Vigo

This spring, I returned to Spain to venture to Vigo. Following five years on the Mediterranean coast, I was ready to throw in the towel on a country in which I’ve never felt comfortable until a friend recommended I give it a go.

Since its founding, the small village of Vigo has transformed into a small city, though it has yet to lose its tight-knit vibes. The longer I was there, I began to recognize familiar faces, particularly in the center, yet was never overcome by the smothering sensation small cities often impart on us. For in Vigo, the estuary that blends river and ocean leaves one with a sense of boundless possibility.

The frequent rain always gave way to brilliant rays of sun, showering the land and leaving it sparkling. Whereas in most European cities buildings are constructed one on top of another, in Vigo there are still vast expanses of green, leaving room to breathe and reflect. Each “empty” lot leaves a link to a land that has yet to be littered with lodges designed for the most destructive beast known to man, man itself. Housing generations of other species instead, these “empty” lots are brimming with life in a way that the “developed” ones never can.

Perhaps this proximity to nature and the frequent rain leave the people of the region with a feeling of continual rebirth, contributing to a profound culture of kindness and redemption. Not since childhood had I felt so enveloped by a culture of care, astounding still given that it came from complete strangers. Seen in a sense I had perhaps never been, I connected with communities that, like the river and the ocean, blended alongside the estuary that marks the flow of time.

Over the course of my quest here, I regained some of the sense of mystery and excitement I had lost with my youth. Far from the Garden of Eden surrounded by arid cliffs and inhabited by dinosaurs in the dreams that come to me by day, I briefly felt alive again. I would have liked to stay longer, but worldly concerns drew me away at the turn of the season. Riding out the wave that began at the start of this journey, I now find myself reaching its end. I don’t know if I will be able to return in the fall, or if the fall will lead me somewhere else altogether. When you don’t have a place to call home to return, you are at the mercy of the wind.

Austria and the Czech Republic, revisited

Memory and perception. I had been thinking about writing a post related to memory and perception when I remembered that I still have not written about the six weeks I spent in Austria over the summer. In fact, I had considered never writing again because what does it matter in a society that pays people pennies to train “artificial intelligence” to write for us?

The other day I read BONUS TRACKS: Some Thoughts on Authenticity by Stacy Chandler https://www.nodepression.com/bonus-tracks-some-thoughts-on-authenticity/ In it, she posed the question of “If we strip art of its humanity, what is even the point?” This resonated with me because part of the reason I had considered giving up writing is that if we no longer will be able to differentiate between a machine’s writing and that of a human, why even spend time doing it? In our era of late stage capitalism, it seems like even art is being sacrificed for the bottom line.

She also posed the question of “If we hand off creativity to machines, what is that freeing us up to do, exactly?” Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, a lot of work had already been handed off to machines, and now that our creative endeavors are being handed off as well, we will have even more time on our hands. The ability to mass produce goods, including art, has more often than not led to lower quality products. I still have clothing that is nearly 20 years old and looks newer than clothing that is two years old. In this late stage capitalist era, the only incentive is short term gains, and the quicker products wear out or break, the more that can be sold. It doesn’t seem to matter that we are trashing Earth in the process and are subsequently facing an existential crisis due to accelerated global warming as a result of these activities.

When most art is also produced by machines for the sake of the bottom line and short term gains, we will find ourselves faced with empty words, soulless shapes, and hollow tunes. These will distract us and separate us along the seams we previously shared through the uniquely human experience of it. Those who profit most from it will be the large corporations and wealthy few who control them. But even they won’t be entirely exempt from the mass extinction event that awaits us in the near future. Human beings have always relied upon and needed each other to survive and without the support of the proletariat, there will be no one left to prop up the ruling class.

But I digress.

I digress because I enjoy writing, and most of my writing has not been for the bottom line. This consideration circles me back to my original intent for this post, which was to write about the six weeks I spent in Austria over the summer. I won’t go into details, but one thing I learned is that if you are supported and freed to follow your passion, you will be able to give back to society in a way that otherwise would be impossible to do and, in the case of my friend, to provide fresh, local, produce to his small community. The small-scale farming systems within which he works are now a rarity in our era of corporate-controlled agriculture, but form an integral part of what we will need to sustain if we are to survive for much longer.

Collectively we have the ability to actively destroy our habitat and understand that we are doing so, and yet do little more than stand by as it melts, floods, and burns all around us. Like art, this ability is also unique to humans and similar to how we are sacrificing art for the bottom line, so will we sacrifice ourselves.

Santiago de Compostela

Perhaps best known for “El Camino de Santiago” in recent decades, I have now been here twice since the early 2000s, neither of which was for the pilgrimage. The first time was to kick off that two-week college tour of Spain that culminated with Granada and this time, which in fact was toward the end of October and when I finally got around to writing “Bologna and Ibiza”, was to accompany my partner, who was visiting for a conference.

While I don’t have any memories in particular of my first visit, my memories of this second visit are still intact. It was a much needed getaway from the thin walls that stood between us and the elements. It took us north, to warmth and quiet and comfort amid rainy days and dark nights, to delicious food and drink, to a space to recharge. We had our first meal at a vegetarian restaurant around the corner from our hotel, where we were introduced to Mencía, now among my favorite types of red wine.

The following morning after breakfast I headed to the University of Santiago de Compostela to visit the Natural History Museum, which was very tastefully laid out. I spent a couple of peaceful hours there wandering around exhibits before I continued on to NuMaru, a fantastic Korean restaurant, before returning to the hotel to rest for the afternoon. That evening I met my partner for glasses of Ribeiro at a local bar, which were served with tasty tortillas de patatas. I would soon learn that in Galicia, drinks are always served with complimentary tapas, something that has fallen out of custom in much of the rest of Spain.

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at a restaurant just down the street for a dinner of cockles, artichokes, and tarta de Santiago (a local almond cake), which we washed down with glasses of Mencía. While everything was good, it would pale in comparison to our dinner the following evening, which lived up to expectations of excellent Galician fare.

The next morning I stayed at the hotel and wrote “Bologna and Ibiza” as it poured outside. While it would rain every day of the week that we were there, it was welcome after the awful drought that had enveloped much of Spain, and still had not relented in Alicante. Later, as the clouds parted and made way for a few rays of afternoon sun, I headed to a coffee shop before going for a walk in a park on the other side of the city. On my way back, I happened across Xuntanza, or one of the best beer bars I have found outside of the US. Ducking in for a local gose, which was served with a corn cake topped with ham, cheese, and tomato, it hit the spot. I then met my partner for dinner at A Noiesa, where we had the best meal we would have that trip. Sharing their eponymous salad, the sautéed octopus, and the tarta de Santiago, everything was perfectly prepared, and paired well with the Albariño that we also ordered.

