A year ago...

My friend Katherine was just asking me about Barcelona.  More specifically all of the Gaudi architecture that is scattered throughout the city.  One simple question and a flood of correctly pronounced answers started flowing from my mouth.  I tried to shut up.  She just asked about Parc Guell, but for some reason her question jolted me from where I was sitting at my computer and threw me back a year ago into that city that I fell in love with.  All of the colors, smells, people, buildings that I miss.  I don't think about it all on a daily basis. Or even a weekly basis now, but its all tucked up in my mind somewhere, waiting for the flood gates to open.

One day last year in early April I took my camera and spent hours photographing my neighborhood.  I stayed mostly in the confines of what I had defined as my barrio.  The streets I walked to school, the markets where I bought my groceries, the placas where I drank my cortados, the bars where I had become a foreign regular.  

On that day, I wandered around in the warm sun and actually LOOKED at everything that surrounded me.  Everything I took for granted in my waking life.  The beauty of Gracia was in the paint peeling off of stenciled balconies and beautiful, colorful graffiti that tagged storefront doors, and the generations of Gracians who lived their days together in a rhythmic harmony--  through my camera lens I saw it all so clearly.  And for that I am grateful.

The picture above is one of my favorites from the day.  I was photographing the blue graffiti, but stopped when the old man and boy were passing me.  When I raised my camera again, they were both in the frame.  To me that photograph shows the heartbeat of Gracia, of Barcelona as a whole really.  The vibrant color, the dilapidated beauty and the generations of people who bring the city to life.