Chapter 5 - Southern Europe- heart stop

I saw you today! I don’t know if what I saw was an image magicked up in my mind or an act of nature’s light, but I saw a man who looked just like you walking on the other side of the street. I froze, just staring as he – you - walked by. The same hair. The same walk. I wanted to run across the street, but could only sit frozen to my bench, staring at the place he had disappeared into, hoping against hope and reason that you would miraculously reappear, my heart banging against the wallls of my chest.

Of course it wasn’t really you. I know that. I wonder what I would do if I ever saw you again. Would I run forward and wrap myself around you or stand still and hope for you to approach me? Oh my head is full of questions! I am hobbled by questions. I yearn for you, and feel frozen in time. Other people pass. Cars, trains, seasons. I walk among them unseen and unnecessary. Like a spirit wandering the earth, occasionally interacting with someone or something, but leaving no impression, making no impact. Just wandering and searching for answers.

Mom’s birthday so I phoned her from Arles. Actually her birthday was yesterday but the only phone I could get to all day did not work. I had to spend a lot of my $30 phone call apologizing for missing the actual day. I always seem to start conversations with Mom with an apology. “People are beginning to wonder when you are coming home. I’ve told them Christmas so you had better make your arrangements.”

I suspect this is partly her way of saying she misses me but I just can’t play the game. I tell her it won’t be that soon.

“Well, what do I do when they ask me when you’ll be home?”

“Do nothing. Let them ask.” Does she really think I care about other people’s questions? I have enough of my own! Then she asked how I was enjoying my holiday. Holiday! Doesn’t she know that my heart is broken and I long for death? Of course not. That’s my own private turmoil. I told her of the ruins in Arles, and how picturesque they are in Autumn mists, what I’m reading and what fashions people are wearing. I have no idea really, I make up stuff about hem lengths and heel heights and hope it sounds convincing and provides the information she wants to hear. My money runs out and I still haven’t really told her anything. I want her to know what I am feeling but I don’t want to worry her. I want her to be proud of me, but not to overestimate my abilities. I want to see and do the things she would approve of, but can’t get enthusiastic about most of them. She wants to know everything I’ve done but I feel too lethargic to remember all the museum names, and too embarrassed to tell her it’s mostly just walking and killing time. Her questions feel intrusive, her comments dismissive. I didn’t ask anything about her and she asked too much about me. My answers became shorter, and we finished our conversation, both dissatisfied.

Chapter 5 - Southern Europe - trapped in the shower

I’m in a ‘foyer de la jeunesse’ in Toulon, a hostel for girls, with a very pink dormitory room. Why is it hostel decorators think all females are expected to like pink patterned walls and frilly curtains? I schlepped around town kicking up crisp brown leaves under the trees. It rained most of the day, and got cold. A November full of browns and greys. So different than at home when the earth is like some garish old lady wearing too much makeup – gold, scarlet, orange, purple. I normally love the colours of Autumn, but not this year. This palate is more soothing to my moods. I picked up a few Christmas gifts to mail off, the first shopping I’ve done since leaving home. I never thought I would have lasted so long, but I’m still alive so had better plan for the near future at least.

I had an interesting shower this evening. I got into a stall and soon realized I had two neighbours who happened to be sharing one of the other stalls, a man and a woman, quite obviously lovers. A few years ago I probably would have been shocked, but now I’d be doing the same thing if you were here. Then a shudder went through me, and I suddenly felt cold all over. My eyes started to sting with more than shampoo dripping into my eyes, and I said “damn” to myself, then got out of there as quickly and quietly as I could so as not to disturb them. It as only afterwards that I wondered how a man had been able to get past the stern lady and her steely ‘pince nez’ at the entrance to the ‘foyer de la jeunesse’.

Chapter 5 - Southern Europe - moving on

I’ve left Spain. I guess I thought a country that launched so many ships might launch me towards a clear direction but it didn’t. I’m still unsure of what to do next, still restless after a few days in each place, unable to gain respite, answers, satisfaction. But I’m glad I came. I’m surprised to find that despite its dirt and poverty, its magnificence and unrest, the country crept inside me. It’s like the taste of bitters I had in Denmark all those years ago. Horrible at first, but the more I had the more I came to like their intensity. Spain is a country that’s seen more than its fair share of internal unrest and teenaged rulers and religious sways – Jewish, Muslim, Catholic – extreme wealth and extreme poverty. There is certainly a lot of this world to see! If only I wasn’t so tired to want to see it. Instead I seem to drift through it, as if looking for something.

France seems more comforting, but maybe it’s just because the language is more familiar, all those school conjugations rising up from the depths. Mind you, it took awhile to come back to me after speaking Spanish these last weeks and months. In the middle of the night while I was sleeping with my head on my guitar alone in the train carriage, I suddenly became aware of a man who had entered and was sitting in the seat opposite, just staring at me. My body went rigid with alarm. I continued to lay there, trying to keep my breathing regular, hoping he’d go away. He must have caught a glint in my half-opened eye because he tried to strike up a conversation I half understood. ‘Pretty lady would you like to spend the night with me?’

I ignored him, but he moved closer and put a hand on my leg. I sat up bolt upright, hoping to scare him off, but he moved in closer, persistent. He put one arm around the back of the seat I was on and the other cupped over my knee. I jumped up and away, pointed to the door, feeling my voice quaver despite all efforts to say strongly, “Bon nuit monsieur, s’il vous plait!” I felt ridiculous wishing him ‘good night, if you please’ – not at all what I had wanted to say, but it was the first thing I thought of. He smiled and I could smell his sickly breath, a mixture of stale cigarette smoke and alcohol and garlic. What a cliché.

