I took me dancing

I took myself Tango dancing last night, once again disproving a common misconception. Here’s to the solitary observer, breathing the life of the city night, well connected without any friends. I took the Metro to Chueca, walked ten minutes down Fuencaral and road the elevator up to a third-story dive.
At mid-night the place was still fairly empty and only a few dancers took the floor. None of them caught my eye. I stood in the doorway watching for a while, not sure if I would pay the entrance fee and stay. My attention was drawn to a woman on a sofa in the corner, attentively and perfectly applying eye-makeup with one hand while the other held a compact mirror to her face. She wore immense dangling earrings, setting off her long neck. She was almost completely bald, with a few soft patches of hair remaining. It struck me that despite the baldness due to some apparent illness or deficiency, she looked exquisitely healthy and well composed. Her posture was that of a born dancer and her bare shoulders were muscular and dramatic. A man approached her and asked her to dance. She stood with grace and accepted with an inviting smile. She took his hand and pressed her cheek to his and they set off. Whether they were both good at dancing or her composure made him look good as well I wasn’t sure. The woman’s expression was grave and her eyes were deep and black. The man’s showed absolute delight to be dancing with her. When their dances were over, in Tango you dance at least three, she settled back softly on the sofa and started where she had left off with her make-up.
A man passing through the doorway turned to me and said several words in Spanish and caught unaware, I did not understand a one. I instinctively replied, “No hablo español.”
And so I’ve been like this a lot lately, observing but not participating, soaking up, taking in, storing up for one day when I can finally speak again.
***
A few weeks back I went to the courtyard sale of Trash and Treasures at a new friends old apartment. The complex where she once lived, a rustic white building and former inquisition prison, was being shutdown and renovated for one purpose or another, forcing out all the gypsies and artists who had been living there for years. The courtyard was filled with clothing racks and furniture, old junk and valuables, pieces with a once sentimental value. There were jewelry and plants, sports equipment, hula-hoops. You name it, they’ve got it. Come on in and take your pick for a low low price, plus fresh juices made by Nacho and vegan chocolate cake by Alison, a Scottish recipe I think.
A group of us lounged away the afternoon on cushions and hammocks, watching the customers pass, pick through the stuff and find their soul mate of a pair of boots. The Spanish conversations bubbled, the day grew hot, the heat got heavy then the evening came and cooled us comfortably. The flow of customers slowed, someone turned up the music, an eclectic mix of Latin and Spanish and whatever else. Broke out the wine and rolling papers, the drums, maracas and bells, played music and danced until someone had the idea to play dress up. We ran for the clothing racks and threw on some costumes. Anything went but was best if you made it something it wasn’t. I wore an Indian sari and a kneepad for a hat at a stylish tilt. The men went for the women’s clothes, pants with a lace up fly and mini-sweater vests in colored heart patterns, enormous sunglasses and long beaded necklaces. Wearing funny outfits, we beat out a rhythm on a bongo drum and some women in summer dresses tied bells around their ankles and danced.
Eventually I drifted away from the party unnoticed, climbed the old staircase to the third story where I could look down on the courtyard and take in the evening from afar. Sometimes more easily digested that way. Then I looked up to the opposite rooftop silhouetted black against the pale grey sky, and the sliver of a silver-blue moon half hidden by a single translucent cloud.
***
“Bailas tú?” I think that’s what he had said. That must have been what he had said. The Tango dance was beginning to get crowded with more young people. I just sat near the dance floor, observing the dancers… Observing, always observing now… Another man came up and asked me to dance. “Hablas ingles?” I asked because I couldn’t really explain in Spanish why I wasn’t very good at Tango but I was alright enough to try. He turned out to be from Australia. The dance was quite nice and after it was over, I returned to my chair feeling more confidant and belonging than before. The man who had spoken to me in the doorway earlier turned to me and said, “Por fin, tú bailas.” And finally, you dance.

And by the way,

how are you?

