Cadiz days of summer
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
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Tag: Spain
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Mark Strand
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…
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Levante y poniente
The levante came and brought with it the heavy heat. Levante refers to the winds from the east, and in Spanish levantar means rise up, and literally it is like the sun that rises in the east. But interestingly enough the levante has nothing to do with rising up, it is more like laid out. We have been lazying around here until yesterday we couldn’t take it and went to the beach despite the fact…
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Running with the bulls
I’m sitting here listening to an elderly Spaniard tell her grandson to walk slower – the narrow streets of Cadiz are not for the weak. Around here grandmothers are the daycare industry. Back home in New Orleans the annual running with the bulls is happening in the French Quarter, only the bulls are gals on roller skates. There never ceases to be an ironic moment in my life. Photo courtesy of Grand Housesitter Ed Johnson:
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The Spanish Parliament
We, who live in New Orleans, make fun of our politicians as ongoing dinner conversation and entertainment, and lately with the way our congress, senate and presidential candidates have behaved, we have a full course meal of conversation and jokes. But really I must say that nothing tops what happened here in Spain the other day during a presentation of tough new austerity measures at the Spanish parliament where specifically unemployment benefits were cut to…
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Que tonteria
Do you know a friend in Spain is selling an apartment at a loss just to get out of it and yet when her buyers approached the bank for a loan, instead of helping her buy it, they offered her all of their properties that they have foreclosed on instead. Que tonteria. Which means, WTF? here in Spain.
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Home away from home
I always had wandering my blood – a wandering Jew that I inherited from my father’s almost gypsy blood. Don’t know if it is because he was born to Sephardic parents from Turkey who gave birth to him Cuba and then he came to the U.S. or what. Inherited or not, I got it. I wanted to live in Spain where my ancestors hailed from, then I wanted to live in Istanbul where my grandparents…
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A typical day in Cadiz
We are staying on Benjumeda Street, which is in the center of Cadiz and flanking us on all sides are plazas. San Antonio is a breath away, Fragella a few blocks, Mina down the street, and Mentidero is down the block. We strolled over to Plaza Mentidero yesterday for a goodbye lunch with Alejandro who left by train early evening. This plaza has more of a working class feel than most of the other ones…
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The coast restoreth
On Sunday, from the get go, there were signs and portents – a guy walking by with a tee shirt that read “Don’t worry be happy!” – a billboard that said, “Today is the best day of my life!” and so it was that the day was crafted around this idea – we caught the bus early this morning to go to Zahara de los Atunes and as soon as we arrived, I felt like…
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Politics weaves its way into memory
Tatjana got me Tony Judt’s book The Memory Chalet, which I’m reading now that I finished the Epstein book. I’m one third of the way into it and already highly recommend. Judt is a historian and his writing is top notch; sadly this book is about his memories as he was dying from Lou Gehrig’s disease when he wrote it. Yesterday, our friend arrived from Madrid as he will be speaking to the class about…