps an office building. Something institutional. This disappointed me. I thought of many reasons why not and then thought "why not?," and went inside.

(Day C)

In the city I saw a stranger, a man, very thin and all alone. He looked quite sad. As it was a beautiful, sunny, and pleasantly mild day, I saw no reason for this. Just before this vacation I had been reading a lot of existential literature on my morning commutes. I thought: if you see something like this, you should probably say something.

I was alone myself. The man did not look very intimidating, only sad. I decided to talk to him directly rather than report him to an Official.

I asked him had he seen the poster behind him: there was something nearby to be enjoyed. And, besides, it was too lovely a day to be wallowing in the shadows. How many such days could one possibly get in Reykjavik? Shall we go?

(Day B)

Down a path were two eyes watchful over the landscape, waterscape. There was a path leading to them, but I never found out if there was one leading beyond.

I sat on the grass and stared up at the clouds for several minutes, maybe more than half an hour. They looked more impressive in person: starker colors, less solid shapes.

The clouds moved, but the eyes never moved. I guess the landscape changed enough to remain worth watching, even from the same vantage point.

Seven Days in Iceland (Day A)

As far as I recall, I did not see them when I took the photo. On the roads in Iceland my traveler's eye became relatively uninterested in the presence of persons, attracted instead by the wide expanses of blue and white, and green.

I suppose it is the opposite for the residents.

When I got home, I wondered who they were and what they were doing: perhaps a mother telling her son to be careful, to be home before dark?

What could this mean in Iceland in the summer?