July 21, 2006

Greetings from Salamanca

If this blog´s been feeling a bit lonesome it might be because I inadvertently turned on comment moderation... today I found several pages of comments waiting for me—sort of like being at camp and discovering a batch of misplaced letters. Anyway it was fun to read all the comments even if I accidentally managed to delete most of them (damn Spanish keyboards).
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We have a car. We are driving! When you've been trapped in a single house for a week this is liberation! I´ve driven around Spain several times but never in this direction... the countryside here is familiar in a roundabout way as I've seen it in scores of medieval paintings (in college I wrote many papers on bestiaries and illuminated manuscripts). So while I was driving I kept having moments somewhere between memory and deja-vu. Coming upon the walled city of Avila I recognized it from a 14th century illuminated manuscript. Looks virtually unchanged. Even the trees which seem fantastical in the illustrations are just the olive and almond trees they have in this area... I had a similar experience in the Dutch countryside a few years ago. Those clouds you always see in the Dutch masters, they are just the clouds they have in Holland.
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Speaking of invisible threads, here´s one that came via email from someone I haven't spoken to in 20 odd years... "Actually you and I had the same Spanish class when I was a Sophomore. Was our teacher's name Mrs Torres? Anyway I remember getting some Apple computer stuff from you, and I remember you let me borrow a disk (floppy disk no less) which you entitled "Late Night with Raul Gutierrez" - I really don't even remember what was on it now, but it was (ancient) Apple IIe stuff.¨
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Photos for Becky and Paul:




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Random aside: I am typing this in a hotel bathroom, my family is asleep... it's about 1 in the morning. A minute ago I had to get something from the other room and my wife started. "Have you made the guacamole?" she asked both eyes open, but completely asleep. "What?" I answered. "Don't worry, you don't understand anything about guacamole," she replied.

Through the shut door I hear her chuckling to herself in her sleep.

posted at 04:42 PM by raul

Filed under: travel