Chapter 5 - Southern Europe - perfect night

I had a bit of an incident with a persistent Spaniard in a restaurant last night, finally insulting him in French to shake him off, but not really even knowing what I said. It shook me up and I felt like crying. Just when I was thinking I was doing quite well! I haven’t cried for days and now I am all shaky and teary. You always made me feel safe, confident and protected. Now I feel vulnerable and weak, something I hadn’t felt since I was a teenager. If I was younger I’d call up ‘Fakira the brave’, but it’s hard to believe in her now. Every day seems such a fight. Two steps forward and another step back.


Sometimes I wonder how you could have loved me at all. I’m always second guessing myself, doing one thing, then going over and over it in my mind afterwards to determine whether or not I should have done something else. How on earth did I manage as a teacher those four years, knowing what to teach and how to teach it? Of course I went over and over each lesson at home first, and of course if anything unexpected happened I would replay it in my head that night to see if I could have handled it any better, but then the next day there were new lessons and new unexpected things so one day never lasted long in my head.


You always told me I should have more confidence in myself, that I shouldn’t worry so much about what other people think. What my mother thinks. I tried so hard to be better. And you must admit I did in the time we were together. But my system suffered a severe blow when you left me and I’m having a hard time not blaming myself. I question whether there was something I could have done better so you would be here now.


At down times like this I call upon one of my good memories. This time it was the camping trip we went on with the “Carousel” gang. Everyone met over at my place, but you came over earlier because I had a broken door handle and you had offered to fix it for me. I hid by my window so that I could see you arrive and when you came walking up the path, my heart did a little jump. Your black hair was tousled and you were wearing that green tee shirt of yours, my favourite one, and those tight jeans that made you look even leaner than you were. You were whistling and I thought, ‘This guy is so utterly gorgeous and he’s coming to see me!’


At the campsite we put up four big tents and built the most enormous fire ring by the lakeshore, spending the whole day and dusk sitting around that fire, drinking good beer and bad wine, laughing and talking. Talking about the theatre and books and music and travel and the world and the heavens! It felt wonderful to be young and blithe, able to shake off our daytime personas as teachers and nurses and bank managers, and be amateur artists and students of the world together. At one point the whole thing swelled up in me and I had to walk down to the water, close my eyes and just listen to everyone talking animatedly, feel the soft breeze on my face. When I opened my eyes I saw a few sparkling lights from houses across the bay, and a sky enormous with the light of ten thousand stars. I thought life could never get any better than at that moment.

Gradually some of the group went to bed but I don’t know how anyone could possibly sleep away one moment of this time together. After awhile it became obvious that there was only one vacant tent left and that we were the only two to fill it and I got a rush of shyness. I just wasn’t ready for anything really big yet. We’d only just met. My heart pounded while we stayed up and talked some more, the fire now a throbbing orange glow. Then, without another word you picked me up and carried me to the tent, setting me down in one sleeping bag while you climbed into the other. You let me off the hook, but lay down beside me. I was so grateful and relaxed immediately. But not in a sleepy way. Oh no, my heart was beating in lurches and I could feel the excitement of lying in darkness next to a man I felt such attraction to. Sleep was not on either mind it seemed. I was so aware of your body two layers of fabric away. I could feel its motions and smell its scent, the darkness heightening my senses and emotion. We whispered the whole rest of the night in the dark, about our thoughts and dreams, breath inches away from each other’s lips. Every once in a while we’d hear a loud snore from one of the other tents and we’d stop, laugh and start our whispered conversation again. All night. Night never went by so swiftly nor so perfectly. Just as it was getting light, you leaned over and kissed me, full on the lips for so many minutes. I just closed my eyes and felt my heart beat against the skin in my throat. We each lay back to watch the sun’s progress over the roof of the tent, not saying anything. I could feel the pressure of your lips on mine for hours. I can feel it yet.

Chapter 5 - Southern Europe - caged birds

After the Alhambra and yesterday’s meanderings through Generalife, a wondrous garden in the old part of the city, I needed open air, so walked out into the surrounding countryside, wondering if Magellan walked near here before departing from Seville to find the world. A journey he never saw the end of. I feel a kinship with that. He was such a famous traveller and yet it was ironic that it was not he, nor any other great captain for that matter, but rather a Filipino servant employed by Magellan in India many years before he touched on the Philippines himself, that would be the first man to circumnavigate the globe. Sometimes what seems obvious on the surface reveals more unusual truths underneath. I wonder if I am going to end up like Magellan or like the Filipino servant.

