Time Out of Time

BARCELONA, Spain — The minutes move differently here. Their texture is strange, their flavor almost unrecognizable. Half-past three doesn’t feel the same. Neither does midnight.

I’ve lived my whole life with a deep-seated knowledge that the world turns, that things change, that the second hand ticks around the clock from 6:56 to 6:57. But that makes no difference now. Maybe it’s the Catalán lifestyle that’s thrown me for a loop—or the sun, which magically remains suspended, muggy hot and sweat-inducing, until past 9pm. Maybe it’s the ubiquitous use of military time, or the complete lack of a sleep schedule. (Party goers return, drunken and stumbling, ‘round 6 a.m.)

Whatever the cause, this body of mine doesn’t know how to handle it. My stomach grumbles between meals. I lie in bed unable to drift off in the wee hours of the morning, then wake up in the middle of the afternoon. Somehow the city—with its flashing lights, euphoric ruckus, its paint-splattered walls and narrow, endless alleyways—has managed to halt my internal clock. Pause it, if you will.

I no longer check my cell phone’s digital display because knowing the hour doesn’t really do me much good. I have no choice here but to live, not by minutes but by moments. In the States, time feels like it’s bearing down on me: I’m always running late, I should be eating lunch already, and I can’t possibly get it all done. But in Barcelona, every second is an opportunity. It’s noticing the one cracked tile on a mosaicked café tabletop. Or the crooked-toothed smile of that 20-something-pierced-lip chica on the Metro. Or the sickly-sweet way your mouth feels after a sip of horchata. It’s forgetting, for an instant, where you are and what you’re supposed to be doing and just letting it all slip and smear and swirl around you.

In that single moment of stillness—standing there as the world races by—Barcelona has become a part of me, burrowed deep down inside. And I doubt it will ever leave.

—Molly M. Strauss '11, a Crimson editorial editor, is a resident of Winthrop House.