The following morning I walked to the Pedagogical Museum of Galicia. Even though I walked through the city and its sprawl on sidewalks, evidently those sidewalks form part of “el camino” because what appeared to be a group of school-aged “pilgrims” passed me, one of whom told me “buen camino”. The camino itself did not seem to be very enjoyable though, since the greater part of it passes along busy pavements. On my way back I stopped by the vegetarian restaurant, and later I would have dinner in the hotel room with a €2 bottle of Mencía from the local market.

The next morning after the conference concluded, I showed my partner where the Natural History Museum is before we had lunch from a menu at a restaurant across the street. We then headed to the Museum of the Galician Community before we made our way to Xuntanza for a couple of beers and their corresponding tapas. We then tried another restaurant that had gotten good ratings, where we had razor clams and a tomato salad before making our way back to the hotel, at which time we spotted O pozo, a local watering hole that hadn’t gotten crowded yet. Taking advantage of our early arrival to chat with the bartender, we learned about how much Santiago had changed in the two decades that had passed since I had last been there, and I nostalgically pondered a past I feel like I missed even though I was present at the time.

While I never plan to do “El Camino de Santiago” or any other culturally-constructed pilgrimage, like any other conscious being brought into existence through no will of my own, I plan to continue on this passage between absences of will for as long as fate forces me. In the meantime, “buen camino”, even though the path is often paved over and it won’t always be good.

Bologna and Ibiza

For a city that I’d never intended to visit, I’ve now been to Bologna a total of four times- twice to visit a friend and twice for conferences- but it wasn’t until this last visit that I really saw some of the city in a way that I'd yet hadn’t. I also re-connected with my friend in another stage of life.

Nearly 17 years following my first visit, I can now claim to have a general understanding of the layout of the metropolis. Staying in an apartment in the outskirts helped, as well as the convenience of having access to a digital map on a mobile device. Sometimes I wonder how I used to get around at all.

On my first morning there I met my friend in the city’s center, and we had coffee at a bar that would later become a favorite. I appreciated the small glasses of water served with the espressos, something that is not customary in Spain. I then accompanied her on an errand before we went to pick up her daughter from school and on our way back, she dropped me off at a neighborhood staple. With fantastic food served around the counter, I enjoyed a plate of ravioli with truffle sauce, which was prepared to perfection.

In search of a library from which to work, I stumbled upon the Teatro Anatómico and old university library, which I decided to visit. Taking in the marble dissection table mounted at the center of an ornate lecture hall, I mused at how many scientific advancements humanity has made in such a short period of time. The library itself transported me back to an era before the digital even existed, when knowledge was more difficult to acquire and magic was uncovered in the gaps.

Later that evening I returned with my partner to the bar at which my friend and I had had coffee that morning for Aperol Spritzers, which were served with small plates of vegetables and hummus and glasses of nuts, which hit the spot. I had made dinner reservations at a restaurant around the corner that my friend had recommended for that night, but ultimately our evening out’s enjoyment would end with the aperitif. Our meals at the restaurant were terrible. Trader Joe’s sells better lasagna than we had there…

Half-full bottle of wine in tow, we made our way back to our room for the night. It would be enjoyed the following evening with antipasti from a bar that reminded me of Brooklyn following a slow day spent in the vicinity of the apartment. After the conference concluded the following morning, I took my partner back to that neighborhood staple for a perfect plate of pasta before we headed to the airport, even though it was out of the way. Life is not linear.

At the airport we encountered the chaos of an overcrowded space and flight delays in the wake of a week of conferences in a city unequipped to handle such traffic. Arriving in Ibiza later than expected, we discovered that in spite of our email alerting the car rental agency of our flight, it was closed- even though the rest were open. With no other way to reach our rural hotel, we had to rent one from another agency.

We only decided to visit Ibiza because there were no direct flights back from Bologna, and we wanted to take advantage of being in a place neither one of us had visited. The combination proved to be too much, but nonetheless we enjoyed taking in the natural beauty of an island that in part has been lost to excessive consumption, something that unfortunately doesn’t seem to be able to be stopped short of catastrophe. At least much of the island’s iron red soil and rolling hills haven’t been razed.

Over the course of the couple of days we spent there, we circled most of the island by car. My favorite sight is one recorded only to memory, of a watermelon patch with a deliciously split watermelon suspended among iron waves of rich soil. I imagined being a small(er) field-residing mammal and gorging on it. However, given my species and microbiome, it wasn’t a good idea to do the same, so instead I enjoyed meals at local restaurants. Of the handful of meals that we had, two stood out, as well as a third that consisted mostly of artisanal beer, the quality of which paralleled that of those found in the United States.

Prior to our extended layover in Ibiza, the only region I hadn’t visited in Spain was the Balearic Islands. Now that I have, I can say that I’ve been to every region in the country. That is, I can say that I’ve been to every region in the country so long as its political borders remain stable, though no one ever really knows what Spain has up its sleeve.

Road Trip

Until recently in human history, a road trip was the only way to travel from one point to another- that is, if there were roads at all. And it certainly was not undertaken as lightly as it is today since distances of the past were much greater than those of the present, and everything required more time. We often complain that we have no time, but in fact we have more time now than ever.

Also until even more recently in human history, two women wouldn’t have been able to embark on such travel without the presence of a man thanks to a myriad of factors, none of which I’m going to delve into here. But the reality is that this still holds true in a number of places around the world. We were fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to do so since ours was through parts of Western Europe.

Perhaps we should be more appreciative of the League of Nations because even though it failed and was followed by WWII, it still set a precedent for peace that hadn’t previously been set, and laid the groundwork for future organizations and treaties in promoting the same. And with peace and plenty come time for reflection and cooperation. At least sometimes, and in theory. At least in the framework of the European Union.

While in the recent past the Pyrenees would have posed a formidable geographic border between Spain and France, well-built roads and tunnels paved our way across and through this ancient range of rocks and over country borders that are no longer manned by weapon-toting mammals. Empty patrol buildings stood in silent testimony. Traffic only slowed due to the sheer number of vehicles on the roads.