I found a wild track that led up to green and gold views of the snow capped Sierra Nevada. Burros carried loads of sand, rocks or straw along the narrow tracks. They looked quaint and charming until I saw a small truck struggling, the driver finally giving up and carrying the load himself. Burros are more practical than poetic here. Local villagers and umpteen children ran and sat out in front of their holes as I passed by, holding their hands out for money. There were dozens of these curious holes cut right into the hillsides, like black gaping mouths looking across the valley. Upon closer examination I found they truly open into homes to these impoverished people. Some had tiny, neat gardens out front, but most led simply to a room cut into the hill. The occasional one even had a door haphazardly fitted into the opening. It looked so odd to see a real wooden door, painted red or green, set in place with the earthen hole it was meant to cover still showing around its edges.

Feeling lucky to have a lunch of bread, cheese and fruit I sat on a ledge across from the Alhambra, but at a higher elevation, so I could see both it and the city below with the distant mountains as backdrop. While there, my eye caught sight of a young boy crouched some distance away. Every once in a while he’d move to another spot, but he never stopped staring intently at something in front of him. My eyes followed his gaze until they espied a few birds in tiny cages hanging in one tree and chirping lustily.

A bird does not sing because he has an answer,

He sings because he has a song.

As I ate, I watched the boy moving around watching his caged birds. Once he looked over to me, with the same furtive and serious expression, so that for a moment I felt I was one of his caged birds. I made myself wave and smile. He nodded back gravely, then returned to his earlier scrutinies, releasing me. He never looked my way again and I never did find out why his attention was so taken with those caged birds.

Chapter 5 - Southern Europe - Granada

Now I know why Toledo has no water – Granada has it all! I spent the entire day at the Alhambra. An ancient Moorish royal palace, it overlooks the city and is filled with fountains and little liquid statues, walkways with rivulets flowing from stairs and gardens, even pouring down banisters. Rooms lead into rooms, courtyards, gardens and yet more rooms. And always the soothing sound of water. I roamed and let it touch all the alleys of my soul, often stopping to read in somewhere hidden, encircled by liquid. Right now it’s Washington Irving’s tales, fitting as he spent so much time here himself.

I was the last one to leave. With the gates closing behind me, I peered in one last time, not wanting to rush too quickly back into the modern world. Taking small lanes back, twisting alleys filled with gypsies and beggars, shopkeepers and fortunetellers, I went into a little shop and came away with a guitar. I don’t know quite why I bought it. I have no idea how to play it. I guess it seemed the sort of shop to go into here, and the rows of golden wood instruments hanging in the window looked so romantic. Inside there were two young men strumming softly, trying out the newly finished mechanics, and I suddenly found myself with one placed in my hands, feeling its smooth sides and cool neck. I never even questioned its possession. The air seems to move through it like breath, and its strings talked to me. It makes me feel you are near somehow, whispering in my ear.

Chapter 5 - Southern Europe - southward

When I was packing this morning I found an enormous cockroach in my luggage. I squelched a scream and jumped to the other side of the room, my heart pounding. But I had to deal with it myself of course, there was no one else. So I moved in and gingerly took out each piece of clothing, one at a time, shaking it out on the floor before putting it back on the bed to refold. I finally got down to the bottom and isolated the creature, then shut my eyes and flipped the bag over. Knowing I’d have to see the thing leave to believe it, I kicked the suitcase around the room watching until the bug scrambled away, then I quickly repacked everything and zipped the case up tight. I felt both victorious and shaky.


A ten-hour train trip took me through wonderful country south to Grenada, almost at Spain’s southernmost coast. Citrus groves and cotton fields. I haven't brought much stuff with me on this trip but it is wonderful having my Walkman; music illuminates scenery dramatically. Sometimes the songs make me cry. I think of the time you and I wasted not telling each other our true feelings earlier.


I have taken to reading poetry. It seems to say so much of what I’m feeling in such concise words. Or else I look in it for hidden meanings, things written only to me. Ridiculous I know. I’m sure everyone does that. In an English collection I found at a second hand store, someone had made pencilled additions in the margins and I am more intrigued by the additions than the collection. It seems the previous owner felt much as I do, underlining some couplets that are particularly resonant:


But there is that within me which shall tire
Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire. (Byron)


Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea. (Thomas)

Chapter 5 - Southern Europe - claustrophobic

I feel tight. Like a clock that’s been overwound. Like a … oh I can't think of a word that's right. When written down, my feelings always sound like a bad novel. I have to try so hard to keep control or I’ll snap, pinging my parts all over the landscape. Tears are always just there under the surface ready to sting when I see a frightened child, a tender parent, a mournful dog. I can’t think straight, or too long or of too many things, and it’s getting worse, not better, with time. It’s all I can do to decide what I am going to eat today or where I’m going to walk.


