PRACTICE
Write about Spain.
Write for fifteen minutes. When you're finished, post your practice in the comments.
And if you post, make sure to comment on a few others.
Photo by Jesus Solano
Earlier this week, I stayed in Ronda, a city where Hemingway used to live and write. The hotelier said when she was a little girl, she was walking with her mother when she saw him. She held her mother's hand and skipped along and then she looked up to see this man with a great white beard, a glass of cerveza (in Andalusia, pronounced sair-veh-tha) in front of him. She looked up at her mother, who said “That's a very famous writer.” And they went on.
I try to imagine him sitting there. It was the nineteen-fifties probably. His beard would have been long and scraggly. He would have been quite depressed at that point, lonely, drinking a lot. In the days of his youth, he said Spain was his favorite country. It was the only one not “shot to pieces,” but by then, Spain had been shot to pieces by civil war and despotism, and he had been shot to pieces by alcoholism—his doctor had told him to quit drinking to save his liver and his heart—by divorce, by depression, and by the years of anxiety and pain inflicted by living and working with the Muse. They were both shot to pieces, and I wonder if he found solace in that.
It's a beautiful place, Spain. I sit in a café and sip café con leche and look out to the cobblestone streets as wide as an American alley. The houses are all white, as if they learned something from the Mediterranean Greeks, and when I walked up the mountain a few days ago, I could see Morocco—and is that Gibraltar?—on the horizon.
I would like to take these tiny streets with me. I want to take the cafés and the slow walking and the long conversations over wine and the view of Africa and put it all in my suitcase and take it with me to America where we could all learn something about life from these rare artifacts: that it's meant to be enjoyed, that slow is civilized, that long conversations are the only way to treat friends.
But on Sunday, when I fly home, I will learn what Hemingway probably had to learn many times. You have to leave Spain in Spain.
Spain—
a refrain
That’s all I could think of. Maybe I should have submitted this to the Muse thread.
I blog about Spain and wade through tons of headlines written by British journalists at the big newspapers. You wouldn’t believe the amount of serious journalists and editorial writers who write headlines including the words “Spain, rain, pain, main” and think it’s still original :-).
Ha! It’s disheartening to read was passes for journalism these days sometimes, very disheartening.
LOL—Let it be known that I’m not a journalist.
I just returned from Antigua, Guatemala, and felt the same thing. I loved walking everywhere I went, loved the history, the beauty, the slower pace of life. I felt like I’d been given a beautiful gift.
You make me jealous. 😉 I got to go to Guatemala a few years back. We went to Lago Atitlan instead of Antigua, but I loved it!
Katie
Have been following your blog for some time. I blog about Spain, so this looks like a good opportunity to jump in with some first comments. It’s not very romantic and dreamy, and I’m not sure if that’s what your after or not, but my latest blog post starts like this:
“Spain is used to long, hot summers, of course, but this winter is not over and experts are already calling for an urgent declaration of extreme drought. Some say it is set to be the driest three-month period since the 1940s.
The severe lack of water and intense frosts have all but ruined crops across large swathes of the Spanish countryside and there are regions in which rainfall has well, fallen, by up to 75%.
New Agriculture Ministry data shows that water levels across Spain’s reservoirs are down 20% over the last year. The giant Duero basin has lost more than 25% of its water.
A lack of water on this scale has also led to a massive economic problem for Spanish farmers and crop growers.
Spain’s young agriculture association is saying that the lack of decent pastures due to effects of the drought is costing them €2 million per day more than it should in feed for Spain’s 15 million head of cattle, pigs and sheep.
They also warn that, unless it rains a lot over the next fortnight, ALL the dryland crops (wheat, barley, olives, almonds, etc) from huge areas of central and southern Spain (Aragón, Andalucía, Extremadura y Castilla-La Mancha) might be lost.”
Much more here if you’re interested: http://matbe.net/yJ69uv
That’s sad. I hate to think of such a beautiful place in those conditions but I guess it’s better off than the north pole.
It looks like it’s going to be a long, tough summer. Spain is not responding very much to climate change ideas, so it will be interesting to watch how the new government responds to the drought over the next few months.
