january 28

I have never been so jet lagged. Last night I lay in bed, eyes wide open, for eight hours. No kidding. This is probably a significant contributing factor to why I was in such a crummy mood today. Since I arrived here in Barcelona I have probably cried more than I have in the entire past year. It´s funny, all the time I spent planning this trip, thinking about where to go and what do to, I never questioned the decision to go alone, it seemed obvious to me. Now that I am here in this breath taking city, all I want, more than anything is a friend. This morning I took off towards MACBA (museum of modern art) thinking that walking around and looking at beautiful things might cheer me up. The whole way there I fought tears. Once inside, I still fought the tears. "This is horrible!" I thought, "I am in Barcelona! A city oozing with art and noise and magic, and all I can do is cry!" And the museum sucked. It was much smaller than I had thought and full of that pretentious red streak on grey background crap. And I didn´t even get to enjoy making fun of it because there was no one to laugh with. Outside the museum were hip university students lounging around in the sun laughing and skatboarding. How dare they enjoy themselves in front of me! Can´t they see I am miserable! I decided then I would not allow myself to be sad. If I couldn´t be happy I would be angry. But then I started crying again and melting into the big pathetic bowl of chicken noodle soup that I am. Then I was angry at myself for being so pitiful. Aha! Anger is good. Angry and happy are powerful emotions, while sad is just useless. I decided to only notice things that made me happy or mad. At this point I was meandering around without a point of destination and I happened across a beautiful wall of grafitti. Of course this city is filled to the brim with grafitti, but this wall was especially impressive. I even recognized a couple of the artists. This made me very happy. But them some jerk came along and started harrassing me to get coffee with him. That made me mad. My plan was working! I walked on, murmurring mean and violent things to myself, trying to stay angry. Then, amoungst all the quaint little Spanish shops on the avenue which I was walking, I saw a Starbucks. This ammused me, which I figured was also an acceptable emotion, sort of a sub category of happy. Then another good thing came, I spotted a sign "Youth Hostel" pointing down a narrow alleyway. I do not like my current hostel and was hoping to find something better. I rang the buzzer and up the windy steps lay before me a cheery room with walls covered in a childish mural. The man said they had plenty of space and I could come tomorrow. HAPPY. This brightened my day significantly and since then I have felt much better. No crying. I have a feeling that this bipolar pattern will continue for atleast a few more days, but atleast I am learning to deal with my emotions. No one said this adventuring in foreign lands thing was going to be easy, so I´ll get through it. The future only looks brighter. This weekend I am going to the Dali museum, no more modern art.