Portrait from a window in Spain

Now where were we?

O yes. Somewhere in Spain in 2003, near San Sebastian waiting out the great heat of the summer.

We bought good wine in the markets for a Euro per liter and fresh fish, but the apartment was stifling and we had to keep the windows open. As the Basque's party until daylight, we got very little sleep.

Every day we swam in the ocean to keep cool.

On the trip up to Bilbao to see the Gehry Guggenheim, the weather broke and it rained. The building exceeded expectations as did the puppy Jeff Koons made out of flowers, but the art inside had nowhere near the impact of the Goya and Velasquez seen in The Prado.

Contemporary art is largely disappointing, but keeps being made in greater and greater quantities.

We must ask ourselves why we keep looking, as we look.

Then art of any sort may have value, or may not.

Memory sits in Retiro park in Madrid, savoring the delectable visual afterlife of Velasquez's "Las Meninas" as seen moments ago in The Prado, debating whether or not to enter an exposition hall in the park featuring the work of a mid-career American post-modern painter, primarily because the hall advertises air-conditioning, and becoming downright depressed when it does.