Carey couldn’t believe she finally made it to Barcelona. It had been two years since she said goodbye to Carlos. She still remembered the day they met like it was yesterday. Carlos was an exchange student from Spain who was staying at her house. Carey was glad to have a host brother her own age, since she was the oldest of four. Carey and Carlos became very close, and were seen almost everywhere together. At times Carey could feel the tension between them, but nothing ever happened. After eleven months he had to go back home, which had been very hard for everyone, but now she was here and she knew it was going to be amazing! She took her luggage and walked into the entrance hall of the airport. It only took her a few seconds to spot Carlos. Tall, black hair and even more handsome than before. It was clear to Carey he had started working out, he had lost a lot of weight and his muscles were visible through his shirt. They hugged and exchanged the typical greetings. “Well, someone has been working out, that’s for sure! What happened to my twin host brother?” Carey said. Carlos smiled “I was just about to say the same, who is this sexy grown up and what have you done to Carey?” They both laughed and started walking towards the exit. Carlos immediately took her luggage and said: “My car is in the parking lot, you want to go do something or maybe rest a bit first? Or perhaps take a bite? You must be hungry, I can’t imagine that airplane food was any good.” Carey thought silently. “Yeah, I could use something to eat, all they gave us where some salty nuts.” “Okay, food it is,” replied Carlos. They drove downtown and after fifteen minutes Carlos parked his car. “There is this great place just around the corner. It’s a tapas bar, and known as the best tapas bar in Barcelona. I hope you like it.” Carey and Carlos went inside. It was small and bad lit, but the people were friendly and apparently knew Carlos. He rattled in Spanish some things Carey couldn’t understand, but when she heard her name and the conversation fell silent, she said the only words in Spanish she had learned: “Hola, cómo estás?”. The bartender was delighted to hear her speaking Spanish and replied he was doing fine and that it was a pleasure to meet the girl Carlos had been talking about for the past months. Carey looked at Carlos, who had suddenly turned bright red. “You’ve been talking about me? Only good things I may hope?” Carlos quickly replied: “Sure, I couldn’t think of anything bad to say about you.” Carey laughed and they ordered. She silently thought to herself: “This is gonna be a very interesting vacation.”
I’m interested! Now I want to hear more about her vacation, Meliena. Is she staying with Carlos (and his family)? Is she going just to visit or is she studying abroad now, too? Does anything develop between them?
Katie
That’s cute. They sounds so young and energetic for some reason. Your writing is smooth, and easy to follow. There is what I suppose is a typo when you describe the bar as “dim” lit, I think it’s supposed to say “dimly” but saying the bar was hazy, dark, dim would be even better, more efficient (avoids using an adverb to modify an adjective to modify a noun).
Well this situation is ripe with possibilities, and what better venue for amore than the sparkling Mediterranean port-city of Spain?
Turning the corner, I see it. It’s the exact replica of the café she told me about. I hoped it was the right one. She wanted to bring me here and share it with me, a huge part of her life I had only heard about from her stories.
“Tammy, I’m here!”
The exclamation surprised me; it came out of nowhere, and it caused a nice elderly couple to stir. I imagined she was looking down at me but I didn’t believe it. She told me that if she could she would send me a sign from heaven so I would know she was OK. I didn’t know what the sign would be, and I did not want to wait any longer – I needed a sign.
“Bill, promise me you won’t be sad all the time.”
“I promise sweetheart, I promise.” I lied.
I stood outside on the cobblestone street and took it all in. I imagined Tammy here with me. Her perfect smile and her cute little laugh always amused by my silliness. She once told me she married me mostly because she loved my boyish charm.
Awake from my daydream, I realized that I had to go inside to order. Inside it was quaint and presentable. Not unlike some cafes in the coastal towns of California. The loveseats were missing. Tammy and I always sat in a loveseat pressed against one another enjoying our time together.
With my perfect Spanish and California accent I order a latte with a shot of vanilla. Which caused a stare from the barista. He appears to be a grouchy sort and not amused by my butchering of his ‘language of love’.
Finally, coffee in hand I sit; the chair is so rickety it was hard to relax. The realization that Tammy was not here with me to enjoy this moment caused tears to well up ready to fall at any moment. Head down I approach the cup with my lips, and my tears, and take a sip. Then it strikes me from inside the cup – a vision.
