78 cents

When I was young, my Mum's uncle wrote me letters throughout the year. Small accounts of his travels, his aspirations, his day-to-day. The leaf like paper was decorated with shaky sketches of his front door or his newly purchased RV.
On the top right corner of each letter, he carefully slanted his script to show the day, month, year, temperature, time, and the city or town where he sat and wrote.

There is nothing like going to the mailbox and finding a letter.

********

Whenever I write a letter or a postcard, lick the back of a stamp, drop it in an ominous yellow box on a side street with blue letters reading "Correos", or in broken Spanish, place it in the hands of an elderly woman, I think to my self: how does such a small thing make its way all the way across the world?

Inevitably, I worry that something may happen - the wind may snatch it out of the arms of its carrier; the plane suddenly leaves, forgetting the package stuffed with handwritten love letters, cursive condolences, birthday pop-ups; and sometimes, I think it made it, all the way to Arbordale, or 47th street, when a mad rottweiler unexpectedly sneaks up behind an average sized whistling postman, and tears apart the contents of his bag.

Whew… The unpromising worries of a letter writer!

When it rains in Madrid, something extraordinary happens.
If you run up a few flights of stairs and glance off of the balcony or through a foggy window, you will find a sea off fluttering umbrellas. The streets become a flood of acrylic octagons and hidden faces.

The man, dragging a dark blue satchel down the street, pausing for a cafe solo, and returning to the sidewalk, for a moment, tips the temporary plastic shelter in between his shoulder and right ear. He opens the yellow treasure box and grabs a handful of addressed papers. Shivering, he shoves them in his roll-along bag and continues to walk.

Maybe they arrive, a bit worn, illegible, the black pen smudged. Is this why? Perhaps.

The carriers, whoever they may be, are of great service to me. The letters, despite my worries, seem to find their way across the ocean, through the plains, over corn fields, atop the snow and into the hands that I wished. At these moments, the “World of Post," though quite perplexing, simply delivers.

Real Life, San Sebastian.

A brief exerpt from Sarah Kennedy's Travel Journal
Entitiled, "Friday"

christmas day. a fantastic day. moll and i bought fresh lettuce, cheese, jamon, and two baguettes from the market. for a christmas surprise, we made kaye a delicious salad and cookies and just everything. molly and i stood in front of the gorgious atlantic ocean. i am heading to california, her to oregon. we will be friends forever.

Merry Christmas.
Love,
Molly and Sarah

The Bay of Biscay

It's Christmas in San Sebastian and my tights are sandy.
The Atlantic coast is beautiful; December surfing, three nuns, fallen bicycles.
This morning, for breakfast, we layed on the bed and shared goat cheese, ripe tomatoes, pears, crispy bread, buttery croissants, chocolate, whole walnuts. The two ladies at our pension knocked on the door, smiled, and gave us tea and sugar cubes.
When we walk down the street, there is an enormous gothic cathedral. At night, the stained glass is hazy and the side lights illuminate the entire structure. Inside is eerie and cold.
Wow, the world is amazing.
So, cheers to bacon, jamon iberico, jamon serrano, chorizo, honey, strawberries, boroque cathedrals, gothic cathedrals, parades, wool, blue skies, and the ocean.

On the Road again

Grand Via, Madrid
After the countryside, life feels a bit like a metropolis of transportation.
Bus stations, Metro stops, feet.

Cathedrals
Religion, in all forms, has created some of the most intricate, intense, and complex structures. For me, I have found that the narrow hall ways and loose tiles, the scripture, the depictions, the details, create a common and symbolic appreciation for the unknown - for heaven, hell, for God. It is almost terrifying, sometimes, the eerie quiet, the chipped marble, the Latin. One of my favourite aspects of Spain is the visible transition of religious influence from one time period to the next. The majority of Cathedrals, throughout the entire country, were once Mosques, and still, to this day, have delicate stone work, eight-pointed stars, and calligraphy. In Cordoba’s Mezquita you can stand beside a pillar, look to your left and see the Qur’an, the colours - Islam, and turn every so slightly right, to see candles and Christ. It’s amazing. In Toledo, the San Juan de Los Reynes Cathedral completely changed my understanding of Christianity. It was as though the Bible were translated into architecture, gardens, grey skies. Standing beneath the bells, in this particular Cathedral, is like being on the Pacific Coast - tragic, curious, elegant. Every day I am more and more educated on history and people by merely opening my eyes and seeing the past in every direction I turn.


