The Canary Islands

Roughly 100 km off the coast of Africa, next to Morocco and Western Sahara, sit the Spanish Canary Islands. There are seven of them, all volcanic, and all very different. They are close too, and you can see some from others if you are high enough and if it is clear. The weather is perfect and the same no matter the season; the relaxed lifestyles that draws 12 million tourists a year make it hard to imagine the destructive magma flows and eruptions and landslides that created such an extraterrestrial landscape not even that long ago. The big one erupted last in 1909. Columbus saw, "a great fire in the Orotava Valley" as he sailed past Tenerife in 1492. The small island of Hierro was active in 2011. Thoughts like this as you stand 12,000 feet on Teide's peak, seeing everything in all directions, are like thoughts about Jellyfish while swimming in the ocean when you cannot feel the bottom. Every bubble starts to look hostile and you feel very out of control.

Months ago I decided to come here because I had never been to an island and had never seen a volcano. There were volcanos in Spain, and I didn't want to leave Spain, so it all worked and I passed on Mallorca. The German beaches and the discotecas of Ibiza are for another time, and it's better that way. I was drawn out into the Atlantic for nine days for some reason and I am glad I went.

I spent the first few days on the beach in the capital city. It was nice to unwind and swim and run along the water, but the coasts within las Palmas were far too easy and what most people would do. I needed to get into the mountains, because they were there, so I climbed higher than anyone else, to the highest municipality, and saw ocean on all sides and Tenerife in the distance.

The days in that small hostel on the side of the cliff were as simple as I have ever had. I cooked easy meals and at night I sat under an amazing set of stars, next to a delightful girl from Bavaria. A Swedish machine keen on escaping the terrible winters of his country took me on a two hour run one afternoon, up to the many places you cannot reach by car. I love the views you must work for, and we certainly worked for this one. The people at the top are in a common sort of bond, fit enough and wanting it badly enough to make it all happen. When I will not climb for a view, you know I am withering away.

An early morning bus took me off the mountain as the sun just started peaking above the clouds. I got on a ferry and went three hours across the ocean with the tall volcano on Tenerife beconing forward all the way. The next chapter, the next island, had arrived, but would quickly depart a few days later on a plane back to Seville.

A girl I know complained about the Canary Islands when she returned. She said she was expecting waterfalls and lakes and colorful parrots -- tropical Hawaiian paradises. Instead she got a dry and barren landscape that could be mars or the moon. For me it was exactly why I fell in love, and thats typical of me to like what other people hate.

My Swedish friend told me one night how much he hates seeing places. He lived in London and never once went to see Big Ben. He hates crowds and noises and cities, cathedrals and bridges and all the things you are supposed to see. He was not antisocial -- he just didn't need it -- and as we ran in silence, burning under the sun, I think our minds wandered to the same simple places alone on the trail.

I took a bus to Teide my last day in the Canaries, high above the clouds of Tenerife. It's the highest peak in Spain, and the third highest volcano in the world; it was the highest I had ever been in my life, really. The last 30 minutes of hiking to the crater was prohibited without a permit, so I hiked around to the other side where there were no people, left the designated trail, and crawled up until it got too steep. I sat back and closed my eyes and listened to how absolutely still and quiet it was and when I opened them I could see the curve of earth before me. My dad uses the word humbling a lot, and I think it was a good time to use it. I hugged the side of the volcano, slipping on volcanic rock, watching it descend into the clouds and islands and oceans below.

My cab driver said Teide is only sleeping. He made the motion with his hands and pretended to snore. Some say it could be another Vesuvius or Etna with all the small cities below. Humans flirt so much with disaster, but it is accompanied by the best of things. We make our choices in a great balancing act, or maybe we don't think at all.

A Few Thoughts on Wedding Eve

Tomorrow is Saturday, 19 May 2012, and I want to be one of many people to congratulate my sister and Jason -- more family than many are by blood -- on their wedding day. I am a long ways away, but I feel connected to this day, its vows and its commitments, like I am standing there on the podium speaking aloud. In my mind they look healthy and happy in their fancy clothes; some distant relative is tearing up in the corner; my dad gives his speech as good as he always does; Mark makes a joke and Maureen laughs. I can pretty much see it all.

