To say that Ireland, that magical place in my dreams, was a disappointment was sort of like saying steroids in cycling is a problem; a major understatement. I set the alarm clock for five in the morning and was ready to taxi as first light appeared. Hop time to Madrid was three hours, twenty-seven minutes. I figured I could get there, see the Prado, why I put Madrid on the route, and still have time to see a little local color.
The routing took me almost due south, across the Irish Sea and over Lands End, the westernmost tip of England, then just missing Brest France, across the Bay of Biscay, and over Spain. From the air, Spain looked a lot more like the terrain I was used to in California; hilly and brown.
Landing in Madrid turned out to be a bit of a challenge since my request for an angled approach seemed to throw off the controllers. When they asked why and I explained about the type of plane I was driving, boom, suddenly I was talking to dead air. I guess they couldn’t figure out what the hell I was flying. Finally, a senior controller came on and approved my approach.
I was met by a follow-me truck, I think just to see what the hell kind of aircraft I was flying. After I parked, the guys got out of the truck and came over to the plane. They looked around, talked on the radio, then disappeared. I guess I passed the test because I never heard a word.
There was an ATM right in the flight ops building so I grabbed some Euros, caught a cab outside, and had him head to the Prado. I got there not long after it opened and being a weekday, the crowds weren’t bad. The Prado is one of the world’s great art museums because the Spanish royalty, at various times, ruled many parts Europe and collected art for centuries. Where they didn't rule, Italy for example, they did shop.
It’s all in the Prado. It is the greatest treasury of Spanish painters, but it is also home to great Italian, Flemish, Dutch and German painting as well. The Spanish court was a great collector of Titian, the Playboy centerfold of his day. You see, the Inquisition, as part of the Christian Church, worked to ferret out pleasure, but the allegorical naked women of painters like Titian passed because the Church in Rome approved of Titian. This way, the Spaniards could get their jollies and still maintain that outward purity that was essential in periods of religious repression of pleasure. Sex as sin is, of course, a Christian invention. Hmm, that sure sounds like America in the present, doesn’t it?
Many of my favorite paintings are in the Prado. Perhaps the greatest Spanish painter was Goya, the transitional figure between Classicism and Romanticism. Much Like Beethoven, Goya straddled the divide helping to create and define this new approach to art, Romanticism. In his art, the sleep of Reason allowed the demons of the soul to escape. Some of his most famous paintings are not even technically the best. Maybe the best example is La Maja Desnuda, the Naked Maja. If you look at the painting, even neophytes can see that the head doesn’t quite fit on the body. It’s tilted slightly wrong and the coloring is different. Why?
Speculation, really certainty, is that Goya had an affair with the Duchess of Alba, and that the woman painted nude was the Duchess. It seems that in the restrictive court of Spain, those impulses banned by the church, e.g. sex, still managed to find their way to expression since everyone of any stature had a mistress or paramour. Obviously, Goya couldn’t display a painting of the Duchess publicly so he went back and painted a different face on the body, probably the mistress of Manuel de Godoy, who subsequently owned the painting.
But Goya, as was his practice, flaunted the conventions of the Spansh court and the church by not pretending to an allegorical or mythological meaning, the way Titian had gotten around the church in his day. Goya's painting was the first life-size female nude that made no apologies for its nudity in Western art since the church had seized control of Europe. The Inquisition got even with Goya by confiscating the painting and declaring it obscene. Isn't it interesting how the Government is still using the obscene label to confiscate works it doesn't like. I am willing to bet that the painting hung in the office of the Grand Inquisitor, as an example of bad art, wink, just the way J. Edgar Hoover used to have all the porn seized by the FBI sent to his office for 'review.' Isn’t it funny how the people in power use the obscene label to ban speech and ideas they disagree with and punish those who don’t bend to their will? In our time the FCC wants to control the Internet and impose those same ridiculous rules that they impose on broadcast TV. Lord save up from the Federal busybodies.
After spending the best part of the day in the Prado, I found an open air café and pulled up a chair. I asked for some wine and watched the world go by. Spanish women have some kind of charm, for I don’t think they are beauties and they often pack a few extra pounds, but the way they carry themselves, it just reeks sensuality. Not sex, but sensuality. American women have lost it, if they ever had it. I look at Meg Ryan, supposedly the home town girl and watch her walk and it’s like she walking through corn rows, clomp, clomp, clomp. Spanish women, their bodies move and roll in all sorts of delightful ways that keeps your eyes glued to them. You can’t help but watch as she goes by. And every man in the café would watch, the girl barely acknowledging our appreciation, oh, but she noticed. An American girl would have run off in terror of being appreciated, or turned and attacked the men having the gall to think of her as a sex object. What American women have lost in feminism is the feminine…
I stayed in the café appreciating the beauty of the Spanish women until late afternoon. The streets emptied, the café emptied and all was quiet. I took a taxi, hard to find at that hour, to the hotel and joined the siesta. About eight, after the sun was down and the night air cool, the streets came alive again. I joined the throngs and found a restaurant. Spanish food is nothing like what I had grown up on and thought of as Spanish food. Wild boar with prunes and Veal in Fruit Pastry were on the menu as well as paella and shrimp and reallnos and things I would expect. I had a hard time narrowing my choices. I did try one weird dish, just to say I did, rice cooked with squid in their own ink. Ever had black rice? I have.
My usual luck with women held. Maybe I didn’t try enough since Lilja was still foremost in my mind. The café had plenty of girls but I didn’t connect with anyone. I had a last sherry and went back to the hotel and crashed.
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