130 years ago Picasso would have been my Neighbor. Timing is Everything.

Day 26

Again with these ideas of getting up early and being productive. I wisely snoozed my cell phone to the point of exhaustion and it gave up ringing to rouse me and let me oversleep till 10am. Only when a louder buzz sounded twice did I hop out of bed. It was the doorbell. To the door. This might sound obvious, but in Spain there is a subtle difference between ringing the door and ringing up to the piso. If you ring up, you are out on the street requesting entrance into the building, which you then enter and hop in the elevator up to your friend’s floor. But this morning the buzzer was for our door. Who ever it was had already gotten in and was tapping their foot impatiently just one wall over. I put on a sweatshirt and hopelessly calmed down my bed head hair that refused to get up and instead held the position of the pillow on my head, like a tidal wave of slumber had hit me in the head. Pulling the door open I’m greeted by my landlord, jumpstarting my Spanish brain I stammer a good morning and ask what I can do for her. Reading the tell tale signs of blanket face and bed head hair she asks if she woke me up and I brush her question off with no no, I was just doing some..Uh...work. Clearly not actually worried she cuts my explanation short and begins to tell me that the locksmith man is coming to fix our door because currently we can’t lock our door. And if you do lock our door from the outside, you leave the person inside stranded because there is no way to unlock it from inside (a fun game Chris and I played one morning, holding me hostage in our piso). Before I can say great a sluggard of a man starts hauling his tools up the 3 flights of stairs, just alit with passion for his work. He leans against the wall to catch his breath, hitting our buzzer and a horrendous “riiiiiiiiiiinnnngggg” sounds out. Even the locksmiths of Spain need to make an entrance. He says he’ll need at least 1.5 hours to do it because he’s alone. My landlord says fine fine, while I can hardly believe it. He needs how much time? What? In the USA if a locksmith took half that time the homeowner would kick him out and say they’ll put up a board to keep the door shut instead. But no, in Spain, time is much slower. So to make sure he doesn’t get too stressed and rush, our locksmith lights up and begins to finagle with our door, actually taking it off its hinge to fix the “problem.” So ironic that the only house rule we have is NO SMOKING. But he’s in the hall so we can’t really ask him to stop and plus he has our keys. Before the cathedral can sound the noon bells 3 minutes early he’s put out his 3rd cigarette and our landlord is back to pay him 400 euro and we get to play open/shut/ unlock/lock just to make sure he didn’t play a joke on us. And it works like a complicated charm.

Free to go on my way, knowing my piso is safely locked up. Not that I would really cry if all my stuff was stolen, I only have lame American clothes and lots of English books and odd dried flowers here and there and a broken camera and ipod that won’t upload shit. I’m probably a hot target. I high tail it to the bank because out of all the businesses of Spain that have the most slacker work day the bank takes the prize, they work a measly 9am-2pm. And you better believe they keep their hours, no going over, no opening early. I don’t flub too much Spanish and only use my dictionary once when the bank man starts to use odd bank language that I don’t even understand in English. When he starts saying lots of things I look at him and say “I want a debit card, an account that can receive a direct deposit once a month and I want to check my account online.” Ya está. He got it. Next week I can expect some sweet Spanish plastic, my first European debit card. I would say, woooo, time to go break the bank, but see, it’s MY bank now, and my measly 700 euro a month, so I’ll probably frame the card and take it out once a month to withdraw my rent.

Riding a very rare high, I head to the market before it closes at 3pm. Maybe because they are surrounded by fresh produce all day and have loads of cash in their pockets from daily sales the market vendors are nicer, I don’t know, but for some reason everyone in the market is just so darn friendly. Daydreaming about Thai food I accidentally buy a kilo of eggplant because it was 50cents/kilo and that looked really cheap. But when the bag started getting really big I realized how much a kilo really was. Hope I’m hungry for eggplant tomorrow and Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday. Obviously I swing around to the disgusting pickled things stand and stare at bobbing olives. The smell though is powerfully pungent today, so I shuffle away quickly.

Feeling the urge to look at the things the tourist info center tells me I should look at I go to the two Picasso museums right by my piso. Random awesome fact: Picasso was born 1 block away from where I live. I investigated the tiny museum of his house, gawking at pictures of him as a child, looking more awkward than Alfalfa of the Little Rascals. Randomly attached was a collection by the Argentinean artist, Berni. His exhibition was astounding. Google his stuff if you can. Taking the disparate pieces of trash, of life, of clothes from closets, of tops of paint cans, and doilies from old ladies tables he made amalgamations of mediums, chronicling the adventures of Juan, as he once said, “was the combination of all children.” Inventive is just a word, too flat for how he escapes the canvas and makes you wonder just how much fun he must have had creating his works. I then wandered over to the Exposition of Latin American Art. Like the other 2 Picasso museums, this was a bite sized exposition, perfect for Katie, the neurotic museum gazer. Upon entering the Prado and Reina Sofia in Madrid I was almost in tears at how much I had to see, at a loss for how I would read every title, stare at every painting and get to every floor. But in Malaga, they make the museums do-able and enjoyable. They stick to 2 floors max. Floor one is big and spacious, moving you through eagerly and floor 2 is less spacious, making you wind up with determination. You feel a sense of accomplishment having seriously considered the 25 pieces of art on exhibit. Yes you may have only been there for 30 minutes, but hey, that means for at least 1 minute you looked at every painting, excluding travel time between pieces. Most artists don’t even expect that from an audience, right?

Best part of today, it’s November 5, 2010 and I am wearing shorts. And a tank top. Obviously I’m wearing a jacket, but no matter how lonely today was wandering through the fantasies of other minds, I could take comfort in my own reality of warmth.

But now that it’s getting late it’s bitterly cold. And with a new door that locks I wonder why go outside? As I told Mom before, the days when I don’t teach are so much harder than the days that I do. Too much quiet time elicits troublesome voices of discontent, whispering questions, begging for answers that come from other lips than my own.

Another day spent wandering Malaga, but more time spent wandering through my mind, thinking of other places, other people, and other times. If only Malaga would take a hold of me and give me some sort of purpose, give me a bit of love, then I wouldn’t feel like a child holding onto a rowdy kite, not wanting it to fly away, but wondering why I’m stuck on the ground, not in the sky as well. Come on Malaga, I’m trying to catch your drift.