Humanity

Dear Jessica.... ^_^

I'm on my last day in Madrid. Yesterday, I went on a 3-hour walking tour of the cit with the hostel receptionist. Most of the places we went to were thing I'd already seen on my own, but it was really nice to have someone along narrating the scenery. My favorite place (outside of the enormous gardens, which are incomparable) is at the foot of a huge statue of Don Quixote and Sancho. I went to the rail station afterwards to get my seat reservations to Sevilla and Barcelona, where I'll be spending my last week here in Spain.

I do really, really like Madrid! Everything is so beautifully engineered. My tour guide was telling me about how, at one point, architects were given free range to design all the buildings alongside one of the main roads here; the result are this beautifully, classically designed structures that gracefully stand alongside an endless stream of traffic, engraved with all sorts of very minute detailing. I think that I could waned these streets for months and always discover something new.

Not to mention the food! The tapas are very cheap and I had a great time trying a bunch of different "fish tacos" from one of the markets, each costing only 1€. The food is so fresh! And there's so, so much selection! The tapas menu ranges from delicious olives to kebobs to cheeses to anything you can possible imagine. My favorite so far is the goat cheese and raspberry jelly, it was just such a good combination! I really want to have little tapas parties when I get back, or just finger-food parties, because it was so much fun to eat!

The Spanish slur is hard to get over, though. It sounds like everyone is talking with a bad lisp. And the Madrid nightlife is a bit out of hand. People don't go out for dinner until after 9pm, don't start going dancing until after 2am, and don't get back home to sleep until after 7am. I her them from my hostel windows -- each night, it was another loud situation, from a pack of women nearly fist-fighting at about 3am to a group of young people rowdily racing and whooping down the streets at the same time the next night. I get that it gets suffocatingly hot here in the middle of the day and that most people sleep their siesta, so it's easy to stay up all night, but I like my sleep and I like getting up at a decent time, and eating dinner at a decent time! And not partying every night! These people are crazy!

I spent the evening yesterday going through the Prado Museum, an art museum on par with the Louvre in Paris. The Prado has this great "free after 6pm until 8pm" thing that they do, so I was able to wander through works by Raphael, Goya, Rembrandt, and more at no cost to me. The museum was enormous and by the time it was closing, I still hadn't managed to see all the different wings...but I was more than satisfied. I like museums, I like art, but I feel like I get my fill after a few hours and then I'm good for another month or so. I like sculptures more than I like just paintwork, for the most part, and in paintings I love the dramatic, emotional images that make you pause your life to gaze at. There was one painting like that in the museum, this huge, huge, huge piece portraying the last moments of a group of liberals who, after being expelled from Spain and then caught sneaking back into the country, were being lined up and blindfolded for execution. The expressions on their faces in that painting were stoically determined, fearless, angry pride in the lift of their chins and pointed gazes. I think that my whole two hours could have been spent just staring at those expressions.

While I was walking around, heading back to my hostel, I heard this strange noise like a deep duck quack or bark or gurgle. Curious, I walked towards the sound and found to my horror that the noise was coming from a man with no arms, a plastic cup clenched between his teeth, the noise being his attention-grabbing cry as he shook his head rapidly from one side to the other, shaking the coins in his begging cup. He was wearing a sleeves shirt and the pitted scars from where his arms should have been were hideous to see. The image is branded in my mind like a burn.

Later on, I had grabbed a snack of some fresh grapes and was still walking. Another man on another street came up to me with a piteously expression, begging for money or food. He limped on one foot; the other was this decayed and rotted and twisted thing, turning inward on itself, skin turning into a wrinkled black cloth. I hurried along, trying not to feel his haunting eyes staring at the back of my neck as I went.

There are men with no arms and legs propped up against sad signs and waiting cups; there are children who ply accordions that seem too heavy for their skinny arms; there are mothers with their babies wrapped up in rags who passionately hold the small infants up as proof of their need.

There is so much need, not just here but everywhere. The man with no arms, his jingling cup with dully-clanking coins, has been hovering over my thoughts since I've seen him. I was waiting for the subway to come up to the platform, and out of nowhere the thought occurred to me that I could so easily get clipped by that same subway, by a passing bus or car, and then that the armless man's fate would be my own. It would be so tragically easy for such an accident to happen. The thought chilled me to the bone, giving me goosebumps that ran up and down my spine.

I don't know what can be done for the people who are in so much need. I don't know what story led them to this situation. I don't know why it is that their begging is the best option for them right now. They are everywhere, though. They are everywhere and they (for me) represent a break somewhere in the path humanity is supposed to be taking. I have trouble trying to put my whirlwind thoughts into the right words, about how things like the begging children aren't supposed to exist despite the fact that they do in great abundance. That we are supposed to be a creature that strives towards perfection, towards greatness, and that the poor are a symptom of an illness that infects all of us, that our blindness to them is a chink in our excellence.

Location:Calle del Desengaño,Madrid,Spain