Somehow the heavy traffic determined the direction of our trip because after a night spent at a roadside hotel just outside of Montpellier (in which we were quick to lock ourselves in our room, where we had dinners of canned salads and bread sticks and avoided any feelings of discomfort we had as women traveling without a man in that particular area) the traffic was still heavy, we decided to take a definitive detour in Avignon, which ended up being the highlight of our trip. It was decided on a whim, a perfunctory exchange while only a few kilometers from the exit, and based on what I had quickly read from a Google Maps search and part of a conversation with a friend the night before in Barcelona, which I had not heard.

How it was versus how I imagined it to be was very different. But in the habit of following life, there was no agenda, and we were free to go where we were guided. Avignon was astoundingly alluring. Enveloped in stone, it was the first French town I was to see outside of Paris. Reserving a room in a bed and breakfast on the island just outside of the town, we were able to rest in quiet natural surroundings in between visits to the town itself. We ended up spending the entire weekend in the area, enjoying glimpses of its history in between a few delicious bites.

That Monday we continued northbound and ended up reserving a room in another rural bed and breakfast just outside of La Roche-sur-Foron. From the patio of our room we had views of both the surrounding farm and the not-so-distant mountains, and the following morning we woke up to horses grazing just steps away. It turns out they make much better neighbors than people. After breakfast we headed up to Switzerland via Geneva, only to discover that our particular data plan was blocked in the country. Not in the mood to go through the unnecessary hassle of getting another SIM card, we ultimately decided to spend only one night there, even though our original destination had been Bern. Booking a night at a hotel near the lake with data scraped from the French side from a beach where we spent the afternoon, we later enjoyed an absurdly expensive bowl of fondue for dinner, happy to return to France the following day.

We needed a new destination and decided on San Sebastian via Bordeaux. Halfway to Bordeaux, we stopped at a roadside hotel just outside of Sadroc to spend the night. A relic of the past but with young owners who cared about maintaining its quality, we had one of the best meals of our entire trip at the hotel’s restaurant before getting a good night of sleep and a couple of good recommendations for places to visit in the area. Our first stop of the day was the Edmont Michelet museum in Brive-la-Gaillarde, which wasn’t one of the recommendations, but was nonetheless an interesting place to visit. We then had a fantastic lunch in town before continuing on, and fantasized about living there for six months while learning French. Free water and cool air go a long way.

Of the recommendations, the first was to visit the town of Collonges-la-Rouge, which reminded me of a real-life Disney World without the attractions- and the corporation. The second was to visit the town of Turenne, capped by one of the many castles dotting the French landscape. Both were beautiful. By that time, morning had become late afternoon and it was too late to continue on to Bordeaux, so we booked a room at a rural hotel just outside of Turenne to spend the night. It was so quiet there that I slept soundly throughout the night without the use of any kind of soothing background noise or ear plugs for the first time in years.

The following morning we abandoned our plan to go to San Sebastian and with it Bordeaux and instead headed to Ax-les-Thermes on a more direct route home. A French Pyrenees’ Niagara Falls (but without the falls or the English), it is named for its thermal springs but stained by its casino. We enjoyed dinner at a French restaurant that served Spanish-style tapas. We missed the food in Spain.

We spent the final day driving all the way home. Neither the original destination nor the subsequent one became places that we even visited, but isn’t the point of a road trip to see places along the way, to create the illusion of control, and to fantasize about freedom?

White Flamingos

As we were passing through the salt lakes of Santa Pola, returning home from a long weekend beach getaway cut short by egocentricity and opportunism and lack of respect for that which is different, I turned to look out the window of the passenger’s seat to about a dozen white flamingos in turquoise water tickled by a gentle breeze. They had not been there on our drive down and had our weekend not been cut short and we hadn’t taken the same road back, I would have missed them altogether.

It’s moments like these when I appreciate where my differences have taken me, bits of beauty engulfed in enduring pain, which seems to become both duller and deeper as time wears on. The illusion of the Garden of Eden masks the harsh realities of the surrounding sights- sharp, arid peaks and a sea blazing under the summer sun, the still threat of an earthquake or a tsunami below. Where a single spark could set off kilometers of furious fires, a quake could bring it all down, a tidal wave could wash it all away.

Lately I have wanted the world to burn, collapse, and be rinsed of us, this plague christened humanity, an absurd aberration that has evolved a consciousness through which to endlessly suffer the knowledge that we will never achieve the solutions that we ourselves have created for our own existential crisis, and instead are damned to watch history on repeat through increasingly luminous lenses. From our perches near the bottom of this beautiful hell scape, we are privy to more knowledge than we have ever been, but there is little we can do with it. The dynamic is the same as always.

As we were nearing home, and I had been contemplating leaving the Garden of Eden forever, a Spanish radio broadcaster briefly reported on the repeal of Roe vs. Wade. In a judicial coup decades in the making, the erosion of a century of societal advancement is rapidly underway. While our collective cheek was turned the other way, the devil was busy making deals. Which way will it face going forward?

Once those white flamingos gorge on enough shrimp and other crustaceans, they will turn pink and resemble the gaudy plastic imitations that dot the yards of mindless consumers who have been fueled and fooled by consumeristic narratives of unnatural production and consumption. While looking down to jam their support poles in the degraded soil at their feet and wondering what they could buy next, those above them are planning what to sell to them next so they can continue to line their pockets with their time. Now that their pockets are stuffed and time is running out, it’s the moment for the next move. What will it be?

Neither home nor abroad

On the evening of the (most recent) Russian invasion of Ukraine, I unwittingly enjoyed a sour Russian beer, which I had bought earlier in the day from a Catalan craft beer shop in the heart of Barcelona. Although I couldn’t read most of the label, I deduced it was made with pomegranate and guava, as per the picture on the can. Neither fruit is native to Russia.

In the days since, I have read a lot of reactions regarding the invasion on social media. Some balanced, others not so much, a particularly unbalanced one has stood out to me. In a LinkedIn post, a user declared he was removing all first-degree Russian connections from his account, as if the actions of an autocratic ruler are somehow directly related to ordinary citizens- and the best way forward is to cut off communication with them. As if it couldn’t have happened to any of us had we been born and raised there and not where we were. As if humans are fundamentally different depending on where we are from. I promptly removed him as a connection (just kidding).

