JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

I gave a talk at Espazo BenComun in Allariz, a beautiful town in Ourense (1hr10 by train from La Coruña). “Beautiful” is not an exaggeration—Allariz has actually been given the title by international agencies for revitalization and sustainable management. The population of Allariz is 7,000 (times three in the summer when tourists and people with summer houses visit). That’s about the number of people in the queue at the bank back home on Monday mornings.

My hosts own independent bookstores such as Libraria Aira das Letras, which carries their self-produced line of steampunk-themed notebooks, bookmarks and puzzles.

The Vilanova bridge over the Arnoia river dates back to the Middle Ages. (I learned that medieval bridges have a hump in the middle.)

My guides took me on a hike in Santa Mariña de Aguas Santas and the Castro in Armea, site of an archaelogical dig that has turned up a Roman hill fort.

The unfinished church is supposed to have been built over the furnace where Mariña survived burning (like Daenerys Targaryen).

The remnants of the Roman hill fort.

Afterwards, an excellent lunch at Casa Pepiñas, including breaded shrimp on skewers.

The annual international garden competition is on from May to October. The theme is Cinema. This garden replicates the house in Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle.

If La Coruña is King’s Landing, Allariz is a prettier Winterfell without White Walkers.

My host Yolanda Castaño, founder and director of Residencia Literaria 1863, is a major Galician poet, translator, sometime TV presenter, and tireless promoter of Galician culture. She gave a talk at the University of Santiago de Compostela, a pleasant 45-minute drive from La Coruña. I tagged along.

Yolanda’s latest book, her twelfth, is a collaboration with 40 Galician comic book artists. They interpreted her poems in their own styles, some tackling the entire piece, some focusing on a line or two. The result is beautiful to look at, though I can’t read it with my kindergarten Spanish. In the first place it is in Galician, one of the official languages of Spain, which has much in common with Portuguese.

Afterwards we walked around the medieval town, which pilgrims have converged on since the 9th century when it was believed that the remains of St. James were buried here. The earliest pilgrims walked from France across the Pyrenees to the Cathedral, a journey which took months or years. The Camino de Santiago today has many routes of various degrees of difficulty. The scallop shells embedded in the stones are the symbol of the walk—the early pilgrims took them as souvenirs, and used them for eating and drinking.

It’s easy to imagine what the town must’ve looked like in the Middle Ages, with its narrow cobblestone streets, bars, and souvenir shops selling jewelry made of jet and silver. And excellent bookstores. During our tour we ran into half a dozen writers.

The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, the end of the pilgrimage, is undergoing renovation.

Visitors line up to embrace the image of Saint James behind the altar, and ask him to grant their requests.

Cold, blustery day, brief rainshowers and the possibility of you and your umbrella getting Mary Poppins-ed.

These appeared in my newsfeeds on the same day.

St John’s Dancers in Molenbeeck, by a follower of Pieter Bruegel the Elder

500 years ago this month, a strange mania seized the city of Strasbourg. Citizens by the hundreds became compelled to dance, seemingly for no reason — jigging trance-like for days, until unconsciousness or, in some cases, death.

Read The Dancing Plague of 1518 in The Public Domain Review.

And twenty years ago, one of my favorite movies opened in theatres.

When I was living in New York and working on a newspaper, I’d get off work at 2am and we’d go to clubbing at Studio 54. There weren’t a lot of other places in the neighbourhood to go to. I had a tailor-made blue suit that was my sole legacy from my father. It was my magic charm for getting into the club. I was scared of Studio 54 at first – but it wasn’t in the least bit scary once you got in. My first date with my future wife was there.

Read Whit Stillman and Kate Beckinsale: How we made The Last Days of Disco.

Chloe!

Make another movie soon, Whit.

Illustration by Richard Baron Reyes in ArtStation.

There’s a Voltes V exhibition at UP Bulwagan ng Dangal. I will drop by on Saturday after visiting my optometrist. In the meantime, here’s a repost of an essay I wrote for Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People, a ten-volume collection published by the Reader’s Digest on the occasion of the Centennial of Philippine Independence in 1998. The essay was based on a column I’d written years earlier, which in turn was based on one of those meandering conversations with Roby Alampay that turned into material. (Disclosure: I never watched Voltes V because everyone was so ga-ga about it. That is how I misspelled “Boazanians”. Much later, I met the voice actor who did the English dubbing for Prince Zardoz.)

Click on image to enlarge.

From my classmates I picked up indie rock, and from musician friends I picked up jazz (Hard bop, so I was thrilled to meet Patrick de K, whose mom was the patron of Thelonious Monk and other greats). From my audiophile friend I learned this specialized burn: “Eh, that’s a lifestyle product.”

When I got my first apartment I had two housemates: one loved Broadway, and one collected recordings of early music (“classical” from 1600-1800). So I got to know the work of Stephen Sondheim, but I’ve never done a deep dive into early music. Recently I discovered that the albums he ordered from European record companies are all available online on music streaming sites. No more excuses—time to plug in the gaps in my education.

I asked Leo to make a list of essential early music, say 25 works. Little did I know that the resulting playlist would come to almost 40 hours of early music. Listen to these playlists and feed your dendrites.

Early Music Essential Playlist: Orchestral

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Read Seneca on the Antidote to Anxiety in Brain Pickings.

From 100 Days of Overthinking by Maria Sanoja

Dear Moleskine,

As a loyal Moleskine user I am dismayed that your recent Limited Edition notebooks (Avengers, Beatles, etc) are available with ruled pages only. Consider that many of the people who shell out uncomplainingly for your expensive merchandise are the sort of people who appreciate the freedom of plain, unlined pages. I am close to deserting Moleskine for Leuchtturm 1917 or those Romeo spiral notebooks by Itoya, both of which have pristine, heavier paper. Only habit and my preference for seeing rows and rows of notebooks of the same height but differently-colored spines (and your flat-opening pages) keep me faithful. Will it kill you to put out a few Rolling Stones Moleskines with plain pages?

Jessica