La Puerta del Sol, Madrid

You. You have thought for a long time that you would like to try writing in second person singular ~ you. You think that you can do so in this blog by offering a series of vignettes of places you have lived, studied, and worked. You begin with Madrid.

Madrid

At eleven, you prepare to  leave the Ateneo where you have been studying since five in the afternoon…

A las cinco de la tarde.
Eran las cinco en punto de la tarde.
Un niño trajo la blanca sábana
a las cinco de la tarde.

Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías ~ Federico García Lorca

You had a quick merienda about seven o’clock in the bar downstairs when your friends arrived from the university. Rather than a bite to hold you over until dinner in the Spanish style, the merienda for you is the evening meal, owing to your limited student budget as well as not needing anything after a heavy bocadillo of a baguette, serrano ham, and cheese. The light over your study desk casts a swirl of whitish yellow on your desk , one of hundreds in the vast library. Before you switch it off, you muse once more, wondering which of the many illustrious intellectuals may have studied there also, at this very desk, students like you. Alcalá Zamora? Unamuno? Ortega y Gasset? Or perhaps one of your professors – Julián Marías, Laura de los Ríos de García Lorca, or Carlos Bousoño? Then, as you descend the gorgeous staircase to the exit, you and your friends meet up to make the short trek to the Metro in Puerta del Sol.

You feel the cold as you leave the Ateneo, but it is not until you round the last corner into the Puerta does the strong north wind take your breath away.  Your pandilla, your group of Spanish pals, tells you that this is the wind that during the winter comes straight from the Arctic Circle to the meseta, the high plain where Madrid is located. This is definitely a night for chocolate y churros before entering the metro station, where everyone will go their separate ways. The sight, the texture, and the taste of this plato típico – like hot, dark chocolate pudding and heavy donuts, is one you still recall 48 years later, as you experiment with the second person singular.

Photo ~ Puerta del Sol by Manuel on Flickr: https://goo.gl/x7DKGQ (CC BY 2.0).

Photo ~ La escalera by pegatina1 on Flickr: https://goo.gl/j9lNja (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Photo ~ Churros y chocolate on Flickr: https://goo.gl/on1BDP  (CC BY 2.0)

This post is part of the Blogging from A to Z (2016)  Challenge. Click here. to see all of the blogs in the A to Z Challenge