It hit me with a flash and then silently, slowly I look again into the cup as it forms once anew before my very eyes. There in the foam of my latte was a shape that Tammy always gesticulated to me with her fingers as a sign of love. It was a heart shaped in the foam and it re-shaped after every sip until I ran out of tears. Pensively I look up and out into the street before me. Leaving this place I’m now assured that Tammy, the only woman I have ever loved, is safe in the arms of her heavenly father.
Beautiful.
I’ve never been to Spain but have seen some of it thought the eyes of three painters, Goya, Picasso and Miro. I think “The Third of May” by Goya is one of the most emotional works of art that I’ve ever seen. When I was young my mother had a book on the coffee table showing paintings by Goya. I was about eight when I first looked through it. I got to the picture of one of the Titans devouring his child (which looked like a small adult instead of a child) and I could never look at the book again. In fact I was afraid of the living room where the book rested on the table for a while. I look at the eyes of the people in Goya’s paintings and I feel like I know them. The “Maja” who is so seductive, the people in “The Third of May” begging for their lives. The people in his series of prints about the war that show pride and cruelty so clearly. Picasso’s also shows war, women, society in an emotional and dramatic way and his ideas of composition, his art, is encouraging to me as a writer. Then there is Miro, who was my favorite when I was studying painting as an undergraduate, with his playful colors his lyrical happy song of life. I saw some of his sculpture and string work at the Smithsonian and I think that is when I really felt Spain. The colors were vibrant, basic and saturated, the movement was lively and dramatic. I wonder if Spain is really like that beautiful, emotional, dramatic. I know a woman who goes on a pilgrimage every year to the shrine of St. Teresa of Avila. She is a protestant like me but this catholic Saint speaks to her there in that barren, arid area that my friend says encouraged mysticism because of it’s bleakness. So that is a different part of a country that I feel some connection to although I’ve never been there and probably never will.
I’ve always been intrigued by Goya. Some of his paintings, like the witches, fascinated me. I always thought they would make great stories of horror.
Isn’t he amazing, and his pairings of the royal family are really funny. He got away with murder. There’s a good movie about him that I rented on netflix. I wish I could think of the name of it. It might have been Goya’s ghost. Although you probably don’t have much time for movies.
Marianne I like how you rely on others interpretation of their country through art for your inspiration. Art can be such a wonderful guide!
Yes I never thought of feeling/viewing a country through its art before. What a wonderful idea 🙂
This is a truly interesting angle!
When I think of Spain, I think of one of the creators (or was it directors?) of the movie “28 Days Later.” That movie frightens me.
I have watched zombie movies since I was ten years old. Most of them were cheesy, some pretty bad. Very few were frightening. I can name two: the original “Night of the Living Dead” and “28 Days Later.”
It’s because I have children that these movies frighten me. I can’t imagine running from zombies (or people infected with a murderous rage virus) with four children. After watching the movie, when my second child was two years old, I used to lie awake at night wondering how I would save my children and myself during a zombie apocalypse.
We lived in a town house at the time. I considered ways to destroy my staircase so that I could hide out of the way of zombies that wanted to eat/kill me. None of them were various feasible, not without detonating the entire house along with it.
Over the many years since I first saw that movie, I have developed a plan that would enable me to survive the rising of the zombies–I hope. I really have prepared for this. I don’t tell people this, of course (except those of you reading this). I explain that I am getting ready for an emergency. I don’t want to have to rely on FEMA to get me out of a natural disaster. After all, their own guidelines recommend that people be prepared for times when services to which we are accustomed are disrupted. Zombies fit into that category of disruption, don’t they?
Zombies scare me more than anything else. I can’t stand to look out of a dark window at night, because I get this creepy feeling, like a caterpillar crawling over my skin, that there is something outside watching me. The only thing watching me would be a zombie. I trust that my neighbors are decent people and not peeping toms. Zombies have no such scruples.
I have been known to hide under my blankets some nights because my fear is overpowering. I’m sure that if I can’t see the zombies, the zombies can’t see me. Please, don’t tell me that they have functioning olfactory senses. No, they don’t. These are also nights that I lay as still as possible so that I am alert to any noises that aren’t normal, any creaking and banging and shuffling that might indicate that the dead (or might-as-well-be-dead) have arrived at my doorstep. Eventually I fall asleep, although I do recall one time that I got myself so worked up over the zombies waiting outside my window that I didn’t sleep. I’m pretty sure that we didn’t get much in the way of school work done the next day, on account of my exhaustion. This doesn’t happen very often, thankfully.
