A windy day walk on my own, humming softly under my breath. The gusts blow my voice away and make it sound like it is coming from somewhere else, mixing with the percussion of the pampas grass which hisses like wire brushes on a drum. The clouds layered over the sun give the river a dull chrome sheen. Suddenly the sound of the opening song from The Lion King blasts across the water’s surface from the direction of the Triana bridge. “The Circle of Life”, except it’s in Spanish. As the sound grows stronger I see that it is coming from a little sail boat with a Jolly Roger flag flapping at the top of the mast, and a man in full pirate get-up at the rudder. “There’s a pirate ship!” some tourist yells behind me. Yes, obviously. But I find myself enjoying the familiar sound of English above the usual staccato chatter of Spanish background noise. “El ciclo sin fin” fades out of earshot and the pampas grass swishes in my ears again, along with the soft company of a quiet little song I hum into the breeze.
*
A spiderweb glistens in the sun and looks like diamonds strung on a fishing line. The sun sinking beyond the hills looks like a drop of burning red paint, spilled over the canvas and leaking out over the entire sky. We humans try to capture life in art and then use art to describe life, both in the attempt to express that immense Something that we feel. But both are really an attempt at the impossible, trying to bottle the immense beauty of the earth in a jar and make it manageable. Something inside my chest expands like a boiling pot, surging up through the throat with a force too big to ignore. Which is why I am running after the twilight sky with a butterfly net.
*
The boardwalk beside the river, which people stroll, cycle and jog along in droves during the morning and evening, is deserted. The midday air buzzes with stillness and it is the first time in weeks that I have been outdoors and not surrounded by people. I feel as though I am walking on another planet, and am wildly aware of every sensation. My hands and feet pulse with relentless pressure, and I think they look nearly double in size. A thumping begins to rise in my temples and I must slow my pace. When I return to the comparatively cool air of our apartment (thirty degrees), the throbbing in my extremities diminishes slowly and my muscles quiver as though I had just hiked a steep mountain. I feel exhausted but strangely alive, tingling with the surreal experience of walking through a baking hot ghost town. The extreme conditions have shaken me awake and captured my entire attention. Amazing, I whisper to myself. Amazing.
*
Will the leaves turn red? Will the long dry days turn cool and moist? Will we harvest any dreams sown earlier this year? Spanish roles so much easier off the tongue these days, though the accent here still renders the background noise a formless din. If we get in close and sharpen our ears to a conversation, words suddenly rise up like street signs in the fog, and we can usually make sense of them. Young people gather in clusters across the dry grass of the riverside park, cradling one-litre bottles of beer in their laps and playing music on their phones, sometimes on a guitar. Families still push strollers along the streets at 1AM and generations gather at little tables on open patios. The nights are still warm and I do not think the autumn chill will blow through these parts for a while yet. But as we near the year’s later months, I think of my goals in writing, yoga, Spanish, travel, and cultivating presence throughout these journeys… and I cannot say how I will feel about them all by the end of the year, but I have hope for the harvest.
and were not permitted to live in the city with the Catholic citizens. Pushed out to the borders of Granada, they made ingenious use of the natural landscape—found in a semi-desert microclimate—digging caves into the hilly earth that became their homes and workshops, shielding them from the heat and costing very little to build. The Roma population continues to live in the caves in what has become a thriving neighbourhood. Many of the caves have been modernized, though some people still live in very rustic dwellings. Rob’s mum and I visited a fascinating little museum that exhibited some of the traditional caves, where we also learned that the Roma people and their music and dance traditions were key in the birth of Flamenco.
Tegan Bethune 