On bravery

I was speaking with an old friend the other night, sleepy bedtime tones, when she called me “brave.” My immediate, funny-bone reaction was to dispel her characterization. At the risk of sounding falsely modest, I’ve never quite understood that label. When I was nine, I was “brave” for attending my grandfather’s funeral; when I was eighteen, I was “brave” for calling ambulances and learning to give extended medical care to someone I loved; when I was twenty-four, I was “brave” for moving to a city by myself, sight unseen, in a country I hardly knew.

But this is simply life. Though the timelines and specifics are special to each of us, we all go through these transitions. We lose the people who helped us stay grounded. We lose the spaces and sidewalks that kept us company during the loneliest early-morning hours. We lose the sense of innocence and wonder that guided us before experience began clogging our emotions. Sure, we gain and we grow from this grief, but we lose so much.

So when my dozing friend told me I was “brave,” I reassured her that, like most people, I’m terrified every day: of knocking over fruit stands at the supermarket, of forgetting to express something valuable to a person I care about, of seeing my folded-up-and-tucked-away feelings pulled on or disregarded or even merely acknowledged. I fear innumerable hypotheticals, from the trivial to the profound. These imagined situations rarely come to pass, yet I suspect they keep most of us disproportionately preoccupied. We’re all frightened in our own awful and brilliant ways.

So what does bravery really mean? I’m scared by a lot of the choices I make—I don’t think that’s unique—but I still move forward with them, likely because I’m more unnerved by the alternative, by the path suggested by a different choice. Many people navigate their entire lives this way, constantly dancing ahead upon the hot coals of anxiety. But bravery has nothing to do with an absence of fear. It is, of course, the will to keep moving despite those reservations, the steaming blisters forming on our feet.

Which, naturally, makes all of us brave for simply breathing. Full stop. The act of mere living, many days, requires a courage and resolve that we don’t celebrate often or wildly enough. So let me remind you, person reading this, that you are brave for getting out of your bed this morning. You are brave for choosing to live through another day. You’re brave for putting labor into anything you care about, and you’re brave for caring. You’re brave for living in a world where you know you might—and probably will—lose some of the people you love. You’re brave for continuing to love those people, maybe even harder, in the face of that knowledge and the inevitable pain it will eventually bring.

And so maybe this is what folks mean when they say brave. It’s not code for “fearless” or “stoic,” but on the contrary: it’s a celebration of sensitivity, of the private and starry-eyed hunger we all feel for this life, of the desire to seek change and development in the face of loneliness or grief. It’s the determination to search for beauty in the chaos of our wonderful, disastrous planet. It's being adventurous, and honest, and vulnerable, especially when you don’t know where those actions may lead.

And so, reader, in the spirit of our collective fear, I challenge you: pursue one unnerving impulse today. Act on something. Take a risk. Tell the truth. Whether you’re reminding your high school English teacher what an impact she made on your life or whether you’re selling all of your earthly possessions and joining Scientology (please don’t actually do that), go out on that limb. Even if it’s a little one. And if you’re feeling proud, drop me a line about it. Help keep me accountable to my own directives, too.

As always, thank you for reading.

- "Running Scared," or how I feel on a daily basis, from Roy Orbison's Black and White Night (1988)

On Female Friendship (or, why I drive with the windows down)

“You can’t take my peace, bitch!” she shouted to the Acura that had cut us off in sweaty, tangled Baltimore traffic. The three of us were driving to the airport after a much-too-brief 48 hours together in deep Maryland, a place where the hot air hung thick and green beneath countless Trump flags and sputtering two-engine planes.

When I say that I’m in love with these women, I mean it in the way of love I’ve felt few times in my life. It’s love, an emotion that no degree of italics could capture. The way I feel for the two of them is doubtlessly deeper and more intertwined than the way I’ve felt for almost all of my romantic partners. It’s an attachment that I suspect most folks are lucky to feel a handful of times in this life, let alone for so long.

What no one ever discusses about this kind of love is that it’s discouragingly difficult. It’s work, and patience, and understanding. It’s waiting three years to see each other because that’s the way life carries you. It’s forgiving one other when you disappear from emails for months at a time, and it’s apologizing to your roommate for laughing so loudly at whatever they just sent to your group text. It's knowing that even if they don't respond right away, they still see your words and feel the warmth of your affection across the miles. It’s FaceTiming in traffic because, yes of course that’s dangerous, but your main bitch is going through a time and you’re going to be there for her. It’s sending them the podcasts and albums and books that made you question yourself. It’s being devastatingly honest, out loud and for the first time, because they know if you’re lying about whatever’s on your mind and they’re not here for empty niceties. It’s holding your breath when you say your goodbyes, because you well know by now just how precious your reunions are.

