February 15th 2005 - February 16th 2005

February 15th:
We're sitting on a beach in Barcelona, brown-bagging Spanish 40s in the sunlit warmth. It's Kate's birthday. This is amazing!

February 16th:
I'm taking pictures of it all. I try to capture it, to write it don, but what it comes down to is that I simply cannot. I'm sitting in Gaudi's famous park looking out over the Mediterranean Sea as the sun begins preparation to set. Today was a day of smiles.

You can't save every part of it, I can't explain it all. But I can know it when I am in it and I am soaking in it right at this moment.
How can I be a writer if I have been given the gift of indescribable moments? I am blown away again and again and again. I am surrounded by smiling faces speaking many different languages, but laughing exactly the same way. I may cry.

-LL-

A dove flew over my head.
I touched the bark of a palm tree.
I climbed the tower of a cathedral and looked out to sea.
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We are the girls with roses tucked into our backpacks. Sam gave us each one for Valentine's Day. I love him.
Yesterday Kate and I got half drunk in the middle of the afternoon. It was amazing. Sam came over last night and we drank 95 cent Spanish 40s outside of the hostel. Then we came over to the area of the city Las Ramblas and hit the bars. (The sound of American girl voices is so bizarre right now. The room nextdoor is full of giggling gossip)
First we went to an Australian bar and drank Guinness, then we found a crowded pub with a live band. We drank Amstel and danced to covers of the Beatles and CCR - we were having a blast! Kate wore the plastic tiara we had bought for her birthday.

(Taking a short break to smoke a joint on the terrace)

We are so stoned. We went out on the terrace. An American girl says "Agh I gotta pack!"
There are fingers exploring and tickling through the nerves of our minds and stimulating our senses.
"They're so arrogant, they don't even know." Some girl from Arkansas on being an unrecognized state. "Are you like a New Yorker, like you don't think any other state exists but your own?" (I scoped it out. She's just a bitch with an exaggerated accent and an inferiority complex.)

We have tall light green doors, like pea green with some white mixed. They lead to a small terrace where we light a joint and watch the people passing below, talking in Spanish and shouting to friends. Mere feet away clothes hang to dry on the balcony across the way. I imagine living there. Living here and being Spanish. I don't think I could ever comprehend it. I peer into their windows but I can't grasp their lives.
I'd be an old man with a dark brown combover and a greasy scalp. I'd have big bushy eyebrows and a sorted past that I'd always embellish in storytelling. I'd smoke cheap cigars and let the milk get sour, but I'd be generally happy because I'd never know what else to be, and see no reason not to be for that matter. I'd smoke cheap cigars that I bought from the Tobacco shop below my apartment. I'd hate the woman with the loud baby who lived nextdoor. I'd be grumpy towards her.
There is so much to tell about me, if I were that man, like that I'd wear only stiff white boxer underwear. But I'm not him. I am Laura from New York, which is pretty fucking cool too.

LLS

Lauren Porten's worst nightmare: Being a homeless man in a towel.
"I will cut you" - My favorite threat from Porto
"You're like a helium balloon ... but you're tied to a bag of sand. You're floating, but you gotta cut the string."
- Metaphor on the irony of being both the happiest and the saddest you have ever been in your life.


Castle adventures. Spain was an adventure and then some. Our stoned ramblings filled my journal for our entire trip abroad.


Bordetta 45.