UnLimerick

There was a young lady from Slough

Who developed a terrible cough.

She'd no way to know

it would last until now.

I do hope she's going to pull through.

Or DBAD Foundation For Short

Can we talk?

I represent a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving social welfare and the mental wellbeing of our global society. It's called the Don't Be A Dick Foundation. We have an interest in encouraging people not to be dicks in the span of their normal social interaction.

And- Well, let's just sit down a moment, and we'll talk about what I saw today.

See, there's this language school in Barcelona, Don Quijote. They operate in a manner quite different to American language schools... Here, the way things work is you pay for and enroll in a certain number of weeks in the program, but rather than having a concrete start-and-end date for classes, all of the classes are constantly ongoing, and you're moved into the class nearest to your level of ability in Spanish. At the beginning of each week, there come new students who are shuffled into existing classes, but, see, since there are OLD students in these classes, that means that the curriculum is ongoing, without regard for who is joining or leaving the class.

What this basically means is that you can study a subject one week and have new students show up in class just when you begin studying the next subject, which is particularly bad if this next subject relies on the first.

This is an organizational problem, but I don't really see how they can fix it. They could have fixed enrollment dates for the classes, but that'd make it harder for those with less time to spend in the program- or very SPECIFIC weeks they can spend in the program, as not everybody's vacation time is the same- to get here and give their money to the school. And the school likes money. A whole lot. They could also give private one-on-one tutoring, but that'd require having more professors of Spanish than they have, so they'd need to hire more- and the school likes money. A whole lot.

So, honestly, I'm not going to dwell on why they don't fix this. For the things they consider important (i.e., money, flexibility, and a basic understanding of Spanish), this is probably the best they could come up with. Instead, I'm here to talk about the way some of the students behave.

Let's say that there are two new students entering a Spanish class right after the class has finished studying the grammar of the Preterite Indirect and the Imperfect tenses for the past two weeks, and the class is moving on to talk about how each tense is used in complicated compound sentences.

Let's say that the two new students, being fresh and new to Spanish, don't actually KNOW the Preterite and the Imperfect conjugations, and have to refer to a table they're sharing, put in the back of the book, to figure out how to respond to the oral exercises in class.

And let's say that one of the students who's been in the class for a few weeks- We'll call her Talita, which is her real name, as the chances of her seeing this blog are pretty minimal, and even if she DID see it and COULD understand the English, one would hope she has the breeding to actually change her behavior based on it rather than just take offense- is a Brazilian upper-class woman who's been in Spanish classes back home, and is skilled with both verb tenses despite floundering more than once with the conjugations during the previous week.

Now, let's say that one of the two new students is asked to discuss what she did the previous week-end, and that she is having a little trouble figuring out which tense to use where, or even what the difference between them is.

And then Talita, rather than helping them understand the nuances of the question and the difference between the two tenses, rolls her eyes and loudly, in an annoyed tone of voice, corrects the other student and mutters something about how her time is being wasted.

What the hell, lady?

Now, some of you out there might think it hypocritical for ME to complain about someone annoyed at other students for slowing down the class. And to these people I respond: "Wait, who the hell are you? How the fuck did you find my blog?"

But after I've calmed down, stopped swearing, and figured out who it is that's calling me a hypocrite, I'd likely reply "Okay, this is actually a completely different situation."

You see, in college, there were times when I was pissed off at how the other students in the class would have trouble paying attention to the material and would thus waste my time by needing the professor to lead them through it by the hand. The difference is that those were students who had BEEN in the class since day one and whose inability to remember the material usually had to do with sleeping through or skipping classes, or just plain not giving a shit. THESE students just arrived in the program THIS MORNING and were just put into a class that spent TWO WEEKS going over this material. And these students have NO prior experience with the past tenses in Spanish, and were only placed in this class because putting them into a lower class would have been wasting THEIR time and money by having them repeat information they'd already learned.

Talita, you're on notice, dear. I was annoyed enough when you were rude to me, multiple times, for actually wanting to learn Spanish the way it's spoken as opposed to the way a robot would speak it, but pulling elitism and saying your time is being wasted when, as I remember it, YOU were the one fucking up this material last week... that's officially a step too far. (And no, readers, she's not going to see this, but I am going to politely imply she should shut the fuck up if she does this again. Learning a language is an exercise in thinking and expressing yourself differently, and that's hard enough for most people when they're not being attacked by a know-nothing know-it-all who's on a superiority rush.)

