Tuesday, October 03, 2006
spain
“…Invite me to your lands of surreal; fantastic, horrific, or numb. I don’t care which way we travel, just drive for me. Drive for me. Invite me to your lands of surreal, that I may be drunk on the nostalgia of fire, a fire with friends and a sprite full of whiskey. While we dance, while we dance in our voiceless-ness in a land named Bollullos…”
These are the words I have sketched on paper thin as tissue hoping postage won’t cost me more than a plane ticket back to Sevilla, a city I dream of revisiting so I might gaze through the cigarette smoke of Spanish flamenco bars to the costumes and footwork of the finest dancers I have ever watched in Europe. When I lick the minty envelope, my mind recaptures the fluorescent yellow, brilliant magenta, and shiny sapphire outfits that twirled about the bodies of men and women as they sing with emotion of love, loss, redemption, and romance. Their voices vibrated the cords of my soul as if I’d swallowed guitar strings that were sharply strummed with each lyric, echoing over and over, long after the performance was finished. I fell asleep to these melodies when I lived in Sevilla; the melodies of flamenco relived in my dreams. And even today, if I am fortunate enough, my mind will mosey into slumber with images of tapping feet atop rickety panels of hollow wooden stage, cheap red strawberry wine served in overflowing glasses slightly larger than thimbles, and a man whose broken English was more beautiful to me than the resonant sounds of song and dance.
Having sat down on my evening train from Malaga to Sevilla, I stashed my ticket inside my school bag and did my best to create lesson plans for my ESL students. A brown-eyed Spaniard with tan skin and a bashful smile approached me, rattled off something in Spanish, and gestured to the seat I was lounging in. After a quick game of charades and a little bit of laughter, I realized I was in his window seat rather than my assigned aisle seat. We traded places and kept to our own business for the next three hours.
As the train came to my stop, I noticed my neighbor preparing his luggage for departure also. We began talking (which more resembled a guessing game of charades since our language barrier was as dense as titanium steel) because we were both exiting in Sevilla. This relieved me, for I was unsure where I might find a taxi on this side of town. “No taxi aqui? En this staci’on de el train?” I juggled my words as successfully as a drunken jester on Valium.
“You…mmm…come? Follow?...with me, con me” Pedro adorably answered as he pointed his stalky finger toward a small side street across the station’s exit. We chatted at the curb for a few moments until a vehicle, to my surprise looking nothing like a taxi, pulled up and rolled down the window. “I want you meet my mother!” Pedro insisted with eagerness. “My mother travel you to the apartment of you.” But I’ve known you for fifteen minutes! I thought to myself. How could I possibly let your mom take me home? What’s your name again?…I soon recognized that explaining I mustn’t be a burden and would gladly wait for a taxi was like refusing Grandma’s peach cobbler; he and his mother weren’t having any of it. Pedro and I exchanged email addresses and departed with a kiss on either cheek, and I laughed myself to sleep at the absurdity of our encounter.
After a few emails, Pedro and I decided to meet at the Cathedral Town Square for a lovely walk through Sevilla. There was so much more to see with a local- the secret trails through gardens, sidewalk tiles with a history not printed in the tourist brochures, cathedral hallways that had been veiled by tree branches. I practiced my Spanish and he his English, but our best conversations were through exchanged glances, smiles, cartoon drawings, and of course, hand holding that continued through the rest of my time in Spain.
One evening, Pedro picked me up from my five story apartment building and drove us to a barnyard where he and his father had built an enormous room for late night visits with friends. After tripping over chickens and mazing our way through goats, pigs, and a few puppies, we met our five friends in a space without rooms, filled with juvenile posters scotch taped to the cement walls, a tattered couch, a naked boom box, a grand fireplace, and a kitchen table supporting various drinks and a dash-board hula dancer. The roof seemed higher than the Catholic Church ceilings, and dimensions of the room were wide enough to generate acoustics that ricocheted our laugher.
