It was raining as Spain rattled past my window. Landscapes blended into vistas - jagged mountains, rolling meadows, scraps of garden, lines of rocks serving as fences, sheep, shimmering green and yellow trees following twisting brooks, more sheep. Lots and lots of wet sheep. The water on the windows mirrored the tears that constantly covered my eyes. The only way to clear my mental fog was to look at landscapes and try to think about the things that must have happened here or that will happen here, the people, the cultures, the generations of sheep. I would imagine looking down on myself from the roof of the train, watching and thinking about what I saw. Thinking. Much better than feeling. Thinking allows for detachment. Feeling is a precipice.
I have made it to the country that launched so many magnificent voyages, and savagely destroyed so many peoples and lands.
So many goodly cities ransacked and razed; so many nations destroyed and made desolate; so infinite millions of harmless people of all sexes, states and ages massacred, ravaged and put to the sword; and the richest, the fairest and best part of the world topsiturvied, ruined and defaced for the traffic of pearls and pepper…oh base conquest. Well, that’s what you get for studying mankind, Montaigne. I have never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself.
And yet what courage Spain showed, too! Encouraging exploration, sending men and ships into the unknown, without maps, sometimes without even rumours or legends. The world has never been the same. Other countries have never been the same. Some thrived, like Belgium and Italy making maps and charts, and others didn’t, like Mexico and Peru, gold lost to Spanish greed.
I’m feeling a bit dazed, my brain clashing from thought to thought. It seems like I just landed in Paris and then left, needing to escape northern intellectual climes and see places known for passion and heat. Places that launched ships into the unknown, not those that charted the results. I shifted luxuriously in my seat. Travelling by train allows me to daydream or look out at the scene presented to me and think. There is so much to look at and think on that I got caught up in the pace of unfolding scenery and was surprised to find myself arrived, in Madrid, ensconced in a pension bedroom containing a lavish chandelier and the most comfortable bed. I can’t quite remember how I got here, but then I have been existing in a sort of muffled bag for weeks now, moving and thinking without registering.
Oh Andrew, I am so very conscious of the fact you are not here – we should be doing this trip together. I feel resentful of everyone I see who looks happy, and so piteous of myself. Talking about you helps, but I have no one to talk to about you, and if I did I know I would do it so constantly it would drive the other person crazy. This way is better really. I can write, describing the places I go so you see them with me, even though you are far away.
I had a pounding headache when I arrived but thought food might help. Figuring it must be late when I emerged from my sixth floor eyrie because there were so few people about, I hunted for a little place that might be open. I found a nice looking place but it was totally empty and I felt embarrassed going in. I found another but it looked a bit rougher. A third was also empty and kind of dark. So I went back to the first place and looked in, trying to pretend I was looking for someone. It was still empty and I didn’t know what to do. Before I could decide, the waiter saw me, opened the door and gestured me in. I couldn’t say no at that point.
I seem to have turned up in the country without having taken in more than three words from all the pages I studied in my Spanish phrasebook. After I’d verbally trashed his language trying to order food, the waiter just put his pad down, gave me a long, slightly pained look, then turned on his heel and returned shortly after with lots of little plates of delicious things and a small carafe of red wine to go with it.
Ok, so first thing I have learned about Spain - eat late. When I left the café it was packed with people. The streets were thronged too. Bands played and people danced in between strings of others out shopping and meeting friends and lovers. Food stalls and outdoor bars interrupted the flow of bodies eating and smoking. Everyone was either in couples or groups, chatting and laughing and even singing. I continued to imagine about this person’s poverty or that person’s hunger or the other one’s despair as I walked back alone to my room. I know in my head they all can’t really be miserable, but my heart is resentful of the happiness of others.
I slept soundly for 11 hours - 11 hours! I had a beautiful dream – a mediaeval romance of a dream. You were on a large grey horse, standing over me, then you picked me up in a cloak of dark green velvet and we rode up the skies to spend eternity together. Delicious thrills went through me and I felt utterly at peace upon waking, lying there looking myopically at the chandelier. Every romantic bone and erotic place in my body was alive. I felt like a beautiful nymph, my hair all tousled and my eyes sleepy, the sort of creature depicted in great paintings or written about in delicate poems. Words you wrote once to me repeat themselves: “My day is rewarded when I awake, for you flower in my eyes. Sunlight streaming through the curtains to touch you, setting your outline afire.”
