View from the Pier

Life is being born slowly.
It would be a little too easy if we could borrow
ready-made souls.
- Antoine de Saint Exupery, 1900-1944

Barcelona, Spain

I have had my share of surreal moments.

Declining a Haitian cab driver’s suggestion of voodoo. Celebrating my birthday in a monastery. Waving to a brightly-colored hot air balloon rising over the treetops as tears streamed down my face.  Being Friended by someone who ruined my senior year in high school.

And while I couldn’t tell you what I had for dinner last night, these particular memories carry such a profound clarity it’s as though they are scenes in a snow globe that I am holding in my hands, turning to look at from this angle and that, and marveling.  The sense of stillness surrounding these captured instants contributes to their power, as does the sensation of them as almost out-of-body experiences, viewed from afar, seemingly happening to someone else.  Indeed, they are moments when time seems to have frozen.

Like looking through the lens of a kaleidoscope, these scenes from my past swirl and then connect in a disjointed dance when I contemplate the concept of surreal. The common denominator among these moments is not only the vivid imagery of each, but the bizarre–bordering on downright hallucination-like–juxtaposition of reality and belief.  Each of these events contains an element of startled awareness, a big dopey double-take, a metaphysical “huh?”

Barcelona induces moments like this.

Over a 50-year period between the city’s Universal Exposition of 1888 and the rise of Franco’s Fascist regime in 1939, a cadre of internationally renowned artists reshaped its skyline and city blocks.  Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Antoni Gaudí, and Salvador Dalí left the indelible imprint of Modernisme on this Catalan capital.   Known as Art Nouveau elsewhere, the movement is characterized by the predominance of the curve over the straight line, by rich decoration and detail, by the frequent use of organic motifs, and a tendency toward asymmetry.  Barcelona abounds with wild architecture and statuary, and is a work of art in itself.

Within Modernisme was Surrealism, of which Dali was the poster boy. It stresses the subconscious significance of imagery achieved by odd arrangements.  Dali described his pictures as `hand-painted dream photographs’ and had certain favorite motifs and themes.  It’s said that his hallmark “soft watches,” which look as though they are melting, and first appear in The Persistence of Memory, are meant to suggest Einstein’s theory that time is relative and not fixed. The idea for this symbolic imagery supposedly came to Dalí when he was staring at a runny piece of Camembert cheese on a hot day in August.  The egg is another common Dalíesque image, which he used to symbolize hope and love.

In 1936, Dalí took part in the London International Surrealist Exhibition. He delivered his lecture wearing a deep-sea diving suit and helmet. He had arrived carrying a billiard cue and leading a pair of Russian wolfhounds. He commented that “I just wanted to show that I was ‘plunging deeply’ into the human mind.”

I have come to recognize strange circumstances are a sure sign I am embarking on one of Life’s growth spurts.  Sometimes I see that only in hindsight, although I am getting better at detecting these cosmic courses in growing up. Usually the more bizarre the scenario, the more potent the lesson—and thus, more of a saga to tell.  So I will leave the voodoo tale to another time and instead share a simpler story.

Retrieving a new FaceBook message one recent evening, I was transported back in time to the bedroom of a high school girl.  I saw her hold a tattered Raggedy Ann to her chest and heave wracking sobs to the umpteenth playing of the anthem of her angst, Janice Ian’s “I learned the Truth at Seventeen.”  Tears of my own welled up watching this tall girl crumpled against the headboard of her bed.  I brimmed with compassion, tenderness and awe at the courage it takes to survive the sensitivity of being 17.  If only that girl had known back in 1978 that far into the distant future, a magical something called social utilities would exist and that the mean boy who had made her cry would say he wanted to be her friend.

That’s when the bubbling started, the tickle in my tummy and the twitch at the corners of my mouth.  Soon my eyes were watering from gales of hilarity, long hearty laughter at the absurdity of life and the human heart.

I will turn 51 on Sunday and maybe this year, when I am tempted to attach too much significance to anyone else’s behavior, I can consider the possibility that time and space will eradicate whatever power I think they possess.

And who knows, perhaps in another 5o years I can even channel Dali,  and mouth for myself one of his famous bon mots: “every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dalí.”

For more images of Barcelona, see Travel Photos

Barcelona