As I mentioned in my post “Madrid”, my present reality is one “in which foreign lands have all but ceased to exist, (and) that awesome exhilaration of the past (while traveling) has been replaced by something more subtle and difficult to describe.” In an attempt to describe it anyway, it stems from having escaped “the prison of youth.”[1] While my “divide” began to come into sight sometime in my early 30s, I am still in the process of crossing it, as it appears to be vaster than once imagined. My point is that the “foreign”, like the “other”, is relative and depends on one’s perspective. When I was younger and most of the world was still unfamiliar, most of it seemed foreign to me, but now that I am older and I can see the familiar in the unfamiliar and more similarities than differences among us, I have lost the concept of foreign. Of other. A connection is a connection, independent of nationality. A nation is a shared social construct. People are not. People are real.

This is not to negate culture, which is also independent of nation. Culture, like genotype, shapes people. But culture is meant to be communicated. With everyone around, which today, means everyone in the world. Like it or not, we no longer roam the planet in small bands of a few dozen, but we roam society as individuals in nations that are affected by every other nation on Earth. In our highly globalized landscape, the actions of one inevitably affect the others, as has been demonstrated by the global pandemic and the start of yet another war with far-reaching consequences. The answer is not to remove. It is to reach. To communicate compassion, love, and kindness. And while some people are not capable of this, most people are.

Neither the pomegranate nor the guava are native to Russia. And I am not native to Barcelona. But the fruits added an incredible flavor to a beverage that is enjoyed around the world, and I enjoyed it that evening, neither home nor abroad. Imagine a world in which there is so little communication and cooperation that nothing can be enjoyed. Then imagine that there is no world at all.

[1] See “Sonnet.”

Segovia

In an era of excess digital documentation, it is difficult to discern the difference between memories and files. Mostly photographic, their electronic existences trick our minds into believing that we would have otherwise remembered the day, the moment, the details. Perhaps so. But it is already too late to know.

I may have visited Segovia 20 years ago and in the absence of digital documentation, I would have to further investigate if I really wanted to know. It would have been on a college trip through Spain- the same one from which I have almost no memory of Granada. When I (re?visited) two months ago, I asked a former classmate if she remembered if we had gone there during that time. While she did remember visiting (the expansive Roman aqueduct should be memorable), she didn’t know if it was during that trip or a separate one she took later in the semester.

Writing is a good way to preserve memories as the brain, like the computer, has only so much space available at any given time. I would have already forgotten many of the details of my most recent trip to Granada had I not just re-read my blog post from the time before a global pandemic and several extreme weather events swept away our senses of stability and control for the rest of our lives. For the rest of our lives. Humans have the uncanny ability to never learn from history so should our species survive for a while longer, I am confident that future generations will continue to make the same stupid mistakes we have.

Since two months have passed since my (most recent?) trip to Segovia, I just looked through photos taken from that time to refresh my “memory”, but it turns out that I remember more than I thought I did. Photographic documentation can also be used as a crutch.

We stayed at Hotel San Antonio El Real, a re-purposed monastery. While pleasing from an architectural and historical perspective, the small rooms and paper-thin walls reminded me of an uncomfortable past that extended until only about a Martha (100 years) ago. Upon dropping off our bags and having lunch at the restaurant in the cloister, we made our way along the old Roman aqueduct to the historical city center. The old Jewish quarter, which has essentially been devoid of Semites for the past five Marthas, was particularly quiet. Assimilate or disintegrate was the rule of the day. Somehow the Romans were a little more tolerant. Perhaps this tolerance was why their empire lasted so long and they had the mental space for great inventions, such as the aqueduct.

Continuing along until the Alcázar de Segovia, we looped back, stopping at a local bar for beers and their corresponding tapas before going for dinner at Restaurante Pasapán, a recommendation overheard from a group of locals’ conversations at the bar. While we weren’t exceptionally hungry given the tapas served with our beers, we nonetheless enjoyed a delicious meal of “new Spanish” cuisine thanks to our ability to eavesdrop on locals.

As we traced our way back to the hotel along the remarkably even stones of the aqueduct, we paused to appreciate the unevenness of the base of one arch, which reminded me of my bottom row of teeth. I probably would have forgotten this particular detail had it not been the last photo I took in Segovia.

The East Coast (of Spain)

From Calella de Palafrugell to Almeria, the summer stretched through a series of stops dotting much of the Spanish Mediterranean. I’d meant to write two separate posts, one for the Costa Brava and the other for the Costa Blanca (both re-visited), but the days blended into each other and before I knew it, fall was upon us.

Recently I’ve reflected on how I miss the long summer days of childhood, and long days in general, when time was more manageable and there seemed to be enough of it to encompass everything. When it was the right fit. When everything felt big, when now it feels vast. When I saw more good than anything else in my own species.

The unhealthy human relationship with each other and the rest of the natural world, increasingly mediated by machines, was driving me to the edge of my own reality until I took a step back. The psychological pressure from the expectation to be constantly connected in a way that demands immediate response was too much.

Following the “lockdown” and nearly a half year of succumbing to this relentless expectation, I was able to get away for a few days to the Costa Brava. Stopping in Calella de Palafrugell for a leisurely lunch on our way back to Begur, we enjoyed the turquoise views of the magnificent Catalonian coastline. The color suited the mood of the previous six months.

Once someone experiences a lockdown as absolute as the one experienced in Spain from March to May, the threat of future lockdowns looms large. Therefore, just two weeks after returning from our long weekend getaway we fled, two weeks early, to the Costa Blanca, where we worked remotely from Torrevieja until the beginning of vacation in August. The change of scenery with breathtaking views and access to and stories about the cove where you grew up propelled me forward.

Home was “el campo”. The luxury of being able to escape cities for the greater part of the month did not pass unperceived, but my faulty human nature made it hard for me to stay in the moment, and I dreaded my yet uncertain return to one. Sounds of species other than the human hummed in the background, and my mind was able to disconnect for the first time in months. “El campo” provided the base for day hikes along the Chicamo River of Murcia and the Nerpio River of Albacete, an afternoon at La Marina beach and another at the salt mines of Alicante, an overnight trip to El Perelló in Valencia to visit friends, and a day trip to Almeria to have lunch with a coworker and his partner.

Most of the details from these days will either be stored in my memory or lost to time, save for the ones that appear in pictures, provided the electrical grid remains reliable. Perhaps the most stunning of them went uncaptured by nothing more than our eyes, when we were snorkeling in the Cala Corralete in the Cabo de Gata-Nijar Natural Park in Almeria. Transparent water covered coral and seagrass and hundreds of different types of fish and other sea creatures in this seemingly unscathed and wild aquatic wonderland. I had never seen anything like it.

