4th rv a traveler's memoirs- flying to Madrid 1

     Flying to Madrid

              1.

In our life there may occur an encounter, no one can foresee, 
to turn the course of life regardless of our will. Probably Such
a case could be applied to this hosteller, Moon who happened
to be present at the flamenco performance in Portland,
as described before, 
Strangely enough he flied alone to the city again the next year,
this time with nothing but a purpose: to see flamenco.
At that time he was scheduled to get on board the airplane bound
for LA with his wife to visit her family there, That is to say,
he was driven to change his flying schedule by an irresistible urge
in his mind. As a result, in his second visit to Portland, he met
a bailaora ( a woman flamenco dancer) there named Lau,
whom he invited to his hometown, Masan, South Korea, 
for a performance he held there several years after that.
Furthermore he alone made a journey to Andalusia, Spain,
the place of its origin. In short, with his first encounter with flamenco
as a momentum, he has become flamenco-intoxicated
in spite of himself! 
He has said before in relation with flamenco,
" If I had had a chance to hear and see it much earlier,
I would be now a tocaor (a flamenco guitarist) or a bailaor
( a man dancer). It may be no exaggeration that not a day
has passed without my thinking of flamenco."
At first he was captured by Baile among the three basic components-
Cante (song), Baile (dance),Toque (guitar). Until he never forgets
the night of flamenco performance in Portland when the dancer Lau dancing
with her arms held in a smooth carve, unbroken by the bend of the elbows.
He like to recollect the night's stage, on which she danced ,
with her splayed fingers traced curling arabesques.
Cante has been his most favorite. Anyway, he really loved to hear
Cante sung. In this relation he himself has enjoyed to recite a line, below, 
of verse for Cante:
Even my soul feels the pain
of so many tears
because these griefs will never get smaller,
will grow with the years. 

Probably most flamenco lovers will sympathize with Luis Rosales
who described Cante sung as follows:
At the opening of the cante, in the ayeo, the voice is pure ｅxpression.
Its sound is like the wind through the trees. The copla has not yet begun;
the opening of the cante is not made of words, it is made of sounds
and these sounds tell us nothing: they tremble; they say nothing:
they sing...... In the ayeo the voice is heard in a distinctive and
fundamental way..... It is found as if in the portal to the day of creation,
as if language did not yet exist
                  
Flying to Madrid
March, 12nd, 2005
In a sense, to make a journey may mean a kind of drifting of,
not the body, but the mind. It could be a freedom, in time and space,  
that the mind enjoys. It is not body, but mind that meets and spends 
days and nights of an unfamiliar place, somewhat in fear, somewhat
in sweet curiosity. In most cases, in a long move our body gets 
powerless, with its eyes and ears naturally duller, but In contrast,
our mind grows brighter, with its eyes twinkling with curiosity.
Particularly so it does in a long flight.  It is impossible for the body 
flying over the cloud, as matter of fact confined to a narrow seat,
to taste a breeze of freedom. In a sense, the body in a flying airplane
will be no more than a mild animal locked in the fold. At that moment,
,in his thinking, his body above the cloud can be compared to a fish 
in the running fish preserve ( a corf ). And not a passenger in flight
can expect the rhythmic movement or the soft engine sound of Greyhound 
running at dawn on the wide plain accompanied by twinkling stars above.

However, the mind feels refreshed with a foreseen gift given by the flight:
a freedom to imagine that it sees in advance the Mediterranean sea,
which it wished to go to, and perceive the sea breeze full of the light
to shake softly the ends of Olive trees by the seashore. In short,
Flight confining the body in a fold gives to the mind a rare gift of
sweet imaginations.
To make a long flight mean, to me, that  prior to the body,
the mind reaches in advance,t hrough free imaginations,
the cities we are flying bound for. At this moment the mind has
an unusual experience: by a kind of fluid movements the mind can
reach any place, as it wishes to. It freely fly back to a place the past, or
meet the cities in the future prior to the body. In other words,
in flight I can get my mind return to the sea of the past,
where I used to live by in my boyhood. 
And also I can reach in advance the cities of tomorrow, in which
hostels will wait for strangers with aroma of coffee and the legend of
Alhambra in Granada which Washington Irving told us.
As for me, such is a journey by air. Anyway, in this case of my flying
to Madrid, Flamenco is everything to me. I got aboard this airplane
bound for Spain with a purpose only: to come close to flamenco.
Moon keeps on muttering to himself confined in the aisle seat
with his eyes closed:  

In Granada
at night with full moon rising
will climb Albaicin village and
there look down to the Alhambra,
treasuring its bloody legend,
with the intoxicated eyes by 
Arabian herb perfume,
flamenco guitar rhythm and Garcia Lorca's poem.

In Jerez
will wind into the narrow lane to gypsy dwellings, 
it is said, luring strangers with sweet sherry of Jerez,
the way of which in the beginning, it is said, 
gypsies and donkeys began to open,
and fill the grass with the sherry
made of grapes and the deep song of flamenco.
And  reaching Cadiz,
the city of light,
will let the pure sea light wash my dim eyes.

In Madrid
you should remember a hint that a guide book gave you:
What seizes your mind is 
rather than Palado museum,
rather than ?Baleskes stature,
a street guitarist, at the foot of it, playing Bach
 
When to Barcelona to see Gaudi Cathedral ?
Oh, forget it, this time. Concentrate on flamenco only.
You know, in his journey to the Mediterranean sea,
 the meaning of his Mediterranean had less to do with geography
than with anticipation , emotions and visual imagination.
At that moment He never visited  Florence or Bay of Naples.
His drive to discover new and diverse sources of motifs
was for one purpose only: to paint.