Days 28,29

The previous two days were my last in Spain, possibly for the rest of my life, and I unfortunately spent them in alternating states of melancholy and horrible indigestion. The first ailment lingered from the leaving of Kelsey. The second was from eating an entire pizza by myself, which I'd drenched beforehand with pepper-infused olive oil. As far as my actions and their consequences go, I regret nothing. In any case, in these last two days I wrote less than two thousand words. My pace has totally been wrecked, and I can only hope that fleeing Spain will correct it. It's still quite certain that I will reach 30,000 words before I leave, but that is not enough. I hope to get to 40,000, even though 50,000 was the original aspiration.

For my last day here I ate the aforementioned pizza and went to the Sagrada Familia again. This was the third time that I'd been there, and I can say without shame that it is my favorite marvel that I have seen in all of Spain.

One of my very favorite parts about it is watching people try to photograph it, typically with themselves standing in front of it, which inevitably turns out to be a comically useless endeavor. The Sagrada Familia is perhaps the most unphotographable structure ever built by human beings. This is partly because it's so stupidly large that it can't possibly fit within the length and width of a camera's lens. But it's also because of a different kind of bigness, or muchness, which comes from the sheer quantity of intricate detail that is general all over the building, as well as the multitudes of dominating fixtures (the crucified Christ, the scene with the Wise Men, those eight terrifying towers, etc. even the damn crane that hangs over it, reminding you, in case you can't believe it, that the church isn't even finished yet), none of which act as a singular focal point of the work, which is why I think it's so damn alarming to come across it no matter how many times a person sees it. There is the sense that it was intended for eyes of greater vision than the eyes of human beings, and of their cameras too, of course.

What a mighty trick to play, to build a tourist trap that's impossible to photograph! I still don't see God when I look at the thing. I don't think anyone does, really. I think all that people see, and this includes myself, too, is a quantity of space that they desperately desire to squeeze into one small, manageable, frame.

Because of the aforementioned melancholy, indigestion, etc. I find myself leaving Spain on something of a sour note. But I think I will look back on this period as one of the most important of my life. I doubt that I have come anywhere close to conveying that sense, that muchness of experience, within this blog. But how could I ever?

I go to Prague next.