Train from Barcelona to Granada

The images in the gallery for this entry are in chronological as we made our way by train from Barcelona to Granada. Granada is at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and one can see a direct similarity to the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. 

Picture Gallery

Traveling by train for 11 hours has been relaxing and just what Auldyn and I needed after four days in Barcelona. We have read our books, eaten our stash we collected yesterday, and napped most of the way. Auldyn has made friends with the woman across the isle from us and has had several conversations with her throughout the day.

The landscape has been sparse and dry with old structures, some abandoned, littering the landscape. These structures have a wonderful presence, as their singularity creates a presence that is in stark contrast to the density of the city. I am sure that some of the allure is my fascination with the age of the structures. They are old, many beyond repair. The weathered materials in the structures are able to signal the climate, provide a reference of time in nature, and the need for shelter in a particular way that the geography and climate shapes the form, texture and color of the buildings.

The drone of a language I do not know provide an atmosphere for reflection and sleep. I can tell that folks are happy, making small talk among strangers, sharing stories, but of what I do not know. The eleven and one half hours is going quickly and I have found several passages in Death in the Afternoon I have found inspiring. 

“As in all the arts the enjoyment increases with the knowledge of the art, but people will know the first time they go, if they go open-mindedly and only feel those things they actually feel and not the things the things they should feel, whether they care for the bullfight or not. They may not care for them at all, no matter whether the fight should be good or bad, and all explanation will be meaningless beside the obvious moral wrongness of the bullfight, just as people could refuse to drink wine which they might enjoy because they did not believe it the right to do so.”

 --Ernest Hemingway

How many times to we come to situations in life where we have been told what to feel without ever feeling it ourselves?

Reading this passage while traveling in another country really strikes with self-doubt to my own open-mindedness. Being in new situations intensifies emotion and feeling. Am I reacting to Spain based on my preconceptions rather than to my feelings?

I have too often been told what it feels like to be an American. From social and economic freedoms, celebration of the youth, our political system, etc... This is not to be a political statement, but to suggest that a role of politics may be in part to tell us how we should feel. Too often our political parties have used contemporary media to tell us where to have moral outrage, what it is to be an American, or to be how to be patriotic. But what would happen if I abandoned what I was told to feel, but reacted to Spain, or any other similar situation, based on what I really felt? Can I maintain open-mindedness? 

This situation eludes to the responsibility of the teacher. Teachers of all types transform open-mindedness. Sometimes, they open minds, but I am afraid that they too often shape the minds to be closed, tell someone what to feel with out providing them the opportunity to directly experience the emotion themselves.

It could be said that we need education to shortcut what would take too much time to learn directly. But really? If we shortcut the emotion, tell someone what to feel without allowing them to feel it themselves have we educated? Or just indoctrinated? 

One point of clarity. I am not speaking to the objective acquisition of knowledge as indoctrination or somehow threatening open-mindedness. But the relation of knowledge and feeling deserves more investigation. Knowledge, or facts, that can be show to be reliable though logic, experimentation, or other rigorous means are not in question. But the application, relevance, value, and significance of knowledge may be related to our emotional being and ability to maintain an open-minded nature.

A fact, or piece of knowledge alone is powerless. But the application of knowledge, the ability to provide context to knowledge, is essential in intellectual development. It is the transformation of knowledge from objective fact to application, contextualization, and implementation is where we can indoctrinate and create situations were people have been told to feel without feeling themselves. 

As the train winds though a mountain passage I can not help think of the vast difference in the pace of the day in Spain. It is great to have some time to reflect and have muse about life for a while.