Barcelona Miss

Anais Nin once said
"We don't see things as they are. We see things as WE are".
So I was in Barcelona for the first time
To rattle my running legs for another round
And do a marathon
To get the crazy endorphin buzz
I stumble into a tapas bar the next night
And there are two bearded Venezuelan bartenders
Like gentle lumberjacks
Introducing me to divorcee Hengrid
Because she used to run
The conversation is high voltage
She's crazy, but she's all fire
And verve
And primal honesty
Her knees scape mind
We clink glasses
We marge instantly
She runs to the bathroom
Every 15 minutes
Every time
Announcing
"Every time I pee, I'm a new woman"
Every so often she pulls me outside
She makes sure I have my jacket so I don't catch cold
We spoonfeed each other fresh fruit after vodka and umbrellas
And drink fishbowl after fishbowl of vodka
And everything was "marathon this" and "marathon that"
The drinking was a "marathon "
The cigarette smoke was a " marathon"
The fruitbowl was a "marathon"
The smoking was a "marathon"
The conversation was a "marathon"
She was cheeky and funny and we laughed
Huddled together at the bar
Silly and deliciously insane
Her Catalan joking cut the air smoothly and injected life
She is drunken and in a thorough stupor
But she is joy
And life
From the bartender
To the university students
And other Barcelonian hipsters
Intellectualizing
Around a table
"I can't believe you came to the city
Alone! And now you two look inseparable"
Puffing on Marlboros
Me stupidly chasing after filters
Not knowing if there was a "clean streets" law
We are the center
We are the fulcrum
Of life
We unify the tapas bar
Huddled
All seconds milked for delight
I missed the jazz clubs but I had Heingrid
There's no company in my hotel that night
But we make plans for the next day
I can only refer to it now as a mental illness
A sick sick illness
An American mental disease
Rationalizing
Money
Pragmatics
Telling me
"Dangerous manipulating women"
"Don't be fooled by what you see"
"They're all out to get you"
"Hang onto your wallet"
Or some bullshit
That prevented me from calling her the next day
In the opportunity time frame
Somewhere between the airy Sagrada Familia
And the Erotic Museum on the Ramblas
Sartres No Exit
Hell is Other People
Doesn't Mean Shit in Barcelona
It is a sick cynicism
I fumbled and continued my journey
In a purple cloud of solitude
A self-absorbed monkey on the streets
Trying to find
Bliss of the inner soul
But couldn't filter out Ingrid's full-on vodkaesque
Craziness
And I adore craziness
Life is so fucked up without
It's a dispiriting rain
At the
Cayagunga train station
And now
I try to bring fucking Kafka into the streets of the city
But they've banished him
Gaudi with his cuneiform architecture comes to me
And chastises me
I pissed him off
He wants to banish me into the mist
Because he wanted passion
And I give him only this
"Return to Prague
And slow dance with Kafka's ghost "
I'm fucking lonely in Barcelona now
Just consuming the air and alcohol and pissing it out
Sweat out the sawdust of that dream and come back
Tonight it just hurts and
I try to slide myself down the
Railings of the letters
I write on the page
Floating on random free energy
But I lost my chance to join her fire
Now your time is dark and joyless
And streets float sadly
Beautiful Gaudian streets
There's no music for your eyes or ears
You've spoiled it
Usually solitude just makes more sense
For me
Hell IS others most of the time
But now feeling
Fuckin lonely and damp from the rain of Wednesday night Barcelonian deluge
Drunken Catalonian
Passeig de Sant Antoni
I need more of her