Cordoba

"You have built what you or others might've built anywhere, but you have destroyed something unique in the world."

- Carlos V, King of Spain (1516-1556), about the cathedral in the Mezquita

Cordoba's all yellow. 

It rises from the banks of a muddy yellow river. The walls are made of sandstone, and the buildings are covered with yellow plaster. The alcazar is made from yellow-tinged rock and the Meqzuita is made up of rough-hewn, yellow sandstone. From the banks of the Guadalquivir River, as you cross the old Roman bridge, it seems like the city's made out of yellow mud. 

The Meqzuita's a strange thing.  It was started in the 8th century and kept expanding as the Cordoba emirate kept getting richer. In the 12th century, it had overtaken the Damascus mosque as THE reference point for Islamic architecture. The guide book says it's the greatest visual representation to homesickness ever constructed, and it's not wrong. 

When you walk in it, it's cavernous and dark and so eerie. It's a hall of marble pillars and red-and-white brick arches, with dim lanterns hanging from the ceiling. The sense of history is almost palpable. If you close your eyes, you can hear the muezzin call to prayer, smell the orange trees in the courtyard and see the host of muslims kneeling in the direction of Mecca. 

Of course, someone in the 16th century decided to build a cathedral right in the middle of it, so the effect is kind of diminished. The cathedral's so out of place that it jars the senses. You have a mosque that speak of God through the repetition of pillars and arches, through the use of space and light and shadow. It's elegant and graceful and so profound. And smack in the middle of it, you've a bunch of statues and paintings and clutter, that speak more of the mundane than the transcendent. It's pretty shitty, and I wholeheartedly agree with Carlos V. 

End result, you walk out of the Mezquita with a profound sense of loss. And you wonder what it would've looked like if it hadn't been desecrated by the Catholics. 

Pictures Of Me

Pictures of you, pictures of me

Hung upon your wall for all the world to see

Pictures of you, pictures of me,

Remind us all of what we used to be

- Pictures Of You, The Last Goodnight

This one's about photos.

Over the months, I've taken a lot of photos - of scenery, of buildings and streets, of people and sometimes even of me. On the bus from Granada to Corboda, I've been thinking about the reasons why I keep snapping away. 

One reason is so I can have something pretty for my laptop wallpaper; and I DO have an awesome set of wallpaper pics now. I keep changing from the Alhambra to the Rose Valley to Tintern Abbey, to the Aya Sophia to the Cinque Terre to.... you get the idea. Currently, it's one from the balcony of the Generalife in the Alhambra, overlooking the Nasrid Palace and the Albayzin.

Another reason is for physical proof that I've been in these places. I've got notions that, way in the future, I'll be cranking up the old laptop and showing the hypothetical grandkiddies where grandpa went when he went mad and needed six months abroad for soul-searching. I'll be showing them pictures of Venice before it sank back into the lagoon, and they'll roll their eyes and say "whatever". 

The third reason, and perhaps the most sensitively poignant, is that it's the easiest way to establish a connection to these places. You see something majestic, or beautiful, or something that's a high-point in human civilisation, and you don't want to walk away. You want to take something back with you, to leave your mark, to connect with these places and not forget about them after a few months back home. And picture taking is the easiest way of doing this. One click, and you've frozen a vista that you've seen with your own two eyes. 

But photos never capture the immediacy of the moment. There's not a photo that details the sound my feet made when I crunched into freshly-fallen snow in Sarajevo. There's not one that recreates the sense of awe I felt as I stepped into the vastness of the dome in the Aya Sophia, nor one that shows the way that shafts of light punctured the dusty air of St Peter's Basilica. There's no way of recording the eeire stillness of the Rose Valley in Cappadocia, nor the sound of the fountains in the gardens of the Generalife in the Alhambra. 

And there's nothing but my memory to remember the chill of the waters off Dubrovnik, the blackness of the sea and the sky, the howl of the wind and the recklessness of drunken idiots squatting on the rocks. I think a lot about that night, but there's nothing left which reminds me of what happened. It's just me and my memory, and even that will fade as the weeks and months roll on. 

So really, it's kind of pointless. And depressing.

Still, it's my first day in Cordoba, and I shouldn't spend it typing in the dorm. Gotta step out and get me some photos of the Mezquita while it's open. It's one of the grandest buildings in all of Spain, doncha know. And I can always do with more wallpaper pics.