So, please, dear reader, take the message of the Don't Be A Dick Foundation to heart, and please, please, please, please, please don't be a dick.

Girona... is a holy place. It's WEIRD. It just feels like... It's a real "On this rock you will build my church" kind of place. It apparently was a very typical Spanish village before the Reconquista, in that it had Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities to cater to, but the thing is that here, they did it BIG. This isn't like "Oh, hey, there's the Alhambra, this must be an important holy place," because, among other things, there's a major Mosque, a gothic cathedral, and a Synagogue, and all three of them seem to have been competing with each other. Not competing like in America, not for "who can get the most members together." Competing like "Hey, boys, them Christians just put in another stained-glass window."

"... Shmuel, tell me again what your plans were for above the Ark?"

"I was thinking maybe polish the stone a little, lead down to a half-wall mural on the eastern wall."

"Make it the whole wall. And maybe slap some blue and some gold in there, will yas? We don't want everyone to come here on Shabbos and think we're slacking off."

The city is very tightly compacted, very close in- It's weird, I don't think I've ever been in a walled city like this. ... Well, except the Vatican... But the Vatican didn't have so damn many PEOPLE. And those it did have were either tourists or put on routine patrols, whereas here, it's bustlingly chaotic. Not exactly in a BAD way. It'd sort of be like blood flowing through your circulatory sistem if your circulatory system alternately used and blocked different paths at random. It's confusing, but in an alive sort of way.

The Jewish quarter (The Call) is made of a bunch of maddeningly twisty little alleyways intertwining with each other into something a little like a square spider web or a pachinko game. It's probably one of the best noir settings I've ever seen in my life. These kind of alleyways in the dead of a dark night are evocative of just the right feeling of a city that welcomes you, but that ain't looking out for you... Which pretty much HAD to be what the Jews felt when they were here.

Still, as far as Jewish life here, I'm guessing things were actually pretty okay. The Diaspora served us well, here, considering that literally every artifact in the museum is gilded and the headstones that remain in the cemetary are some of the most ornately carved pieces of stone I've seen from this era. Seriously, this place was... GOOD to us, man. The typical clothing housed here was brightly-colored and festive, the food was served on plates only marginally less stunning than what we used for Passover and the like- hell, they had a crushed velvet cover for the the Megillah, and it was a different cut from that of the Torah. From what I could tell, they even had a Megillah and Torah that were MADE here IN THE SAME YEAR, which if you know anything about Jewish scribes suggests that there had to be two active groups of scribes working at once.

And then the Reconquista happened, which is I think when the Jewish Quarter started to... turn.

They had on exhibit a letter written by the chief "Jurat" of Girona (Catalan term basically analogous to "judge"), expelling the Jews. Some got out, I guess. Quite a few, if you believe the walls. And others... didn't. These were the ones who got too comfortable to remember how to flee properly, it seems.... And those were the ones that were killed in the main square, in front of the Cathedral, over year after year of inquisition conduct. They were offered the freedom to convert, oh, yes, but the thing is that from the records, more than half of the people who DID convert were still brought in a few laters, accused of practicing Judaism in secret. Which some of them might well have been, but... Seriously, dudes, they tried to play it your way. Who elected YOU Inquisitor- oh right.

Granted, the town apparently learned the hard way that killing and expelling Jews causes a deep and terrible plague to fall upon your city in the Renaissance... the plague of inescapable poverty. One. In the 1490s, Jews = trade. Did Venice and Florence teach these people nothing? Two. You never, EVER try to evict a quarter of your population, ESPECIALLY if all the men are tradesmen, blacksmiths, merchants, butchers, bakers, candlers, and many other professions upon which the continued wealth of your city depends. This is what we like to call "Shooting yourself in the foot."

So yeah. Jews leave, suddenly that area of the city is preeeeetty bad. People who DO live there are bitter, and the people who've left have taken their trade, their food, their cultural contributions and, in a few key notable places, the actual stones that make up their buildings and alleyways. I'm not making this up, there's a place in the Rambla that's still missing half of a stair.

Aaand that was the permanent exhibit. There was a temporary calligraphic exhibit about the Song of Songs, but without much English writing, I sort of had to puzzle out what the Catalan was saying about it - The Castillian signs here are useless, basically, as they're all Blind Idiot translations- and I got the feeling that this exhibit would be really, really nifty if Dave was here to explain what I was looking at.

