Do you ever feel guilty because you are choosing a life of non-doing. No, she answered, as she snapped her gum and banged on the keyboard. No, not at all. Liar. Read this article. Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day Emptiness is desirable. Go…
This is the last week of school for the students in Cadiz and also, our visitors from Croatia are on a three day excursion. I write this today, a cool breeze blowing through the open windows, the noise from the streets ever present, and I’ve come to the conclusion that if a month is almost up of our visit to Spain, I don’t know anymore than what I started with. You always think you’ll get…
We decided to go to the last beach in the city of Cadiz, passed Playa Victoria to an area called Corta Dura on Friday after napping. The beach was packed all the way from Plaza Caleta onward. But we found a place with ease and as we entered the seaweed filled water, we felt a noticeable rise in temp from the other day. Levante is leaving and poniente coming. This morning, a heavy layer of…
Boy time Plaza San Francisco with our summer friends Lunch of creamed pumpkin soup, grilled eggplant and zucchini, tuna, pimiento, olives and manchego plus tinto de verano
We went to the Baluarte de la Candelaria on the sea front last night to hear Jueves Flamencos (Flamenco on Thursdays), part of a rotating regional talent of Flamenco stars. The shows are put on by Peña Flamenca Gaditana Enrique “El Mellizo” and last night’s billing featured “¡¡Nostalgia Flamenca!!” con el cante de Antonio Reyes (Chiclana); David Palomar (Cádiz), Macarena de Jerez y Felipe Scapachini (Cádiz); las guitarras de Antonio Higuero (Jerez), Rafael Cabeza (Sevilla)…
I was speaking to a friend about life things and he said that in reality the one thing we need is love. He said he often thinks of the Beatles’ song, All You Need is Love, and he believes it is the singular truth in his life. Love of his mother, father, partner, friends, and even his relationships to his clients are all wrought from this one requirement. Love. I’m working my way through the…
Progress Sundays we’d stroll to the railroad track, My white-collared father and I, Where he’d gaze after freight trains billowing past And deliver himself of a sigh— “If I still worked for the railroad, I’d retire with a pass. I could ride To any place in the country, And the country, they say, is wide.” Yet for thirty years my father With fountain pen wielded power At the boiler factory in Dover, Keeping track of…
I realized early this year that I can’t have it all – I can’t be the mother I want to be to my 3 year old, run my own business, and stay in shape. It just wasn’t in my cards. And so I assessed – Tin is 3 now, and will be soon 4, then 5, etc. In time, his days will be filled with school and friends and extra curricular activities – but now,…
I picked up Mark Strand’s new collection Almost Invisible and have been revisiting it several times now that I’m here in Spain, in Cadiz, here to relax and get myself whole again. Poem of the Spanish Poet In a hotel room somewhere in Iowa an American poet, tired of his poems, tired of being an American poet, leans back in his chair and imagines he is a Spanish poet, an old Spanish poet, nearing the…