It seems that any attempt I make to capture the feelings evoked by being in Girona - of exploring centuries- (in some cases, millenia-)old architecture, of taking in the views from the tops of towers and walls that I'd breathlessly (and a little fearfully) climbed, of having a glimpse of history as a living thing, of understanding what all the pages of often dry text and the arbitrary dates and lines drawn in the sand, demarcating who goes here and who goes there really amount to - will be inadequate. It a quietly thrilling, thoughtful, and really enjoyable experience. That much, I can say. Aside from that, it seems pointless to try to explain the wonder I felt, or the excitement - yes, excitement. This is maybe a nerdy thing, but I just loved the feeling of the narrowness, the sense of how close together life was then - and continues to be now, in many, but not all, ways - in this area. So there's that. For what it's worth.
Also, in Girona, I made a few new friends in the form of Tracey, Bill, and Ada - a couple and their two-year-old daughter who live in Australia, but are originally from northern England (Tracey) and Ireland (Bill). They were great fun and great company, and somehow we managed to get separated from the tour group in Girona and exploring the town on our own (and following up with some tasty lunch in the town square). Tracey has the most amazing camera eye, and not a few of the shots I took in Girona are owed to her. Also, Ada is pretty much the awesomest two-year-old I've ever met, bar none. Just the other day I was talking with Leez about how people don't need to be taking their damn kids on vacation, because the damn things don't know how to act right. Well, Ada is definitely the exception. Not only quiet and able to function independently quite well, she was funny and charming and fun without being intrusive or desperate for attention. She was a pleasure to spend time with, and by the time we'd all been traveling together for about an hour, she was clinging to my skirt and asking to be picked up. Heh!
As far as Dalí is concerned, I had a pretty good idea that he was a madman before ever having seen a piece of his in person. It hardly seems a rarity to have seen a poster of one or two of his works tattered and battered on the wall of the occasional college dorm or twenty-something apartment, a space usually also occupied by Pink Floyd or the Dead or maybe the Schpongle/Infected Mushroom crowd. Either way, I'd never really had an idea of Dalí's genius prior to this. I knew only that he was a crazy Spanish artist, and that it seemed like a trip worth taking to see his work.
Right on all counts, but oh so incomplete.
Again, words fail here. Salvador Dalí was crazy, and Spanish, and an artist, but I'd never realized his genius. There is cleverness and humor all through his art, and he not only identifies connections between food, sex, relationships, violence, love, and death, but he twists them, braids them, juliennes them and then constructs things almost wholly unfamiliar but almost always recognizable. He slides in sly references to class, animals, love and loss. Also, he made puzzles, he was a magician; there are visual tricks all over that museum, and the three hours I had to peruse it were simply not enough. The scale on which he worked ranged from the smallest little seven-inch wide canvas to the entire building in which all his art was housed - the building itself was literally a work of his art, with the same visual puzzles built into it everywhere. I already want to go back.
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