Also, as a brief aside, the stuff that Nahmanides actually touched and used has this unusual way of GLOWING. I think he probably was quite happy when thinking about God, and it shows. Even his handscript is more playful than most, in a way I can't think how to describe.

Checking out the cathedral after lunch.

Update, a few hours later. On a visual level, the gothic cathedral of Girona (built over about two hundred years, so you really do get a nice slice of different architectural styles, from romanesque to the flying-buttressed variety) is really stunning. On a metaphysical level, ow. Ow and wtf. 500 years of masses kind of don't bleach out the continued red stain of "Our kind used to kill your kind here." It is VERY much an Inquisition cathedral, and thus I couldn't stand to stay in it for very long.

Couldn't find the Mosque, because apparently the Cathedral is built where it used to be. Some people directed me to a smaller mosque, but it was recently firebombed. So it goes. The muslim community here is endeavoring to rebuild it.

Finally ended up finding my way to the Nahmanides Institute of Jewish Learning... Which was closed, because it's Shabbos. Oh well.

A poem

At the death

Of Catharsis

It that marked the satisfaction

And release

Of gnashed teeth

And It, the only one

That died unfulfilled.

The speaker at the Eulogy

Was Tuesday

Clean-cut, well-respected

The day before the hump

When the weekend mentality officially ended

And everyone knew

It was time to work.

And Tuesday, he said this It,

Catharsis,

Was unknown to him, personally

(Protests rose here-

It had been to his place

Once or twice

And Tuesday conceded

That Catharsis always brought the Beer

When it showed up)

But that,

Really,

No man knew Catharsis

For long

Though each welcomed It as a friend.

The bitter and resigned

Wanted to bury Catharsis,

Give it a big grey headstone

To mark Its passing from their lives.

So they could revisit It, they said,

And recapture Its memory

Forever.

Friday tossed in a match.

The smoke cloud

Was a column

A hundred and fifty

Feet high.

Saturday

Had loaded the casket.

“Let’s face it,” said Friday.

“It would have wanted to go out with a bang.”

Missed Opportunity

Today in class, we played a little board game set on the hands of a clock... Each turn, we would roll the die, advance that number of hours, and take a card that told us either to "di la verdad" or "di una mentida." We would then respond with either a truth or a lie, as per the card, regarding what we did in that hour the previous day.

The game only ran for two rounds, due to the shaky understanding of it on the part of a few players. I pulled a truth card each time. Sadly, this meant my list of hastily prepared lies had to go entirely to waste...

Here are lies I didn't get to tell in class about what I did yesterday. They extend from the sublime to the ridiculous. Some were going to be used as half-truths, in that I HAD done them, but was going to use them on the wrong hours.

Here's the list. Guess in the comments which ones I actually did.

A las *Time in question*,

Yo estaba escribiendo un poema para mi blog.

Estaba robando un banco.

Estaba huyendo de los cienciólogos en la calle Dos de Maig.

Fingí ser un avión.

Malversó más de cuarenta millones de dólares de Microsoft.

Empecé un incendio.

Fear and Loathing in Barcelona, part the somethingth

From the desk of Raoul Duke:

Made my way towards Parc Guell on foot. Accosted by Scientologists halfway through the journey, when the fatigue had just started to hit. We each had made a mistake. Mine was not looking away fast enough to avoid the deadlock glare of those steely bastard eyes. His was letting me grab him by the windpipe while he was catching me with his eyes. The Scientologist's greatest weakness is his continued reliance on air.

Got as far as the Turkish embassy before the plan hit a snag. The freeway was under construction, sidewalks all torn up to allow the twisted European cousin of a backhoe dig through the water main. There was no way to cross without going up another six kilometers.

Shit. SHIT! And I couldn't stop here, not with those scaly reptilian sons of Hubbard hot on my trail with their 70s science fiction in one hand and their slime-covered subpoenas in the other.

I have no choice now but to follow the cats. They leave me a trail of dead pigeons and feces, knowing that my advanced human nose will make these signs clear and easy to follow. They're leading me Parc de las Algues. At least I think that's where they're taking me. The bastards won't open their mouths no matter what language I insult their parentage in.

I'll try Swahili next.

Where Is Me Blog, Me Noggin Noggin Blog?

There will come a point, at some point, in which this is filled with information.

This is not the point in which such will be the case.

Hello and welcome.