Sunday en Sol: Lindy's rebuttal

I knew I needed a fact-checker in my life and it just so happens that the songbird that has wrenched my heart from many distraught places and amazed my mind with ventures inspired by what I can only categorize as magical realism is a proud tour guide as well.
Lindy wrote me in response to this blog and the ones that I will add soon. I thought I took notes and maybe they're still in a clutter somewhere, but here is all you need to know before you read this blog and the others. I will correct them when I have time, or maybe I'll leave them as is: fiction from the eyes of a stupido tourista.
"Well.... few inaccuracies, but ok. However, just to preserve my image as a top-notch professional tourguide, you should note that niether the Indian place nor the Sunday flea market (which is famously known as El Rastro) were in Sol... actually, Sol is just that low place with all the shops in the middle of the little dip between my house and the other side of up-the-hill, around that ugly statue of the bear humping a sickly-looking tree (it happens to be the symbol of Madrid, commically). We didn't actually do anything in Sol, as best as I can remember, as I think Sol is touristy, boring, and snobby. We ate Indian food in Lavapies (the old Jewish district, now hippieville), and El Rastro is in nearby La Latina. My bike got stolen from Pl. Tirso de Molina. Montera is a street, the Plaza is Gran Via, and I passed out in an alley behind Montera a week before you came... The night before the airport, I was chasing my crazy friend all over Lavapies and La Latina cause she was drunk and trying to get me to go to dodgy places with her and random guys on the street and I was worried she was gonna have her buzz killed in a hurry if I didnt talk the crazy bitch into just going home. The museums are near Atocha, and the gay district is Chueca. The Bull Fight area is all called Ventas. Anything we did around my neighborhood, including the Russian resaurant, the Nick Cave bar, and the bars we went to with Javier, all happened in Malasaña, the main neighborhood of the Movida Madrileña back in the 80s."

Lindy took me for another walk Sunday morning. We returned to Sol, the very center of Madrid and the very center of Spain, where there was a street bazaar taking hold of the morning in Puerta del Sol. You know the scene, thousands of homo sapiens waddling around looking at one thing and then another, touching the fabric, twiddling the trinkets under tents. Here there is a souvenir shop. Over there, somebody is peddling food.


Here's a musician, there a pick-pocket waiting for an easy mark. Couples in love. Couples bored to shit. Couples who haven't met and those that wish they had not.
This was much of the same, but my groggy head and the change of scenery made it novel...and I was in Spain to see through Lindy's eyes and that is what I did for most of the day.
The most interesting displays of wares were on the streets where folks had their artifacts and relics laid out along the walls on blankets, not tables or stands of any sort. Books, postcards, records, trinkets, old radios and other appliances were on display. Lindy bought a doll with a white porcelain head to send to her friend Rose, who collects items that Lindy shares an interest in, but which she can't afford to add to the organized clutter of her small room and in her bags when it is time to travel. We escorted that doll up and down streets for a bit and then started cafe and cervezaria hopping.
As much as I was following Lindy around, I was also watching and listening with my own sensibilities, so I caught a couple scenes with the camera and the snapping of one shot, caused a shop owner to hiss me away, which I knew he would.

I have an eye for the absurd and I wanted that picture, so I took it, but I knew someone wouldn't like it and a Bukowski piece immediately came to mind. I can't find the actual poem anywhere, but I've heard him read it on a recording. It goes something like this:
I was walking down the street
and I had my camera
with me
As I passed the shop
window I
noticed the mannequin there.
I photographed the mannequin
in the shop window
and immediately the shop
owner came running out
and screaming,
What are you doing?!!!
What are you doing?!!!

Nothing, I said,
I just took a picture
of the naked mannequin.
I really wish you wouldn't
do that
she said.
She had made me
feel guilty
and I had done
nothing
really
wrong.

I started to walk
away
but then spun
around and
crouched to one knee
and I shot
her again.

The trouble with these people
is
their cities have never
been bombed and
their mothers have
never been told
to shut
up.

Something wasn't right with taking pictures. I took it anyway. Luckily the walls and the street pussy didn't mind one bit.