As some of you know, I am (or, at least, insufferably pose as) an architecture buff. So let's play a game, shall we. Let's pretend for a moment that you're a brilliant modernist Catalonian architect, and that Quincy and I are your wealthy patrons, and we have charged you with the task of designing a feverishly detailed cathedral in Barcelona. But, at our behest, instead of embellishing its facades with lavish representations of the Nativity and the Passion, you have instead decorated it with a more mundane sort of iconography – a set of images that depict our five-day family holiday in Spain last week.
Just what tales do these tableaux tell? Ah, what tales indeed...
One facade of this mythical building might be adorned with a set of panoramic panels depicting the banal beauty of Our Home Away from Two Homes. "Our home away from two homes" is exactly the phrase that Jasper used as we returned to a plastic cabin in the southernmost section of a vast parc de vacances outside of the coastal town of Vilanova i la Geltrú. Ours was one of hundreds of prefab structures parked alongside hundreds of trailers and RVs, around which prowled dozens of mewling homeless housecats. The entire "camping" complex was like a weird pan-European mini-city comprised by linguistic ghettos of people speaking French and English and German and Dutch, all energetically pursuing a leisure lifestyle largely isolated from Spain itself. It addition to its playgrounds and swimming pools, the complex had its own supermarket and shops and restaurants, and even its own mini-zoo. We explored them all, and – because it was unseasonably cold and wet – we also occupied ourselves indoors a lot. A lot of mad-libs and art projects. (Maddox has largely abandoned abstract expressionism and is now producing representational art with surreal flourishes, such as his habit of drawing stick-figure people with unusually long feet that curl and swirl and circle around their entire bodies.) Also a lot of games of twenty-questions. Which could've become tiresome but never did, despite – or perhaps because of – the fact that Maddox's first question was invariably "Is it a goat?"
We also spent time in the indoor swimming pool. So much time, in fact, that some extravagant depiction of the swimming pool deserves to dominate an entire wall of the shrine that you, the eccentric architect, have designed to commemorate our Spanish holiday. But, in this sculptural masterpiece of yours, it's not the pool itself that grabs the eye; it's the people splashing within it. And, specifically, it's what they are all wearing on their heads: Swim caps. Everyone has a swim cap on. It's the law. Well, okay, it's not exactly etched into the Catalonian penal code, but the parc de vacances did have a strict policy requiring everyone to wear a swim cap in the swimming pool. Now, as many of you know, I just don't do headwear – because caps and hats always look ridiculous on my tiny head. But rules are rules, and so I was compelled to find a store that sold Speedo-style swim caps for all of us. I tried to be optimistic. I hoped that maybe it'd make me look like some angular Australian backstroke bronze-medallist or something, or at least not look completely laughable. No such luck. When I slipped that lycra cap over my nut-sized noggin, I looked less like an Olympian, and more like some pasty Russian cosmonaut in awkward orbit around the Earth.
The kids would've been happy to spend their entire holiday swimming in the pool and cuddling up to half-feral housecats, but we did venture occasionally outside the "camping" complex. So maybe a third and final facade of your ornate architectural masterwork should depict the highlights of these excursions. For instance, we spent some time on the beach in Vilanova i la Geltrú, where the kids took great delight in climbing onto a statue of muscular naked woman curled up inside an enormous bull, and took equal delight in watching a big bulldog take a crap on a miniature railway.
And we took a daytrip to Barcelona too. I've already forced you to recall that I am (or, irritatingly, pretend to be) an architecture enthusiast. So it won't surprise you to learn that Jasper and Maddox were forced to participate in a Barcelonian walking tour dictated almost entirely by my desire to see some of the modernist architectural marvels for which the city is so famous. It'll surprise you even less to learn that this was decidedly not the highlight of their holiday. My own lasting memory of Barcelona won't have anything to do with the intricate organic forms of the Casa Batlló or the hallucinatory magnificence of the Sagrada Familia. It'll probably be the half-hour we spent in a very ordinary playground directly in the shadows of the glorious soaring towers of Gaudí's famously-unfinished masterwork, watching Maddox happily slide on a slide, while Jasper sat on a bench with her nose buried in a book about a magic school-bus and butterflies.
