Barcelona Movie Quotes

Before we had finished the third round of beers, little Johnny and I had been poisoned. Someone must have put something in his beer and mine, but not in his wife's. Imagine that. I was texting and crying with my head down, and they were kissing in love, so we didn't pay attention to who could have reached our bottles on our table. I don't remember how we got to Urgell while both of us were dying from poisoning. It was a couple of blocks away; uphill a few blocks and another few block left towards Plaza Espanya. I was blindly following the way my legs and muscle memory led me, and us, towards the store and Canale Vuo from Universitat. I cannot recall a single memory frame from Nevermind to the Urgell Store, as if I had been poisoned so badly I was literally blind and unable to see. Visual blackout. I remember the three of us, holding onto each other at every step of the way, grabbing each other's arms, squeezing a hand in pain. We must have resembled Benicio del Toro and Johnny Depp attempting to enter Circus Circus in the movie, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, under the influence of ether. Or as Hunter S. Thompson and his lawyer must have appeared in real life. Anything could have happened to us that night. His wife was as tiny and fragile as Sabrina; she was just a bit taller. Multiple times we almost fell on the ground as we stumbled through the streets, trying to find our balance as his wife tried to keep us both on our feet with limited success. Johnny's wife was between us, trying to hold both of us up and lead us where my legs were taking us. I was unsure if we would live long enough to see the next day. “Realllllly.” – as Adam would say. It was the first time I had ever met Johnny Maraudin and it was almost our last night in life. We got closer to each other one night, after less than three rounds of beers, than we were with his brother Adam, who’s only friend was Tomas, in need.

But I was stuck for a long time by myself at Abraham Lincoln's portrait, standing in the middle of the huge hall as people moved all around me with mostly children. I felt as if time had stopped as I watched Lincoln, facing him, while watching the woman’s back as she was looking out the window. I felt wronged, so much like Truman from the movie, standing there in the middle of the museum alone. I was wondering what would Abraham Lincoln do if he realized he was the slave in his own cotton fields, being robbed by evil thieves, nazis. I had taken numerous photos of Martina from behind, as well as silhouettes of her shadow. I remember standing there, watching as she stood in front of the window; it was almost as if she was admiring the view of the mountains from our new home, as I did take such pictures of her, with a very similar composition to that of the female depicted in the iconic Lincoln portrait looking outwards from the window. I hadn't realized how many photographs I snapped of Martina with her back turned towards me while we travelled to picturesque places. Fernanda and I walked side-by-side in utter silence, admiring painting after painting of Dali's, without exchanging a single word. Meanwhile, Luis and Martina had got lost somewhere in the museum. When I finally found her, she was taking pictures outside of the Rainy Cadillac. We both felt something was amiss without having to say it, as Fernanda knew things I didn't and vice versa. We couldn't bring ourselves to discuss it though, not because we lacked any legal authority between me and Martina, but because neither Fernanda or myself had much parental authority over the young lady. It felt like when our marriages and divorces had dissolved, it was almost as if our parenting didn't matter anymore. It was as if I were unwittingly part of a secret screenplay, like Jim Carrey's character in The Truman Show, living in a fabricated reality made solely for him. I was beginning to feel a strange nauseous feeling, as if someone was trying to force something surreal down my throat, as if I were living something not of this world, making me want to vomit onto the painted canvas of the personalised image crafted just for me. I couldn't help but wonder if Fernanda felt the same way, if she was aware of the magnitude of what was happening, or if, just like me, she was completely oblivious, occasionally getting flashes of truth or reality for a moment or two. I took some amazing photographs of her in Port Lligat in Dali's yard in the port, and in Cap Creus, but I'd rather not even try to describe them—they were almost like Dali's paintings which make all sense now. As if all the pieces are coming together. She was walking by the water and I was walking a bit further up on the same beach on pebbles, parallel to each other as we walked away from Dali's house in the port. I looked towards her and there were two boats flipped over on the two sides of my view. I told her: “Run, Bunny! Run!

However, it is important to note that Breonna Taylor's story does not solely define her. While she may not have pursued a career as a doctor, nurse, or ambulance personnel, (she wasn’t Holy Mary) it is unfair to dismiss her intelligence or potential. As much as it is unfair to say „she was such a bright lady, and was always doing the right things in life, she was about to become a doctor, saving lives, and of course she was such a good kid.” The evidence shows otherwise. „Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” Martina was such a good kid too. On the surface. The mask of sanity. Mirroring the victim. Illusion. Illusionist. Not with her hairy thing. But that smile. Like Monroe in the movies. „Hollywood.” „Holy.” Wood. The Cross. The Show. Atop a hill. „Look look.

