The Art of Leaving

I was once asked to say something I was exceptionally good at, one refined skill I had crafted that most people could not do as well. Some might say writing and others might say treating illness and others might say running a company and still others scrapbooking. Arguably not all skills are created equal, but I found it a fair question to ask because it offers another pivotal chance to be real with ourselves. Life provides plenty of opportunities to lie -- to say that a wasteful television program is only a television program, and that we all die of something so smoking is nothing -- and we can usually get away with it. Unavoidable questions that force a splendid moment of silence have a way of exposing it all in a flash.

I decided then my skill would be adaptation. It's a vague skill, yes, but it's the only way I am able to explain going from Spain to France to Germany and all the other little realities of my life with constant ease, feeling very much at home in all of them. That was the essence of my last few weeks, exiting Spain to the French Riviera, cuddling up with a dreamlike Argentine girl in Montpellier, hiking quiet green World War II battlegrounds on the German border, looking down upon poor Anne Boelyn's jail before her beheading, kissing a beautiful Italian under Big Ben to the sound of the Thames, and other seemingly chaotic impossible moments that happened as simply as they did. 

Landing in the United States after so much time away is always a peculiar feeling, and the silence then exists regardless of noise or commotion. Yet it was easier after leaving Spain in all its finality, its entirety, and I was ready to get the next part of life moving. Perhaps the skill is not adaptation but leaving -- the art of leaving, we'll say -- being ready, flexible, aching, excited, anxious, willing always for what comes next.

So Long, My Friend

There were moments as my time in Spain came to an end where I wondered who the hell I was anymore. I was going through all the same motions, having the same relationships, in every sense, exactly like I had my entire life, only sometimes now the words were different. Carlos and I would go to a discoteca and it could have been any night back in Austin long ago, except Spanish came out of my mouth and I was able to flirt and talk and do things. I said goodbye to my mother and father like I did my real mother and father eight months ago at a terminal in DFW International Airport. I sat there next to that Argentine girl  in Tenerife and talked about the same tough things -- why smoking is bad and sex important, and what's next in life -- and none of it was hard. If I am asked why Spain was important for me, I would say nothing of old buildings and far off lands; there are old buildings and different cultures everywhere. I would say that I can now live and operate in two different worlds like they both were mine to begin with.

When I think about eight months it feels both long and short, too much and too little. Leaving is always painful, but I have many homes now, many places to go, and I will come back if I decide to. The day before I left Spain, the cycle came to fruition: a new American arrived in the house. All of us ate lunch, and I watched him curiously. He struggled and did not understand as my family and I laughed and talked like Carlos and I had been fighting for mom's attention in diapers. I saw him sitting there with a blank stare, and it was me in a different time.

I think back often to Washington Irving's last words as he said goodbye to Granada. He was summoned back to the US in 1829 for a new job, and had to leave his paradisiacal escape. His words are tragic, and bittersweet, and show both gratitude and sorrow.

"The setting sun as usual shed a melancholy effulgence on the ruddy towers of the Alhambra. I could faintly discern the balconied window of the Tower of Comares, where I had indulged in so many delightful reveries. The bosky groves and gardens about the city were richly gilded with the sunshine, the purple haze of a summer evening was gathering over the Vega; every thing was lovely, but tenderly and sadly so, to my parting gaze.

"I will hasten from this prospect," thought I, "before the sun is set. I will carry away a recollection of it clothed in all its beauty."

With these thoughts I pursued my way among the mountains. A little further and Granada, the Vega, and the Alhambra, were shut from my view; and thus ended one of the pleasantest dreams of a life, which the reader perhaps may think has been but too much made up of dreams."

Teide: Revisited

I went back to Teide, and the Canary Islands for that matter, because it gave me something I knew I could not find in Rome, Berlin, or Vienna. I am not sure what that was and I might not ever know but at 12,918 feet above sea level, freezing in a high-altitude wind, wearing too few clothes, watching the sun rise slowly above ocean and clouds and islands, I managed to find something.

It was around five in the morning with sleep in my eyes and the darkest dark I had ever seen that I turned on a small black flashlight and began the last hour of hiking to the crater of Teide. There were a few people in front and many behind, but they grew farther behind as I went farther ahead. It was ominous, scary almost, hiking dried lava blindly with nothing but your light and the stars and a sliver of the moon. Sometimes a star fell, as part of the almost finished meteor shower and sometimes I shut off the light and just stood to catch my breath. Other times the movement of shadows behind lunar rocks startled me. It was a great place to embrace a feeling of vulnerability, knowing there is little you could do to prevent just about anything from happening, and then remembering that nothing will except the next step forward on a well marked trail.

Huddled together for warmth at the top, around fifteen of us sat under the stars until the first light crept up over the horizon and one by one the stars melted away. They were German, French, and Spanish, and not a single person spoke English well. We were silent anyways, listening to the wind and the sound of our own shivering. The common bond atop a dormant volcanic crater, watching a sunrise from another world, all went well beyond language. We all knew what everyone was thinking.