Madrid month blues

And then there are times when I’m afraid of being alone, afraid to stop moving for even a moment. The world is moving around me and I feel like a walking shadow surrounded by human life that I am not a part of. I walk in the streets at a pace that’s hardly transporting me just so I look like a person walking down the street. People pass with their groceries and their friends and lovers and their strange habits. I watch a man produce a jar that most definitely looks like mustard out of a shopping bag, unscrew the lid and take a sip.
I unlock the door of my apartment that’s dimmed with the light of the day and I want to fall asleep forever, disappear because there’s nowhere on earth I can escape this sensation that creeps up from the depths and paralyzes my ability to be or scream or feel. I could absently drink a jar of mustard too or walk around with one shoe on and the refrigerator door still open and my laundry piling up for weeks. The trash needs to be emptied and the dishes need to be washed but all I can do is sit with my legs crossed on the sofa and my eyes focusing unintentionally on a crumb that must have fallen yesterday on the floor, or the day before, or the day before that.
All the dirt seems to be accumulating at a faster pace than I can move to collect it and throw it out the window in a storm of dust and memories and emotional baggage from years and years of regrets I continue to deny I have.
When I sleep at night, my sleep is filled with the hubbub of dreams and the dreams are filled with images of friends whose friendships were deep rooted and solid as steel once. And an unrequited love, which is the best kind really. And I’m longing for a place across the sea that I couldn’t wait to leave because this part of me was a part of me there too and I thought I could leave it behind.

Tricks of the Brain

Et le monde devien plus et plus petit...
I'm on the sidewalk now, giving Javier a kiss on the cheek, then Fernando. The last time, and first time, I saw them we were in Nepal... The beginning of the last time I saw Fernando I was walking alone through the mad maze of Kathmandu rush hour, the day after returning to the city from the trek to the Everest base camp. A bit of a low after the high of the hike... The thrill of reaching the destination, then back to the city and I was thinking, "Now what?" and contemplating eating all the junk food I'd seen in the bakeries of Kathmandu over the day and half since I'd returned from the mountains all at once... Just for the temporary endorphin release caused by chocolate that makes everything feel all right for a moment.
It was as I was considering my chocolate downfall that I started hearing things... Hearing my name carried by the hot and crowded air, the noisy streets of the city. "Hilary," at first startled me and then in doubt, I shrugged my shoulders and theorized all the sounds of the city must have coincidentally shaped my name because as much as I wished it was a friend calling, I was in a foreign country in a foreign city at a foreign time... But there it was again, "Hilary." So I turned subtly so as not to let the tricks my mind was playing on me know that I was falling for them. Just to my right, crammed at the edge of the traffic was a man on a motorcycle with a face mask to protect his lungs from fumes of the traffic. "It's Fernando," he said and then I recognized the way his short black hair stood off the top of his forehead. My friend from Madrid that I met on the small airplane out of Kathmandu to the start-point for the Everest base-camp hike. "Hop on," he said, or something like it, so I did and we rode very slowly, hardly moving any, if at all, with the chaos of traffic, cars and bicycles, people and cows, at a stand-still. Eventually we found it was faster to park the motorcycle and scramble on hands and feet, climbing over bumpers of trucks. Somehow we found Javier, who Fernando had lost before accidentally finding me, and the three of us spent the rest of the day exploring the city and closing the evening with pizza at a popular ex-pat Italian restaurant and a bottle of red wine.
It's the warmth of people like Fernando, Javier and their friends that lead me to Madrid in the first place, and it's thanks to them that I'm living in the apartment I'm living in. Fernando grew up with Ines outside of Madrid and I'm living in Ines's bedroom while she escapes Madrid for the summer.
Ines came back this evening to pick up some of her stuff, and I helped her carry it down to the street where Fernando and Javier were waiting in their truck. Out of the truck they bounced and gave me a kiss. They look smaller than I remember. In Nepal they were the size of the mountains and the monuments... Or maybe it's just memories that play the tricks of the movie screen and render it's subjects larger than life.