As a backstory, you have to understand that relationships like this mean quite a bit to me. I look at those of my sister and my dad, my closest friends and mentors, and see remarkable connections that are hard to explain in a world plagued by online dating, divorce, and a thousand reasons to quit. Everyone it seems, out there in the real world, has commitment issues, phobias, fears, jealousy, regret, pain, and heartbreak, and then there are you all, these small little bubbles and bright shining beacons, showing the rest of us how good it can all be.

My relationships have been bad at times, and a lot of that is my fault. I was young, but that's sure a silly excuse for someone like me. I really did traumatize myself for a time, those tough days back in Austin, those late night talks over beers. There are a few people, particularly one, where if I could do it all over again I promise I would. I would sit with you by the riverwalk a thousand times and run that half marathon again and lay next to you with stuffed animals at night and go for runs and eat late night dinners at Kirby Lane, all because I felt as comfortable with you as I ever felt with anyone, and that was just plain scary, but its long behind us and you are a long ways away and will never know, even when you are old and grey, how much having you in my life mattered. What happened with us was real and I will never think it wasn't. It's been awhile and I forget so many of our moments because there are no reminders anymore and that all makes me sad.

I am different now, as they all say, but I couldn't be if I had not gone through all that. I am sorry to go so deep, but I think you have to, as a reminder that you can. I did not have writing back then so I could not write about things as they happened, and was not even good enough at writing to do it well. Since then I ran a long ways away and was very alone and saw some ridiculous things out there in the world but I came back better and will keep coming back better and better with time. I went into the woods, like Thoreau, to get at the meaty parts of life and just to see what it all was about. One day I'll understand what all that hesitation and second-guessing was for -- to lead me to something else, I'm sure -- but I have certainly seen what I do not want and that's important too. I didn't forgive myself for a long time, but now, really I do.

So now it's midnight, and the day of my sister's wedding. My thoughts went other places, but that is how I am. I want to thank her really, because we only know what exists by seeing what others have done. I am so grateful that we entered each other's separate worlds those many years ago and have been around ever since. I cannot wait to watch how they change together in the years that come. 

A Melancholy Start to May

It is hot in Spain now. The weather channel shows red blinking arrows coming into the country from Africa and it seems the desert air of the Sahara is everywhere. I wake up in sweats during the night, though it's nicer then; during the day it's much worse. It is that quick transition from Spring to Summer that happens every year in Spain and all the world, but somehow it is always a surprise. Somehow we always resist this difficult but inevitable transitions. I certainly remember that year back in Texas where I suffered constant growing pains to put on inches in height. All that followed was an awkward and lengthy stage with far too little muscle, though I am grateful for the height in retrospect. Here too, probably has its gains. I have always preferred a hot run and tan skin to a cold room and pale complexion. The former is to be alive and breathing, and the latter something else.

May is a month of other transitions, for many, and for me. After a weeklong set of exams, every American citizen I have come to know over the past four months is gone, back in their beds full on their mother's cooking or some local fast food joint. Many were normal and fine, some just plain tedious, and then there were those few gems who made moments better. They are all lying awake at night with their window open, as I do now, but the air is different and I suspect they have returned to many people who have not changed while they probably feel quite different. How foreign that must feel, and I felt for them when they said their final goodbyes.

There is not much else to say about that. I am not sure how I feel. People in front of me yesterday are now thousands of miles away. Memories from atop the setas, looking out over the city we came to know together seem like a far off place. Times by the river sitting, wondering as to what it would have looked like 500 years ago when Columbus sailed into its port carrying the most interesting of news are mine to revisit and carry. My mom always said leaving is more difficult on those who stay. While life grows hectic on planes and trains, with goodbyes and greetings, it becomes potently quiet for those in the rear view mirror.

I am sure that before I know it, I will join them back on American soil and sit along the river in Austin with a Shiner Bock and a plate of nachos. It will be all well and good, but I will miss a few things and think to how similar the Guadalquivir and Lady Bird Lake are as they reflect the downtown buildings in their sunset waters. Such is the dilemma of one who travels and the price you pay for seeing wonderful things. Your mind will always drift to some far away place and some precious memory if given the time to do so.

But this all sounds much too solemn, when it is not at all. Good things come and go. My momentum is only increasing, and I sure wouldn't trade any of it. I really could not be paid for a life outside mine, and that is a special thing to say.

