Just when you think you're alone...

Day 128

Saturday

I must have angels keeping close watch over me.

It's Saturday, 10:30 am and after lingering at the security gate watching the memory of Leise walk away to catch her flight, I mosied out of the Malaga airport into the bitter sunshine to catch the metro back to my flat...to fall back into the old routine...or bed. Suddenly my phone jumps to life and it's my groovy Andalucian grandma, Antonita, calling to see if I could catch the earliest train out to Alora for her birthday BBQ that afternoon. My tears weren't sure whether they should keep falling for loneliess or for joy. Exlaiming "YES!" in everyway possible in Spanish I confirmed my eager attendance. Pausing for a moment after I hung up to check my emotions as they soared from their deep morning plunge, I stuck a smile on my face and marched into the Metro, 1 ticket for Alora, off to a party, not home to wash clothes, wash dishes, sweep floors, buy groceries or job hunt.

It's amazing how far compassion can go. I arrive at the party and Antonita, the birthday girl is busy preparing my vegetarian meal (the only vegetarian for 50 miles) and shooing me out of the kitchen and out onto the patio to sit down and relax. Across language and cultural differences, she loves me and so do her family and friends. All piqued interest in me, asking how I was, if I'd like more to drink, if I'd like to move into the shade so as to not burn my pale American skin. And then the beautiful orchestra of familial comraderie started up and played throughout the afternoon. Sly jokes and pranks breaking the raucous conversations roaming the lenghth of the table. Food and forks clinking on plates, bottles of wine being emptied and calls for more paella echoing in the heavy heat of the sun. And then like a slow motion retreat of coral into its bed, friends and family members leaned chairs back into the shade, sipping espresso and watching the pools of melted icecream float on their plates.

And eventually it felt right to stand and stretch and 'start to go.' Which really meant, they started to talk more and wrap up food to give away ( I got 2 boxes of cake shoved into my arms). As I was figuring out who to ask for a ride to the train station to wait for the last train out of Alora, Antonita's sister-in-law comes up to me and says that she and her husband will be going back to Malaga and they'd love to drive me back to the city. And so like a little duckling I pad behind her, smiling at my luck, as I give the salutory "hasta luego" besos to everyone ( a tradition I will miss very much in the USA...there's something so intimate about kissing everyone good bye...it's genuine and decisive).

Reaching Malaga, my new friends dropped me off, with another round of hugs and kisses and assurances that I was welcome whenever I wanted to stop by their apartment. Somehow I floated back to my apartment, even though I had no need to go home because all day I had manifested the belief that "home is where the heart is" and as far as I was concerned...my heart was still in Alora, with the people who only know how to love unconditionally.

The rest of the night took an unexpected turn. I got food poisoning from the omlette that was made especially for me....with wild, local esperragus and quail eggs from their very own quails. For such a great day, it certainly came with a terrible back lash. An iron claw of pain had my intestines in its grip and all I wanted to do was call mom and ask her to help me stop hurting...but sometimes the body reminds you that home may be where the heart is, but there can't be a disconnect between body and mind. 24 miserable hours later...I was able to nibble at the box of cake left in my fridge :)



Antonia (in the purple hat she crocheted all by herself), Me, and her husband, Antonio

my best friends.

My Own Tea House

Day 127

Friday



Like a lazy backfloat, tea bags hover momentarily in the rising steam of boiling water and like a deep exhalation waft downward to the radiating globs of honey at the bottom of our mugs. Exhaustively re-steeped the tea bag gives its final breath of flavor, tinting the water a weak amber. Conversation lingers in the columns of steam. Socked feet hang on the ledge of chairs and chins rest in the cups of hands...wandering across tracks of memory and remembering late weeknights at college after coming home from the library, dreary from writing our theses, only to put on the water for tea, hoping for something to take the edge off our anxiety.

And we found ourselves, a year later, Pj clad, staring into mugs of weak tea, working through life, working out life, working up life, and wondering when to just let it be. I can't say Leise and I had any real revelations, but I finally had a feeling of being home...in friendship.