I just got a letter from Mom and Dad telling me they don’t mind about themselves but I should really write to Babby. Andrew, I write postcards to everyone, including Babby, constantly! I must send 20 postcards a week! Don’t these people talk to each other? Maybe it’s their way of saying they want to hear from me more often, but why can’t they just say that? Why do they make it seem instead like I’m doing something wrong? I caught myself wandering around muttering “shoulda, woulda, coulda” over and over. I think I might go crazy. I start to think about what it would be like to just step in front of a train and everything would be over in a second. No more ties to family or world. No more feeling inadequate. No more having to know where to go or what to do each day. But instead I look both ways, buy my tickets, and wrap up well. I wonder if I really am being sensible or if I am just a coward after all.


It’s rained almost constantly since I arrived in Toledo. I loved it in the beginning but now everything is beginning to seem claustrophobic – El Greco's long people, narrow streets, steep stairs winding around courtyards filled with plants. I have been everywhere several times. My brain feels squeezed. I need space. I have to leave.

Chapter 5 - Southern Europe -Toledo

Crap. The water is shut off here every day between 7pm and 7am. What a time to get my period! I had an entirely sleepless night, worrying about the sheets, but the morning and a warm bath brought more equilibrium, as did a bowl of thick, dark hot chocolate. Toledo’s cathedral is unexpectedly imposing and impressive for a relatively small town. I went early, then stayed to see what a Roman Catholic mass is like. Conducted entirely in Spanish of course, I didn’t get a huge amount of inspiration from the words, but the surroundings offered much in their place.

It’s a wonderful country for gilding: there are dozens of lanky statues dressed in gold from far away places stretching up towards the small circular stained glass windows. I tried to shut out the image of how the gold got here, but then fell into imagining what it must have been like to be an Incan princess or an Aztec jeweller. There are several enormous oil paintings with little clutches of flickering white candles at their bases, which only highlight how darkly painted the oils are; moody blacks, greens, indigos and maroons. Jesus hanging, head down, blood dripping from his wounds. Mary holding her dead son, a broken man splayed out on her blue mantle. Even the tender mother and baby, usually a scene of optimism and hope, was tempered with foreboding; sadness filling Mary’s eyes. I wandered back and forth among the portraits, seeing something new in ones I’d passed a half hour before. Churches in Europe contain everything galleries and museums do, with the added benefit of providing a place to just sit in silence. I don’t have to make any decisions or ask any questions. The doors are always open and I am always welcome.

At lunch my limited language skills picked out ‘soup of egg yolk’. Aptly named. My bowl arrived with a lone egg yolk perfectly intact floating in a hot, milky broth. It looked horrible. And with little bullets of ham that were pretty well inedible lurking in the bottom of the bowl, I soon gave it up as a bad job and left almost in tears. These days even a small thing as bad soup makes me feel awful.

In the afternoon I visited El Greco’s house and museum. I never really knew his art before. Now I’d know it anywhere. His paintings, mostly large - the Spanish have a penchant for the conspicuous - are filled with subjects that seem pensive, even vacant, and with elongated, almost feminine hands that mesmerize me. He puts light into dark corners. I wandered around the house where he lived and painted, returning to some rooms and staying longer in others. How wonderful it must be to have a talent like this, to put in tangible form ones thoughts and feelings.

I have found stirring places in Toledo, most unexpectedly around corners. My favourite is Santa Maria’s grove of quiet trees. There is a bench there, of grey stone that undulates after centuries of bodies have sat and worn it down in places. I would sometimes pick a soft dip to sit on, mirroring bottoms from yore, and other times I would choose a part of the bench less favoured. The trees would whisper in the soft breeze and drizzly rain, their leaves that metallic colour leaves get before falling at the end of Autumn. No one else was ever around and I could sit alone and feel the centuries seep up through my body, and indulge in memories. I can choose which memory to bring up, what memories of you to remember. Spain is a romantic place and romance is constantly in my mind thinking of you so far away. All the times we spent together spring to life in my mind as I pace the streets and sit on benches. I can’t believe we only knew each other just a year.