I am still afraid of zombies. But my preparations for their imminent rising has taken some of the stress away. I still worry about it, but I know that I have prepared for the worst thing that could possibly happen. It makes it easier to sleep at night. Sometimes.
What? Wasn’t “Spain” just a prompt? 🙂
Casey you are funny. Not that being afraid like that is funny when it’s happening. I still come inside really fast when I drive up at to the house in the dark, but I’m worried about vampires not zombies. I think those of us with big imaginations probably shouldn’t watch horror movies. Read Kelly Link’s short stories, but not the ones about zombies.
Ohh, I will. I can deal with short stories. I just checked out Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman, a book of short stories which, I hope, are on the darker side. I read his Coraline to the older kids.
I still run back to the house if I have to take the trash out at night.
When I was a kid I spent the summers at my grandmother’s house, and she had an old cemetery in the back of her house, across a dirt drive. I still to this day cannot sit on the back-or front- porch alone in the dark.
Again it sounds like another story! And I was definitely thinking Young Adult when it comes to genre….btw, Neil Gaiman is one of my fave authors. I have to read in the genre I’m writing in (although my age group is middle-grade, I read all around that age group).
I’m with you on that one Marianne. I have been to one horror movie in my life, when I was 15 because my friends were going, (The Night of the Living Dead), I lasted the first 5 minutes and got up and walked out. Yet it still haunts me. My imagination is way too fertile to need any encouragement!!
Casey, there’s a book here…ever thought of writing about them? It’d be a way of exorcising them from your imagination too (hidden bonus). I laughed over ‘zombies have no such scruples’. I could see a zombie book written tongue-in-cheek being a bestseller!
One time I was sitting in a Tapas bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts with my husband. We almost never went out and I was kind of glowing with happiness. I looked around and appreciated the design of the place and the mood it created I took his hand and said, “This is so romantic. Doesn’t it remind you of when we went to Spain?” There was a dramatic pause and he said, “But Nora, I’ve never been to Spain.” Oops! (That’s a true story, but don’t worry. We’ve been together for 28 years.)
Nora, this is hilarious. My kids are yelling at me, demanding to know what’s so funny. I read it to them, and they give me a blank stare.
What a hoot! How did you get past that one? I’m still giggling at what must have been interesting looks on both of your faces.
Once I told my sister (27 months younger but almost identical) that I read the book Captivating while we were in Mexico.
Sister: which trip to Mexico?
Katie: I’ve only been to Mexico once.
Sister: Katie, I read Captivating while we were in Mexico.
We argued before looking up photos. She was read: she read Captivating, I read an American Lit textbook (for class… Not quite that nerdy).
Katie Axelson
Well younger sisters can be very irritating with details. I know mine is.
They remember things completely different from how we remember them. What planet were they on?? Actually, looking back at how my younger sister and I remember things, it is very telling about how important things might have been to her, that were no more than a blip on the screen to me.
That’s hilarious.
What I know about Spain: It’s close to France. Spain and France share a mountain range – the Pyrenees. Or, as they say in French – Les Pyrenees. How do you make accent marks? There should be one over the last e, I believe. Spain is surrounded by ocean, except for the little strip that connects to France. They probably have good fish. I know they have good wine. Why do you see French cookbooks, but not Spanish? Spain is warm and probably very pretty. A Farewell to Arms takes place in Spain and “the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plane.” And that, is about all I know.
One more thing I thought of – Spanish people are called Spaniards (why aren’t they Spainish Spainiards?)
Isn’t it funny how we collect little tidbits of a place and when it comes to it all we can offer is a handful of this and that. I especially like “the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plane”!
In the late 1930s, Spain was the first battleground in what later became World War II.
Two mounting tidal waves of ideological fervor were sweeping across Europe, directly opposed to each other. Communism, as spearheaded by Bolshevik revolutionaries, was moving westward from Russia. Fascism, as manifested primarily by Hitler and Mussolini, was vehemently opposing the leftist horde in many nation-states among the European theatre.