Now that it is nearly fall and pollution levels are back to the old “normal” and political nonsense persists, and I am reminded of the inherently destructive nature of humans, I have reached a point where I no longer have much hope for our species. There seem to be too few good ones among us to effect the changes we need to move forward in harmony with nature.

Though I do hope that our extraordinary earth survives us.

I’m almost certain that it will.

Barcelona ("locked down")

The COVID-19 pandemic has probably affected every single person on Earth, however directly or indirectly, as well as all other forms of life. Our pets, or the non-human species closest to us, have perhaps felt the most immediate effects of the crisis, depending on whether or not they have been able to spend more time with us- and whether or not they like it. Many of our canine companions have been in their glory, relishing every extra moment spent with their beloved humans, while many of our feline friends have surely felt slight pangs of irritation for having to do the same. Still more have suffered great loss as the virus has swiftly swept across the world, leaving a tragic wake in trail.

In many places, wild animals have taken to the streets in the absence of Homo sapiens. Wild boars have been prevalent in much of Spain, which fortunately are far less terrifying than the ‘’pigoons’’ of Margaret Atwood’s Flood Trilogy. The air has been noticeably cleaner, too.

With the hum of humanity at a minimum for the first time in years, previously silenced sounds from the rest of the planet can now be heard- and I hope they are heeded. For too long we’ve tried to ignore nature by busying ourselves with what we coin “progress”, while choking within the confines of an increasingly progressive and closed society. We seek to escape through the screens of programmed reality, the foundations of which were laid by people no longer able to control their outcome.

For the first time in my life, I had found a job for which I would have had to travel a lot and by the time the “lockdown” started, I had already been to Bologna and Paris. Set to go to Grenoble, the conference was cancelled the week before and since then, I have already foregone Brussels and Tampere. Fiuggi is off the table, too. But the work continues to get done.

We should have seen this coming- we saw this coming- but those of us who could have done something about it chose not to. Whether it was due to ignorance or denial or something more sinister, our short game approach to life will cost us dearly, though of course those who are paying the highest price for it are the ones who are at the mercy of the masters, who are merciless. In time we will discover how to move forward from here, and whether or not anything we’ve learned from this experience will lead to positive change.

I like to think it will.

Granada

I could say I’d been to Granada, but my only memory from my previous trip to The City of the Pomegranate was a vague one of dinner at a fondue restaurant. To have managed to forget the rolling hills, the snow-capped mountains, and La Alhambra was no small feat, and I am unsure of whether it was swept up at the tail end of a two-week college tour of Spain, lost sight of over the years, or somehow entirely missed altogether. Trauma has a way of affecting our vision, whether it be in the moment or in hindsight, and our minds have a way of shielding us from the past.

It would take another seven years for me to be driven from my thin garrison of disguise, and then another eleven to return to the fortress on the hill, which I did not recognize in spite of its size and grandeur. I saw it as though I had never seen it before, as I did the hilly and winding city set against the backdrop of a landscape that I knew I did not have enough life to fully appreciate. I had a hard time walking away.

In spite of the gray skies, my view had never been brighter. Alone, I wandered the city streets more completely than I did all those years ago. Over the course of my first afternoon there, I had a late lunch at Papas Elvira, a Middle Eastern fast food joint, only accompanied by the mother and children who, after school, were helping her with work, followed by my first cup of pour-over coffee in Spain, as I inadvertently took an indirect loop around the cathedral. Later I met you for drinks and their accompanying tapas, as we would do every day we were there. The next day, following a menu del día, I made my way up to Carmen de los Mártires, a beautiful garden with views of the city below. I was free to go my own way.

On our last afternoon there, we took in views together, stopping for lunch at Palacio Andalúz Restaurante Almona before dropping by Coffee Corner Sur for my second time. On a whim, we purchased tickets for a live flamenco performance and while we waited for it to begin, we enjoyed glasses of wine in the window of a bar next to the stream that cuts through Albaicín. After the performance came to a close, we went out for the night. Our final stop was a party that my former disguise did not match, however transparent it may have been.

Now I can say I’ve been to Granada, and I have many vivid memories of The City of the Pomegranate. However, memories of the fruit for which it is eponymous remain elusive. What one doesn’t look for one doesn’t find, even when it is everywhere.

Valencia

Some of my earliest memories abroad are from Valencia. It was the first time I lived in a city, the first time I found myself in an environment in which I could barely communicate with others, and the first time I didn’t enjoy the summer in spite of an opportunity that, a few years later, could have been a lot of fun. It was from the time before.

From coloring books and Crash Bandicoot to conversations about relationships and a solitary swim on a cloudy afternoon, the nearly two-decade divide has brought me closer to myself. Some things remain the same, such as my love of sepia and regularly being mistaken for someone much younger, but other things, such as my general regard for humanity and idealistic youth, have gone the way of the past. I am neither hopeful nor hopeless, though I can no longer take comfort in that the adults, with everyone’s best interest at heart, will save us from ourselves.

Some of the people from these early memories abroad now only exist in our abilities to hold them in our minds, and I often find myself thinking of them, though I can’t be sure why. A memory of a woman standing in a kitchen the day we took a bus up to Paris to see the final match of the Champion’s League, recollections of a father’s affect and the effect it had on both his presence and those of the people around him, the sight of a grandmother’s smile. And some of the people are still there, and our memories overlap before they diverge again. We will always stray from each other.

But we are able to stray from each other because we come together, and if we keep coming together for the right reasons, maybe future generations will also have the opportunity to experience the world, to form memories, and to discover what it is like to be human.

Most people may not have everyone’s best interest at heart, but some people do, and that is enough to hope.

Madrid

My first experience with Madrid was from the window of an airplane at half the age I am now. Eyes fixed on the small, arid, mountains that I wouldn’t reach for another two years, I was struck by the awesome exhilaration of an early-life encounter abroad, one that becomes impossible to replicate as the years wear on. I was in a foreign land.

In a present in which foreign lands have all but ceased to exist and most material reminders of these earlier visits have been thrown away, whether by donation or sale, that awesome exhilaration of the past has been replaced by something more subtle and difficult to describe. Even two years on from this initial encounter I was still in awe of this land that only continues to expand for me, when I spent two days as part of a college tour group, passing by and through landmarks such as the Plaza del Sol, the Museo del Prado, and the Valle de los Caídos.

“La puta capital” or “the fucking capital”, as chanted by a little girl at the final match of the Champion’s League between Madrid and Valencia in 2000 in Paris, didn’t seem so bad to me even though I, too, was a Valencia fan. But it also wasn’t a city to which I had planned to return without good reason- similar to how I had felt about Paris- so it wasn’t until I was invited to a reunion of friends that I decided to go back.

