hosana, excelsis

Having arranged to spend the night in Barcelona, I checked into the Kabul, the city's most famous youth hostel I'd heard about now and again from other backpackers in Spain. With only an evening to soak up the city, and a train to catch early the next morning, I put the two hour all-you-can-drink session and pub crawl hostel events out of my mind; instead intending a crawl of my own to visit churches and monuments, barrios and artwork.

I was disappointed to arrive too late to take in more than the faces of a few Gaudi buildings I wanted to explore, so I descended into the subway system to make haste to Gaudi's unfinished masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia cathedral; the one sight I couldn't miss. The metro tunnel walls echoed louder the messages I've seen scrawled all over Spain -- no a la guerra, and no a many other things... police, fascism, Bush...

The words of the prophets are written on subway walls; tenement halls.

-- Paul Simon, The Sound of Silence

Maybe some of these prophets just find it an easy way to be heard; leave their mark.

Climbing the final steps out of the dungeons and back into sunlight the church stood towering impressively above me. Its sheer size, though, is nothing when compared to the incredible articulation and originality Gaudi bestowed upon it.

I was bowled over (per usual with cathedrals, museums and the like,) by the vision and labor of the artist, and laughed to compare his mark on the world with those of the subway prohpets, as well as my own accomplishments and promise, overcome by the compulsion to work, think, slave and not waste a moment. Einstein stood on the shoulders of giants, and I in the shadows even of ants.

But I'm reminded that the moulded, mosaiced towers reaching for the heavens of course will one day crumble and fall, just there is a hand to wipe clean the subway walls.