Monalia's World

Mark and I have a unique ability to get ourselves engaged in wonderful scenarios where we are embraced by local people. Last month it was the calçots party in the country where we picked 400 calçot onions and grilled them, dipped them in romanescu sauce and devoured them, getting our hands and clothes dirty and becoming part of the Catlån tradition.

This weekend we got one such invitation by an exceptionally friendly lady named Sara we know from the Gracia Gitano dog park. I used to take both dogs to the Gitano park, but the last few weeks of Pukka’s life I would take her alone and let Mark worry about Haka. Sara knew Pukka and grieved with me when she died. After Pukka’s death I sat desolately on the park bench with Sara, who would cheer me up with stories of Viladrau, in the nearby mountain, Monseny, where she has a house. Sara has a naturally mischievous twinkle in her eyes which reminds me of the childhood girlfriend I always got in trouble with as a kid. She is a natural accomplice.

Mark and Haka were at the dog park last week when Sara approached him. She invited us all up to spend the weekend in Viladrau, famous for its pure water which is bottled and sold throughout Spain. Mark knew it would be good for him if he were forced to speak Spanish all weekend, so he accepted. Haka was invited too, of course. The seven of us; Mark, Sara, Ricardo and I plus Haka, Cip (pronounced ¨cheep¨, an extremely active and likeable chihuahua), and Kira, who looks like a fox, not a dog. Four humans, three dogs. We all packed into Ricardo´s minivan and did the 70 km trek up highway C-17, direction Montseny.

At the base of the road forking off up the 4km windy road to Viladrau we made a stop to see ¨La Barbara¨. Sara had told me about La Barbara at the dog park, said she was a friend who gave her 3 midget bunnies for Christmas. Sara says, ¨Now I’m stuck with 3 midget rabbits who poo, take up space and aren’t even edible.¨ I offered to help her sell them or give them away on La Rambla. Its a deal. We´ll do it sometime. Heh heh heh. She is proving to be like my childhood sidekick, always up for a funny adventure. (or the idea of it, anyway).

La Barbara turns out to be a scene like an animated medieval Pieter Brueghel painting. We are greeted by a blonde Flemish looking teenage girl riding a small horse, La Barbara’s daughter presumably. Young dreadlocked kids of all ages, all of them blonde and engaged in various forms of farm related activity. A young boy pushes a wheelbarrow of hay. A young girl feeds the geese. They speak Catalån. It turns out they are actually Catalån speaking Germans. We see goats, sheep, cows and horses grazing in the environs of a roman fortress/stable, with stone arches leading to stalls once used to keep sheep and horses in, now used to store hay, farm tools, etc.

We climb the ancient concrete stairs to reach the main barn, full of bleating sheep and other barnyard animals. There is a very young screaming human baby all alone in the patio, and inside the barn we find La Barbera hand feeding a goat calf through a baby bottle. She speaks Catalån to Sara and Ricardo, informing them that the goat’s mother had died so they were hand feeding her. I’m thinking, ¨what about the human baby crying out back¨ but didn’t say anything. We wait for her to finish feeding the baby goat and then Sara follows La Barbara into the back recesses of the barn. Ten minutes later Sara returns grinning from ear to ear, with a bottle of fresh goat milk in one hand and a big carton of about 30 fresh laid eggs in the other.

We all crammed back into the minivan and did the last 4 km to the place in Viladrau that Sara and her sisters have inherited from their great grandparents. Many years ago this family estate was compartmentalized into five individual self sustained units plus an attic where extra kids can sleep when necessary. Sara showed us the compartment she had inherited and gave us a choice from two of the other ones on the same level as she. We chose the one next door.

Our new friends are delightful people. When we strolled through town Sara introduced us to several of her childhood friends who still live there. Over the weekend she told me hilarious stories of playing tricks on her grandmother, who was always chasing them around trying to make them behave. We traded tragic animal stories with ironic, funny, horrible endings.