Actually feeling quite at peace with myself, more than usual, more often than usual... I think I’m having much less trouble adjusting to life in Madrid than I’ve had adjusting to cities in the past, and I’m not sure it has anything to do with Madrid. I think it’s me. I’ve faced this adjustment period so often before and every time, no matter how weird, how alienated, lonely, scrambled, bizarre and misshaped I feel, time creates a level of comfort. This knowledge forms a new level of patience with myself not to be perfect and loved, not to have friends for now. Thus, I feel more secure, sure of who I am... Though I couldn’t describe who I am or realize it on any tangible level...

Himalayan Pizza

I logged onto blogger.com to post a new blog tonight and instead of seeing my blog from yesterday, there was a notice that my blog has been removed temporarily for review and is suspected of violating the terms of blogger.com. At first, I was shocked, annoyed and frustrated, but within a few seconds, a curiosity and satisfaction settled in and I wondered how I managed to offend someone so much, and who. I felt that under the circumstances, my very own blog would become as provocative and popular as previously banned books. However, after a little investigation, I discovered my blog was being reviewed due to the possibility of it’s containing spam, which is apparently an inconvenient mistake made with anyone’s blog quite often. To expose a little secret, I haven’t really any idea what spam is, except for the mysterious canned meat by the same name invented in America sometime in the late 1930s due to limited resources, and still made today for God knows what reason.
I tasted Spam only once, and felt it wasn’t as bad as I had expected, but I probably wouldn’t give it a second try. It was back in November en route to the Everest base camp when I joined a group of six other Americans and eleven Nepali staff who cooked our meals. Our meals were usually very good and once or twice, I went to help out in the kitchen, which was a large tent with some camping stoves, to try to get some of the credit for the wonderful food though I was always asked just to cut the vegetables. One night, after a longer day of hiking than usual, the kitchen staff rewarded us by making a pizza for dinner. Himalayan yak cheese and Spam pizza. After six hours of hiking mostly uphill, over 14,000 feet above sea level, turning down some pizza isn’t done, so I tried the Spam. As I said, it wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined, and I was so cozy in the big tent huddled next to my fellow mountaineers at a small fold-up table by the light of lanterns and candlelight.
I am sure that within the next few days, my first entry will be found Spam free and re-posted. This entry, however, is all about Spam.

Madrid, and then?

That's the curse of being human isn't it? Never really satisfied and never fulfilled fully in a present state? Tomorrow, quit smoking, less drinking, start running, stop eating five pints of ice-cream then throwing them up. Tomorrow, when I'm 20, 30, 40, when I leave this town that's gotten boring. When I live somewhere long enough to feel at home. Or am I the only one?
Monday night, beginning of my third week in Madrid and the thrill of getting to my destination is wearing off. I'd been traveling since October. Well, depending how I choose to look at it, traveling since August 2006. Then, a few months back I found myself stranded in Copenhagen with zero visibility to the path ahead and dead burnt out on travel. Returning to the place I grew up wasn't an option because that feels farther from home than anywhere in the world, so all I had to do was choose a place and commit. That place I eventually settled on was Madrid, Spain.
Six cities, two and a half months, 1650 miles or 2650 km later I am finally in this city I'd been dreaming of. The first moment of my arrival I felt I had come home. Through a series of coincidences or fate, I landed a lovely apartment in a lovely part of town and as soon as I arrived in Madrid, I headed to a place I could call my own more than any other place in the last seven months. There's a door here I can close when I want to be alone, and my own bed, or mattress on the floor. Regardless, it feels like mine.
Now, just over two weeks after my arrival, already getting restless in a settled state minus the benefits of real friends, connections, traditions, already wanting to look forward to future travel. I wanted to settle and now I want to be on the move. I thought I could be a more whole, complete, self-accepting person once I gave myself the chance to settle in. But so much for that. The only consistent state I've found is the state of procrastination. Tomorrow, I'll be a better person. Tomorrow, I'll feel comfortable in my own skin no matter where I go. "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" and no matter how many adventures I have, the petty pace of life finds me, commuting in the metro, cooking dinner every night at home, in my sleep on my mattress on the floor.