The Passage Way

There is an old passage that connects Sant Pere Mes Alt and Trafalgar.  It is completely enclosed and used to be a place with Kiosks and shops.  Now there is a bar at the front of it.  There is something so retro about this picture and I really liked how it turned out.  I may be the only one.

Sadie attempted to guide us through it but didn't get very far.

The Small Things

I am always overwhelmed when I step into a cathedral in Barcelona.  It seems like any tiny piece of it is worthy of staring at for hours, but they are made up of thousands of things.  It's almost too much for the senses.  I can't figure out what to look at.  Is this what they had in mind when they were building them?  "Maybe if we can put in enough cool stuff then people will be focused on God, or won't drift off so easily."  Anyway, it brings up a lot of crazy questions that I don't want to get into here.  Here is the view of the Montserrat Cathedral as you walk in.

This is just one light hanging from the ceiling.  It's in the left side of the larger picture, but completely lost.  In and of itself, it is a magnificent work of art.

I wonder how many of the small things we miss in life because we're too focused on all the big things going on around us.  

Make Your Mark

As I said a couple of days ago, the people of Barcelona have a lot to say, and sometimes in a uniquely artistic way.  In Barrio Gotico, tucked back into the streets is this chalkboard.  People can write anything they want (and they definitely do).  Sometimes there is even chalk provided to write with...or I guess you could just bring your own.  I love checking out messages and the doodles whenever I'm down in the Gotico and need to get away from the crowd.

Sadie also liked the flowers out front and 'made her mark' as soon as we were done with the pics.

Cement Jungle

Barcelona is a cement jungle, much like New York or San Francisco.  Sure there are parks strewn about, but the majority of land is taken up by sidewalk, street, and buildings.  Yesterday we were walking near where Passeig de Colom meets the Rambla.  Tucked into the corners of the Delegación de Defensa En Cataluña building was this tree.  It is such a stark contrast between the grayness of the cement and the old dirt.  I love finding these spots of natural beauty in this city, where life is finding a way despite our best efforts.

Protest

Barcelona is a culture that has something to say.  It knows how to protest.  The graffiti contains political or life messages.


Large corporations such as Citibank, El Corte Inglés, and Starbucks paid dearly in property damage on the day of the General Protests due to their involvement in economical collapse as well as their unwillingness to close their doors while the rest of Barcelona was at war against the system.

What I'm learning, though, that while Barcelona has a lot to say and be angry about, as do many other cultures, countries, etc, the people aren't offering solutions.  Yeah, we understand that you don't want cuts to education, but how do you get out of deficit without some sort of sacrifice?  Surely there is some misappropriation of funds, etc., that leads to cutting valuable programs.  And some politicians (if not all) are protecting their own interests rather than those of the people.  But, how do we fix these issues?  Causing property damage costs the taxpayer and the consumer more in the end.  It's not a great solution.

We saw this last photo on a walk today.  What a reminder on how to live your life.  The acquisition of wealth does not exempt one from death.  It's all temporary.  But, as poignant as this is, it doesn't answer the question: "If I'm still going to die…then what?"  What do you do with this information?  OK, so you've called us out, but what's the alternative.  Where do we go from here.

I'm not going to attempt to answer these questions here, especially the political ones.  We all have things we can be angry about, but rather than just trying to rip the system apart, how do we move to positive change?  That's the challenge.

Making Memories

One of the things I've been particularly bad about in the past is finding creative things to do with pictures we take or videos of our lives.  I end up with gigabites of unused media, although it is fun to look back every now and again.  Tracy and I were walking the streets a couple of weeks ago and I saw what looked like the perfect canvas.  It's just particle board on a wooden frame, which almost looks like a stretched canvas.  I thought it would be a perfect surface to decoupage and hang on the wall.  

The hard part was figuring out what to put on it.  For the past 2 weeks, it's been used as a barrier to keep Kitty out of certain areas of the apartment, then Tracy challenged me to put some photography to work.  

I started with a copy of La Vanguardia that I purchase for 1,20€ and covered the whole surface.

Then I combed through our pictures and printed photos of our time in Barcelona.  I printed until I ran out of ink. 

Here is the final product…so far.  

We intend to continue adding photos as we make more memories and buy more ink. 

A Texas-Shaped Table

We took a walk two weeks ago at trash night.  As we were contemplating turning back towards home, we ran across this odd, Texas-shaped table.  Tracy could immediately see potential in it, but I was completely against taking it home.  As soon as we turned to walk away, I changed my mind and we picked it up.  We managed to get it home and not do any damage to it on the way.  We toyed with different ideas on how to utilize it and what to do with it, but after careful analysis, we decided to decoupage it.  Of course, Tracy was completely right about this table's potential. Here is the process.

The Original felt covers, or what was left over after I started taking it apart.  There were 3 layers of felt (2 maroon and one mustardy yellow), full of dust, each individually stapled to the table.  I had to pull hundreds of staples out of every surface of the table, with pliers.  

The Table with the felt cover removed.

After all the staples were removed, the surface of the table was largely destroyed.  There were also half staple sticking up out of the wood, which I could not remove with pliers, so I hammered them back into the table to avoid tetanus scratches. 

Me looking at pictures and pages to cut out.  A couple of the legs had Carcoma (wood worm), so I had to do some injections of Matacarcoma (a clear chemical used to treat wood) before I could start on resurfacing.

What to use, what to use.  So many fun pictorial history books I found late one night while Sadie was going potty.

Getting started

It's always hard to decide where to put my favorite images.

An hour in.

A different angle.

Getting close to finishing...Sadie is bored.

Almost done...just missing a couple edges.

The Final Project

Another Angle of the table.

Thanks to Tracy for taking the great pictures of me hard at work.