Not Much

Day 126

Thursday

I clench and unclench my hands like a pulsing jelly fish. I curl over and unfurl flashing a face of pain. I point to my stomach in agony. Still the pharmacist looks back at my in a quizzical apathy through sunlight glinting glasses. “Te duele el estomago?” {Does your stomach hurt?} She yawns, after my enthralling charades of stomach cramps. “Yes, well no, my stomach doesn’t, but my friend's does. It’s called PMS cramps. I need Advil.” She looks even more confused by my answer. So there I am back mumbling ‘apretado’ (cramped) and pointing to my stomach, hoping to spark a synapse somewhere in her medical mind. None of my translations of ‘Advil’ into Spanish seem to register with her. So she decides to meander back into the vault of boxes and comes back sliding across the counter an anti acid medicine to me. I look at her incredulously. In all my drama did she not understand LOWER ABDOMEN? I have no medical degree but esophagus is as far from the uterus as Spain is from the USA. Fed up with her “I don’t give a shit at 10am” attitude I forcefully slid the antacid back and yell “UTERUS!” And to that she says, “Well how should I have known that? You said stomach, (which obviously means esophagus in Spain) so she goes back and brings out Ibiprofeno. Apparently because drugs are so cheap in Spain there’s an embarrassment tax they like to throw on the price of medicine, just for kicks. Slamming the door shut as I sprint out I chuckle, thinking, good thing she’s a pharmacist because if she were a doctor I can’t imagine what her bedside manner would be like considering her horrendous customer service at the counter.

Leise and I decide to chuck are grand plans for Nerja and instead lay low (well, she does, she naps in my bed and I paint my nails.). And it’s ok. Sometime company is a vacation in itself.




Eventually though she rallies and we catch the train for a touristy beach town, Benalmadena, where we happen upon a St. Patrick’s Day Festival held by the Irish Council of Benalmadena. Gawking at the Irish accents surrounding us we catch the end of an Irish Dance performance and the closing guitar performance. Green of all shades roams throughout the crowd. Clover green Cat-In-the-Hat—esque hats bop around, kitschy medals of having had a Guinness.


Before long the event wraps up and we cut out before we get pulled into a circle of lawn chairs and card games in the parking lot. Meandering down to the beach for dinner we grab a picture with the elusive Buddha statue and marvel at the farm animals that litter the local “Paloma Park.”

It’s funny looking back because if you were to ask me what we did all day, I’d say “Not much” and it’d be steeped in a satisfied grin. But so many other painful days I’ve tallied the happenings of a day and come to the sad conclusion that “Not much” happened.



Community has the power to create and sustain. Old friends, like the annual arrival of spring and warmth, restore the languid roots, stiff from a lonely winter, of the soul and encourage new blooms of new found friends.

Isn’t there a saying, “You are the light of my life” ….?

I’m looking at each one of you.

No hump hump day

Day 125

Wednesday




Arming my visitor with a map blotchy with tourist hot spots circled in blue ink, a key to the apartment and a big hug for good luck, I set out for work while Leise set out to explore Malaga on her own. I can't say which of us was luckier... me at gypsy school or her, a non-spanish speaker in the belly of Spanish pride. All day at school I felt like the high strung mother goose, hoping that Andalucia would treat my friend nicely, that it wouldn't cause her to get lost in tiny alleys and that it wouldn't rain on her. Clocking out at 6pm I hurried home doing my best power walk with swinging back pack, pounding out my most up beat playlist on my ipod. Turns out my roommate had rendezvoused with Leise and had taken her on a quaint tour of the 'local highlights' (don't you love it when the important people in your life just mesh). It ended with me meeting them and sneaking into a hotel to ride it to the top and check out the view of Malaga at sunset...as well as surprise a cohort of naked men who had commadeered the pent house hot tub, presuming no one would want a roof top photo op on a Wednesday at 8pm....hehe. Strolling back into town we wandered to an old favorite of mine, a small back alley tapas bar, where we gazed through a glass window and pointed at things that looked oddly colorful and tested our luck with our spontaneous ordering. Like all food in Spain, it ended up being delicious, only tainted by the unwelcome visit of a one eyed dog who eyed me with his one eye and the gaping hole of his absent ocular. (almost causing a complete reguritation of tapas)...

Considering it was Hump Day, usually a hard day to get through before any sort of slide into the weekend could begin, today was a walk in the park.


sometimes life is very clear cut. life is good.

