Malta 2

March 5, 2012

Tremendous thunderstorms last night. My window is in a decorative cave seven feet from the roof, and yet the driven rain rammed flat against it. Fire and thunder simultaneously, so the storm was right upon us.

Read in the lobby bar last night. The traffic seemed to be mostly leggy Irish blonds meeting (one would have thought) pretty ordinary men for drinks, then bishops and priests, and black-suited young men drenched in excellent cologne, speaking Italian. Read Tina Fey’s Bossypants, acquired in the airport.

I am east of Greenwich mean time. It seems impossible to coordinate with activities at home.

Afternoon: I wanted to make individual human contact today, and almost as soon as I hit the streets of Valletta, I met Eddie, who runs one of the surprisingly numerous art supply stores. His store is filled with fairly bad nautical paintings by his father and grandfather (one is notably worse than the other, I don’t know which) but he never took up the brush. He speaks like a Londoner but looks like an Arab. Eddie assumed I was from Canada, but when I told him where I am from, he wondered where there one could find megaladon teeth, I had not encountered that question before, so I did my best, suggesting Hatteras, maybe. Eddie seeks them out in Morocco, and wondered if I might want to join him there. He probably didn’t understand that my “yes” meant “yes.” He was bored and friendly, and I took advantage of that.

Walked the streets in the blazing light, washed clean by last night’s storm. My thighs ache from climbing up and down the long flights of stairs that lift almost every street up from the harbor. Took many photos, mostly to please people back home. I discover I’m every bit as indifferent to photo-taking as I assumed I would be. NCIS in Italian last night, and some movie about black people who were all speaking German. I speak Italian to the shopkeepers, assuming those conversations are unlikely to get out of my depth. Half of them answer me in English, anyway, so no matter.