Port Meadow

3 January.

Fiddler's Island and the Thames

30 December. Along the Thames path between Port Meadow and Osney Bridge. At my right shoulder the sun declining at each pace I took, the sky deepening, the final red blush held awhile, then night fell.

Carrer de Fernando Primo de Rivera

The wall of the Royal Palace gardens along C. de Fernando Primo de Riviera also receives many repaintings. Here it seems the graffiti is more calligraphic or cartoonish, marking closer knit or more private identities than the broader references of that to be found on C. del Tinent Coronel Valenzuela.

Carrer del Tinent Coronel Valenzuela

On the walls of the Royal Palace gardens running along C. del Tinent Coronel Valenzuela are many remnants of graffiti, often expressing protest, which have been in due course painted over.

Cementiri de l'Est

(Some of the unmarked resting places amongst the tiers of wall niches.)

Cementiri de l'Est

18 October.

Walking around the symmetric, maze-like Old Cemetery I became very conscious of moving in space and the attendant marking of time (meanwhile a differently moving cog made itself known through mementi mori). Turning left and right, looking forward and backward, and returning, while all around the autogenous wall paintings bid me stop.

In every framing signs and traces, scenes pregnant with past events and those that are yet to happen.

Cementiri del Sud-Oest

25 October.

Cementiri del Sud-Oest (1883) occupies the seaward side of Montjuïc. Its urban layout and architecture a compressed simulacrum of the contemporary city of the living. The high-density blocks of niches have the upper reaches of the hill and therefore a better view of the sea; on the other hand the ornate tombs are lower down and benefit more from the shade of cypress and eucalyptus trees.




In this city of the dead there are many imitations by architects and sculptors mimicking the work of the city of the living. Sometimes the architect who designed for the living also designed for the dead: Puig i Cadafalch built a tomb for the Amatller family with the same stepped Dutch pediment that he put on their house in Passeig de Gràcia, and even used the same sculptor, Eusebi Arnau i Mascort.
That there is little difference between the imagining and formation of the two cities is quite oppressive, and to wander the streets stifling.