When I last saw these women, I had joked with them about being emotionally closed off. “I didn’t even cry once this weekend, and I’m angry about it.” We’d spent hours floating in piss-warm water, drinking improvised cocktails and airing out our ideas to dry in the sun of each others’ perspectives. After an intensely trying year away, a year in which I lost several loved ones and in several senses of the verb “lost,” I was ready for an emotional release with them.

But my dramatic, misty-eyed monologue never came. We dove into our own tired souls, dredging up whatever willowy sludge we’d cared to share. I felt immensely self-conscious about how detached I could be in talking about the grief I felt, how coldly I could describe the well of my own confused emotion. I imagined that wasn’t a good sign, and my hyperactive imagination urged me to worry that they saw me as invulnerable, unwilling to be present and raw with them in the same way they had both shared with me. As we piled into the car to part ways, I felt anxious that I had taken our time together for granted.

And then we began driving. It was sweltering outside, a clingy stickiness that only happens when it’s July and you’re underslept and dehydrated from long nights and late swills. The windows were cracked, an overeager breeze stirring the car as if desperate to bring us one last moment of overlap. We were silent. We'd said hardly a word for the entire drive, until the obnoxious Acura swerved ahead of us on I-95 as we meandered south.

In that moment, something broke loose. Pushing her middle finger over the steering wheel, she yelled at the other car, the two of us passengers peppering in colorful comments about the value of serenity and the supremely entitled fuckery of DMV drivers. We began laughing, an overreaction to the humor in a fleeting moment. We couldn’t stop. We had moved beyond words; we were simply together.

As the car’s atmosphere again stilled, the weight of our imminent goodbye again pressing down on us, the speakers opened up. “A tornado flew around my room before you came, excuse the mess it made…” Frank Ocean, a hymn we'd memorized through years of shared history. It was a song that felt like being together again. Each of us knew exactly where the other two were, without speech or sight. This was what it felt like to be with the people you loved.

I looked out at the tiny needled skyline, curving past us, finally welling down the tears I didn’t think I could release. And then a hand. She had reached over, tear-soaked fingers in mine, to wordlessly tell me that she was there too. We stretched our palms into the backseat, the three of us clinging to the present as best we knew how, holding onto each other through the last minutes of the journey.

When I drive my car these days, often alone, I do my best to keep the windows down. I like to smell the leafy, dusty landscapes of the county where I grew up. I abhor the heat, familiar and fervently midwestern, but I enjoy the way it makes my skin feel, salty and stained with just the slightest discomfort. I relish the breeze and all it stirs up in my scalp and in my spirit. I love the way it reminds me of being in that car with the two of them, barreling toward an ending and yet impossibly confident that the wind would still, somehow, carry us back together.

- "Thinkin Bout You," from Frank Ocean's Channel Orange (2012)

Buscar La Habichuela

There is a saying in Andalucia, "buscar la habichuela." Quite literally, it means to search for the bean, which couldn't be better. Figuratively, though, it means something more along the lines of to search for life and experience. This is, more or less, what I'm trying to to do with my time here.

My world is relatively static these days: I'm teaching a few new students, taking small trips around Andalucia, and doing my best to make time for the things that make me content. I'm writing less and reading more. Yesterday I finally began reading Hanif Abdurraqib's Go Ahead In The Rain, which, one chapter in, I will heartily recommend to anyone who likes hip hop, personal essays, or vivid and emotional writing.

Because it's about to be Semana Santa, or Holy Week, I have a break from work. So I'm buscando la habichuela and taking a trip outside of Huelva. In a few hours, I'll be on a bus to Portugal before making my way up to England. I will visit a friend of mine, and a few new cities, and I will finally catch up on sleep. My mind is happily scattered in pre-journey jitters.

Last Sunday, I spent the day in Ronda. Perhaps when I'm back home and in my routine again, I will share a few stories from that trip. For now, here is a low-res cell phone photo of the Puente Nuevo awaiting daybreak.

As always, thank you for reading this.

Looking southeast; cold April rain

Back and Forth

The last few months passed at hyperspeed. I'm pursuing a few secret opportunities for next year, traveling to new spots, and picking up more private English classes. (I've also developed a strange and disappointing reaction to bananas. Anytime I eat these very specific ones from the Canary Islands, my mouth itches and burns like an evil pox. I choose to blame it on pesticides, but I avoid eating those bananas all the same.)

