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- El País del 9 de Diciembre, 2009

Storing words for winter

I've been reading some Spanish books lately (please regard the word "reading" lightly), but I've been missing reading English. I miss the poetry of the language I own, diving into it, and how enrapturing it can be, how it feeds me and influences my own writing.

I have two English-language books with me in Spain. This is very different from the United States where I have two for every day of the year.

I brought:

1) "The New Spaniards" by John Hooper, second edition. It's a very well-written and entertaining history of modern Spain. I like it. Well, I liked it; I honestly have no desire to read it now that I'm in Madrid and would rather place myself in beautiful old bars with smoke-stained ceilings, sipping manzanilla and talking to Spaniards.

2) "The Secret Lives of People in Love" by Simon Van Booy. I found this book of short stories in September and was enthralled by it. However, I cannot read it at the moment, as there are remains of masticated love still stuck between my ribs.

So in the midst of missing my language, today I bought a third.

In all honesty, I wanted to buy "Lolita" (both of my copies are in Boulder), because even just the first paragraph makes me want to slit my wrists in a dramatic sacrifice to alliterative craftsmanship. But the only version that Casa del Libro had was one with a soulless, forlorn-looking rubia on the front cover. I just could not walk around with that. Not because I care what other people think, but because it depicts a character I don't believe exists in the book.

Anyway. I bought Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse." I've never read it, although I own a copy in the U.S. But I am hungry for poetry and it seems this might be what I am looking for.

[Our attention is drawn] to Woolf's poetic prose: her rhythms and images, her use of hard consonants in monosyllabic words in counterpoint to long, soft, dreamy words and phrases. "To the Lighthouse" plays back and forth between telescopic and microscopic views of nature and human nature.

In the introduction, Woolf writes of her novel:

I meant nothing by The Lighthouse. I saw that all sorts of feelings would accrue to this, but I refused to think them out, and trusted that people would make it the deposit for their own emotions.

And so inward I dive.

La Niña

My Spanish family is very endearing, and after hearing some friends' stories about the Spanish families they are staying with, I appreciate mine even more.

The little boy, Jaime, is an absolute treasure. Like his grandmother said, "Con Jaime, todo es siempre bien." He gives up his candy for his sister Ana and then she pulls his hair. He puts himself last in order of turns when the three of us play "Memory." He seems to know intuitively when I am uncomfortable because Ana isn't listening to me, and he will try harder to show me that he wants to learn English. If I had just him, my teaching life would be a bit too perfect.

And so — enter little Ana.


My relationship with Ana is a bit like a non-functional romantic relationship. It is filled with anxiety, emotional ups and downs, occasional compromise and random destruction of property.

Today, Ana not only spilled water on my computer, she then broke a glass in the bathroom and danced away as Jaime started to clean it up; as I ran into the room to help he cutely said, "Please shoes!"

One evening, she stole sunflower seeds from my room without asking, and I told her not to. She scowled, and ran away, still eating them. Then I hear my iPhone alarm going off, and as I went to turn it off, the funniest thing happened... the alarm started moving. I followed it out to the living room, where I found it in Ana's hand, as she was about to hide it inside an umbrella bin where I never would have found it if it had stopped making noise. At this point I spoke a lot louder than before and told her to not ever take my $360 iPhone again.

We didn't talk for two days after that.

But then... my door was open one night and she came in, thought for a minute, walked back out, closed it — and knocked.

"...come in?" I said.

"Tienes pipas?" she asked.

And I gave her some sunflower seeds, and she said "thank you." And I smiled.

Of course, the next day I saw her with more — meaning that she went to where she saw my hiding spot was and got herself more.

And to this I say: Jaime is here to remind me what angels children can be... and Ana is what Spanish wine is for.

When the cold comes, yearning billows out

Without memory, he thought,
man would be invincible.

— Simon Van Booy

A Thanksgiving tale for stateside friends

The Spanish family I'm living with in Madrid has had the abuela, the grandmother (of the father), in town for the past two weeks, and I absolutely adore her. Her name is Lola, she speaks no English, and she likes to try to teach me Spanish by repeating a phrase six times, even if I've already used it in the same conversation a few minutes ago. This makes having a discussion with her slow but endearing, and I feel warm and fuzzy when she calls me cariño and cielo.

Today we left the house at the same time and in the elevator she told me she was going out to buy a conejo, a bunny rabbit. Since it is her last day in Madrid and she won't be around for the holidays, I figured she was buying the pet as an early Christmas present for the kids. How cute!