This past saturday, I went to the beach in Cádiz for just a day, returning after the sun had gone down that same evening. It was a beautiful sunset and as the bus powered out of the city and back into the Andalusian countryside, I watched the orange glow, illuminating everything from somewhere just beyond the Atlantic. Soon it was night, and with my head against the window, feeling the vibrations of the road, I watched the stars in the sky all the way back to Seville.

The Climactic End to April

A long walk home along San Jacinto or Asunción at night in late April makes a few things apparent, greatest of which is the end to feria in Seville. The lights of the large door, modeled after the church of el Salvador, will soon be put out, the dresses dry cleaned and retired until a later date, and the people will all return back to school and work in their own neighborhood or city or country. Los Remedios will surely quiet down, and if I lived on one of those nearby balconies, I would not object.

It is a weeklong carnival of sorts, characterized by various private and public tents, traditional flamenco song and dress, manzanilla and rebujito in excess, all leading to more dancing and party and fun late into the following morning before all go home and wake up ready for the next day. It is a marvelous spectacle: a massive street party steadied by its tradition. In the middle of feria you could be living across any of the last few centuries, or now, and all would all be relatively the same. Watching a man and woman dance with gipsy fire and passion, it all transports you back to another time. The clubs blasting American rap across the river suddenly seem shameful and in poor taste.

I danced, or tried to, but it's hard in Seville. The Spanish are not great instructors; they are doers. I could feel their looks, but no one cares and no one really remembers. A great part of Shantaram is when Gregory David Roberts "surrenders to the will of the place," and realizes looking stupid doesn't matter. You are perfectly alone in a far away place; you will never see these people again. That Sevillian spark may not be in my blood, but if I could put it there I would.

Everyone is beautiful, tan, rich in personality and appeal, dressed in their best outfits and in their best of minds. For any sane American boy, it would be here to throw yourself into the mix of things blindly, as  witness to everything, and see what the hell happens in Seville. I want to be Spanish-American so badly, and to fit in to this place like I was here all along, but I'm afraid that will take much more time. I'll get there one day.

When I went to the bathroom, someone left a phone number in my book. I sent a message out of curiosity to Ana, but never heard back. It's a start, and must mean I'm doing something right. I will be sad when the lights go out for feria on Sunday, the casetas taken down, the daily bullfights over, but it is all very necessary. One cannot possibly live like this forever. It happens again every year, and if I want to I'll be back. 

La Sagrada Familia

When I was in the sixth grade, I had a wonderful Spanish teacher who one day showed us photographs of various places in Spain. I don't remember much; we were young, and of course much more interested in running around and holding hands with girls. A photo of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona still stands out in my head, and I don't know why. Our minds were simple, but you never know when things will come back around again.

That was over ten years ago and at the time the church had been in construction for around 120. This is an incredible length of time for a modern day project in a world where skyscrapers and Pizza Huts are built in a day. Its original architect, Antoni Gaudi, has buildings dispersed like seeds in Barcelona, and they all feel modern before the time of modernity. He died in 1926 when the Sagrada Familia was only 25% finished and left designs and original drawings for the many architects to come. They still follow those drawings today -- sometimes exact and sometimes interpreted -- as if Gaudi himself is still looking over everyone's shoulder.

I am older now, but still have this memory, and on a saturday afternoon I left tour groups behind and took a cab alone to Barcelona's most visited site. At some point I made a left turn and saw for the first time the distinct towers stretch above other buildings in the city, and then cranes jutting out above all that. Between this point, and another point three hours later, I wandered around one of the best things I have ever seen men make.

Gaudi's life work is a big marble forest. The towers are the trees, budding at the top and bursting forth with color. Every piece of rock and every design follows contour lines evident in nature: the honeycomb of a beehive; he falling pattern of a leaf; the crystallization of a mineral. At openings in the canopy light illuminates everything inside, and unlike most gaudy dark places Catholicism has built up over the centuries, the Sagrada Familia feels open and alive and accepting.

Buildings in Spain are very old, and completed sometime long ago, and we probably do not remember the date and if we do it isn't important. The rest of the time it's all about restoration so it looks as fresh as it did while it was finished, and in this way there is something lovely about being "in progress" because it will never look this good again. I do not mind the cranes or the sounds of construction, because one day it will also be timeless and old.