On one of those nights in January 2014, we sat next to each other in Maria Vostra, happy and content, smoking nice greens, with one of my favorite movies playing on the large flat-screen TVs: Once Upon a Time in America. I took a picture of James Woods and Robert De Niro on the TV screen in Maria Vostra's cozy corner, which I loved to share with Martina. They were both wearing hats and suits, standing next to each other. Robert de Niro looked a bit like me and his character, Noodles, (who was a goy kid in the beginning of the movie, growing up with Jewish kids) on the picture, was as naive as I was. I just realized that James Woods—who plays an evil Jewish guy in the movie, acting like Noodles' friend all along, yet taking his money, his woman, taking away his life, and trying to kill him at one point—until the point that Noodles has to escape to save his life and his beloved ones—looks almost exactly like Adam would look like if he was a bit older. “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.” – William Shakespeare That sounds like an ancient spell or rather directions, instructions to me, the director instructing his actors, being one of the actors himself as well, an ancient spell, that William Shakespeare must have read it from a secret book or must have heard it somewhere. Casting characters for certain roles to act like this or like that as if they were the director’s custom made monsters. The extensions of his own will, desires and actions. The Reconquista was a centuries-long series of battles by Christian states to expel the Muslims (Moors), who had ruled most of the Iberian Peninsula since the 8th century. The Reconquista ended on January 2, 1492. The same year Columbus, whose statue stands atop a Corinthian custom-made column down the Port at the bottom of the Rambla, pointing with his finger toward the West, had discovered America on October 12, 1492. William Shakespeare was born in April 1564. He had access to knowledge that had been unavailable to white people for thousands of years. He must have formed a close relationship with someone of royal lineage, or used trick, who then permitted him to enter the secret library of the Anglican Church. “A character has to be ignorant of the future, unsure about the past, and not at all sure what he/she’s supposed to be doing.” – Anthony Burgess Martina proudly shared with me her admiration for the Argentine author Julio Cortazar, who was renowned across South America. She quoted one of his famous lines, saying: “Vida es como una cebolla, hay que pelarla llorando,” which translates to “Life is like an onion, you have to peel it crying.” Martina shared with me her observation that the sky in Europe felt lower compared to America. She mentioned that the clouds appeared larger in America, giving a sense of a higher and more expansive sky, while in Europe, it felt like the sky had a lower and more limiting ceiling. “The skies are much higher in Argentina, Tomas, in all America. Here in Europe the sky is so low. In Argentina there are huge clouds and the sky is huge, Tomas.” – Martina Blaterare “It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same--everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another’s existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same--people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world.” – George Orwell, 1984

Last night's harsh phone call seemed to be a distant memory as we spent the day in the snow with my new fake friends, going for one last turn on the mountain while I drank boiled wine at the bottom of the ski lift at the hutte. I honestly told Anette in the ski lift during the day what Sabrina had told me on the phone the night before, but she remained silent and didn't seem surprised for some reason. I didn't think Anette would conspire with Betty to test me or win me. I didn’t think they would conspire with Sabrina but perhaps I didn’t know her well enough to assume what she was capable of when jealous, mad, sad, confused or in love. Perhaps they did not. Everything I don't know. I try to write here all that I know and have managed to figure out, taking a long time. I try to share what I have been through because I am sure that others will find it useful to learn from my mistakes, faults, sins, virtues, and so on. Perhaps only my luck, good or bad, I don't know. I could not have figured out what happened if I had not written down exactly how things unfolded in order to be able to see through it all and comprehend what really happened since I bought that Roberto Saviano book and met Sabrina. Perhaps the women had been conspiring for one reason or another; perhaps they had not. Nonetheless, it was odd. „Water is wet, the sky is blue, women have secrets. Who gives a f..k?” – Joe Hallenbeck Do all men have to be natural-born and supernatural detectives like Bruce Willis in all his movies, or in The Last Boy Scout? I'm not sure how many coincidences can fit so strangely into reality by chance, or is it all manipulation? Is it all because of the story of Eve and the snake and the apple?