From Huertas to Chueca to La Latina, I was able to walk more freely than I did all those years ago. The first day we enjoyed a bowl of “migas” with Murcian vermouth on tap from stands at the Mercado de San Ildefonso before moving on to the largest plates of “free” food I have ever seen with orders of draft beer at El Tigre. Unable to finish even half of them, we ended up sharing the rest with a group of young men standing next to us. Later that evening, we savored a delicious dinner at the Taberna del Capitan Alatriste before making our way back to Chueca for a night out.

The following day we went to the Parque del Capricho for the reunion of friends. Starting out with a walk through the park, we then planted ourselves at a large table at the restaurant for several long hours of eating and drinking, Spanish style. Restless and generally bored by the conversation, I focused my attention on the three-year-old child of one couple and the six-month old baby of another. If, as Pablo Picasso said, “everything you can imagine is real,” then the worlds of children are much larger than ours, and I was wistfully reminded of a time when mine was larger than most, and I never wanted to grow up. Yet there I was, against my will, grown up.

The last day we went for a walk through the Parque de El Retiro, which is arguably nicer than Central Park in New York City, before stopping for glasses of the best vermouth I have tasted at the Taberna Angel Sierra. Since our train back to Barcelona didn’t depart until 7:30 that evening, we then had a late lunch followed by dessert with coffee before boarding. By the time the train departed, we were exhausted, and grateful for our discounted preferential seats and the peaceful train car that accompanied them. As we sped through the Spanish countryside at 300 km per hour and I caught glimpses of rural villages that most people never visit, I wondered if, going forward, it’s time to slow down and spend more time in such places and less time in the noisy, sprawling, cities from which I want more and more to retreat.

Costa Blanca

From Barcelona to Benidorm via Alicante, Benidorm to La Marina via Orihuela, and Orihuela back to Barcelona via Valencia, our route looped through a couple of overlooked, yet beautiful, cities on the eastern coast of Spain.

The Low Festival took us to Benidorm which, contrary to how it sounds, is not a city-state, but in fact a coastal city in the province of Alicante. While the tourism industry has been actively destroying its stunning coastline for the past half-century, which is now fragmented by looming, apocalyptic-looking skyscrapers and littered with shorter, run of the mill businesses, its natural beauty is not at all inconspicuous. We stayed at a hotel with the word “fiesta” in its name, which set my expectations for the accommodation so low that in spite of the reality that our room for three was indeed a room for two with an extra bed, further constricting an already tight space, I had to sleep with earplugs night and day, and the place was teeming with severely sunburnt Brits who swarmed the basement breakfast buffet with a zealotry only paralleled by the Brexit (tempting, but low in nutritional value), I was, overall, satisfied with my stay, though it did help that our bedtime hours were mostly constrained to between 4 a.m. and 9 a.m. and, by day three, we were in zombie-like states.

The festival itself was enjoyable. Attracting an older crowd, it was lower key than most. I developed a particular affinity for the Spanish musician Zahara’s songs. It was also nice to be able to spend the days at the beach, even if it meant that the concerts ran a little too late for my taste. And in spite of the tourist traps, we managed to find a few good restaurants during our time there. My favorite was Freiduria Los Peces, which served up some of the best fried seafood I’ve had.

Following the festival, we made our way further south again, this time past Alicante, to Orihuela. Distinct from the Orihuela of my imagination, the actual city of Orihuela is a beautiful small city, dotted with history. In contrast to where we stayed in Benidorm, we had space and quiet, other than the deafening sound of the afternoon cicada, which provided the perfect level of white noise for naps. As we caught up on sleep, enjoyed homemade meals, and went for dips in the pool, the days disappeared almost indiscernibly until the week came to a close.

The morning before we left, we drove out to La Marina, an uncrowded beach near Torrevieja, for a picnic and a swim. The surrounding area and even the beach itself reminded me of Assateague, if only for the empty land and eroding coastline. The water was much warmer, bluer, and calmer though, and the distance between shorelines much shorter. It’s hard to believe that the image comparisons are from memories over 20 years ago and that in such a small expanse of time, so much has changed.

On our way back to Barcelona, we stopped to spend the night at a friend’s place in Valencia. I hadn’t seen him in almost a decade, and it was great to catch up. Reliving memories of the past, many of which I’d nearly forgotten, it was interesting to learn who remembered what- and why. Over dinner at La Tasqueta del Mercat, a new Spanish restaurant that reminded me at once of new American restaurants in both New York and Baltimore, I realized just how much our separate paths are merging and blending in the infinite stretches of time. A lifetime later, I was there.

Costa Brava

Based in Begur for its proximity to beautiful beaches, we managed to evade high season bitches by visiting one week prior to the start of summer. In an area with four different types of sand, the green jagged coastline and teal water make it one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

Located near the medieval towns of Ullastret, Peratallada, and Pals, our first afternoon was spent exploring each one. While the streets of Ullastret were mostly empty, save for a couple of lounging cats, both Peratallada and Pals were livelier. Peratallada, filled with artisan shops and restaurants, offered up delicious magdalenas from the Cal Tuset Magdaleneria, which we would have for breakfast the following morning, and Pals, lined with small street fairs, led us to buy a bottle of craft beer from Minera and hunks of sobrasada and cheese from De Menorca Alimentación Artesanal, which we would have for dinner the following evening.

Later that day we took a walk up to Begur Castle, which more accurately could be described as Begur Castle Ruins, from which there were breathtaking panoramic views of the region. That night we went out to dinner at [redacted], a terrible tourist trap that served up low-quality fare and Cigyones, a delightfully refreshing local rosé, and the highlight of the meal. From there we made our way to a bustling bar, and a night out on the town.

In the morning we ambled along a path through the forest to Sa Punta, where we went for a swim in the still chilly waters of the Mediterranean before continuing on to El Recer de la Mar where, contrary to the night before, we had a wonderfully prepared meal of local fare with a Thai twist. From there we walked back to our lodging along more forest paths and settled in for an evening of Women’s World Cup matches and artisanal snacks.

The weekend came to a close and that Monday we briefly stopped by Platja Fonda and less briefly had a delicious lunch of rice and lobster before heading back to the city. Driving in the opposite direction of most of the traffic, we made good time.

