Today I wrote around one thousand words, 1100 to be exact. The project is giving me trouble, admittedly, and it is at a crucial stretch. The story has gone somewhat adrift. But I find that if one is lost, sometimes it's best simply to keep moving, keep moving, keep moving, despite what they may say otherwise.
Today was an uneventful day. I have taken to going to Starbucks in the afternoons, which as I understand it is a kind of mortal sin when one is abroad, but truthfully there is no escaping the Americanization of a city like Madrid, and so I consider it better simply to embrace it. In keeping with this idea, last night I went to an Irish pub and watched American football for three hours. They sold Guinness for about seven American dollars per pint, but there were free potato chips. I can not bear to be away from football.
W.G Sebald writes of ordering french fries at a McDonald's in Belgium and "feeling like a criminal wanted worldwide." I do not feel this way, although perhaps I should, or will.
In my room there is a giant New Zealander who has worn the same Tim Duncan jersey for the last three days. Apparently his passport was stolen from his hostel locker (!), and so he will be trapped in Madrid for a total of three weeks. He has been here for ten days now. He has come to despise this city. He sleeps in until three in the afternoon and goes to bed around midnight. He drifts aimlessly, as though in Purgatory. He is someone I can easily mock -- you are in Madrid, you whiny lout, enjoy yourself! But in a small way I feel the same as him.
Hopefully today I will do something very "authentically" Spanish.
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