Now Sara lives in Gracia with Ricardo and her 18 year old son, 2 dogs and 3 rabbits in a three level hobbit´like dwelling with a sunny terrace up top. Her mother lives around the block and her sister lives down the street. They all were born and raised in my Gracia neighborhood, but growing up she would spend summers and holidays at Viladrau with her grandparents.

Mark does most of the online grunt work of our company. I help him with big decisions, but overall he does a lot without any help from me.

My job is mostly creative, plus balancing the books, doing payroll, etc. (which only takes up my time once a month.) I get to name the collections we put out by new composers. I get to write music whenever so inspired. Mostly I love to go out and embrace life in Barcelona, NAGRA recorder in pouch as I ride a bike around the city, recording any unusual sounds I might find … you never know when you might come upon a protest, or like last Sunday I came upon a Science and Mathematics fair at the Ciutadella Park.

There were several tents, one with a juggler juggling numbered balls and doing magic acts with the numbered balls that required kids to think, another in which the kids were interactively solving
3-D puzzles, another where kids are shaking vials of liquid vigorously. I was hoping, NAGRA in hand, that the result would be a hissy, fizzy sounding something I could record but instead the liquid gelled and a sticky, gummy, sparkly mass is what the kids plied out of their respective containers.

Although I didn’t get any sounds from that stall, I was able to record a man pretending to be Einstein, spouting off his theories in Catalan to a group of assembled kids. Although Einstein theories in Catalan might not be a sound many are looking for, I could have fun with it later when I transferred it to the music room studio sampler.

I have only recently taken up the reins of this blog, and I haven’t figured out how to do some things yet, but in the future I will figure out a way to come in here and transfer a fresh sound, like the Catalan Einstein, so ideally you can read of my day’s wanderings and also hear the sounds. This idea excites ne.

Last night our friend Nuria invited us to a poetry reading by a Catalån poet. We had no idea what to expect, but the flyer looked intriguing, saying the poem would be accompanied by 2 Bhagra dancers.

The title of the poem is “Mel”, which means “honey” in Catalån. The poetry performance begins with the poet, handsome, holding a small spotlight on his face. He drools liquid for what feels like a full minute. It seems inconceivable he can drool so much liquid. (We found out later it was meant to represent honey, literally spilling from his mouth). After this he begins reading his poem, which has one line on every page. He reads dramatically, I only understand a few words but this doesn’t matter.
The sound of the words and the language are beautiful and the short passages entrancing.
He pauses after every page and shuts his flashlight/spotlight off. He then turns a floor spotlight on the two female Bhangra dancers who slowly swirl and entwine themselves like a ballet of snakes sliding on and off the stage. At one point one of the dancers throws clouds of dust at the poet as he is reading.

After the last stanza is read the lights go down and uptempo Bhangra music fires up through the speakers. the lights come up and both girls morph into an amazing whirling dervish of elbows, arms and legs at they do a traditional Bhangra dance. The whole thing abruptly stops to thundering applause and we realize that we have been transfixed for the last hour.

This is what poetry *should* do.

The room was packed with Catalån intellectuals, authors, poets, actors, teachers, dancers. People snapping photos and taking videos. Everybody was chain smoking. The place felt authentic, beatnik, hip and I wouldn’t have been surprised if everyone started snapping their fingers after the performance was finished.

Nuria pointed out a philosopher friend of hers across the room. Mark told her (with some help from me) his belief that there should be philosophy stores in every neighborhood. Right next to the panaderia and carniceria there should be a philosophy store where you could go everyday to get a meaningful phrase for a euro, something to get you through the day, or just something to ponder on for a while. They could also sell philosophical phrases on plaques that you could hang on your door.
She seemed to think it was a great idea and took Mark over to introduce him to the philosopher after the performance was over. She said “explice la tienda de filosofia”. (explain your philosophy store to him). Suddenly on the spot, Mark did his bes.t The philosopher understood and liked the idea. He said that at the moment he was working out of a bar and not getting paid very much.