The five of us sat around a fire and drank whiskey with coke, chatted and visited and laughed and danced. The night was lovely. The night was Spanish and romantic and I loved it. Pedro kissed me when his friends left, and he and turned out the lights so that the fire was our light. The kind of light where we only saw the reflection of each others shadows. It was beautiful, everything was beautiful. Sadly, it was then that I imagined how I would feel tomorrow, which is now today. After the high is gone, and the nostalgia has passed, after the kissing is through and all touch has been finished, what is life like when the lights of life are switched back on? When I’m not living in a movie anymore, and I have to work out how much I miss being drunk on darkness and fire in Spain.
Sometimes when we were talking, he would tell me that he thinks I believe he will forget me, but that it’s not true. He would translate what his friends said about me…that I will make a good girl for him, and silly things like this. I liked laughing at the fact that we couldn’t understand each other, for we were often hysterical when we were trying to tell jokes but couldn’t deliver punch lines, leaving the other excitedly confused. But there were times, the times I was most honest with myself, that felt a prick of grief in my soul and wondered with angst…The nostalgia, the romance, the anticipation of what is to come…For it is these things that I am in love with; maybe I am celebrating myself instead of him? No, no, I do not think this is it. This romance is not about Pedro. This romance is about the moment. The problem does not lie in the person. The problem lies in the lie itself, that this love is not real…or is it?
I suppose I will never know. Having returned to a world that revolves around time, a society driven by money, a country that idolizes efficiency and future, I was tempted to conclude that my love was not real, simply because it was not realistic. But oh, such a statement was blasphemy to the lot of my heart that believes in ecstasy- for it would be as real as I desired it to be! The reality of my love solely depended on my ability to remain in such an emotional state for the rest of my life, an environment built on escape and adventure. But in such a case, I would never be fully awake.
There are days when I still want to meet with him. I wish to adore him and let him adore me, to collect memories along the gypsy tents, and trace his face with my fingers, to let him point to my eyelashes and say “pestanas” with a voice that liquefies my rationality. But I am not blind anymore, for I see my time in Spain in hindsight with sober eyes. And although I desire to resurrect the past, I doubt I will ever be able to fully immerse myself in the heavenly intoxication of my Spanish experience. I can not pretend to be blind while at the same time experience the bliss of oblivion. ¶ 8:58 PM
These are the words I have sketched on paper thin as tissue hoping postage won’t cost me more than a plane ticket back to Sevilla, a city I dream of revisiting so I might gaze through the cigarette smoke of Spanish flamenco bars to the costumes and footwork of the finest dancers I have ever watched in Europe. When I lick the minty envelope, my mind recaptures the fluorescent yellow, brilliant magenta, and shiny sapphire outfits that twirled about the bodies of men and women as they sing with emotion of love, loss, redemption, and romance. Their voices vibrated the cords of my soul as if I’d swallowed guitar strings that were sharply strummed with each lyric, echoing over and over, long after the performance was finished. I fell asleep to these melodies when I lived in Sevilla; the melodies of flamenco relived in my dreams. And even today, if I am fortunate enough, my mind will mosey into slumber with images of tapping feet atop rickety panels of hollow wooden stage, cheap red strawberry wine served in overflowing glasses slightly larger than thimbles, and a man whose broken English was more beautiful to me than the resonant sounds of song and dance.
Having sat down on my evening train from Malaga to Sevilla, I stashed my ticket inside my school bag and did my best to create lesson plans for my ESL students. A brown-eyed Spaniard with tan skin and a bashful smile approached me, rattled off something in Spanish, and gestured to the seat I was lounging in. After a quick game of charades and a little bit of laughter, I realized I was in his window seat rather than my assigned aisle seat. We traded places and kept to our own business for the next three hours.
As the train came to my stop, I noticed my neighbor preparing his luggage for departure also. We began talking (which more resembled a guessing game of charades since our language barrier was as dense as titanium steel) because we were both exiting in Sevilla. This relieved me, for I was unsure where I might find a taxi on this side of town. “No taxi aqui? En this staci’on de el train?” I juggled my words as successfully as a drunken jester on Valium.