Water
We walked across a Roman Bridge, just above a river south of town.
Here, rosemary grows in bushes, and even though it’s brisk like Autumn, it feels like Christmas.
Hot sugar coated walnuts make up for the lack of snow, and at night Merida is foggy.
Sometimes it feels like we’re in this gigantic cloud, and then, out of the mist, appears pillars and statues, Roman figures. Every corner is so well preserved, authentic in their lack of perfection.
You know how they say, “you learn something new every day!”
Well, today I learned two things: 1. December is freezing 2. There are, in fact, great blue herons in Spain.
After a six hour ominous bus ride, full rucksacks, and hungry belly’s, we couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful destination.

One Hundred Acre Woods

One of the most difficult tasks that I face in my life is the seperation between seeing each thing for what it is and connecting each experience to something that I have already seen. Are the changing colours in Southern Spain reminecent of Autumn in Michigan? Or are the yellow leaves, the river’s wind, the ploughman’s land, the dry grass, just, well, Spain? And is the beauty in dawn lovely because it is lovely, or because it strikes some memory? I’m not sure if either understading is better or worse, or if it is the misigenation between past and present that makes our life experience so stark and interconnected. And do these things melt to become our future? Is it our experiences that shape our understanding, or our eyes that create the present? And what if we didn’t have eyes? If we just heard and felt. Would our connection to certain things continue to be through touch and smell. Would we say that such and such feels like Winter, or such and such smells like raspberry jam? Or would everything be everything. Is everything, everything? Or is each thing a part of the whole? And what is the whole? Is it life? God, life is such a huge thing, filled with so many little intricacies. I love those delicate pieces, the blue and purples in our skin, the seasons in our structure.

And then I look around me, to the front, to my sides, above, behind, everywhere. I see curtains and wood, plaster, woven rugs, yellow sheets, books, skipping stones, walnuts, lampshades. But most of all, I see the white spots on my fingernails, the cut on my left hand. I see my life in my body. When the evening time is cool, my feet are covered by wool. It reminds me of Dexter, this little farm that I love to get chili peppers from after the first frost, pumpkins in October. The man who works there has calloused fingers and steady strides. He is, in a way, his land. His acres are his legs and his hands the soil. To tell you the truth, I love that we see everything in everything. That our life can be the ocean, the sea – Can be lake michigan and the dunes. And that at eventide, or midnight, throughout every second of our life in this body, that we are always relating one thing to another. And although nothing can possibly be the same, it is amazing that home expands to rural Andalucia, to salt water.

Sometimes when I wander I think about One Hundred Acre Woods. But I think that in life, sometimes we are Eeyore, and other times we are Pooh. And that both are okay, and are part of the balance, and that after all, honey reminds me of everything, everything, the whole universe – five years old on soft wheat bread, afternoons with ella campbell, six o’clock lavender tea, dried out winter sage, apples with abby, burt lake, second time toasted angelo’s bread, and on and on.

For now, I wake up in the morning and make my coffee. We work, we sweat,

I think that it is while travelling, while our bodies are so displaced, that we are able to connect the historical to the momentary.

So here’s to, well, home.

Family Vacation with Grandpa Fritz

Today I had my first ham and cheese sandwich, ever.

And nestled in the mountains with honey, bread, and apple? What more could one ask for? As a human being, a sister, daughter, niece, cousin, a lover of northern Michigan summertime, an early bird, avid reader of the New York Times travel section, a physics drop-out, double mitten wearer, dreamer of Kiss concerts, knuckle cracker, heavy sleeper, wanderer, your neighborhood cookie baker, a lover of ideas, and a Moslem, I think tasting this little piece of the World was necessary, and absolutely yummy.

What I'm really saying is that for me, being a Moslem is more about experiencing the world, wholly - to be immersed, to indulge in tastes and colours, and to later thank and appreciate. But more importantly, to know that such a thing may only happen once.

Thus, I must say, Terevez Jamon is a gift from God.

Van Morrison

olives on the front porch, in the grass, in our nets, the crates, the bus, back home, wooden floors, chairs, washing machine, microwave, sink, carpet, our wine glasses (the broken ones too), dark chocolate, in the rubbish, compost, plastics, olives in our cupboards, in the ceiling, the panels, salad, stove, plates, bowls, spoons, hangers, wool socks, terrace, page 256 of my novel, behind the curtains, olives in joe's keds, in my crocs, kaye's boots, our bras, stained shirts, wrinkled overalls, jean pockets, hanging from the closeline, on the goat path, in the village, at the market, in our hands, our fingernails, crates, the bus, olives, the road, on the scale, in the funnel, up the wheel, through the machines, crushed, paste, in the air, pressed, early morning german beer, pressed, day dreams, pork chops, ham, sausage, siesta, pressed, oil.