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