Hey y’all! ¿Que tal? Muy bien, I hope. Me, I’m doing great. It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it? So long, in fact, that I don’t quite know where to re-begin.
But since the book in my bag at the moment is The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle, I guess the best place to start is… ;)
I’m sitting on a red leather couch in Bootleg Café, a fine establishment that I just discovered this morning, here in Barcelona, in the Gothic Quarter. In a city of bar-cafés, within a nation of bar-cafés, within a continent — well, you get the picture, one thing this place has got going for it is that it opened a few seconds before 10am, 10am being the unofficial opening time, seemingly, of every single place of business in Spain. (Except bakeries. And meateries. And, blessedly, the post office.)
I’ve got my laptop, thin and portable and recently arrived from the States. Goodbye, dependence on internet cafés and locutorios! Hello, dependence on WiFi. ;) Which led me, today, to wander the streets, keeping half an eye out for a wireless-enabled joint, but 99% just enjoying the tranquility of early-day Barcelona.
See, a 10am citywide teetime means that I wake up a full five hours before everyone else.
Makes for very quiet, gentle mornings like this one. Meditating; making oatmeal with cinnamon, raisins, bananas, and Galician miel de bosque (forest honey); taking an unhurried, exploratory walk through the labyrinthian Barri Gòtic. Sitting on church steps and reading very slowly, a tablespoon at a time. Marveling at angels in the architecture (wassup Paul Simon) and stencil art in the alleyways. Stumbling upon an outdoor kindergarten class. All before the stores and offices unshutter their windows.
And now, typing on a powerful, responsive machine that lets me share words, pictures, and sounds with wonderful people thousands of miles away.
Did I mention that I’m feeling great these days?
Okay, friends, so here’s the general plan blogwise: for the next few days, I’ll be posting, bit by bit, the rest of the group-email updates I sent out (the final one was a few days ago), and some of my favorite fotos from the trip so far. Hopefully it’ll give some sense of the adventure’s evolution. I know it’ll be fun for me to assemble…
For folks who have already read the emails and seen the pictures, I hope that revisiting them in this context might offer some new insights — as always, I love hearing your thoughts and responses, so share a comment or two, if you feel like it. And them that’s seein’ the stuff for the first time, I hope you enjoy!
It’s good to be back. It’s good to be here. Thanks for being here with me.
love,
katie
Kloncke 