The Direction of Feet

On sore feet, I could not stop walking the cool Gothic Quarter, stone on all sides, roads too narrow for a single car. When I would come back out at La Rambla, or any busy street, I’d find my way back in again. Soaring walls intensely lit, or in deep shadow. Plants hanging or climbing to find the sun from clay pots on balconies. Clotheslines and racks with linens, t-shirts, and blue jeans, and one little purple princess dress. I’d already been walking for hours, for days, but I walked.

Passing through a courtyard, yellow-painted on all sides, I hung a right. Had I gone left I might not have noticed. A chair, primary red and shining, arms and back white from friction, and four women, one wearing nothing but a dark sheet. Cobblestones and graffiti, rows of coloured flags hung further down the road. One, wearing nothing but a dark sheet.

Giving her naked friend directions, the brunette photographer took swigs of red wine directly from the bottle. When people passed, she yelled “Rapido, rapido” in South American Spanish, till they were out of frame. The blonde photographer, with the dread extensions and sunglasses on her head, just took photos. I asked the fourth friend for permission to take my own, and she spoke a little English with me, until we heard something overhead, and both looked up.

Several young men living in the apartments above were taking cell phone pictures without permission, laughing, and calling out to their friends across the alleyway. They took pictures of the nearly naked girl, and I took pictures of them.

She laid upside-down in the chair, her hair hanging, legs crossed, eyes covered by extended fingers and outward facing palms.