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shhhhh, I'm dreaming:)

What a great experience! Such a big city, so many associations over the centuries, so many lives and stories crossing paths; too many to know, only fugitive fragments pursued down a multitude of streets and laneways, where the only reality is the map of the city, slowly, insidiously insinuating itself into your every fibre, until the city becomes your story.

Lose and find yourself there.

I can hear the rifles crackling there in the Spanish Civil War as rival groups took potshots at each other, and acted out their terrible betrayals, as described in Eric Blair's (Orwell's) Homage to Catalonia. Where did Orwell lodge his peculiar commitment into the Spanish psyche? Where is his famous lost diary—burnt, or hidden in the archives of the Generalissimo?

City of Gaudi and of Pablo Picasso; haunt and inspiration of Australian art critic Robert Hughes ... It's still a mystery for me, who have never been there. My brother has been there for conferences; our friend Heidi was mugged and had her handbag stolen in a back street in broad daylight, despite the heroic efforts of one daughter who sprang onto the back of one of the bandits until her mother told her to let go ...

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