Smile like you mean it

Sometimes if I don´t recognize something on a menu, I´ll order it just to figure out what it is. It´s how I learned that boquerones are sardines, not sandwiches. This morning I ordered toast with sobrasada. I was hoping it would be some kind of jam, and I guess it is sort of like jam, only made out of sausage not fruit. Not bad actually, but not really what I wanted--spreadable may be my least favorite Spanish pork product so far.

I´m in Málaga now, and absolutely disgusting. The hot water wasn´t working at the hostel in Granada, and it was too early to check into the one in Málaga when I got there. So I haven´t showered and I´m in the same clothes I wore yesterday to hike around the Alhambra and hang out in smoky bars. Yuck.

Anyway, about ten years after Guernica, Picasso moved to Antibes and got happy. I like the Picasso Museum in Barcelona better than the one here in Málaga (Barcelona has more early stuff, Málaga has more cubist and weird stuff), but the museum here does have this great temporary exhibit of works from when Picasso was living in Antibes in the 1940´s. It was mostly paintings and drawings of fauns, nymphs, and centaurs. (After seeing lots of examples I still don´t know what a faun is, except that sometimes they have horns.) And they were so simple and so happy, but in a good way. The faces were mostly lines and dots and squiggles (think :-) ), but they were adorable and they kept making me smile. Sometimes I wonder if I´m really appreciating greatness or if on some level I just like things because I know I´m supposed to. But I definitely don´t go around smiling in spite of myself over just anything.