Thursday, November 28, 2002


Today was a total immersion in Gaudi, God�s Architect and the genius behind Segrada Familia, the most amazing cathedral on earth which is still under construction--it will be another 40 years before it is complete, and it has been under work since 1895. Everywhere there are curves, swoops and organic shapes, like Geiger lit up with soul, like a culmination of everything we�ve ever learned about cathedrals distilled and poured into a huge mold...but breaking, over and over, into different shapes. In the crypts beneath the cathedral-in-progress are the workshops, where new models are made daily--I have read extensively on the medieval process of building cathedrals, which takes hundreds of years, but had no idea that an example still existed here in the modern world. What a blessing, to see such beauty split open and the light of day pouring into a half-finished nave where workers smoke and drink coffee, debating some issue of stonework heatedly. I was looking forward to seeing it, but the reality of it blew so far past my expectations that I don�t even know how to calculate the difference.

We�ve been eating dinners from the market, cheese and bread and fruits so fresh they spoil minutes after they leave the market (great on vacation, bad in practical life) and watching incomprehensible Spanish television. Tonight there was a man in a room. An old man spoke to him, and then a casket opened. An older man was in the casket. The young man wept. The corpse changed into a crying baby. The young man grabbed the baby before the lid of the coffin came back down out of the air on its own. Then the young man had the baby baptized, and then he was in a room with a woman (the new mother?) who was angry with him, or flirting, and he attacked her, and tied her up. Then he flipper her on her back and used a sword to cut off her clothes, and then proceeded to whip her with his sword.

Finally the old man from the first scene returned, and the young man seemed sad. The old man said something, and the young man started counting, there was a light change and he was very happy. The End.

Just like life, isn�t it?


11:00 PM