Lisbon

Closer to home but further from my recognition, Lisbon looked very different than it did in my memory of my first visit over 17 years ago. While the city and the people hadn’t changed so much as my perception, I also had managed to escape the binding institutions I would have been better off without had I not met you.

A short flight away since home is no longer demarcated by geography or politics, the blue and green aerial views were reflected in the city’s numerous parks and green spaces. A favorite was Parque Eduardo VII, where I went for a couple of runs. Another was Jardim do Torel, which I later re-discovered with you before my “second dream” came true over a meal of traditional fare and one of the best conversations I’d had in years.

A soundless memory from a joyless past was replaced by both professional and amateur fado performers. Two of the amateur participants were an older couple seated next to us, and with whom we had struck up conversation during dinner. The show went on until late in the evening and was underscored by wistful notes that we could hear but neither understand nor feel, though I suppose that mutual understanding and feeling are rare, regardless of linguistic and cultural divides.

A panoramic view of the city followed by several solitary strolls took me through streets that ended in plazas and a sunlit cathedral, though I felt like I was just going through the motions. It wasn’t until a Friday afternoon walk with you that I felt like I really saw the city in its vibrant abandon. Wondering about the lives of the people who had lived in what once would have been lively accommodations, we later took a streetcar to colorfully occupied streets and a view of the castle against the backdrop of a blue and pink sky.

With cleaner air, cleaner streets, and more space to breathe than in Barcelona, we couldn’t help but speculate if it were somewhere we’d want to live in the near future. From an unappreciated visit blighted by circumstance nearly two decades ago to this most recent experience, I came to know myself.

France and Switzerland

France was a point of transit, a necessary passage en route to Switzerland, and Paris was an afterthought. Zurich and Geneva were spokes; Gruyeres was the hub. The main method of transportation was the train and, in a way, it was also the destination.

The afterthought came first. Arriving at Gare de Lyon, I took the long route to my AirBnb, following the rays of the late afternoon sun. Once settled, my hostess and I went for dinner at her local favorite, where she recounted her life story over a shared bottle of wine that I was too tired to finish. Later that evening I <enjoyed> my first shower in weeks before drifting off into two days of touring.

Following a breakfast of pain au chocolat and pain Suisse from Ernest & Valentine, which was conveniently located right down the street from where I was staying, I made my way to the Sacré Coeur, from which the entire gray city was revealed. From there I stopped by Le Pantruche for a lunch of rabbit ravioli before heading to the Arc de Triomf and the Eiffel Tower, after which I recharged with a cup of hot chocolate before continuing on to UNESCO. By that time the slow drizzle of the day had turned into a steady rain and exhausted, I returned home by Uber.

Later that evening I happened upon Au Bascou after a failed attempt to find another restaurant in the dark, dripping, streets and luckily so, because it was one of the best meals I’ve had. Offering up French fare with a Basque twist, I ended up treating myself to a full course meal. Starting out with the escargots with jamón, I then continued with the duck with polenta and mushrooms before finally finishing with a French cheese with cherry jam for dessert. Washing it all down with a glass of red wine, everything was delicious.

Day two took me across La Seine to Notre-Dame Cathedral and onto, into, and around Musée d’Orsay, where I nearly missed a Picasso exhibit. From there I descended into Les Catacombes. Gasping at the sight of seemingly endless tunnels of human remains that were in no way roped off from the visiting public, I doubted that such a display would be permitted in the United States. Taking the metro back, it struck me as even more uncomfortable than that of New York, and it seemed to take forever to arrive at my stop. I felt grateful to have been able to complete most of my tour by foot.

Dropping by a brasserie, I had a pint of beer and a snack while I looked up a place to eat. Opting for Le Ruisseau – Burger Joint, I had the best burger I’ve had outside of the U.S., and the cheddar cheese with which I chose to have it topped was far better than any I‘ve had in the U.S. Both the staff and a regular customer were happy to hear my opinion, although of course it was of no consequence overall, as it was already as popular as any place could get.

The following morning, I cut it close catching my train to Zurich, and I almost wished I could spend one more day in a city I hadn’t planned to visit in the first place. I would find Zurich looked very different than it had in my imagination, and the area in which I spent the night could best be characterized as a dystopic Baltimore neighborhood. In this dystopia I discovered Più, a popular Italian restaurant in which I was fortunate enough to snag a single seat at the bar. Chatting with the person to my left, I savored what was perhaps the best bowl of pasta I’ve had before calling it a night.

Going out for breakfast before taking a quick walking tour of the city on my way back to the train station, I was in Gruyeres and the start of a snowstorm before I knew it. Stopping for lunch at La Maison du Gruyère, it had picked up by the time I had finished. Fortunately, a local woman who I ran into at the post office offered to give me a ride to town. The snowfall itself had been long anticipated; the locals were looking forward to ski season. One of her daughters then informed me that there were a lot of tourists in the area. I admitted to being one of them.

Walking into the village itself was like walking into one of the holiday snow globes I always fantasized about entering as a child. The street was nearly empty, save for a few other tourists and a madman from the train who, upon spotting me, bounded down from his second-floor window and proceeded to follow me, periodically shouting out “I fucking love you, baby.” However, I circled back with a group, and he soon became distracted by throwing himself around in the snow, creating a small spectacle in the otherwise serene sphere. Once he had twirled himself out of sight, I checked into the local hotel.

That evening I had a beer across the street from the hotel in one of the only open restaurants. What would become a group of seven locals quietly drank at a table next to mine, a gathering that would have been at least twice the volume in any other country. The snow continued to fall, and had a muting effect. It was all very otherworldly and unaccustomed to such isolation, I couldn’t help but feel slightly uneasy.

Awaking early the next morning, I was the first to arrive at the hotel’s small continental breakfast buffet, and had already toured the castle in its sunlit splendor by the time the town fully awoke from its snow-induced slumber. Upon checking out, I made one final stop at the chocolaterie for a gift and a piece of chocolate covered meringue, which I promptly popped into my mouth, on my way to the train station and to Geneva. Spotting a fox along the way, the Swiss countryside was just how I had imagined it would be.

Upon checking into a hotel near the train station in Geneva, I looped out to see the United Nations offices there, taking in the lake and a park on the way. I later had dinner at Chez ma cousine, a casual joint that offers up Swiss chicken, traditional potatoes, and side salads reminiscent of the various Queens locales I used to frequent, if only in part because they also play music in Spanish, which I love.

