One of the prize-winning Patios in Córdoba
This is my final week in Spain, so this week I will offer reflections on my experience here.
What has my creative process been like here in Spain?
Stalled in Mojácar, more enthused by translation than the production of new
poems. Until I arrived in Granada and I found my way back to poetry through the
landscape of mountains that seem almost sacred in their distance snow-capped
grandeur. And flamenco, of course. And the enduring presence of Lorca. Now I’m in touch with my duende—perhaps a kind of animus. I've written several poems in the style of Lorca and tried a few Oulipean experiments using his poems as a base. My writing of
aphorisms has returned (a project I began several years ago and work on
intermittently). All are tied to a particular place: Thus, I am writing
Andalusian aphorisms now. In the course of my readings I have yet to encounter
a woman’s aphorisms, yet women can be as pithy as men.This group of aphorisms, tentatively entitled “Andalusian
Wind,” contains some found aphorisms. Here is one I encountered in the ladies’
WC in Córdoba bus station:
What
hurts most
in
life is that
which
you have never ventured to live.
And another on the walls in Sacromonte in Granada: BEAUTY IS
YOUR HEAD, which sounds better in Spanish: LA BELLEZA ES TU CABEZA.
In Granada, I felt myself as a poet; in Córdoba, a Jew. In
the ancient synagogue (only one of three left in all of Spain!), I stood inside
this small square shrine with Sophie, a young woman from Canada, and I
deciphered the fragmentary inscriptions for her. The most spiritual moment of
my journey: I sang for her the section of the psalm we sing during the Days of
Awe (and the month leading up to it): “Achat sha’alti” (One thing I ask, that I
may dwell in the House of the Lord all the days of my life . . . .” ) It was my
way to bond with all the Jewish ghosts who had and had not been able to pray
there. And then the groups of tourists and school children descended upon us and
drowned out the echoing hush. Twice I went to the Salon de té, run by a gentle Moroccan
man, who suggested I drink a tea of lotus, jasmine, and rose—the closest I have
ever come to drinking the essence of flowers. And finally, I had my first
Turkish bath and massage. (There were days like this that felt like I was living poetry and didn't need to write any.)
In Córdoba, also, I managed to see the last evening of the
annual Festival of the Patios. Imagine houses with inner courtyard and patios,
the owners giving themselves over to creating a space of colorful spring
flowers (a lot of geraniums, from what I could tell) and then opening up these
patios to the public for several weeks each May. (There are prizes given to the
1st, 2nd, and 3rd Place Winners.) A culture
given over to beauty and repose in tea salons and flamenco. Yes, there is a Plaza
de Toros (bullring, and I keep managing to arrive too early or too late to a city to see any bullfight) and yes, most people do have to work. I know this is
an extremely romantic view of things, but in these two cities—Granada and
Córdoba—I have seen an appetite for
joy, for drinking and eating with friends rivaled only by my visits to
Italy. I no longer felt the loneliness of cactus but a solidarity with everyone
and in this moist ground, of fountains and rivers, I could find poetry once
more.
Coda: Now here’s a strange truth I must confess. In the first 10 days I
spent in Mojácar, I discovered, when just checking back in my notebook, that I
had written 19 poems—not the first time my feeling about writing did not jibe
with reality. They may all be una mierda (such pleasure in
cursing in a foreign tongue!), but they belie my belief that I had written
nothing out of the desert to which I am returning. In the desert, too, there
are also songs. Exile. The desert. Wandering. Isn’t that the history and fate
of my people after all?