Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 06:57:28 PDT
From: nathaniel finley
Subject:

Hola from Spain! I came down last week, arrived via bus and train in the wonderful town of Seville (really, really gorgeous, with the largest collections of city parks that I have yet seen in Europe). My family met me at the train station and we drove an hour an a half south to the coast where the ocean breezes and the crashing waves of the atlantic make me long for the sunny summer days that I spent in Sardinia, Italy, with my good friend Dave, playing hide and go seek under the water among the fishing boats and zodiaks. Nostalgia...

I'm heading back north on Friday. Currently, my time is being divided between my daughter (by birth) and her family (now mine), and Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment. Also, I'm working through two German children's books, so I've got my hands full! But back in Heidelberg friends await, and the German language is growing and expanding without me. It's a terrific language...I feel a sense of philosophical perfection when I speak that language, and after two or three hours of reading it I think that I can tackle Kant head on! Well, that would be a bit like grabbing the bull by the horns, I suppose, and since I've been in Spain I've seen what that can do for a person! One woman told me about the time she was up in the mountains for the running of the bulls and was tossed ten feet up in the hair by one of those screaming raging toros. She woke up three days later and hasn't walked straight since (but what is walking straight, anyway? Do I walk straight, do you walk straight, can any of us really pass a field sobriety test?). Also, just before I left Germany I had my first serious and lengthy conversation with a street bum, in German. that's pretty important for me, for those of you who are familiar with my interest in US street people. Well, there's a ton of them in Germany, too, only I haven't figured out where they get their beer money. Maybe the German government has some sort of pension plan for these people...alcohol stamps? None of them ever ask for money, only the punks do that, but they continuously stay wasted. I can't figure out if it's the German that I don't understand or the slurring. My time is almost up here. Stay cool in Florida, stay warm in Montana, stay sweet in Tennessee. much love,

'thaniel.