Since I last checked in, I've been to Cádiz, Valencia, and a few other cities. I'm trying, desperately, to inhale as much of the landscape as possible while I'm on the Iberian Peninsula. When I was in Portugal last month, someone told me that the name "al-Andalus" was derived from a word meaning "heaven," and while that etymology is debatable, I agree that the countryside here is nearly celestial. Before I return to the U.S., my goal is to explore more of Portugal and Spain. We'll see how that goes.

In the midst of everything swirling around my world, I'm also working on lots of little writing projects. For the first time in years, I'm writing short fiction. It is an absolute joy! Creating such tiny, alternative realities is empowering. Fiction gives me a unique sense of control and liberation. These little narratives are an excuse to be self-indulgent about any topic I want, whether it's Janelle Monáe or public transportation or feminist movies.

To be a writer is to be be selfish, and I happily accept that mantle.

While there is much more to report, I leave you here to read myself to sleep. After an unintentional rash of bleak books (Not That Bad, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love; The Crown Ain't Worth Much), I'm finally working on something (possibly) lighter: Richard Adams's Watership Down. As a child, I false-started this book at least a half-dozen times. I never reached the end, but this time it finally clicks. I couldn't be more delighted.

Eastbound, por las Marismas de Isla Cristina

Porto (A Return)

It’s been almost a year. Over eleven months since I last published a word to this blog. Lately, I’ve thought hard about why that is. I’ve got a handful of secret notebooks; a whole folder of private Word documents on my desktop about public writing, about authenticity, about loneliness. There are hundreds of these abandoned projects. Each false start is a stray pebble, twirling around in the pocket of my mind.

The truth is, it’s a lot easier to be honest when you can hide these pebbles within the luxury of privacy. But that luxury isn’t challenging, nor productive. So here we are. I’ve decided to try writing more for an external audience, to push my own words back into the discomfort of a public arena. I have so much to say, and I’m eager to put a voice—a true, resonant voice—to the things that I’ve seen. I hardly know where to begin.

Maybe the best place to start is with an ending.

Last weekend, I went to Porto and found myself in the midst of a Portuguese funeral procession. I was wandering around the city and had ended up in the Cemitério do Prado do Repouso when I heard someone running behind me. I turned around to see a woman in a hoodie, carrying nothing more than a wallet and cell phone, slowly jogging down the path. I stopped to let her ahead. She seemed hardly out of breath, like she was in no more than a tiny hurry to arrive somewhere. I kept walking.

I found the crematorium, where gray smoke was breezing up toward the sky, and I wondered who was inside and what the smoke had once been. As I turned away, I saw a black hearse approaching. It was glassy and glossy and flowers were exploding over an enormous coffin in the back. The woman in the hoodie was now walking beside, talking and laughing with three or four other people. They seemed impossibly relaxed. They smiled and waved at me as they passed, carrying nothing more than a few motorcycle helmets. The small group proceeded to the crematorium, where they unloaded the casket and carried it inside. They disappeared.

I have no idea if what I saw was “normal,” if Portuguese funerals are generally so casual. But I felt a pang of modest hope, watching them stroll forward. I imagined they were comfortable with mortality, that they would end the funeral and all go drink together at a sunny sidewalk café. I liked to think they’d drink a few messy toasts to the person whose body was becoming ashes, and then they’d continue with their lives. I liked to think it would be simple for them.

There were lots of other shimmery moments, images that in my recollection seem more magical and mysterious than reality. I saw cats climbing over flea market stalls toward abandoned beer glasses, an ancient bookstore filled with anxious tourists, and plain walls painted to life with Escher woodcuts. I saw sleepy men napping next to fiery peacocks at the edge of the miradouro; a photography museum nestled within in a drafty old prison. A setting sun, embarrassed in the pale ragged sky. A woman with a voice worn loud by decades of cigarettes, shouting to announce the sale of lottery tickets. Another woman, still, knowingly winking at me as I sat alone in a noisy and chaotic café. I saw warmth, and attention, and movement.

These impressions, soft and tattered, are worth more to me than any hard data about the trip. They are disparate pebbles, a mismatched set of chipped thoughts and stolen ideas polished smooth in my own head. They are a mess, but they are mine. And with them, I pave my path forward.

Looking west, Jardins do Palácio de Cristal

Portuguese Centre of Photography

II

The Rio Douro

Livreria Lello

Tracks of the Camino Portugués

O fim