Our New Reality
Moving into this place feels like winning the lotto, although we did work hard to get it. A lot of luck and good timing has landed us here, living right on the beach, with open horizon views and an elevator.
We’ve had 2 oversees visitors since moving here; Mark’s nephew Anson who came to celebrate his 16th birthday with Uncle Mark, and my lifelong friend, performance artist Elia Arce.
The first thing Mark did was to buy a big, comfy couch to make the place comfortable for his nephew, who arrived just a few days after we were handed the keys to the place.
Since moving into the place on July 5 we’ve had several spontaneous housewarmings and a birthday party for Anson, who stayed with us for 2 weeks.
The city has all sorts of fun events that take place in our new front yard, Plaza del Mar. Twice a week they host a free movie night, old film classics, projected onto a screen on the beach.
Good morning!
My life is presently a living dream, where I get to swim every morning during the “sweet spot” of the day, between 8 and 11 am, before tourists and party people show up. This is when the water is flat, its before the wind kicks up, and you can swim naked if you want. (In Spain its actually written in the constitution that citizens have the RIGHT to be naked.) The evenings often bring a surprise, like last week, when they broadcast a live opera performance of Verdi’s La Traviata, from the famous opera house, El Gran Teatre del Liceu, on Las Ramblas. We have front row balcony seats, heh heh heh.
I can’t believe we no longer have to descend and later ascend the 88 steps to go anywhere, even to the beach only a half a block away. I thought I would miss our little quiet treehouse, but instead I’m just relieved and happy we sold it in time to cinch the deal for this new place.
On Sunday the city celebrated by throwing what I call a Holi party (like in India, where they have a holiday named Holi in which they throw paint around and on each other) The intense afternoon sun beat down while people danced profusely for hours on end while shooting colored powder everywhere, jumping and laughing exuberantly while music was pumped out by a DJ with a mega sound system. The music went from techno to rockabilly to pop to rock, but always with a strong underlying beat. I think its odd so many kids stayed for the whole day. In Hollywood ¨back in my day¨ kids would pretty much seek and dance to only one genre of music and would tire easily if lame music would come on. But here, its everything goes, as long as you can move your feet to it. I love that about this city. I also love the multi-generational approach to fun. If it weren’t such a messy ordeal I would have gone down to join them for a spell and felt perfectly at one with it all; I love to dance!
It was intriguing how those kids could keep it up for so long in the hot July sun. Even when I was ¨young¨ I would not have been able to dance wildly in such shadeless heat for hours on end like that. I was told that throwing paint while wildly dancing is a new exercise trend in Barcelona, though its the first I’ve heard of it. Of course, after 6 years of living in a tree house with 88 stairs for 6 years I probably missed out on a few trends…
I’ve never seen so many people having so much fun getting dirty with colors! Right in my front yard! These events probably took place while we were living in the beach house 1/2 block away, but by the time things start I would normally be up in my treehouse waxing poetic about the quiet.
Giving all those dancers a place to safely chill, the city followed this big paint throwing party with a mellow film on the beach afterwards. I must say, the city workers are really efficient in their clean-up. Less than an hour after the all day event was over, barely a trace of colored powder could be found on the plaza ground.
The crowd needed something cool (and free) to do afterwards, so they were encouraged by the clean-up crew to go down to the beach to wait for tonight’s classic movie. What a great city to be young in! (its also a great city to be old in, heh heh heh). After dancing their bazookas off all day everyone goes to sit in the sand to wait for dark, when the Sunday night movie begins.
I am pinching myself that all this stuff probably was going on while we lived in the treehouse, but we were not aware of it. Occasionally we’d hear live music and crowd cheers for whatever reason, but we never associated any specific activity with that.
August 2, 2015
All the things that make us happy as a couple somehow all happened in one beautiful relaxed day.
Sunrise
Coffee
Swim
Hanging on the beach
Bike Ride
Nap
Sex
Watching Fareed Zakaria together
Having lunch made by a good friend
Working on my video project with Mark’s help
Playing music
Watching a good movie
Staring at the full moon
Laughing and smiling a lot.
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