Thirty minutes below, at the first habitable point beneath the crater, there is a cable car station. Everyday at 9:08am sharp, the first round of people are brought up from 1800 meters below. I didn't stay long enough to watch this happen, and I don't think I could bear seeing five hours of sweat covered by eight minutes of technology. Things happen faster now but the fifteen of us who climbed the peak in the dark and climbed hours before to get there, we saw much more and it was not because we were in the right place at the right time but because we were in many places at many times.

I left the station promptly for a four hour trek down the other side of the mountain, through a landscape that could have been Mordor or Mars. I let nothing cheapen it and enjoyed the pain in my legs and the sun even more as it got warmer and my hands thawed. I enjoyed the small lizards who ran across the sand and under a dry bush, scared of by the sound of my footsteps. I enjoyed the rocks people stacked, outlining difficult parts of the trail for as far back as the trail existed. I enjoyed looking up at the peak and being amazed by how far we can go in a short time. I enjoyed all these quiet things a lot.

The lava fields of Siete Cañadas ended two weeks in Tenerife. By the time I arrived at the base, nine hours had been hiked, one hour had been slept, and four hours had been spent on buses. I thought about a lot of things during that time, but I often thought of nothing at all; it was good to get that break from myself. Sometimes I get caught up in the fact that if one thing does not happen, ten things never will, and every little decision will change everything, but it's silly to think like that. I met a stunning Argentine girl after our flight together, and five days later we fell asleep on the side of a volcanic cliff falling 200 feet to the ocean. A meteor shower lit up the sky above us and when we woke up tucked away in that small protected cave, hugging each other, the sun was coming up over the Atlantic. Some things are so perfect, divine really, and fit for a film, that you could not question them if you wanted to. Since those kinds of things are happening all around me it would be silly to think about anything at all.

And it would be silly to miss them. She got on a ferry and is gone, the road trips and beach time all behind us, and I hiked down the different colored rock, watching one prehistoric explosion overlap another, the boulders turn to rock and sand, until it all fell dramatically into the sea.

Sitting at the base of the mountain and looking up, a Spanish man from Tenerife sat with a coffee. His wife and mother sat with him in no hurry, watching the tourists pass. I asked him as we sat looking up at Teide, when it will go off again. He said he didn't know, but one of two things will happen. The island will grow very quickly, or it will go away completely, and it will all be very bad for you and I. Shortly after, I got on a bus and looked out the window at different parts of the volcano, at different angles, from further and further away.

Getting Drunk with Hemingway

In 1923 Ernest Hemingway visited Pamplona, Spain for the first time during the July festivals of San Fermin. The whole ordeal had such an impact on him that he would return many times for more than thirty years. He would get drunk at Cafe Iruña and stay at Hotel Perla and eventually would write about a series of experiences in The Sun Also Rises. Some might say if he visited the same spot today, he would not go back. There is, in fact, a line in A Dangerous Summer, that says he will not tell the reader the location of a special place he found in the woods because he does not want to go back next summer and find 50 cars already there.

San Fermin is the running of the bulls in the mind of the world. Every once in a while you look at the news and see something about someone being gored by a bull as they crossed the "corner of death" before reaching the plaza de toros. It does really happen; 15 people have been killed since 1925, the last in 2009. It is just a bunch of drunks feeling very brave with a red scarf.

I had big plans for Pamplona, being a Hemingway fanatic myself. I had dreams of getting drunk at his bar with a drink on his stool. I knew there was a statue, so I dreamed of staring into his eyes with every sip and him staring back approvingly with a nod. I had dreams of a Spanish newspaper and a pen and paper. It was a very authentic dream.


But things a'int like they used to be, and the people at Cafe Iruña are not pleased with questions about Ernest even though he is the reason why people come and spend money. One bartender said lamely, "he came here to get drunk," so with all this I packed up and went home with my own bottle of wine. I had my own Hemingway experience alone somewhere else, and that was as good as any.

Pamplona two weeks after San Fermin was wonderfully quiet, a steady place. I came out of the Pyrenees and the Tour de France like no tomorrow, and was greeted with a hug and a kiss in Zaragoza like we were still back there on a hill in Ronda. It's a wonderful thing in life to pick up where you left off like you were there all along. I was told one night laying there in bed, a few tears coming down her face, that I am going to live the most amazing life, and that was a bittersweet thing to hear because I think she's right, but to do that I must keep moving. I ran along the Camino de Santiago, out into the yellow fields beyond Pamplona, on my final afternoon in Navarre. Pamplona has been done, discovered, and saturated, for years now really, and so off we go to discover what's next.