At the top of one of the towers a construction worker told another construction worker to be careful as he walked along a wooden plank and all of it goes to show things have not changed much. A century ago carved pieces of rock were lifted up by rope and by hand and today cranes lift the same piece of rock to the same place it was always supposed to fit. The main tower -- which will make the Sagrada Familia the tallest church in the world -- doesn't exist yet after 120 years of construction and no technological advancement will make it exist for ten years more. That is the neatest thing about this little place.

Antoni Gaudi is buried somewhere beneath the Sagrada Familia in a cavern. There are candles lit and it says something I could not read because it was too far away. The whole thing will all be done soon, the final tower topped with a cross. Gaudi dedicated 43 years of his life to his final project, and if it is like he intended, one great celebration of nature, I think it's fitting he rests at the roots.

The Color Red

I imagine there to be an especially inviting aura around Hemingway's grave: the birds chirping extra loud, all the flowers budding right, and the clouds parting for the sun. This because in the last 36 hours I watched two bullfights in exactly the way he instructed one to watch their first bullfights. I sat in the correct place and looked for the right things and knew all the important details I was supposed to know in advance. I walked through the gates of the plaza de toros in Seville with the right mindset and left everything else at the door. Hemingway said a bullfight is something to see and not to "have been seen," and all this for me sounds like a book accomplishing its purpose long after the death of its author. What else can an author ask for?




As anyone will tell you, whether they liked it or not, bullfights in Spain are a difficult thing to put into words, because there is so much going on and it is so blunt and honest and hard. This makes Death in the Afternoon the masterpiece it is: the ultimate english manual for bullfighting. While many are content to call all this barbaric and a shameful spectacle, Hemingway finds something else in it all, and one realizes very little has changed since his prime in the 1930s.

Perhaps most perplexing is that there is no formula, and no way to predict our response to the death of othe first bull. An old woman who likes cats and knitting has just as great a chance to enjoy it as a young man passionate for American football. That man has just as great a chance of leaving early after the first bull. It is just one of the many unpredictable moments, and you will never know your reaction until you go and dig your fingernails into the person on your right and slide onto the edge of your seat as something almost goes wrong. Of course, sometimes things do go wrong -- this is not staged like wrestling -- and how can it not?


I truth is, I loved the bullfight and will certainly go again. In today's Spain, it's not that popular amongst the youth, and saying something like this sometimes requires a ready defense. It is not necessarily pleasing to watch a bull take a sword through the heart, picadors jabbing at the neck, but I just felt I was watching something real. The crowd loves and respects a brave bull and ditto for the matadors and they applaud these simple things that are a part of being human and alive. For something softer, to be frank, the museum of fine arts is fifteen minutes up the road.


I think sometimes that those who oppose bullfighting so vehemently are those who don't like to know where our food comes from. We are so disconnected from the simple things that make life stop and go on. If you find yourself curious about universal themes -- life and certain death, bravery and cowardice -- there is no better place in today's times than the section called tenidos, sitting on hard brick, sun in your eyes and sweat down your forehead, watching this entire spectacle, the essence of old Spain, play out on the dirt in front of you.

Valencia to Alicante

There were valleys in between mountains and sea, and there Valencia oranges replaced olive trees. The bus was empty, its passengers asleep with the rain, and I laid awake next to a lovely girl from New Zealand, sometimes talking and sometimes not, keeping both our eyes on the road. We parted ways a few days later, but until then we nested in Alicante; thunderstorms locked our door and ruined the beach, but we were lazy and slow and had nowhere to go. The whole thing -- every damn piece of it -- made me wonder if all the people I keep meeting from this part of the world are all trying to tell me where I should end up. These were silly thoughts at such a time, and silly thoughts as Spain flew by out the right-side window.

One glance at European rail maps remind you there are many routes to a single place. Valencia to Alicante was not planned, but it happened, starting the moment we kissed, after a few too many wines, underneath those strange glowing lights in the sky. Somewhere, a few hundred miles away, a trumpet player was humming the ominous hymns of Semana Santa in Seville, and I was happy not to be there.

“Maybe you go looking for one thing and find another. The truth is that if my master, Don Quixote, is healed of his wounds, or his fall, and I’m not crippled by mine, I wouldn’t trade my hopes for the best title in Spain.”