Tuesday, July 12, 2011

my grandmother's habitual comment about "ungodly hours of the night" are a product not only of her religious piousness, but of geography.
i've finally gotten used to the schedule here. you do not know it but how you live your everyday life as far as overall organisation of daily tasks is dictated by your latitude on the globe, and the climate.

it goes against all instincts to close the windows and pull down the blinds from 11 am to 7 pm. this feels instinctively horrible for a canadian. no matter how much i love heat and boast about never using an air conditioner, even in the hottest parts of china, or here in spain, i now batten down the hatches. my natural way of organising my day, if it is free to organise as i choose, is to get up at 10, spend time on breakfast and then on working on some project, and finally leave the house around 1 or 2 in the afternoon. then return before dinner at 5 or 6. cook and eat around 7 or 8. go out or invite friends over around then or a bit after.

i now do it in exact reverse: up at 8, to the studio at 9. back home between 11:30 to 2 pm. stay in the house for lunch, getting stuff done, sleeping, until between 5 to 9. go out shopping anywhere between 6 to 8. or wait to go out until 9 or 10 if i don't need to buy anything. go out to meet people or stroll and read by the river around 8:30 - 10:30 and come back anywhere between 11 and 2 or 3, depending on whether i meet friends. randomly eat dinner or a snack; sometimes twice.

people head out to have dinner outside on terraces or on the sidewalk starting when the sun goes down. right now that is around 9:30 or 10. that's when it starts to get busy.

if she was andalucian she might has said that noon was ungodly!

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