hojas

The same word for pages and leaves, I have been surrounded by hojas and hojas of colorful liveliness. Books. Parks. Books in the park.

It’s beautiful and refreshing to be part of a community so entrenched in  the importance of literacy, and story telling, an languages, and sharing.

Recently I went to the Biblioteca Nacional.

Then, I spent some moments traipsing through the new shelves and endless rooms in the newly opened public library in Retiro, and got a little inspiration from the speaking walls.

I always enjoy riding the metro seeing the little posters with a dose of daily literature or poetry?

(images via librosdelacalle. check out the link “textos” to see more bit of literature.)

And of course the always open feria de libro on la Cuesta del Moyano, where you can find lovely smelling used editions. Especially on a sunny, fresh, stroll worthy afternoon.

But what I’ve really been waiting for is la feria del libro de Madrid.

(photo via feria del libro de madrid)

For teachers, learners, and vivacious readers, book fairs are like finding a gold mine. And if you happen to be living in Europe and get the chance to go to a huge book fair in the middle of the city, in a once royal park, with authors and illustrated characters signing books, technology pavilions, and children’s pavilions – well, now we’re talking.

I’ve been looking forward to the book fair, and going with a group of friends proved to be a joyful experience, of entering childhood again.

I found my soulmates – a small fox who reads books and when he is finished salts them, and munches them up. And a little red fish who explores the library (El pez rojo).

We followed the turtle, and the elephant, and the giraffe, and even the rat, up to the moon.

We met a little pirate girl who drinks rum and kisses her teddy bear goodnight, and falls in love with the little boy who is all the while criticizing her story (El libro mas genial que he leído).

We made one sentence stories.We quizzed ourselves, are-you-smarter-than-a-fifth-grader style.

It is by entering those magical places and letting them expand and shape the contours of your brain, that you can piece together the inconsistencies that we call existence, and find sense in the senseless.

aprender es jugar

Note to readers, before beginning this blog entry: slowly but surely my Spanish is growing, and I think it’s about time I explore writing a bit more in my second language. Imagine a foreign language as a key which unlocks a door, and furthermore, a door to a room you never knew existed. I encourage my students in their efforts: speaking and learning another language is about communicating, so they need not be crazy about making their spoken grammar and language perfect. But in fact, language is much more. It’s a path of thinking and understanding, and diving into new things, and expressing something in a way that perhaps makes much more sense than it makes in your own language. English only speakers: bear with some Spanish adventures. Spanish learners: learn with me! Spanish natives: bear with my grammatical mistakes, embarrassing errors, and attempt at expression.

Llevo en Madrid dos años y actúo como fuera cualquier poblador de una ciudad grande: no hago cosas culturalmente típicas ni históricamente importantes.

Vamos, no os miento: me dicen que soy más madrileña que el otro tipo de la calle. Conozco la Zarzuela (más que una vez), por ejemplo. He cortado (y bien, me han dicho) un jamón. Me he puesto chulapa, cantando del corazón “Madrid, Madrid, Madrid”. Fui a una despedida de soltera, andando por las calles de Madrid, repasando las etapas de la vida de la novia, pura madrileña. Y celebramos la boda este sábado!

Aunque sea exageración, la verdad es que he disfrutado mucho de me tiempo acá.

Como llevamos algunas semanas bastante lluviosas (hechas con la intención de quedarnos en casa, libro ocupando las manos y una bebida calientita a lado), decidí que la aventura que me lanzaría fuera del piso, confrontando las nubes para que no me ahogan con sus tormentas, sería quince minutos andando a la Biblioteca Nacional de España, entrando por fin sus puertas épicas. Con entrada gratis, lleva dos años llamándome para que entre.

Para los que odian museos, u os que se encontráis aburridos nada más con entrar, teorizo sobre los museos: es un estado de actitud y mente para disfrutar de las aventuras que te esperan. Si uno se entiende como se aprende, investigar este modo de aprendizaje en cualquier espacio y formato en lo cual te encuentres. No te preocupes por cómo se anda la otra gente. Museos son espacios de explorar – tomad control de tu experiencia de aprender. Sacaras mucho más.

Exhibición temporal: Mudéjar. Cualquiera persona que haya vivido en España tiene pillado lo que es el diseño Mudéjar. Mezcla entre las tres influencias dominantes de España: cristianismo, judaísmo e islam.

Libros como arte. Cientos de minibooks, hechos por artistas en varias partes del mundo, explorando el libro como formato de expresión de ideas, sin tener que llenarlo con millones de palabras. Las cosas pequeñas más valen.

Unos prismáticos antiguas, que se trata de poner una dispositiva de dos fotos parecidos, y mirando se ve una versión en tres dimensiones del imagen.

Biblioteca de Don Quijote, divertida!  Estanterías llenas de ediciones variados del nuestro héroe gracioso español, algunos de la obra completa, y muchas versiones ilustradas. Ordenadores con la historia a través de películas, y líneas del tiempo sobre la vida de Cervantes.

Y cómo este año la Biblioteca cumpla 300 años, se han construido una tabla gigante de BibliOca, la Oca (Parcheesi), basado en los eventos importantes de la biblioteca durante tres siglos. Cada espacio viene con un dato y una ilustración súper divertida. Tira el dado enorme, y usa el cuerpo como marcador.

Aprender es jugar, y jugar es aprender. Espabílate, y recorre un poco tu ciudad. A ver las sorpresas que te tiene.

Attraversiamo

First day of Spring and Weekly Joy 7

I love Spring! That ray of sunshine after a dark, rainy, cold winter.