It was a Thursday. The day we met. I remember it was a Thursday because that was the opening night of “Carousel” and our shows always opened on a Thursday. You came to the party after with our costume maker Janelle, and I thought you were the handsomest man and Janelle’s boyfriend. You read me some of your poems, then asked me to dance and dipped me, which was so romantic. The room seemed too hot and we went to sit out on the back steps and talked for an hour and a half. Four years older than me which seemed a lot at the time. And with the most wonderful smile I’d ever seen.

You came to the show every night after that and went out with all of us afterwards, sometimes with Janelle but mostly on your own. A flicker of hope. I loved it when sometimes you sat next to me. You made me laugh. I tried not to be too obvious about how much I liked being with you because I’d look so ridiculous if you didn’t feel the same way. When the show’s run finished we both stayed at the closing night party until it shut down, then watched the sun rise from the roof. I didn’t want to leave in case I never saw you again, but I’d never asked a guy out before.

“Would you maybe want to meet up sometime, you know, for a drink or a movie?”

“Yes, I would.”

“If you have time, of course.”

A quizzical look, given you’d already answered my question. “Yes, I will have time.”

My face went hot, now back to improvising. “Really? Um, that’s good. I’d like that, too.”

I felt like a nine year old, stumbling over my words, my mouth dry with excitement. And then we talked some more and you told me that you thought I hadn’t been interested in you, and so tried to hide your own disappointment by acting uninterested in me! How many love affairs have been curtailed by mistaken assumptions and emotional cover-ups? I am blushing now just remembering it!

Chapter 5 - Southern Europe - dirt and pastries

Toledo is charming with cobbled streets, narrow twisting lanes bordered by narrow twisting buildings, little shops crowding the streets and bakeries everywhere. I had no idea Spaniards loved pastries so much. Even on today’s National Day, a holiday, the pastry shops are open and jammed full of people.

The journey here coincided with my first rain in days. I raised my face to feel it streaming, washing me clean. Madrid had been always filled with sunshine. Every morning I would awake to see it gliding through my large windows. I had the most happy dreams that entire month. But they made me restless, seeming so close that I didn’t want them to end at light of day. Even as I tried to clutch on to them I could feel them slip away to join the rays of sun, becoming as transparent as smoke when it drifts and mingles with air. I filled the days as much as possible with walking and eating and reading in order to get back to my lovely dreams again. You were always there in them somewhere woven into the string of unconnected events that dreams always are. And every morning you’d disappear again. Oh, Andrew, I miss you so much! I feel so lonely, there are times when I wish I could just die, but then I feel guilty and horrible inside for wishing such a thing. I have to keep telling myself that why you’re not here is not my fault.

I often wonder what you’d think of the places and people I see and the things I fill my time with. Time is different now. I’m not rushing to any timetable, no schoolbell directs my plans. I don’t even care what the hour is, only that it is filled with diversion. Yesterday I sat awhile in Madrid’s train station in a little green and white coffee shop above the platform, probably the cleanest place in Madrid if not in all of Spain. The Spain I’ve seen so far is pretty filthy. Dogs foul the sidewalks, dust swirls in corners, urine smells pucker my nostrils. Piles of litter fill empty spaces in the streets and beggars line walls and passage-ways looking more grimy and sad the more money they receive. I read that some of them even amputate their own limbs in order to become more effective beggars. Men say ‘shhh’ to me as I pass and others spit. There’s spittle everywhere, so if the dog poop doesn’t get you the spit does. The toilets never have toilet paper or hand towels, and are so putrid I don’t even want to look let alone sit. Some of them are just squatters anyway, with two metal plates where you plant your feet before squatting, holding your pants or skirts so that they don't drag on the ground. I can never find out how to flush them, and then they flush all by themselves, which is creepy, especially when I am still squatting on top of them. Flies skulk everywhere. I never thought a fly could skulk, but Spanish flies definitely skulk.

My little clean oasis of a coffee shop afforded a good look at everyone coming and going, seeing relations off on journeys and greeting returning friends. I drank strong coffee and watched, grateful to be invisible until the time came for my own train’s departure. Families hugged goodbye, grandparents welcomed grandchildren, couples separated with exaggerated despair for temporary severance. I know I should be comforted with seeing how life goes on, but I’m not. How do others cope? Since you’ve gone I’ve felt so weak. I know there’s an inner core that somehow keeps me alive and moving, but my emotions are feeble, strung out like a piano wire that cuts like a blade. The slightest little memory sends me down into the depths. I feel so vulnerable without you. Losing you dismantled me.