In 1931, Spanish republicans had deposed their king and replaced the monarchy with a leftist government in Madrid, supported by the Russians and other left-leaning entities.
The authoritarian traditions in Spain are deep and strong. Generalissimo Francisco Franco mustered military and rightist support to oppose the socialists who had taken over in Madrid. The two fascist dictators in Europe, Hitler and Mussolini, supported Franco in a big way with guns, butter, and troops.
Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls chronicles the efforts of an American republican to support the liberal Madrid government against Franco and the fascists.
The destructive swathe of Nazism and Fascism that later engulfed Europe found its first belligerent manifestation in the German/Italian Axis’ uninhibited military support of Franco and his soldiers against the Nationalists in Spain.
That Iberian confrontation between socialism and fascism in late-1930s Spain was a harbinger of later ideological, epic death-struggles in the world to come.
It always amazes me when reading history how closely tangled events are with one another. Something in “this country” is triggered by something else in “that country” and before you know an ideological cross-pollination has taken place that often breeds a mutant plant, deadly to everyone who touches it.
I considered writing about ice cream in Spanish instead.
Katie
Spain. España. Iberian Peninsula. Four languages. Vosotros. Th. Mardid vs. Barcelona. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. 1848. Goya. Dalí. Picasso. Siesta.
All of these things I know. With a little prompting, we could hold a conversation all morning (in English or Spanish) about Spanish history. But until you visit a place, it remains someplace only on a map. Nothing more.
I have never set foot in el Prado. I have never wandered with wonder through the Alhambra. I am a stranger to the terraced landscape, the breath-taking sea, the treasure only accessible by plane. The oil-rich foods have never touched my lips. The “th” pronunciation of “d” my ears are not accustomed to. The beer and hills of “Hills Like White Elephants” have never graced my eyes. I do not know the smell.
I am speechless about a land whose flag I can explain, whose language I understand, whose history could once diagram.
Yet here I sit, passport in-hand, work visa within it, boarding a plane to a land I have never know. To trade the language I call my own. Their first, my second. My first, their second. Will we ever accomplish anything? Will we ever say more than “¿Cómo estás?” “I’m fine thank you, and you?” “Bien. Gracias. Dios le bendiga.”
Spain.
How shall I pick a soccer team, or rather, a futból team? How shall I decide when to use usted, tú, and vosotros? How shall I remember acetuna does not mean tuna? Embarassada is not embarrassed. Molestarse is not a cognate either.
What about the life that does not translate? The night-life and daytime naps? Will I suffer jet lag for three months straight? Will I yearn for familiar smells, tastes, and comprehension? What will this adventure bring? Suffering?
No. I hand over my ticket with confidence. This will be the experience of a lifetime everyone keeps telling me it will be. This will be a chance to learn another language, another culture, another way of life. I will come home changed—for better or worse. And maybe I’ll know more than the entire life stories of Ferdinand and Isabella. Now, if only I can get on the plane.
Did you go there for real Katie or was this fiction?
The going is fiction, the rest of it real. Although I did teach English in China.
Katie
Great job of giving those of us who know little about the country a taste of it. I am trying to learn American Spanish, myself. I still struggle with more than the basics!
Stepping from the stuffiness of a tour bus onto a tree-rimmed tiny plaza, I inhaled the life-breath of Barcelona. A sultry, airless late summer afternoon stretched ahead. Four hours to explore. Four short hours, with the heart of the city mere steps away.
The sidewalks were crammed with young citizens – later I read the median age in Barcelona was 31 – hurrying and shoulder-bumping to what must be important hook-ups, business or otherwise, their feet barely touching the ground. Everyone walked with heads bent to scan hand-held devices, and spoke aloud as they marched alone. You see it here, too, but as the sun beat down on the ancient city, I felt an even steamier heat rising from the sidewalk – the heat of a citizenry on the brink in a new age.