After my morning run, I came into the kitchen to get some water and saw lots of red meat on the counter. The grandmother pointed at it and said, "Conejo!"

Down to the earth I fell with dripping wings

"Hube de sustituir el principio de necesidad
por el principio de posibilidad."
— Lorenzo Silva

I left Colorado for Spain three weeks ago, and have been letting it soak into my skin before squeezing out my reflections. I am constantly learning, exploring, discovering. I get lonely and frustrated, but I am determined, caffeinated, invigorated — and mostly, happy. Happy I chose this path for myself, for the time being.


I live with a Spanish family of four — a mother, a father, and two children — in Madrid. I teach English to the children, Ana (6) and Jaime (7), for three hours every weekday in the evenings, and I have the rest of the time to explore the city, the country, myself. I can eat whatever I want of their food and I stay here for free, but I am not paid. I am living purely off the money I saved in Boulder.

I feel somewhere in between a visitor and a resident. I am living here, I am working here, but only for a short time. I don't visit tourist sites, and when people ask me where things are, I can direct them. But while already there are bars I have been to several times, where people know my name and graciously offer me wine and tapas on the house — everything is still new to me. And I'm finding that it's the smallest things that make my days amazing.

Like, when I understand a Spanish phrase or two more than I did the day before. When I go to the Retiro Park for a run and take photos, turning inward to a focused and calm inner space, marveling at nature — an appreciation that Colorado gave me. When new English-speaking girl friends and I are between bars, and I ask them, out of nowhere, what the imperfect tense of tener is — and they answer without thinking me odd, because they are constantly wondering the same things.


I love the history in Madrid. I love the taverns that have been around for 80 years, their ceilings stained with cigarette smoke. I love looking at the dust on bottles of sherry at one of my favorite bars, La Venencia, taken straight from their casks long ago. I had a night out with a worldly woman who told me they haven't dusted those bottles in 14 years. She knew the owners when they had hair on their heads. This is beautiful to me.

Last week, in a Madrilenian tavern from the 19th century, I had croquetas, café cortados and conversation with Andrés Ruiz Tarazona, a writer and art critic for El País and other Spanish newspapers. When I went up to pay, the camarero told me that Andrés had already paid for me — the bartender knew him by name, because he's been coming there for years.

I have a favorite cafe, Pepe Botella, where I like reading El País and its Sunday magazine amidst espresso and the incense of cigarette smoke, hearing Russian and French and English and German, and Spanish — God, Spanish. I know I have spoken this in another lifetime.

I am trying to be light, because heavy things don't fly.

The comforts of staying

I bought some hot apple cider this afternoon and took a walk around Boulder, fogging up my sunglasses with cinnamon-nutmeg steam.

I forget how much I love autumn. I wrote a short story last year about "the season of turmeric and spices, of osmanthus and scarf-worn longing." Today there was a scarf — a red one, my favorite, that my friend Christian bought for me in India — but there was no longing. Just appreciation, a kind of breath-driven inner peace, the kind you feel after a deep stretch.

I love knowing a city so well. I know that when I walk past a certain cafe that my best friend's boyfriend will be in there, working away on his next book. I know that the bathroom code to the local bookstore changes every week, and I always remember it until it no longer works. I know which intersections are always okay to cross even when the lights are green, because they're hardly ever used.

I know it will take me 12.5 minutes to walk from my work to my favorite local gourmet deli, where I harass them for their wild Alaskan house-cured salmon. I love learning through Facebook that a favorite cafe — where Christian and I would discuss our impending plans to travel the world over mochas and scones — is now serving hot apple cider, made from locally-grown apples; I love that I can walk there from my job, which is less than .5 miles away, because everything is less than .5 miles away.

I love that last night, as I was eating a delicious squash risotto with my close girl friend at my favorite restaurant, the bar manager — also my ex and friend — pointed at a table of diners and said, "They grew that squash you're eating."

I love feeling like I'm the only one who knows where a beautiful tea house is right downtown, because there's hardly anyone there. I love having places to retreat outside of my home, and not having every inch of my city crowded with people.

I love knowing that at least one out of five of my closest friends will likely be at the local "herban" bar at any given point on a late afternoon, working on art, illustration, writing, or just drinking jun.

I like growing, and discovering that when I really want to live in a place — the settle-down kind of live — it will probably be a smaller city, because I just like knowing. My life is filled with going and staying, but I am gaining so much in the process.

And when it comes to Boulder — I'm so glad I stayed.