De Madrid al cielo

Little context is present for where I am or what I´ve been doing, but my itinerary is currently Spain-Morocco-South Africa, and I´m into it. I´ve been in Spain for a week now, staying at a bit of a dive in Madrid, and I love it. I love the dive itself--a crazy hostal called Villar on busy, narrow Principe where the youth from every capital in Europe seems to party. The hostal is loud, godawful loud, and abuts a small square of buildings where one can hear the water in every pipe, every kid screaming for leche, every drunken 3 am song by partiers from Santa Ana. At around 4 AM two nights ago, I was treated to a midnight gospel-reading by some guy at an open window across the square after listening to the couple in the next room have sex for almost two hours. Then, after J. arrived, the next night an entire street sang in the moonlight, hundreds of people who just launched into song. It sounds corny, but being around such goodnatured individuals is so infectious it makes the heart glad.

I love the Spanish--happy, jovial, tolerant, kind is how I´d describe them, and I have come--already--to love Madrid. I do not share, however, the Spanish passion for bullfighting. I went to the corrida at the Pl. de Toros, and I had to drink my dinner afterwards. The only thing I can figure is that the sport resembles the inexplicable American passion for wrestling, except the bulls are a little stupider than American wrestlers, and they die in the end. I had got an impression that this sport was at least a little--well, sporty, but it isn´t. It´s pageant, but one could not call it sport. The bulls are blooded and tired by various tormentors, piccadors and other matadors, before the main matador takes over to make the dramatic and macho poses with the cape and the bull. This guy´s goal seems to be almost to dance with the bull, tiring it out, and well-nigh hypnotising it with fulitily before he kills it. If the guy does this with style--which only happened once out of six fights with the tough madrilenos crowd--the whole corrida, particular the females, flip out, and the dude collects everything from flowers to silken panties thrown at him while he marches around the arena and selects the graceful flower of Spanish luciousness who will get the poor bull´s ear. If the bull is a cool bull, then everyone will cheer the toro as he´s dragged off--deader than hell and puking blood sometimes--from the arena. It´s tough to tell which bulls will please the crowd. One guy came out and obviously--probably alerted by the smell of blood in the sand, which is cleaned after every fight--knew some crap was up. He was more suspicious than anything and would just stare at the various matadors after making a few halfhearted passes at the capes. He was so reticent, they finally ran some cows in to see what he´d do, and he happily fell in line with them to get the hell out of the arena. The sexism was obvious, yet this cowardice on his part was enjoyed greatly and cheered happily by the crowd, who seemed to approve of his intelligence, if nothing else. His successor lacked his common sense and died just like the others. Ugh. The entire experience evoked a lot of feelings I have yet to process.

And oh, the Prado. And Goya. And Toledo. And Segovia. And...I leave for Morocco via Gibraltar later this week. More to come.


I