Thai-d Up Again in Friends

Day 124

Tuesday

How is it that old friends can so easily slip into the freshly etched grooves of a new life path?

My 4th year roommate at UVA, Leise Hook, better known as the my fellow thesis fanatic, who I should have credited in my bibliography as a source of sanity/madness/joy/fear/frustration/caffeine addict partner in crime, had just finished up her year teaching English in Thailand and decided to do a swing through Europe and taste the foreign flavor for the first time. Tuesday after work I skipped to the airport to pick her up and had to hold back tears of joy when I saw my old bud. She knew all the right things to say, "haven't been waiting long...you look great...so glad to see you...no no, I'll carry my bag" and just as if we were meeting after class at UVA we talked the next 4 days to the ground.

I'd forgotten how good it felt to have someone waiting and wanting to see you. Someone to eat dinner with. Someone to walk home with. Someone to chat over cups of tea with. Old memories sweetened the reunion. Not that Leise knows me through and through or that I'm even worried about that, but she has a good feel about who "Katie" is and god it was awesome to laugh nostaglically with someone who loved me then and loves me now.

Andalucia softened its growl today, my new friend helped distract me from all the little troubles I'd been stuck staring down for the past week. Suddenly it was just laughter and smiles...stories of Thailand and a warm spring night.

It's hit me.

Day 123

Angsty storm clouds fit the sour mood I woke up in. Monday, back to work, back to being on my own. No family visiting, no school holidays, just a wet commute to work.

Soaking in reality.

Tidal Wave

Day 122

Day 94-121 : Sporadic Review to come

This blog goes out to JAR. The girl who thought writing an 8 page essay would be a breeze on a Sunday afternoon before driving back to UVA. That's a 4th year for you. Delirious on the high of her final semester, she loses all sense of time management, because the end is near, so who really cares, right JAR?

This vignette is for you.

Skirting the edge of darkened sand, recently baptized by the coming tides, my gaze falls side to side, water to sand, eyeing the encroaching waves and languidly scanning the carpet of seashells, wondering when I'll discover the gem of tranquilty I can pocket and put in my little cup of shells on my desk back in my flat. With my hobo sensiblity of beauty I pick at odd red rocks and swiggly edged shells, filling my peacoat with sponateous delights. Internal arguments flitter as I throw a shell back because it wasn't whole, it wasn't perfect. I'd already happily tossed bits and pieces of shells in my pocket, but now I was on the hunt for the queen conch. As much as I didn't want to admit that I wanted a perfect shell I did. And I combed the beach until I found it. And yes, I took it. And now it sits, heavily at the bottom of the pile of shells I have, a platform for the scraps of shells and colorful pebbles I was instantly enamored with. Hours later, I can't say I love it anymore than the others. But JAR, the vignette doesn't end here, with a search for perfection and the unsatisfying feeling of finding it. No, I was walking on the beach, with a military commander intensity gaze, eager to find more shells that I stopped listening to the ocean, that is until it reached out and snapped at my heel. Cursing my wet shoe, I shook the salt water off as I hopped up the bank, abandoning my guerilla hunt momentarily. When I took a moment to shut up the waves continued to rhythmically hush me. And then I realized I was watching an epiphany occur. Again and again. The wave rushes into the shore, like the light of an epiphany and then the white fringe runs up the shore and the water balances over the sand, fully exposed, drenching the shore in foreign water, just like the idea rising to the surface of consciousness, hitting your brain, stretching itself out in perfect clarity for a moment. Then the wave pulls back and in a grand rush, leaving a momentary silence, a breathless calm, like the flood of relief at the realization of a long coming epiphany. And just as the wave pulls back, so does the curtain of ignorance and you realize what you hadn't before. And then the wave comes back, just as little thoughts come and quake the mind, because like small eddies in the current, a trail of thoughts winds through the reservoir of new found realizations. An epiphany changes everything, like the wave shaping the shoreline.

The obvious epiphany : Procastination means shooting yourself in the foot. It hurts and little progress is made. (no this was not taken from the vignette JAR, this was just a 'no shit' epiphany for you, especially)

The subtle epiphany: Wholeness can be found in disparate pieces.
But now that you all have left me again, I'm back to grasping at a sense of self from memories of times when I a part of you all.




love you and miss you.