Before I came home to California from Spain, I stopped for two weeks in Edinburgh to pack up the things I’d left there and to see friends I might not see again for a long time. I stayed with one of my best friends in her third-story studio apartment above the Royal Mile; every night we curled up to sleep under a heavy duvet, and woke to the sound of church bells from the cathedral outside the window. We sat in comfortable silence often; we listened to music, and made dinner, and invited more people over to help us eat it, and after we ate we sat on the carpet in a circle and talked about dreams.
One friend told the story of a dream he’d had about a tiger and a tower. The tower, standing in a meadow and made of stone, had no visible doors or stairs, so in his dream he scaled the wall and climbed in through the window. Inside the tower bookshelves covered every wall, filled with hundreds of identical unlabeled white books. At the center of the tower sat a tiger, dressed in a waistcoat and a judge’s wig, feverishly scribbling away, filling yet another unlabeled book. As he wrote, the tiger spoke, and he spoke about how he had to keep writing, but to be able to write he’d had to build the tower. So he built the tower around himself and wrote and wrote and wrote, filling book after book with words.
I’ve had vivid dreams my whole life, and I love hearing other people talk about theirs; there’s something about the unexpected images that the sleeping mind invents that is endlessly fascinating to me. This image — the waistcoat-clad tiger, building a stone tower around himself, spending his days trying to get the perfect words down — really struck me. I’d just spent two months in Spain, careening around both physically and emotionally; I was very much outside of my comfort zone, having been unwillingly removed from the life I’d built in Scotland (outside of my tower, if you will) and I’d written nothing more than scribbled notes in my phone and my notebook. Nothing that I considered to be of substance. But sometimes the things you need to hear come to you not in your own dreams, but in the dreams of others, because when I heard the story of the tiger and tower my first thought was: how can he write if he is not in the world?
I spend a lot of time trying to make sure my writing is perfect, and can never quite get there. Even now, months after coming home to California, I still have pages of notes from Spain that I’ve left untouched because I just don’t know what to do with them. So I decided to not do anything with them. They’re fine as they are. They’re true. They were written on planes and buses, late at night and early in the morning, while sitting in hostel common rooms and on stone walls on sunny hillsides and on friend’s couches. They’re far from everything, but they are some of the things I wanted to make sure I didn’t forget. Here they are — straight from the notebook.
Watched a young man lunge out of the metro doors to help an old woman onto the train. Was chased down in Sol by two women who had seen me drop my metro card. Wandered into an intercambio by accident in the basement of a bookstore and spent an hour talking to four old men from Madrid; learned that wedding rings are worn on the right ring finger here, and that Madrilenos of three or more generations are called “gatos”. Walked through Retiro and Oeste; boots filled with tiny gravel. Got used to the metro. Learned how to order a coffee and purchase groceries in Spanish without sweating. Found the perfect pair of old Levi’s jeans in a secondhand store, just like Barcelona all those years ago — this country is rich in vintage American denim and handsome men with tiny silver hoop earrings. Caught the light on the buildings in the evening; watched Jamie take a picture. Ate Mexican tacos on Thanksgiving night — whitewashed stucco walls, weird fluorescent lights, plastic tables with cheap red-checked tablecloths; the tacos are greasy, and topped with lime, and taste like home.
Riding the metro from Spanish class to flee my host family — I listened to a man singing and playing guitar, eyes closed; moved past a fiddle player in the Alonso Martinez station, and tapped feet along to clapping drums and guitar on Line 10 towards Tres Olivos. This city is filled with music.
Two lovely things: on a walk last night, I passed a young man sitting on a bench, holding a tissue, shoulders heaving with tears. Around him sat three other young men, two on each side with a hand on his shoulder, one crouched on the ground in front of him with a hand on his knee. All were visibly concerned, nodding with concentration as he spoke. Then, this morning on the metro, an older couple slept beside one another holding hands. The woman leaned on the man’s shoulder, he with his arm around her and his head resting on hers. They woke up laughing.