This last weekend I got spring started by spending a sparkling long weekend in Lisbon. What an enchanting city. All the perks of a city, with all the beauty of a pueblo. Obrigada Lisboa, for your hospitality, kindness, and delicious food.

This week is a short week at school, working hard to get caught up before semana santa, a difficult feat as the kids  teachers are antsy for vacation.

I am over the moon about my trip to Italy, starting tomorrow! I will be Roaming & Wandering around Florence, Venice, and Rome for 9 beautiful days. With Holy Week, Easter, and a new Pope, it should be a curious time to visit Italy.

Readers, be prepared for many new thoughts and ideas here at Roam&Wander upon my return. But for now I leave you with a little bit of weekly joy…

I’m just finishing On the Road after a great friend of mine commented that my writing reminded her of the Beats. It’s something completely different than I´ve ever read, and it’s been really great to roam across the continental USA with my friend Sal. I found it quite curious to see a book review in the New York Times around the same time I’m finishing. It’s quite controversial to be compared to a beat. But I love the idea of being a raw writer. My time in Spain has definitely taught me to be more spontaneous (hence, Roam&Wander).

“Be free. Be open. Be naked in your responses to the world and its peoples.”

(via cafecomversos)

(via art&psychology)

(via switcheroo)

weekly joy {5}

The more I learn about the earth, the less I think I know. I am an eternal learner, and I love the prospect of having so many things to learn. It gives me a healthy dose of humility and a desire to connect with others on a deep level.

I am so intrigued by the minature earth project, which brings some great perspective

Adventure inspiration from my reading…

“Now we must all get out and dig* the river and the people and smell the world”  – On the Road, Jack Kerouac  

Caribou Coffee “Life is…” and What do you stay awake for?

Life is a soulful journey meant for compassion and forgiveness, finding joy in the smallest things, and loving with all you have. 

I stay awake for midnight conversations that change my understanding of the world for the better. 

A Whole World and similar books by Katie Couprie 

Check them out in English, Spanish, and French. These books are a journey for the sense, not only illustrated for kids, but a visual story of the world we live in. Perfect for learning children, passionate teachers, and conversations starters.

If you could make your own version of A Whole World, what things would you include? What types of photography, pictures, and artwork would you include? Where would you find inspiration? What media would you use? What is your vision of the world? Share it with others!

Summer project, anyone?

*check out number 4. What do you dig?

Happy Weekend.

XOXO. 

gentle gray

“Elephants are Contagious.” – Paul Éluard

There is something about elephants.

Of his own accord, my sweet nephew started loving elephants basically as soon as he could say the word.

The birth of baby elephants at the Portland, Oregon, USA zoo is always a huge deal.

Going to the Madrid, Spain Zoo with one hundred first graders, found two hundred little eyes glued to the humungous, yet gentle creatures.

I think we can learn something from elephants.

They might be the most intriguing of animals, yet they are an animal void of color. Gray.

Think of all the gorgeous animals that are vivid and piercing. Orange and white, jagged tiger stripes hiding in tall green grasses and squishy clown fish hiding in sea oeneome.

Consider peacock and parrot feathers, scaley reptile patterns, and the millions of life forms, known and unknown, filling our oceans and seas. And this is barely scraping the surface of incredibly colorful creatures.

Elephants should go unnoticed, in their earthy and voided tones.

Impossible, you say?

Elephants weigh in between six thousand and eleven thousand pounds: their presence cannot be ignored.

They are intriguing, being the only animal on the planet with a trunk.

Their wrinkles tell us wisdom.

Life is full of color,  not black and white.

But it’s also gray. Just like the wrinkly, thick folds of an elephant’s skin.

A black and white world would be so boring (no offense to Pandas, you might be one of the most adorable animals).

Even literature admits to the tenderness and striking beauty of elephants, stories about difficulty and hardship, but also about friendship and love and protecting one another. Think about Junior in The Jungle Book, and Tantor in Tarzan.

They aren’t perfect stories, easy stories, black and white stories.

But they are deep stories, where an undefined world is explored, questioning the evil, the unfair, the difficult, grasping hold of the good, of needs, of desires.

Sea of Stories

I just finished reading Salman Rushdie’s strikingly vivid novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories, in which stories are physical substanceswhich fill an entire Sea, as a life source for our existence, that, when poisoned, can cause sadness, a loss of truth, and war.

Stories and words are the river of our hearts and our desires.

“The poor storyteller opened his mouth, and the crowd squealed in excitement – and now… standing there with his mouth hanging open, found that it was as empty as his heart”.

But many wishes are unspoken, out-loud desires are not an easy feat.

“Wishes are not such easy things”.

“You are suffering from a Heart-Shadow”

And when we try to express our deepest desire, it isn’t usually clear upon the first try.

 “A figure of speech is a shifty thing, it can be twisted or it can be straight”.

Therefore, stories and words help us sort through the seen and the unseen, through visions and understanding, through knowledge and wisdom.

But sometimes stories aren’t told with breathed words, but rather action.

“Silence had its own grace and beauty (just as speech could be graceless and ugly), and that Action could be as noble as Words”.

The current book clutched in my ten fingers is Peony in Love by Lisa See (better known for her beautiful novel Snowflower and the Secret Fan).

Peony, not unlike myself, is in love with story, collecting various editions of her favorite story The Peony Pavillion. Forbidden love mixed with very clear societal roles for men and women, many things going unspoken, Peony’s fathers explains that

“Stories tell us how we should live”.

I think stories are crucial to the fiber of our being.

What stories have changed you?