the hypnotist collector

The Texas state motto is “Friendship,” as advertised on their highways and sidewalks.  Strangers smiled and said hello as they passed.  We could hear music coming from every restaurant along South Congress. We pulled into the dusty fair grounds of … Continue reading →

What a strange, and alluring, and transporting, and wonderful feeling is in the word: road! Gogol, Dead Souls It always seems so desolate, driving along highway 5 in central California.  Signs of life abound—houses with no neighbors, orchards, billboards for … Continue reading →

Barcelona, te echo de menos.

What I find most surprising about the Sagrada Familia is not its dripping nativity facade, like one of those candles in a chianti bottle with years of wax melted around the base, nor the skeletal passion facade, with rib-like columns … Continue reading →

Tibidabo, 11 September 2010

Those words, which I’ve often heard spoken with the fondness that memory lends, have always loomed large in my mind.  I grew up hearing stories of my mom’s travels to the Costa Brava, eating regional pastries with coffee from bowls … Continue reading →

“It does not seem to me…that we understand the laws governing the return of the past, but I feel more and more as if time did not exist at all, only various spaces interlocking according to the rules of a … Continue reading →

Parc Güell, Barcelona, September 2010

Farther up Passeig de Gràcia is Casa Milà, designed by Gaudí and built in the early 20th century (finished in 1912).  The people of Barcelona were so shocked by its unique design that they named it La Pedrera, Spanish for … Continue reading →

Gaudí’s Casa Batlló, on the Block of Discord on the Passeig de Gràcia, was a private residence for the Batlló family.  Imagine living in a museum.  Of course, it wasn’t a museum then, but everything in it, the walls, the … Continue reading →