Of course, 4 hours was enough for only the tiniest of tastes. Reluctantly returning to the appointed pick-up spot – again the small plaza – I heard a noise, soft at first, then rising and gaining volume, like an advancing orchestra of castanets. I looked up, and in the distance a low-flying dark swarm had a bead on this plaza. Suddenly several hundred green, yellow, and red wild parrots swooped low over my head, the rush moving my hair, and disappeared into the branches of a fat palm tree. The clacking stopped immediately, but the treetop shook and jumped with life, yet no trace of any bird was visible. I stood rooted to the pavement, and in a few seconds the flock tore skyward again in a huge S-curve toward the setting sun.
What a wonderful taste you provide Diane. I love your observation of ‘the heat of a citizenry on the brink in a new age.’ And the last description of the parrots sets what might otherwise be any metropolitan city apart.
Thank you. Witnessing those birds in such huge numbers was truly a magical experience
Those birds sound amazing. You use a lot of good details in your writing.
Thank you. I do love those details, every single, solitary one of them. I, however, often find myself drowning in them …sigh
I don’t think they’re overdone at all though. I like to be able to get a good picture of what I’m reading.
Spain is in my blood. My family heralds from Wales originally and the Spanish invaded Wales many years ago, hence the black haired, olive-skinned look of the Welsh. My great grandfather was the very epitome of this. Tall, for the Victorian era, at six foot two, with jet black hair slicked back thickly Arthur had brown eyes, and was rakishly handsome. The whole family from his line down all look like him. My father could be the spitting image. I’ve been asked all my life if I have Spanish in my blood and I always say yes. But I have never been there. Pored over photos in books, magazines, I have, and I’ve always been drawn to the food, yes. I feel as if I have been there. I can simply close my eyes and tune in to rolling fields (the smell of grass under the sun), grazing animals moving slowly, orange trees heavily scented with citrus, rows upon rows of grapevines heavy with fruit. I see donkeys with large carefully balanced loads ambling along narrow winding country lanes, followed by a farmer with a neck scarf, or maybe a boy, barefooted and dark-haired.
Isn’t it fun to imagine what if? I love how our own physical attributes and families tell a story. A story we don’t have all the details to but that we see the ripple of, like a stone dropped into a pond!
Thanks Marianne and Beck. Yeah I know what you mean. I don’t ever think of family geneaology or bloodlines or things like that normally, so it was interesting to me how I instantly went there on this exercise.
I love the last lines there when you describe the fields and the oranges, grapes, donkey etc. Very clear images, the rhythm of the writing is very well matched to what you described.
What a fun exercise! Hope you are soaking it all in Joe!
***
I wonder, if dream became reality, and I found myself on a quaint Spanish street would I feel at home? The echo of my teeny Grandma Ria’s accent floats through childhood memories. As the number of grandchildren grew, her memory waned, and she resorted to addressing the youngest as “leetle one.”
A half dozen olive skinned children, topped with thick black hair, would have been as at home on the streets of a mountain town in the Basque Country of Spain as in the suburban streets of America. Yet they would never know the land their grandfather left behind.
Sometimes when I look at my father’s long straight nose and dark curly hair, off set by crystal blue eyes, I wonder what story his genes are trying to tell. Who would he have been in his mother’s homeland? Who would I have been?
Would the hues of life have shifted under the shadow of the great Pyrenees?
Was you grandmother Spanish? The sentence that starts with “A half dozen. . .” is particularly nice.
She is Spanish. Actually her parents immigrated from northern Spain to Puerto Rico shortly before she was born. She met my grandfather while he was stationed there in the Air Force, they married and she came to America with him. Many of my aunts, uncles and cousins still live in Puerto Rico. I always thought it was funny that the children in our family all spoke English and are very American while our cousins speak Spanish and have very Spanish names.
Mijas is bent into the mountains, and goat or two is led by a man outside the city. Shops and restaurants are carved into the whitened streets. Nearly every corner is, as many world travelers would call it, a “thin place.”
I wonder how a man could make a living off of a knick-knack store so craftily hidden in an empty alleyway, or a proud little shop filled with expensive art. This is why Mijas feels like a fantasy, like a “thin place.” It doesn’t need the rest of the world to stay alive, but rather a steady drink of God and crisp mountain air.
But it’s not only the streets and shops which seem so holy- so set apart. When I enter the bullring from the place where the matadors come to fight the bull, I feel an unexplainable fear. Although it’s empty, I know that the men who cross the threshold I have just crossed willingly face a wild animal who wants to kill them. Much like the artistic Resistance that wants to kill me as I share my thoughts with you now. Because you see- the page is the bull, at least to me.