Just what tales do these tableaux tell? Ah, what tales indeed...
One facade of this mythical building might be adorned with a set of panoramic panels depicting the banal beauty of Our Home Away from Two Homes. "Our home away from two homes" is exactly the phrase that Jasper used as we returned to a plastic cabin in the southernmost section of a vast parc de vacances outside of the coastal town of Vilanova i la Geltrú. Ours was one of hundreds of prefab structures parked alongside hundreds of trailers and RVs, around which prowled dozens of mewling homeless housecats. The entire "camping" complex was like a weird pan-European mini-city comprised by linguistic ghettos of people speaking French and English and German and Dutch, all energetically pursuing a leisure lifestyle largely isolated from Spain itself. It addition to its playgrounds and swimming pools, the complex had its own supermarket and shops and restaurants, and even its own mini-zoo. We explored them all, and – because it was unseasonably cold and wet – we also occupied ourselves indoors a lot. A lot of mad-libs and art projects. (Maddox has largely abandoned abstract expressionism and is now producing representational art with surreal flourishes, such as his habit of drawing stick-figure people with unusually long feet that curl and swirl and circle around their entire bodies.) Also a lot of games of twenty-questions. Which could've become tiresome but never did, despite – or perhaps because of – the fact that Maddox's first question was invariably "Is it a goat?"
We also spent time in the indoor swimming pool. So much time, in fact, that some extravagant depiction of the swimming pool deserves to dominate an entire wall of the shrine that you, the eccentric architect, have designed to commemorate our Spanish holiday. But, in this sculptural masterpiece of yours, it's not the pool itself that grabs the eye; it's the people splashing within it. And, specifically, it's what they are all wearing on their heads: Swim caps. Everyone has a swim cap on. It's the law. Well, okay, it's not exactly etched into the Catalonian penal code, but the parc de vacances did have a strict policy requiring everyone to wear a swim cap in the swimming pool. Now, as many of you know, I just don't do headwear – because caps and hats always look ridiculous on my tiny head. But rules are rules, and so I was compelled to find a store that sold Speedo-style swim caps for all of us. I tried to be optimistic. I hoped that maybe it'd make me look like some angular Australian backstroke bronze-medallist or something, or at least not look completely laughable. No such luck. When I slipped that lycra cap over my nut-sized noggin, I looked less like an Olympian, and more like some pasty Russian cosmonaut in awkward orbit around the Earth.
The kids would've been happy to spend their entire holiday swimming in the pool and cuddling up to half-feral housecats, but we did venture occasionally outside the "camping" complex. So maybe a third and final facade of your ornate architectural masterwork should depict the highlights of these excursions. For instance, we spent some time on the beach in Vilanova i la Geltrú, where the kids took great delight in climbing onto a statue of muscular naked woman curled up inside an enormous bull, and took equal delight in watching a big bulldog take a crap on a miniature railway.
And we took a daytrip to Barcelona too. I've already forced you to recall that I am (or, irritatingly, pretend to be) an architecture enthusiast. So it won't surprise you to learn that Jasper and Maddox were forced to participate in a Barcelonian walking tour dictated almost entirely by my desire to see some of the modernist architectural marvels for which the city is so famous. It'll surprise you even less to learn that this was decidedly not the highlight of their holiday. My own lasting memory of Barcelona won't have anything to do with the intricate organic forms of the Casa Batlló or the hallucinatory magnificence of the Sagrada Familia. It'll probably be the half-hour we spent in a very ordinary playground directly in the shadows of the glorious soaring towers of Gaudí's famously-unfinished masterwork, watching Maddox happily slide on a slide, while Jasper sat on a bench with her nose buried in a book about a magic school-bus and butterflies.
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