This time, since the idea is to be here indefinitely, there is no urgency for the fun stuff, and the hard stuff feels interminable. Timing, or perhaps, perspective, is everything.
But we're muddling through. One big challenge (or first world problem, however you like) is our very small apartment (700 square feet between the five of us and our three cats). What seemed like an interesting adventure for a year seems absolutely unworkable in the long term. I keep bumping into things, and the thought of our eight additional boxes wending their way across the Atlantic makes me wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. There simply is no room.
So we're constantly reassessing what's necessary. How much stuff do we really need? Is it a question of storage and ingenuity, à la all those "Living in Small Spaces" books? Or is it a deeper issue of how much of our lives are defined by the possessions we accumulate and how comfortably we can invite friends for dinner. If we are just ourselves, and there are no clues to show what we care about: photos, books, things we've created or built, or the way we've set up our living space, does that mean we have to be witty and interesting and articulate all the time?
There's also this sense that I'm constantly planning and not just living. But not having the infrastructure means there's all this extra planning on the fly. So, should I spend some time setting up infrastructure to save time later on, or should I take advantage of the lack of infrastructure to be more flexible.
Probably I just think too much.
Saturday, I heard the whistle of the knife sharpener man. He walks around the neighborhood with a flute and a motorcycle-driven workshop. We have three knives and a pair of scissors and none of them cut a thing. I pulled them out of the dishwasher, ran down the stairs and caught up with him. He looked at me panting, and said in Spanish, "Did I make you run?" He must make everyone run, no? How else would you catch up?
I handed him our knives, not totally sure how it would work. On the back of this bike, he had two grindstones, and a small wooden box. Out of the box he pulled out a gear belt and a bit of newspaper. He connected the grindstones to the motor with the belt and laid the newspaper at the edge of the grindstone. Later when I asked him, he said it kept the sparks from flying into his face.
Then he started the motor and the grindstones began to spin. He sharpened all four with the rough stone, and then used the smoother stone to finish the job. He turned off the motor, and pulled out a final buffer stone from the wooden box to smooth off the edges.
He charged me 20€ in total (5€ for each item). It seemed like a lot, and I wasn't sure if he was taking advantage of me. But I'll admit that for as long as I have listened to that flute, I have always wanted to try it. While I was standing there, a Catalan woman and her son walked by and she started explaining what the man was doing. It made me wonder if it was just a temporal anomaly—something that used to make sense but that now people solve other ways. One thing is for sure: the knives are really sharp now.
