Caceres, Spain

Though the birds and their shrill song is present always here, they come out most fully when the sky starts to pinken and the heat gives in to a slight breeze, around 10. They emerge from the holes in the castles and walls, which at this hour are already glowing, and they circle in the sky madly, their sharp little wings like daggers and their vast numbers in the pale sky making it look like a fine fishing net is dancing in the wind above the plaza.

A man with a cane walks across the plaza and looks up at them. A lone crane flies from one roof to another and looks like a massive white airplane striking through the blackness of rapidly circling little swallows. Couples make out all over the place. A man packs a cigarette before lighting it on the steps below the clock. When it gets a little darker, the sky a deeper blue like the blue of tissue paper, and the birds fly close to the buildings, their shadows swoop along the walls as if on mirrors and it looks like there are even more of them than there are.

Barcelona!

Clouds in pants dripping with magenta, from the air a landscape as if acid was splashed upon the land and in the burnt splotches it left fields grew, rows of olive trees and orange groves, a woman in all red with red high heels standing in the café car of the train during golden hour and gazing out at an approaching purple dusk and passing small towns like islands in greenery. My favorite thing to do in new places is traverse the lands inside its borders back and forth in various forms of transport and spend long hours walking in its city streets and drinking coffee. I arrived in Barcelona on San Juan, which I had spent in Potosi last year. From the train I could see bonfires on the beaches and the whole city was shaking with fireworks and explosions – the orchestra of fire thinned out but lone detonations echoed late into the night. City of the sea, city of the mountain, city of the fire.