I remember sitting down at that little cafe in a back alleys of Granada, and on the menu it said, "Hemingway was never here." I love Hemingway, and I will read more books and enjoy the simple honest writing about what he saw, but the fact he wasn't everywhere is probably a good thing. 

le Tour de France

It was a man from Bossost who picked me up off the side of the road early Wednesday morning for no reason other than the fact I had a Spanish flag pinned to my back. He had a wife at home and a child's car-seat in the back but I did not learn more, other than his desire for the calm and quiet of the Pyrenees. From Vielha to Bossost we went, and then about ten minutes further on winding roads to the top of a mountain. Where the road becomes flat, Spain ends and France begins. I shut the door with a thank you and when he was out of sight I walked across an invisible line. An old French cyclist greeted me with bonjour. I smiled and said in Spanish that we are in France now. He said oui and smiled also and then turned and descended without anything else. Shortly I followed him and this was my start to the Tour de France.

The Tour de France lasts three weeks and occurs in many cities and in countries outside of France itself. Most of it is in the remote countryside and so to spectate the Tour, at least any large amount of the Tour, is very difficult. It is because of this most people find themselves picking sections, times, routes and stages to which they will make the Tour a part of their lives and it is in this place a found myself from months ago up until the day of. It was the same strategic orientation of Bagneres-de-Luchon that brought me and thousands others to this small skiing village in the middle of the French Pyrenees for stages 16 and 17 of the 99th anniversary.

In Luchon, the Tour ends one day and begins the next - the only time this happens. It is the last two mountain stages before the entire race finishes in Paris. It is probably the best place in all of France to see what I wanted to see.

Stage 16 is one of the most grueling of the entire race, lasting 197km over four horrific climbs. I was situated on a downhill, 3km from the finish and when the peloton flew by it was not one but many and Cadel Evans had lost 5 minutes with a stomach bug. I still told him I loved him and waved my Australian flag but he probably had other things on his mind. The Frenchman continued to dominate with an impressive win, almost too good. What happened with Cadel, as one spectator put it, is what you would expect of someone who was not on some sort of performance enhancing drug. He is human. He is not perfect for three weeks straight.

Stage 17 was shorter (less than 100 miles) and I placed myself on a large incline, 15km from the finish. Cadel was doing better but it was a Spaniard I saw first, and he remained first until he crossed the line. That gave my Spanish flag value. These are the shortened technicalities of the Tour, and I will keep those at a minimum.

I camped out in Luchon with two Americans. We found a trailer park full of spectators and put down blankets and sleeping bags and talked for a little while until everyone was silent and I just looked up at the big sky that was very dark and full with stars. It was not very cold and when I woke up sometime early in the morning the stars were gone and it was very cloudy and a little colder but still not as cold as I expected. A French family in a nearby trailer gave me an extra blanket the night before and another one in the morning gave hot coffee and a cup. There was nothing I could say but merci and nothing they could say but cafe but I smiled and they smiled and I think we all knew what we meant.

The clouds remained that morning into the afternoon and the mountain stages felt much more like mountain stages because there was always a peak shrouded in mist. I saw Cadel Evans very closely that second morning before the race. Gilbert and the rest of the team also, as they descended BMC's bus and got on their bikes to warm up and do interviews. I saw Cavendish get driven to the starting line through the window of a Jaguar. Wiggins rode by at one point. I was ten feet away from a face of Australian sports television I remember seeing when I lived there but still cannot give a name. There were other important people too. There were thousands of dollars worth of beautiful bikes, tuned to perfection. There were buses with tinted windows. Police officers looking intimidating and some not so much. There was a lot. But the crowds remained very collected and calmly watched from behind the lines. Occasionally someone would yell something out and sometimes the riders would turn and look over and give a wave. My Australian flag joined me with lots of happy Aussies who were happy to have me join even though I do not speak like them.

Walking up a particularly difficult stretch of road, an Australian girl from Melbourne asked me if I had been following the Tour much. It seemed a strange question. I had traveled hundreds of miles to see the Tour. Of course I was following it. But I wasn't really, because one of the innate qualities in coming to these remote places is that you will lose track of the Tour at some point. Waiting hours on the side of the road, your favorite rider could have crashed out and you wont know. The riders could be ten kilometers or thirty and the only way you know it's coming is when a helicopter emerges from behind a mountain and you know it is close. Every major move of the stage passes by completely unnoticed to the people quietly lining the roads, standing poised and ready with flags and signs in hand.

Maybe not if you are like that man from Belgium, satellite television and all inside your trailer, but that is not me now and I would not want it to be. Maybe it will be in a different time. When I glanced at the flatscreen quickly and saw 50km to go, it was however, a little helpful.

It was a running joke among numerous others. We are standing in beautiful scenery that people all over the world watch on television every year and say to themselves how great it would be to see the Tour de France and meanwhile, we have no idea what the hell is going on. But it didn't matter anyways. We were there and people saw us somewhere in the middle of all the rest. And it was the thousands of other connections and conversations, not just the cyclists streaming by, that made the days what they were.

