rv hosteller 12 -Spain

4. Hosteller

     2.

Moon's memos of April, 2006

5th

In the hostel, Caracol 

not far from the western sea-front of Cadiz.

....................

In Cadiz every day in the morning

the grand roar of the waves overwhelms me

facing the sea full of light.​

Why am I here alone afar off from home?

As Pissarro, an impressionist painter said,

in order to get the wound of my soul ?

Looking  afar toward  the horizon dividing the sea and the sky

I recite lines of verse (copla) of Tona, a kind of flamenco song:

When I'm up on the hill

I like to face the wind,

to let it carry off my pain

and ease my suffering.

6th

In Cadiz

a bed of hostel Caracol, a bit chilly,

in which lies the fatigued body curled up like a prawn 

but the refreshed mind filled with the sea color.

 

7th

In Jerez

'Flamenco is a tragedy in the first person.'

 I send a email asking  Lau in Portland

what you mean by it.

She mailed her interpretation as follows:

Any personal tragedy cannot be shared with others

by saying or action. Flamenco expresses such a tragic experience.

8th 

In Jerez

A long contemplation on the straight road

to the Fundacion Andaluz de Flamenco: 

Every solo baile( flamenco dance) is in essence introvert.

The body in the moment of dancing moves inward,

not toward others

 

 

​10th

 Maria, a flamenco dancer in Jerz gave me a book, 

'Song of the Outcasts' by  Robin Totton

in which the writer says that there are no leaps,

no upward movements of any sort,

quoting, " Ballet is up, flamenco is down."

Oh, this vanity of indulging myself to flamenco!

​

​11th

On the road toward to Seville​

 a line, below, coming into my mind:

"Flamenco , in its awesome spontaneity, is in him

who can suffer from the world and feel within him-

like the dawning- an irresistible urge to cry out

14th​

In Tarifa

By the Tarifa seashore I look at the Strait of Gibraltar.

The wind touching the skin is like the pointed end of a knife.

Probably it will be not because of the chilly wind

but because of the sound of it reminding me of the deep sigh for

grief of my mother who is buried in the hill, densely covered with azalea,

not far from my hometown.

Anyway I  hurry to walk toward the quayside on which lies at anchor

a ferry, prior to sailing out, bound for Tanger, Morocco 

across the Strait. 

​

​0일

In Granada

sun-shining

sit in the bus terminal to wait for a Seville-bound bus, 

over the cup of  coffee  the Images coming across my mind:

alleys in Jerez filled with the fragrance of Sherry wine

the splendid and grand sea  of Cadiz,,

the narrow Strait of Gibraltar between Tarifa and Tanger,

the ferry 's custom officers with cautious eyes checking-up me 

desolate landscape of Tanger under the hot and dry weather, 

And  a moment of meditation on what Garcia Lorca said about

Gypsy flamenco:

The Gypsy siguiriya begins with a terrible cry, a cry that divides the landscape

into two ideal hemisphere. Then the pauses to make room for a silence that

is both amazing and measured , a silence in which the face of the turning lily glows

, the lily that has left its voice in the heavens. Next, the undulating and

never-ending melody begins as it does in Bach, though in a different sense.

The infinite melody of Bach is round: the phrase could repeat itself forever

in a circular manner; but the melody of the siguiriya disappears into the horizontal;

it escapes through our fingers and we see it off in the distance like a perfect

point of common hope and passion- where the soul can never arrive.

​

 

Madrid, Apr.

Dear Lau

Back again to Madrid, safe and sound. Sangria-drunken I am looking back on my Spain trip.

Madrid will be remembered as a city of rain. It was drizzling the first night when I was going to this city by taxi from the airport, it was drizzling. And now again I am looking outside through windows of the  bus running back to this city at the dark street scene where it is drizzling.

Granada, a grand cave with jewels of flamenco twinkling in would be the past legends of glory Washington Irving loved.

Cadiz by the roaring sound of the sea reminded me of the sea scenery in Moby Dick by Hermann Melville.

Malaga was a triste city where I breathed in the sweet sea smell for the first time since my Spain trip for Flamenco.

Jerez was an inspiring city full of sherry scent. Somewhat for my writing, because the city seemed to keep the essence of flamenco as what it is.

Thinking of a line which a flamenco said: 'Flamenco is the tragedy in the first person'.

abrazos

Gohk

Madrid, Apr., 2006

Dear Lau:

My visit to Madrid would be ended as just a
short tourism, If I had not had a good luck, as below, 

to meet a street guitarist playing a Bach ,
to take a long walk in the Museo of MNCARS where I
stood looking at a modern painting titled Louvre

together with other several modern artworks familiar to me,
and lastly to find an time-worn  cinema hall 5 minutes walk away

from the hostel MAD where I have stayed, which gave me as a gift a movie

regarding Carmen Amaya dancing flamenco.
 

Late at my last night in Spain here, dim and drizzling outside

I smoke tobacco in a bar alone with my ears given to classical music.

That is a rare experience for me to taste a deep solitude,

a kind of an odor of nostalgia, pure and dry.

different from the loneliness, sorrowful and wet.

Adios
Moon