Shifting gears.

'Let me briefly digress on the subject of fear. There are such moments in travelling when it arises, and the bread you are chewing sticks in your throat. When you are over-tired, or alone for too long, or are left down for a moment after a burst of enthusiasm, it can take you unawares as you turn a corner, like a cold shower...  You defend yourself as best you can, especially if its a case of getting on with the job. Humour is an excellent antidote, but it takes two to make it work. Often its enough to take deep breaths and swallow a throatfull of saliva. Whet it persists, you have to give up the idea of that particular street or Mosque, taking that photo...' Nicholas Bouvier 'The way of the world'.

You'll forgive me for using someone elses words, because although they have been translated from French, they still express more succinctly than I can, the regular companions that fear, doubt and anxiety are for the solo traveller.
In my own experience (and with lazy metaphor), the varied moments of travel requires a shift between 'gears'. It is possible, regardless of the richness of your surrounds, to be left grinding and rolling backwards in 5th, as you find yourself on a steepening incline.
The Barcelona birthday backwash of the last few days is a perfect example.
Two days alone.
Its not as if I have lost the knack of it, it is merely that the rapid shift from the richness of moments shared, to the need to find them alone, takes consciousness and time.
It is the moment when you go from an easy participant, with friends, family or occasion... to a witness. Time becomes something that stretches long each day, and begs you to think upon how it is filled.
As with this moment, they often come amidst the backwash of their opposite, and leave you with long moments of introspection to ponder what you have done as the wash of those events passes through you, and then where you wander from here.
Until the new gear grips, it is easy to feel that you have lost your way, lost the knack.
This is when you take those breaths,
and walk
until you catch up with yourself.
 ...

 So two days wandering the lanes of Barcelona again.
Tight lanes and alleys that, even in the midday sun, remain soaked in cool shadow, the light washing down from above in the form of bright colours cascading down the balconies above.
...
Spanish, the soundtrack of the constant talking on street corners, parks, benches, bars, everywhere. Always talking. Always the sound of a language that tumbles like water over uneven stones.
...
Shots of Rum at the Bar in the slow, after siesta afternoon.
Maybe the owner saw a fellow worker in my knowing look as she struggled with the worst cliche of English tourist, or maybe I was just at the bar and looked alone and in need of a heart-warmer.
Salud... and a smile.
...
The accountant-looking security guard standing watch over a childrens playground, carefully twirling pineneedles into elaborate little flowers to hand to the children.
...
My man Clemen.
The sternly friendly patron of 'Clemen's' bar in the Boqeria, whos crisply professional movements behind his cramped counter, became a necessary morning comfort with breakfast.
Cafe con leche por favor.
...
Colour.
Sun.
A city with a character so unique and fully expressed by an architecture exemplified, but not restricted to, Gaudi its most famous of exponents. 
...
Rest day, back in gear.
The night bus, and a tomorrow back home in Paris.