Cities

I went through a lot of opinions about Madrid. Some parts of it felt very weird, and other parts seemed cool. I suppose this was largely a matter of my not knowing anything about it. One thing that sort of exacerbated my ambivalence is that people here do not move like they live in a city. I feel like a city of 3.5 mil should be able to bully out-of-towners into behaving correctly, and the fact that they haven't speaks to what I assume is an ambivalent tendency towards capital life.

I did a pretty aggressive museum death march, spending 5ish hours at The Prado on Saturday, and about 2 hours each at the Reina Sofia and the Thyssen (et al.) on Sunday. The Prado and Reina Sofia both share a problem where they are clearly trying to juggle a wide variety of occasionally-contradictory missions. It makes visiting them kind of dizzying. I think The Prado in particular has a reputation of being a museum for which you should make advanced plans, but I'd just wandered into town from the hinterland and wasn't in that kind of mood. I enjoyed myself, but it did make me feel a little beat up.

I also feel very mixed on both Picasso and Dali. I AM a Joan Miro guy, though.

Today I returned to the US. I am in my true home, Bushwick, as we speak. The sun going down before 5 is a real shock. As with Madrid's museums, I probably haven't given enough thought to what I'm going to do for the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll come up with something.