And so the Tour de France moves North while I go back South. The clouds have lifted a little with a few pockets winding through the passes. It was sure something to see. It was sure an experience. Next year I will probably be in a warm little house watching highlights each night, maybe alone and maybe with good company. I will think about the whole thing very differently. I will think about France differently too. I do hate the language gap. It still kills me. But when people are exceptionally and needlessly kind, that neither matters nor exists.

What's Happening Lately

When I arrived in the United Kingdom I had 50 euros in my pocket and I walked up to a stand run by three rather striking girls and exchanged it for 40 pounds. I always like the feel of a new crisp currency in my wallet. I look at the artwork and examine the coins I will fumble with later. It is exciting, like when a plane flies over a city and nothing makes sense yet but you know it will. Four days later at a different airport, I again had 40 pounds in my pocket and received 50 euros from an older woman not nearly as striking or pleasant, and this was the beginning and end of my visa run off mainland Europe.

My mother came to Spain, and it was her first time overseas, and that is where the fluid line began. It is special to be around someone during this time, and I remember often getting off a plane in Melbourne, feeling different air, the accents of people on the streets, the changed orientation of the stars at night, and the realization that entire little world's exist that we would not have known about or give a single thought to before. This is what traveling does the first time, and still the many times after, but never quite as profound as the first, and I was lucky to be there to witness it in another.

In Spain she met the family I had lived with for all this time, and teared up when they said goodbye. We watched a soccer game and she wore a red scarf that would later be defined by the little family who had made up and filled so full the last few months. We went to Granada and walked around the Alhambra, those haunting towers at night, the beautiful gardens during the day. It is a place that keeps you mesmerized and quiet. I stumbled across a beautiful poem one night in a dimly lit square, surrounded by balconies and draped in vines.

Y vosotros dormís siempre,
Y la muerte está lejana.

Then it was on to Toledo, that old mid-evil slow moving town built above the river and filled with shops selling old armor and axes and swords. Then walking out into the countryside, higher and higher for a better view of Don Quixote's la Mancha. Then back on a train up to Madrid to say goodbye.

And then I had days to myself in Madrid that were not really to myself because I was in a very large cheap hostel full of very large personalities that grew larger when they drank. People drank because they were in Madrid for its parties. There were pub crawls every night and people stumbling into the rooms every morning before the sun was out and there were large bathrooms with many showers and odd smells. You felt dirtier after those bathrooms than you did before, but Madrid was good too. I saw the best artwork I had ever seen at the Prado. Picasso and Goya and the rest were close enough to touch. Under Hemingway's advice again, I went to a Madrid bullfight in its beautiful plaza. I went alone and sat up front and talked bullfighting with the old Spanish man who had been going the past thirty years. The young Spanish girl behind me also was impressive with her knowledge and her tenacity, yelling at people for standing and other people for other things I did not quite get. It was as edge of your seat as I'd seen, especially when the third matador was gored and rushed off to an ambulance.

And then, for the first time in six months, it was all behind me. A plane took me out of the Iberian Peninsula and into Manchester and a train took me across to Liverpool. What a strange transition that is, when a country speaking your first language natively feels as foreign as one that doesn't speak your language at all. I was upon first instinct talking to taxi drivers and sandwich makers and people in the street in words they did not understand. And then a few additional things messed with my head, that I imagine will still cause me to put my face in my palms in shame for quite some time. I will remember walking down the rainy streets of Liverpool hand in hand with a girl from Seville, laughing and switching in and out of languages with great happiness. But life still has its moments of excess unfortunately, and the entire thing it retrospect feels something like a regression. That's vague, I know, but I can't write about these things anymore after thinking about it too much. It's not something to plead about out loud. It is something to man up and fix about yourself.

Later it all still hurt, going up in the plane and watching the buildings of Liverpool I came to know falling away in the clouds. I could follow the streets up from the cathedral and see where she was, probably sleeping, though maybe stirring in bed as the world lightened outside. Later there were more clouds and ocean and nothing and then I was in Barcelona around people who never knew a damn thing about me in Liverpool. As the heat returns along the roads in Catalonia, a hope a few other things return with it.

A Few Afternoons of Art

I got the sense, after hours around art in Toledo and Madrid, that this is what it means to live forever. Some people cement their legacies with medals and wealth, and that's fine, but to leave something like this for generations to see, that is what it means to leave something -- some of the best stuff ever made -- behind. Books too; to have your novel on every shelf, read by every pupil, then you have led a meaningful life. I think that before my life is said and done, I need to have written some equivalent to Picasso and Goya and the rest, and then I can die and say I did it all very right. With all this talk of careers, to have done something else seems like to have just gotten by.