The Green Ayuntamiento and Other Stories

This morning I awoke at nine-thirtyish, and was pleased that the time change made me look like an earlier riser than I was intentionally. It has been chilly lately and the trees are beginning to lose their leaves en masse after being in their original splendour quite far into the season. Of course the plane trees will likely bear their foliage into November as they always do.

Within the past week, smoke has hung in the air, and I saw a chimneystack where the vapour was rapidly drawn forth and dissipated into the breeze. We have not turned on the stoves yet ourselves. Still, last week and for the first time this autumn, I turned on an electric heater to banish the humidity from my room. Generally I've held to the belief — however — that adapting to wintry temperatures is helpful for the immune system, besides its environmental and pecuniary benefits.

During that same week, our uncle brought a pale orange, white-streaked pumpkin from a neighbour's patch in the eastern periphery of Berlin, which sat in state on our kitchen table until I began to use it the day before yesterday. It has yielded pumpkin pies — a Mürbeteig pastry aromatic with lemon juice and zest, and a filling of pumpkin purée and eggs with sugar and spices — and a potful of pumpkin soup which Ge. made. In the process of it, he cut up a massive bowlful of pumpkin sticks which was exhausting even to contemplate, besides dicing the onions, etc.

FROM an eating perspective the weekend has been rather good; during the week, which was busy, I was a little more austere than I'd have liked. Ever since I felt exhausted so often last year, I have been more careful to eat nutrients aplenty.

After the first bit of breakfast, at any rate, I turned to the computer and went to Flickr for story research. It will be a Lousy Story, so I have been arguing with myself if it's fair to invest a great deal of time and energy into it. In the end I guess that it is not in me to waste even lesser ideas. (Though I had thought of writing an Edgar Allan Poe parody recently, which would also be worthwhile depending on my ability to execute it.)

Ayuntamiento de Burgo de Osma, by Edithor after: photograph by Z. Sánchez.
Oct. 26th, 2014. Original size: 4.7 x 5 cm?


I HAVE been tracking down photos of city halls to imagine what the architecture of the story setting would be like. To engage with the details, I have been making miniature green ballpoint pen sketches. By now, the buildings are all beginning to look alike.

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Fortunately the habit of researching essays for university has been very helpful, amongst other things in introducing me to the delights of G***le Books. But Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica have been very helpful in sketching the outlines of the world I want to explore, and in showing me where research in further depth is needed.