urban exurb-suburbia (it's hot here)

it's a long weekend here in madrid, and finally starting to get hot -- entire city is in a state of perpetual construction. dusty, scorching, with a grinding sonic environment that gives the term noise pollution a new meaning...

that's not to mention the nighttime, here along miguel servet street -- though it's cool (I mean temperature-wise, ehem) there's an all-night ethno-eclectic fiesta in a sound tunnel going on right outside my window: "summertime" on a saxophone ad nauseum, castanets and spontaneous clapping, howling crying, vendetta-style screaming semi-indecipherable violence, like, "I'm gonna kill you tomorrow, hijo de puta, blduydbu AHH" (or something similar in arabic) followed by punching windshields, girls squealing, the trash truck, barking dogs, metal doors opening and shutting, cackling laughter - but that's just the night.

at least its not that hot at night.

since madrid is way too precious for air conditioning, here's the drill: you wake up at the sunrise, close the curtains, and close the shutters.... go back to bed, wake up at noon, lounge around in underpants in the midday twilight until way past siesta time, then the nice part comes, walking in the city when the sun goes away...

now that I've taken to dusk-time walks, I'm often astonished when I find myself on the street and.... things are open! (well, not today, it's a... holiday.) it's so often that I'm out after everything turns to a pumpkin, like between 1:30 and 6 in the afternoon or so, and the city is shuttered, no store windows, no nothing, just dumpsters full of rubble and violently, violently hot sun. and as someone who has a pretty fantastic sense of direction, I get flustered -- the landscape shifts at all the wrong hours, the light and the landmarks they illuminate are never quite fixed, and why CAN't you buy a newspaper after 2 pm? what's wrong with these people?
i guess you have to give it to them, though --- 'siesta' actually does give you sufficient time to siestate, I mean, have a full REM cycle, maybe a quickie with your sweetheart, lunch, and a little bit of telly. though its sort of a wonder anyone goes back to work in the afternoon.

anyway.

yesterday we went out to the 'suburbs' to visit with a friend. 'suburbs' transliterated to spanish does not mean green lawns and picket fences, but rather brick highrises around dusty courtyards dotted with incomprehensible playgrounds in the sad, abandoned outskirts of the city. he likes it there, this friend. he sells certain substances, to his 'friends' in the barrio, which we won't elaborate on here -- but as we all parked ourselves at a picnic table yesterday afternoon to have some potato-tortilla sanwiches and ham-flavored potato chips, with ham-flavored soda (just kidding, though not really...) he told us about how he had a little bit of an episode the other day; thought the telefonica guy was a spy, chased him out with a screwdriver, intuited that the police were coming and dumped an incredible amount of said substance in the toilet and flushed.....

later we stopped by his parents house to pick up his toothbrush. they are jehovah's witnesses, and had the cleanest house I have ever seen. framed photographs and gently ticking clocks, all sorts of porcelain doodads arranged equidistanly behind spotless glass -- and the dad insisted that I meet the 92 year old grandmother that he had "stored" in the other room. I thought he was joking (still cant pick up the nuances of middle-age guy humor, i suspect)..... I thought he was going to take me to see an urn or something, but no, there was the grandmother, stored in a brightly lit 8 by 8 foot room, with all her lotions and pills perched - equidistantly- on a shelf above the bed. she was incredibly old, decrepit, could not sit up, and started to cry when I came in the room.

then, back at this friend's apartment, there was a snake, a tarantula, a bibi gun that he let me shoot while everybody else did dishes, lots of ants in the bathroom, and a meticulously organized collection of german industrial and gothic music.

another day in the spanish suburbs ...