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.

Uzbekistan: recent archives

I went to Uzbekistan, but Uzbekistan failed at the internet. I share:

The Motherland tests you in many ways. At the airport , the line to check in is hella long, moving real slow, and it seems like they'll never get through all of us in time. I seek out a security gaurd and he laughs. The plane is delayed nine hours, he says. It takes three to check in my bag and the man checking me in can't answer any of my questions. He writes a number on the back of my ticket and says to call with any inquiries. My dad comes back to pick me up. We drink vodka at a friend's house and eat shashlik. When I call the number a bit later to see if the flight has been further delayed, the message informs me that their office hours are Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. It is Sunday. Sunday is for relaxing and so I do.

I return to the airport when it starts to obumbrate. I like the swarthy clientele of this airline, the ladies in sparkling head scarves, the plump women and the men in pointy shoes. The blondes will get off in Latvia, the brunettes keep going East. There are a couple of outliers. An American blonde, older, animal print cardigan, shaking head, bobble-like, that makes me think that she is going to Uzbekistan to find herself a husband. Something attitudinal. A young Korean girl with a laptop. And me. I wore my gold necklace but I didn't bring my gold teeth.

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.