I sat on the opposite bench and turned away from him, crossing my arms, hoping desperately he’d just go away on his own, but he moved across and put his hand back, this time down by my ankle, slowly moving it up my leg. For some absurd reason all I could think about was how long it’s been since I’ve shaved my legs and I felt my face flush with embarrassment. I pushed the disturbing need to apologize aside and stood up on jelly legs. Quivering, I opened the door to the compartment and rasped out for assistance. The man got to his feet and moved towards me. I was terrified that he’d grab the door and close it, or hit me or something, but the compartment door next to us opened and the noise made him pause. Then he shrugged and moved out of the carriage, looking down at my breasts as he pressed past me. I moved back into the compartment and crossed my arms over my chest, shut the door and sat, wide awake, shaking like a leaf the rest of the trip, keeping myself from crying by thinking of all the more clever things I could have said.

Chapter 5 - Southern Europe - Barcelona

Barcelona is too big for my moods. I had expected to enjoy it here, as I had expected to enjoy Seville, a place that filled me with such sorrow that I left it immediately. Seville is a city created for departures I guess, all those voyages. Barcelona’s cathedral, weirdly Gothic, just seems empty. Gaudi’s overwhelming La Sagrada Familia is spooky and grotesque. In a previous life I’d be all over this, interested in when it was built, how many bricks it used, etc., etc.. At this point though, visiting it just fills in time between sleeping. To me Barcelona is a place that must sing in Summer, but now, in Autumn, it merely hums. Oh it’s beautiful all right. The air is brisk, soft and cold. Copses of trees rustle as burnished copper in the hazy light. The street lights’ metallic lace, like cobwebs in early morning strung across a gate with the drops of dew illuminating the delicate lines. I’ve gotten all sappy and poetic lately, trying to rhyme words for no reason. And here there are all the necessary distractions I could want. But Barcelona is too big for me. Autumn has come, it crept up behind me and now envelopes me, reminding me that time has passed, months have passed and I feel no less displaced. Somewhere in it I turned 25. A quarter of a century. I feel old.

Chapter 5 - Southern Europe - dreamless and tearful

I didn’t get to dream of you last night because I couldn’t get to sleep. Feeling restless and depressed, I went to bed early and then lay awake crying all night. The two months after you left I couldn’t cry at all. The hurt was like a stone weight inside me, or a sponge that soaked up any tears I had before they could be shed. Mom said I obviously didn’t really care that much about you if I couldn’t cry about it so for heavens sake buck up and stop being such a wet blanket. She had no idea that not being able to cry was worse. But as soon as I left home, it changed. Now I cry all the time.


I moved slowly this morning. There’s a market nearby for good bread and cheese, fruit and nuts. I’m getting better at speaking Spanish and now feel confident asking “Cuanto?” because I can finally understand the answers. Why do language books always teach students how to ask questions without preparing them for the answers? I have learned how to ask questions that require mostly only ‘Si’ or ‘Non’ in reply.


After my market stop and a beer in a seedy, crowded café I strolled along the shore imagining I was walking with my arm in the crook of your elbow. The sea was glittering and tossing sparkling jets of foam into the air, gurgling in joy and then tumbling onto the sand only to drag laughingly back to itself. Birds wheeled through the air, mediators between sun and sea. I sat on a bench under a palm tree feeling poetic, covertly listened to entwined lovers’ laughing, blind peddlers selling, elderly tourists marveling and young soldiers jesting. The sounds would blur into one, the sound of the waves shooshing onto shore, all human activity eventually reverting back to the sound of nature, a rhythmic beat we all become. I feel like I am watching from afar, from high up in the trees or the sky. Hearing all but listening to none of it. A spectre not connected to life or the living.

I wanna be your poet
Your lover, your hero, your slave,
To stand by your side
‘til I lay in my grave.
To open your eyes
to a love undenied,
Like the truth in the sun,
With the strength in the tide

Why oh why did you leave me? You never indicated that you were ready to or even wanted to go and that makes it worse. It was so sudden. I long to feel your arms around me, and to see your eyes laugh back into mine. My mind keeps trying to change what happened. And shut out the long years ahead without you. What am I going to do with those years? How can I possibly live them? Of course I can never say it in letters home, but I am hoping for some swift and painless accident that will just end everything. I don’t care about going into unsavoury or even dangerous places much these days. That way, if something fatal were to happen it would not be by my hand. I call myself “the suicidal single”, even though I just know I don’t have the courage to actually do anything. I’m such a coward. My only hope is to have something happen out of anyone’s control. Then you too might know a tiny portion of the pain I have felt these last weeks. Maybe then my spirit would be free to seek you out, and follow you forever.

Chapter 5 - Southern Europe - the sea!

I had no idea how much I had missed the sea. I certainly told you often enough how much I love it, didn’t I? The first glimpse of grey-green breakers crashing on a shore always fills me with a peculiar kind of joy. The smell of it, the sound of it and the look of it in all weathers satisfies something deep inside me. I could live for a long time away from it, but it’s like a part of me is dormant, or hibernating until the time when I can be near it again.

I reunited with the sea in Alicante. I have an inside room with no window, but the pension is not far from the beach and I can smell it through the crevices and down the halls. I followed that scent outside and down the streets until my ears picked up its cadences, then I caught a glimpse of green and white and there it was. That first day I stretched out on the dusty sand with my books, some fruit and the wind playing in my hair, watching the green waves crash into white again and again like some never ending fugue. I plan to spend part of every day there. Tonight I hope I dream of you – I always feel you are close to me when I do.

Chapter 5 - Southern Europe - depression arriving

I don’t think there is any part of Granada that has not seen my feet. Every avenue, every church, every vista, every market. It’s getting too familiar and I start to think of other things, things outside the geography of the place and I get depressed. Time to move on.