Like a matador who gouges the bull, however, the page is once more conquered with ink. And the matador, like the writer, must leave his work on the sands behind him, to seek out the thin places of his city, to breathe fresh mountain air.
I imagine that there are books about matadors. Art regarding art. What a paradox that must be…
You stand triumphant with bull slain! Sheer poetry. I’m sure Keith Jennings would be proud. I loved ‘the steady drink of god and crisp mountain air’, it transported me somewhere else!
What a beautiful piece. I love the pictures your words invoke and exploring the “thin place” of which you speak in my own life.
Nicely done.
Spain is different, they say
You pose a good philosophical question. Does a place change or because we change we see a place differently? It’s probably a little bit of both. And hopefully both are changes for the better that lead to even more experiences and more changes for the better.
I enjoyed reading what you wrote. Well done considering (as you allude to) that English is not your primary language for non-technical writing.
All I knew was he was somewhere in Spain, and I was stuck in this crummy motel in South Fort Worth. I chose the motel based on proximity to the closest congregation of my church in the area; I wanted to attend services before I passed through and continued on to Granbury for his cousin’s wedding.
This whole trip was nerve wracking – the driving, the navigating, knowing I was taking pictures tomorrow at the wedding. My husband served as our family photographer, not me. How would I cope with the task? Deep inside, I seethed with resentment, still struggling with this new job that took him not only out of state, but out of the country.
He was in Europe, for heaven’s sake. No chance of me getting to go on the trip because the company would not pay for spouses. Our budget held no money for that kind of travel. I tried to be a grownup about the whole thing, but I was still irked over his prior trip to France and Denmark, when I watched him pack and wished that I could somehow go. I was the one who wanted travel, not him.
Now I sat in this motel, praying that the spot on the baseboard near the bed was not really blood. It must be something else. It had to be something else. They certainly would not leave a blood stain on the baseboard…
Time to call him. I struggled with dialing unfamiliar numbers, unsure of what they represented. You had to dial 011 to get out of the country, and go from there. The clerk at the hotel answered, in Spanish. My Spanish level was about first grade. I tried to get across what room number I wanted. The clerk sounded irritated. Yet another American with no language skills bothering him at what was some ridiculously early hour of the morning in Spain.
Finally, I managed to get through to my sleeping husband. Talking to him, hearing his voice coming across all the miles between us, I felt better. We had agreed to this job, and I would not be one of those clingy women who could not cope alone. I missed him, I was worried about the pictures, but it was still good to hear him. For a moment, it did not matter that he was in Spain and I was not, or how bad the hotel might be. For those few moments on the phone, all was right with the world.
Thank goodness that phone call went through to help relieve all the angst that was building up sitting in that crummy hotel room staring at what might be blood on the baseboard.
Nice build up of negative emotions making the resolution all the more comforting.
Thanks! That trip was really stressful, all the way through the weekend! Thankfully, that was years ago and he doesn’t travel anymore. But I still never made it to Europe!
I love Spain, even though I haven’t travelled to that country, yet. What turned me on to Spain? Reading “Tales of the Alhambra” by Washington Irving. I was fortunate enough to experience the Alhambra and its garden, the General Life right here in New York; Brooklyn, to be exact.
About a year ago I visited the New York Botanical Garden’s green house exhibit called “Spanish Paradise: Gardens of the Alhambra”. Once inside I was immediately taken to the General Life as I strolled past the fountains, flora, and fauna of the garden exhibit. Traditional Spanish guitar music floated in the air, and made the experience complete.
It was summer time and balmy in the green house. I imagined Moorish princes and princesses sitting in the shade by the fountain trying to stay cool in the hot Grenadian sun.
The Botanical Garden also had a library exhibition called “Historical Views: Tourists at the Alhambra”. It was a small exhibition of a few sketches, paintings, photographs, tiles, and pottery. Looking at the artwork I was once again transported in time and place. I absorbed each line, the colors, and the shapes. It was exhilarating and inspiring to see how the Alhambra captured the imagination of these travelers through the centuries, and on that day captured mine as well.
For a few hours last summer I was in Spain, in my favorite place, the Alhambra.