Lessons Learned from People Watching

Calle del Tesoro is burrowed between two main streets in the heart of Madrid’s liveliest neighborhood. It’s existence is almost unnoticeable to passersby — save for the vibrant paper flags that hang like laundry across the balcóns. Like loose shoe strings lacing their way from the top of the hill to the bottom.

This second thought street gives shelter to an array of characters. It is where I sit each morning, stretching out my spine and listening for the pop-pop-pop of bones as my coffee grows cold. Where, on lazy afternoons, I tune into the faint guitar strums at my diagonal, whose chords pull me out of novels and beg my attention. The horizon isn’t visible through the cracks in tall buildings in this city, but on fortunate evenings you can find a glimpse of an egg yolk sky.

The top of the street awakes in stages. First come the screeches of graffitied tin shutters rolling up, giving way to dark bars and the tired waiters who rub sleep out of their eyes while smoking cigarettes. Then come the terrace drinkers, who throw frutos secos away from their table in hopes of keeping the pigeons at bay. Slowly and unsuspectingly, the night swarms with fits of laughter and shrieks and wine glasses shattering against the pavement. It’s where B-list actors sip beer and bask in unfamiliar pleasure at the hushed whispers of their followers and their not-so-discreet-iPhones. Where misfits and men without homes gather to sell hand knit dolls or sing ancient Spanish ballads for coins.

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Across from my perch sits a papery woman. Her flowered nightgown flaps in the breeze as she steps out to her balcón, one unsteady foot at a time. Each night she turns her chair to the east, her crooked back to the sunset, and faces the youth of Malasaña. A small grin plays along her face as her eyes follow a couple staggering down the hill. Arm in arm, cigarettes hanging loosely from their lips, glitter clinging to their beards. Her bony knuckles rub the grip of her cane and she rests her chin against the cool steel railing. She closes her eyes, meditating with the late howls of the night.

Sometimes, though rarely, I see her and another grayed woman leaving the building. Each takes turns propping themselves up against the heavy door, allowing the other to pass through with that unhurried ease gained only in old age. There’s a man in the apartment too, though I’ve never seen him leave — not even to step out onto the balcón for a bit of sky. I think of what he has seen that keeps him inside. Sitting at the dining room table day after day, the years sifting by outside the brownish glow of the little flat. He’s lived through a dictatorship. He’s lived through war. He’s lived through the changes of the barrio.

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Tesoro means treasure in Spanish.

I often wonder who took the time to name each street in the city. Who stood at the top of this channel, which rests timidly along the edge of the neighborhood, and thought to themselves treasure? It’s a street one might come upon after making a wrong turn and finding themselves lost, only then to take in the layers of color and chaos. Its countless stoops offer safeguard to the drunk, to the fighters of the night — the ones unwilling to make their way to the metro and into their homes where they’ll inevitably surrender to exhaustion. For the ones battling the comedown, its long fingers pressed against their throats, as they dig keys into tiny baggies in hopes of release. There’s a scavenger hunt of secrets hidden here.

It’s these findings I take in as I read and write and drink and watch.

Insecure. Insignificant. Alone. Full. Capable.

Their expressions fill my thoughts as I sit here each afternoon and wonder if the reflections before me reveal my future. This small street, the fraught buzzing that I don’t fit into, the language I still don’t understand. How many others sit here, too — swaddled in safety, drawing Xs in the dust on the floor, waiting to be discovered.