Cordoba: stucco walls with VIVE FRANCO scrawled in red, dim bars full of men, and a club called Gongora — old dark wooden floors, walls, and ceiling, dim lights and thick with incense and smoke; non-stop reggaeton for hours and stomping our sneakers on the slippery floors that crunched with broken glass while men circled like sharks without ever speaking. Eggs and toast for breakfast the next morning and wandering through the rainy streets; Argentinian food for lunch. Hand-drawn maps and detailed instructions from patient waiters. The dim cool quiet light of the mosque and the sense of peace, rain outside and music in the courtyard, wind blowing our umbrella. Followed faint music through the narrow alleys to a square where old women sang on a stage in the December sunlight. Before dinnertime, walking past an abandoned quarter of the city, fully fenced off, the town deserted before dinnertime and hazy dark; napping on the bus to Malaga while the darkening vineyards rolled by outside.
Malaga: an evening walk on arrival with new friends — one from Canada on his way to Asia, thick curly hair scraped back into a bun, and one from India who lived in Dublin and spoke English with a gentle Irish accent. Christmas dinner at a wine bar, risotto and ceviche; abandoning a pub crawl to dance at a flamenco bar with two brothers and their guitarist nephew — all three handsome, friendly, moving on the dance floor with loose-jointed ease and clapping effortlessly in time to their favorite songs. The guitarist told us he used to be a physiotherapist but now studied flamenco because it’s the only thing he loves; we felt the calluses on his fingers and knew it was true. Ordering coffee outside the train station the next morning, hungover and quiet in the morning sunshine; naps and lounging in the sun in the plaza beneath the Alcazaba.
A day trip to Ronda: bus ride through the beautiful rolling foothills in the morning light — sit on a curb to put film in the camera, walk down the road to the first churreria we see and eat hot greasy churros dipped in thick hazelnut chocolate. Through the gardens to a viewpoint where the dry rocky mountains and the green gently manicured valley where people have been quietly farming for 500,000 years unroll beneath us. Spend hours in the bullfighting ring and riding school — the buildings are immaculate, scrubbed clean of blood and filth; the sand is groomed neatly in the ring but there are still deep gouges in the wooden walls from horns and swords and hooves. The stone corridors are cool and smell faintly of sweat and horses. The sun lights up the curved balconies and we sit and eat crackers and fruit and talk about horses and summertime. Walk down across the bridge and then below it where it looms up above us like something Tolkien wrote.
Granada: the air so dry that my hair static-clings to everything and my nose burns in the night; the thin light of January mornings in the common room at the hostel, all colorful pillows and guitars leaned against couches and tables; Francisco cradles one in his lap and plucks gently at the strings while I have my porridge and tea — “Legal Alien” by Sting, and the opening notes of “Me Gustas Tu” by Manu Chao which makes my chest ache so sweetly I wish I could close my eyes and curl up on the old rough pillows and listen for the rest of my life. Homemade sangria and stomping boots on empty streets to “Guarda come Dondolo” by Eduardo Vianello. Hiking up to the Alhambra, wandering through labyrinthine rooms filled with soft dim light and dancing reflections from sunlight green pools outside. The sounds of doves cooing, intricately carved white stone so detailed you think it must have taken a thousand years. Eating a Snickers bar in the sunshine, dipping fingertips into the cool stone pools of water that flow everywhere through the gardens. I can see across to the Albaicin and the dry plains and hills beyond the city, cloaked in a dry cool haze, and in 360 degrees to the Sierra Nevada which are dusted with snow and framed by the battlements of the Alcazar. Every day I wander through the twisting streets; I pass a perfumery and my nose catches the most arresting scent — like a pure mountain campfire, sweet and sharp, it smells like the outdoors at high altitude, like diving into a mountain stream, like eating meat cooked on an open fire. It’s the purest frankincense, given to Jesus by the three wise men, used in ritual for a millenia. I buy a box to burn at home.
I want words that remind me I’m alive.
“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here….Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: You will outlive the bastards.”
— Edward Abbey
SGBRSH 