Disappearing behind the Pyrenees, the rain and snow of France and Switzerland were left behind for the dryer climate and sunnier skies of Catalonia. Hurtling through darkness, the last leg of my week-long trip carried me back to Barcelona, or the city in which all those years ago I never felt comfortable, I now feel at home. 

Barcelona

Thirteen is often thought to be an unlucky number but in my case, it is considered to be the opposite of that. While we quickly assume that the opposite of unlucky is lucky, I can’t say I’ve had an abundance of luck in terms of that which is most important to me, so now that 13 years have passed since I last lived here and I find myself as alone as I ever was- or maybe even more from the hardening caused by the experiences in between- and left without the eagerness and desires that propelled me through my youth, my path forward is one that is not well charted.

Yet the experiences are all I have, and what I have to show for them is mostly in my understanding of the world in which we live, which at once becomes both deeper and nonexistent the older I become. Having escaped from “the prison of youth,” I’m not convinced that taking the next step is worth the suffering inherent to sentient beings- or if living with these truths will even be bearable.

By succumbing to our own desires and insecurities, we either naively or selfishly create seemingly endless suffering to fill existential voids within ourselves, whether or not we admit it. We then congratulate ourselves for doing so, as if by fulfilling our evolutionary “purpose” we are doing the “Godly” thing- and go on to judge people who do not. We marginalize evolutionary outliers, which only leads to more suffering, seeming to forget that it was us who created these outliers in the first place. We confuse the “uncommon” with the “unnatural,” as if we don’t understand our own languages. We are unnecessarily cruel.

We create needs that would not exist had we ourselves not created them to give our lives purpose, and perhaps as a sort of insurance should we live long enough to become helpless in our inevitable decay. The decay is both gradual and swift, for our time here is short, but the years seem long in isolation, so whether or not we make it there depends on our perceived purposes, and whether or not we deem these important enough to go on.

These purposes- these experiences- involve too much suffering to tolerate outside of a shared construct with a close conspecific, but not all of us are lucky enough to find this person or even if we do, to be able to share our lives with them, especially if society has set us at a disadvantage from the start. Further, if we try too hard, or are too kind, or are too giving, we are ridiculed, not taken seriously, and not respected. People eventually sling so much shit on us that we begin to mistake ourselves for pieces of shit, even though it is the other way around.

Though does it matter that it is the other way around?

What matters is how the world makes us feel, and whether or not being a conscious part of it seems worth it.

Austria, Slovakia, and The Czech Republic

Breaking borders, shifting alliances. But if borders are only political to begin with, is anything ever really broken? One could suppose that depends on perspective.

It had been eight years since I last had been on the continent. Continents shift too, albeit more slowly. It was unplanned, insofar as I could see, though according to my perspective, everything is predetermined, at least to the extent that the present is comprised solely of reactions that already have been determined by past events and carry forward to a future that is contingent on a present we can’t control. Therefore, I no longer believe in “free will,” because no one thing is fully independent of anything else, but this is not to say there isn’t will. There is will.

The occasion lasted for the better part of the summer. Based in Vienna, the days were characterized by a considerable degree of inertia, which is an accomplishment in itself in a world that is continually changing. The sluggishness matched the season, particularly as the days became warmer. In “The City of Pools,” as I would call it if I were ever in a position to coin a quoted phrase under its name on a roadside sign, the Laaerbergbad provided reprieve from this inertia, and came to be a constant in my life. Complete with diving boards, a wave pool, and a mushroom, as well as a large park, a cafe, and various food vendors, going there was a vacation in its own right. Immaculately maintained, as is nearly everything in this pristine country, it serves as a reminder of what we can accomplish together.

Further to the East, I was welcomed as a guest in Turčianske Teplice, where I would spend five nights with a family that lives like more should. With a home adjacent to a garden filled with red currants and gooseberries, and watched over by gnomes, I never had seen such fresh abundance. On a day trip to Banská Štiavnica, the morning was spent at a “tajchy,” or one of the remaining manmade lakes constructed for a historical mine, and now used for recreation, and the afternoon at an outdoor museum dedicated to the memory of those mines, followed by pizza and “kofola,” or Slovak cola, and a stroll around the city center. On the way back to Turčianske Teplice, a visit was made to the Hronsek Wooden Church. Upon unlocking the doors of the entrance and entering, the stairs collapsed under the weight of the elderly attendant; fortunately, she was a sturdy woman and unharmed, made her way into the church all the same, giving a tour. A final stop was then made in Banská Bystrica, where a visit was paid to Vilo’s place.

Once back in “The City of Pools,” a spontaneous day trip was taken to Brno. Following the advice of an Internet acquaintance, it was begun with a delicious lunch at U Caipla before an afternoon of exploration. A few days later I finally made it to the Grüner See, which was breathtaking. Emerald in color and true to its name, it was the most beautiful lake I have seen. Sometimes I wonder if the world’s beauty merely serves as a mask to hide its horrible nature and distracted by the former, we have evolved to overlook the latter. Or is it vice versa?

Over the course of my last two weeks in Vienna, I reconnected with an old friend, as well as made a new one. While the old one is still young, and the new one is already old, and both have lived vastly different lives, we all had something in common. I also made a couple of furry friends along the way, one of whom convinced me to reconsider cats. My last weekend was spent along the Danube just outside of the city. During this time, I sampled the best grapes I have tasted, enjoyed one of the best meals I have had, and learned something new about myself. Though fall was still awhile away, I found myself changing anyway. People say people don’t change but oh, we do.

And we don’t take as long as continents.

Nicaragua

I thought it was Nicaragua, but when I finally awoke in the late morning, I was no longer sure- it’s hard to know when you’ve never been.

Getting out of the car, I spotted a colorful village on a hilltop not too far in the distance and wanted to take a picture of it with my phone, only to realize I had left it charging at home. Anyway, it was too risky to take out, so I turned and ran over to the restaurant you were entering up a ramp, cutting through a slope of hedges, and meeting you halfway. You didn’t recognize me at first- I had recently had my hair cut and dyed, and didn’t look like the version of myself with which you were familiar in life.

You had let him walk ahead, which you often did, even though we all know you were always the one to lead. Entering together, we were approached by a woman whose teenage son had also had his hair cut and dyed, and had frosted tips.

With a start I became conscious, the only real separation between our existences. We never did get to have dinner in that unknown place and time. If we could, I’d want our consciousness’s to cross paths again tonight. You might suggest Vincentown Diner. It was one of your favorites.

And I never did get around to taking any pictures last night, but the image of that colorful hilltop village is still ablaze in my mind. I wonder if you saw it, too.