Observations on the wondrous, quirky and sublime.
I live in a hobbit house. If only for a week. A ninety-eight year old man owns the place. I imagine him as a compassionate and somewhat distinguished Quaker gentleman. After all he had once argued for the life of the man who had murdered his daughter. I had checked it out. But it turns out he is a small balding man with a large stomach and bad breath who leers at me and tells me a story about a young heroin addict who once stayed there and offered herself to him for money. I can outrun you, old man, I think. His son lives there too. I am guessing he is in his sixties, sinewy and tan with the vacant expression that results from years of what I imagine was regular drug use. He has long hair streaked with gray and his eyes are bright yet empty in the way of Frodo when he was wounded by the Ringwraith's blade . He wears cutoff jeans. Emerging from my car late one night, I see him leap off the patio and stride across the lawn, bare chested and barefoot, holding a harpoon gun pointed at me. I step out of the shadows so he can see my face. Recognition is slow in coming but when it finally appears, he is all smiles and invitations to go harpoon fishing with him and his two friends. At night. In the ocean. No thank you. The friends, a young Hawaiin man and an old woman with stringy hair stare at me as I politely refuse. They mutter to each other and I see nine teeth between the two of them. Up the stone stairs, into my round room, and I lock the door. Someone blows a conch shell and I imagine the gathering of strange indigenous tribes.
The acoustics of Old Town Madrid are their own. From the fourth floor of the old building, the sounds drift up the air shaft. Cooking sounds of pots and pans, and voices speaking in a foreign tongue. Spanish. My one year of it in high school leaves me ill-equipped. There is a spicy smell along with the tiniest whiff of garbage. I can hear children playing. There is laughter and the sounds of booted heel on cobbled street. The buildings are so close that I can’t see the street at all, only the tiled roofs across the way. They feel close enough that I could jump. (I dreamed of having to jump across an open abyss between buildings. Onto a metal surface and I knew I would not make it.) There is a cat in a window box that is filled with plastic geraniums. Around the corner from the restaurant where the tiny spanish woman tried to talk to me, all smiles and nodding head, a canary sings from a cage on a small iron balcony. The sound swoops and soars, echoing off the stone walls and streets. The acoustics of Old Town Madrid become about what is missing. The sound of cars, buses, sirens in the night and rap music blaring from open windows. Instead, it is the softer sounds from another time. It could be any time, a different time, somewhere older, less advanced than cities today. I could be back in the 17th century. I cannot understand the voices around me, so they could be saying anything. “How are the crops faring?” “When will the midwife come?” “The ships sail from Barcelona at dawn.” Waiters try to lure us into eating at their establishments. I shake my head. “No habla espanol.” But I want to habla, very badly. Or maybe not. We drift through the plaza. Fat spiderman is there again. A man is playing an accordian and singing. Close my eyes as I walk at dusk. An elf on the corner and strange ringing music. An old man sits in front of an elaborate rack of glasses, each filled with water to a different level. He moistens his fingers and runs them around the rims, creating an eerie melody. He is wearing a suit and does not look up at the people passing by. There is no cup or can for the coins of passing strangers. His acoustics are his own. 