“You…mmm…come? Follow?...with me, con me” Pedro adorably answered as he pointed his stalky finger toward a small side street across the station’s exit. We chatted at the curb for a few moments until a vehicle, to my surprise looking nothing like a taxi, pulled up and rolled down the window. “I want you meet my mother!” Pedro insisted with eagerness. “My mother travel you to the apartment of you.” But I’ve known you for fifteen minutes! I thought to myself. How could I possibly let your mom take me home? What’s your name again?…I soon recognized that explaining I mustn’t be a burden and would gladly wait for a taxi was like refusing Grandma’s peach cobbler; he and his mother weren’t having any of it. Pedro and I exchanged email addresses and departed with a kiss on either cheek, and I laughed myself to sleep at the absurdity of our encounter.
After a few emails, Pedro and I decided to meet at the Cathedral Town Square for a lovely walk through Sevilla. There was so much more to see with a local- the secret trails through gardens, sidewalk tiles with a history not printed in the tourist brochures, cathedral hallways that had been veiled by tree branches. I practiced my Spanish and he his English, but our best conversations were through exchanged glances, smiles, cartoon drawings, and of course, hand holding that continued through the rest of my time in Spain.
One evening, Pedro picked me up from my five story apartment building and drove us to a barnyard where he and his father had built an enormous room for late night visits with friends. After tripping over chickens and mazing our way through goats, pigs, and a few puppies, we met our five friends in a space without rooms, filled with juvenile posters scotch taped to the cement walls, a tattered couch, a naked boom box, a grand fireplace, and a kitchen table supporting various drinks and a dash-board hula dancer. The roof seemed higher than the Catholic Church ceilings, and dimensions of the room were wide enough to generate acoustics that ricocheted our laugher.
The five of us sat around a fire and drank whiskey with coke, chatted and visited and laughed and danced. The night was lovely. The night was Spanish and romantic and I loved it. Pedro kissed me when his friends left, and he and turned out the lights so that the fire was our light. The kind of light where we only saw the reflection of each others shadows. It was beautiful, everything was beautiful. Sadly, it was then that I imagined how I would feel tomorrow, which is now today. After the high is gone, and the nostalgia has passed, after the kissing is through and all touch has been finished, what is life like when the lights of life are switched back on? When I’m not living in a movie anymore, and I have to work out how much I miss being drunk on darkness and fire in Spain.
Sometimes when we were talking, he would tell me that he thinks I believe he will forget me, but that it’s not true. He would translate what his friends said about me…that I will make a good girl for him, and silly things like this. I liked laughing at the fact that we couldn’t understand each other, for we were often hysterical when we were trying to tell jokes but couldn’t deliver punch lines, leaving the other excitedly confused. But there were times, the times I was most honest with myself, that felt a prick of grief in my soul and wondered with angst…The nostalgia, the romance, the anticipation of what is to come…For it is these things that I am in love with; maybe I am celebrating myself instead of him? No, no, I do not think this is it. This romance is not about Pedro. This romance is about the moment. The problem does not lie in the person. The problem lies in the lie itself, that this love is not real…or is it?
I suppose I will never know. Having returned to a world that revolves around time, a society driven by money, a country that idolizes efficiency and future, I was tempted to conclude that my love was not real, simply because it was not realistic. But oh, such a statement was blasphemy to the lot of my heart that believes in ecstasy- for it would be as real as I desired it to be! The reality of my love solely depended on my ability to remain in such an emotional state for the rest of my life, an environment built on escape and adventure. But in such a case, I would never be fully awake.
There are days when I still want to meet with him. I wish to adore him and let him adore me, to collect memories along the gypsy tents, and trace his face with my fingers, to let him point to my eyelashes and say “pestanas” with a voice that liquefies my rationality. But I am not blind anymore, for I see my time in Spain in hindsight with sober eyes. And although I desire to resurrect the past, I doubt I will ever be able to fully immerse myself in the heavenly intoxication of my Spanish experience. I can not pretend to be blind while at the same time experience the bliss of oblivion. ¶ 8:58 PM
