When I first planned this trip to visit my kids in the States, I thought of dropping by to see my “spiritual brother” Bruce Davidson. Together with his partner Linda Reimer, and the gathered companions at Sirius Community, he had been carrying an inner light for decades, even through the past few years of declining physical health, after a fall from a tree had physically broken him.

He passed in November, and my desire to meet him again in this lifetime were ended as well. Since Sirius is not far from the Pioneer Valley, where both of my adult children are in residence, I took an evening to drive up into the hills, to add my presence to his lingering presence.

I know my friends and neighbors to be peace-loving, cooperative citizens, and I know the long heritage of their culture enjoys many more days of enlightened rule than oppression. I know that the history of power in Madrid cannot very easily defend their own record in this regard, and that a disinterest in real discussion has led to this pass.

While I hope to read and understand better the Catalan motives for secession – more lofty than “mine is mine” finances, though probably that factors in as well – I prefer a diplomatic solution, brokered by disinterested third parties (should those exist), than a push toward bloodshed.

Yesterday’s general strike concluded without further agression – thank you to whomever had sense enough to cool the hotter heads in the room. Now begins the media battle, and probably some sort of legal battle.

To make sense of the right-wing response from Madrid (“Mine! Mine!”): at 20% of the Spanish GDP, Catalunya leaving the federation would be a bigger economic blow to the Iberian peninsula than if California, Oregon and Washington State joined to declare their independence, becoming some glistening, insane, ephemeral digitocracy, poised to shake into the sea with San Andreas’ next rumble. Catalunya has a history as an independent State, so a “bipartisan” Congress’ hard-line response would have the greater force of law.

Since we have seen this same tired play performed over and over again throughout history, we actually don’t need to pick up the script to know what happens next.

Since an army has been sent, there will be violence.

The violence will not originate with the people who are gathering without arms. It will be provoked by the invading military, orchestrated, or barring success is creating a fight, invented.

The people who are marching will defend themselves as best they can from the aggression, which will then be labeled “insurrection” or “coup d’etat” (the latter has already been used).

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For the past week leading up to Catalunya’s self-declared referendum on independence – fervently contested as unconstitutional by the standing Spanish government in Madrid; equally or more fervently proposed as the only remaining action possible within an unjust and unresponsive regime – the people of the city have stood at 10 pm outside their apartments, on balconies or in windows or in the street, with large pots and pans and wooden mallets. For five minutes they struck those pans like bells, decentralized but united, is support of their right to decide.

Catalina’s mother was able to travel and be with us for a number of weeks, shortly after the birth of her grandson, our son. On one of the Saturdays of her visit, the two decided to, finally, “Do the Tourist Thing”, and ride one of the big red double-decker buses around the hills and beaches of Barcelona. I was invited, but declined; they had a great mother-daughter-grandson outing, and I took my bicycle and headed north.

Entre los varios sueños que me visitaban ayer noche, este fue lo más problemático. Perderme, tranquilo; sufrir una pequeña accidente de coche, aguanto; llamar a casa, encuentro mi pareja cansada, sin tiempo hablar conmigo, está bien, está bien.

Pero cortando esta paisaje cinemática, como la voz del narrador, unos pocos palabras: “Tienes veinte-y-cuatro horas para vivir. Disfruta-las.”

Lo que pasa en el sueño es tan real. Quién estaba hablando? Dios, ángel, diablo? Tengo veinte-y-cuatro horas. Se ha hablado. Puede ser?

When the sun rises the wind rises, mostly from the sea slightly acrid and full of the tide, sometimes from the land laden with dust and a broad swath of heat, in either direction pouring into and over Barcelona, east-to-west or west-to-east, breathing in or breathing out.

At street level there are pedestrians and cars, the pungent aroma of century-old sewers, the sycamores’ daily fall of leaves, and still air. Walk up a couple of flights, and the atmosphere lifts with you, tourism gives way to neighborhood (Sr. Carles and his little dog on the second floor, the acid-rock teen on the third, the divorcée and her daughters on the fourth, the colombiana next door). You meet them at the door of the tiny elevator, where they smile and wave and turn away to walk down to the street; you meet them with their bags and boxes and baby strollers, with their garbage bags and umbrellas; and you meet them in their quiet or loud domesticity, the bellowed phone calls to hard-of-hearing relatives, a raucous chorus of feliç aniversari to a friend or family member, the deep silence of all these families sleeping during a personally restless night.

A flight of steps takes you from one floor to the next. If you are at ground level, you could fly upwards, as high as needed, to reach your roost; if you are floating somewhere above, you would flutter downward to reach the street.

If your ceilings are high and your walls short, a stretch of stairway may not fly you from one floor to the next. In our building, the stairs double back on themselves once between each floor. The segments in a flight of stairs are called “flits”. Our building boasts two flits per flight. My friend Sal, master of the moist (or much) arcane, would enjoy researching the veracity of this, or extending its coinage.