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.
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