what's up, buttercup?

Apple tea, hummus, the echo of call to prayer, so many men trying to sell me carpets, silk scarves and burkas, very old things, restaurants with big kilim pillows instead of chairs, the best white beans ever, evil eyes, bialys street vendors, golden mosaics, windy ferry rides, lights reflecting on the Straits of Bosphorus, a bus ride to the beach, toes in the Aegean, bulk olives ordered in pantomime, nutella for breakfast, weird money, fish markets, afternoon backgammon and beer, tulips, ancient ruins, a little winery village, churches and mosques, salt-of-the-earth restaurant proprietors, so much history, oh so beautiful.

tell me about some place beautiful that you’ve been?

at La Sagrada Familia, 2006

I was remembering one night when I was in Barcelona. I had stayed there two days longer than I’d planned, in a stuffy and crowded 5th floor hostel in an alley off Las Ramblas. I’d spent the day doing the those Barcelona things: viewing the entire contents of the sea for sale at the outdoor market, gasping at the Gaudi, the phototaking and the basking on the too-crowded Mediterranean beach.

At night I shared some wine with some fellow hostel people, someone from Israel and someone from the US. We ventured out kind of late and found some particularly Spanish restaurant and all that I remember of dinner was 10 handfuls of tiny, crunchy, greasy, salty fried anchovies and more wine, though I know we ordered more than that. We wandered to a square (or was it a plaza), alive at night with tourists and locals, watched over by a fearsome looking SWAT team of police. We sat on the edge of a rather mundane fountain. There were two pretty Russian girls and I played wingman to my two hostel friends. There were some boys from Africa, refugees or migrants or some label that people who build borders like to use. We talked about how they’d come to stand here, how long they’d been there. Only the one spoke English confidently enough to carry on a conversation. The quieter one, the one less confident in his English, had a walkman of the tape variety. They handed me one of the ear phones and it was Bob Marley. We sat there for a song, some African boy and I, listening to Bob, bobbing our heads and he said, “niiiice, yah?” We walked around the corner, away from the heavy eyes of the policia, and four of us smoked a joint.

We met back up with the white boys and the Russian girls and headed out onto Las Ramblas. By this point I was buzzed and stoned. We all sat up on a stone wall, watching the night crowds come and go from nightclubs. Along came a girl from Bolivia, wandering down the cobbles with a boy from Boliva. She was wicked drunk in that giddy, loud, ferocious, and happy way. Back when I was in Barcelona, George W Bush was still President and Arnold was my state’s governor and while some people from the U.S. told stories of being from Canada (and of subsequently being caught by Canadians when they couldn’t produce a place beyond a province), I for one simply said I was from California (pronounced with a flair of Spanish accent). When someone asked me what I thought of the whole thing I said that it was embarrassing, that I believed my country, my state, could do better. When that girl from Bolivia learned I was from the U.S., she began berating me, “Why do the Americans not have a Revolution?! The Americans put up with corruption! I do not understand why there is not a Revolution!” I told her that we are, by and large, comfortable, that we’d had our revolution, that even though things like the Al Gore Supreme Court decision were outrageous, that we still have this unwavering belief in the eventual outcome of the system, that we value the order of things, that, overall, we were able to comfortably go about our daily lives and that comfortable people do not hold Revolutions.” She told me that we had a responsibility to the world to stand up for ourselves and others.

As I see these #OWS protests grow though, I can’t help but think about my fleeting Bolivian friend and how far and fast things have changed since 2006. I don’t know if OWS will fundamentally shift things, but I think it’s already shifting the dialogue and it’s clear from some of the reactions that it makes a certain segment of politicians uncomfortable. I bet my Bolivian friend is rooting things on.