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.”

The Streets of Seville at Night

It was an interesting day on the streets of Seville, dedicated to the national huelga, or strike. 80% of businesses were closed, most transportation was shut down, and people hovered around major shopping centers and outside government buildings protesting reforms. In Greece they are throwing stones at riot police. That was a long ways from the peaceful chanting in the distance. A helicopter flew by overhead making its rounds and police on horseback trotted down streets and no one was very aggressive.

Things were more hectic for me that morning. After falling asleep early, I woke up around 3am to the sound of a roommate stumbling home drunk, struggling with his pants, before throwing himself into bed. An hour later I heard water hitting the floor outside our bedroom -- only it wasn't water, but piss. The whole outside corridor of our residency was covered, and, remembering days long gone back in the bars, I got the hell out. At my age Charles Dickens was publishing the Pickwick Papers, my father was marrying my mother, and Lionel Messi was leading scorer for the best soccer team in the world; I'm already much too old for this.

By 5am I was on the road for an early run, before the sun even hinted it was coming. I ran down Avenida de la Constitución normally packed with tourists and those strange face-painted entertainers, past the old churches and darkened cathedral. I ran past the Plaza de España where the Andalusian Parliament sits. Then I continued further than I'd ever gone, down streets I'd never seen before, losing all sense of orientation. I kept going: past the football stadium for Betis; through a park and underneath the bridge only seen from high places; along a highway, into the port by docks and cranes; over a few gates with spiky tops locked until the day; finally along the river again, which I grew desperate to find. 90 minutes later I passed the Gold Tower and the Plaza de Armas, and walked up quietly to my door.



My roommate slept on in a tired sleep, making a few quiet cries for help in his dreams. I showered, packed my things, and left for breakfast around 7am, thinking about the paradox that forever seems sprawled out between two beds, and that nothing is as powerful as seeing the physical manifestation of the many things you never want to be.

Northern Spain

A new friend and I hiked up the small neighborhoods of San Sebastian one afternoon, arriving at the top and looking out at the pinnacle view of the city. Here the coast of Spain turns abruptly north and the Iberian Peninsula meshes into the side of France. Below, surfers in wetsuits made the most out of small waves, and the children of Basque and French and Spanish ran up to the water until it came at them, retreating then to the arms of their parents. Along la Concha, a brisk breeze blew in from the Pyrenees, and a statue of Jesus looked down from the hill.



He was a good guy, that ex-member of the Australian navy: one of those people you immediately like. He and his girlfriend were traveling Australia to England taking the scenic route, and while his girlfriend went off to a fashion museum, him and I did what men do and hiked a big hill to the top. Good couples know how to be together, and also know how to separate, and they both knew they needed some space (how can you not after so many miles) so we all did what we did. My brief stint in Northern Spain was defined not by the place and the view but by the people, and as we all went out for a beer later that night, I thought how great it is to feel that way when I travel alone to all these places. Americans in Seville and people everywhere are obsessed with the idea of being alone. "Don't you get lonely," I sometimes get asked, and I smile because if anything I wish I were alone more often.


A Philippine man named Albert worked in the hostel and cooked fresh hot paella for us all if we bought the ingredients: a barter deal of sorts always worth making. He told us one night about his family -- three kids and a wife -- living in both the Philippines and Dubai. He expects to see them all within the next three years when there is enough saved to bring them to Spain. It's strange for me to talk of plans and dreams in years and not weeks, but the developing world does not have that luxury. That is a first-world irregularity.

Albert and I and the two Australians went out again on my last night, and drank a few more beers and danced around a latin club. I had a silly few hours with a Basque girl, winding up on the beach and then back at her house with scary wall photos that remind you of the house of Carrie's mother in Stephen King's famous novel. A few hour's later I watched the coast to Santander, and then the mountains of Northern Spain. Somewhere on that ride I read a poem that hit me hard against all this chaotic movement.

What
Can be made with just one push: this work of wanting
More than the actual. To watch yourself
Move in and out of all that truth
And beauty - to be in debt is to remain awake.

Lisboa: In Photos