the end of belonging

this is my last blog entry that i will write from spain. i finished up a few week's work in sabadell, mainly to make enough money to pay for a round trip train ticket to murcia. said my goodbyes, dropped my things off at my friend marta's, and hit the road for an 8 hour train ride to murcia. ow. anyhow, spent a week in murcia, which is in very southeast spain. my friend veronica and her boyfriend picked me up at the train station, and we went out for drinks. since veronica had classes, i spent a few days in the downtown, drawing and walking around. mariano (her boyfriend) showed me around one day, which was very nice. i was most impressed by 3 things in murcia:

- el río segura. really pretty name, means like "the sure one"

- the cathedral has a giant stone chain around one if its towers. if you look closely, there are no cuts or splices in its construction, so it seems like the entire chain was carved out of one big rock. wow! the local rumor is that the engineer was buried inside the wall so he wouldn't tell anyone how it was built. urban legend, i'm sure!

- festival of the sardine .. every year, people make a giant paper maché sardine and parade it around the town before they drunkenly set it on fire. lots of fireworks, alcoholics, and creepy costumes with horns and religious icons. totally pagan.

i was totally unimpressed by 1 thing in murcia, their bloody marys. skimpin on the vodka, come on!

a bit of a strange meditation on time and distance while i was in murcia .. i had been there 2 summers ago, and i kept looking around for old friends in the streets while i was drawing. even though i knew they weren't there, or weren't coming, i instinctively kept turning my head up to find them. the sad part, is that their "roles" in the city seem to have been replaced by others. my friend alej, from rumania, used to live in the park floridablanca .. i remember seeing him there, meeting his friends, etc. i went back to draw some of the trees in the park, and i walked around 2 or 3 times looking for him. the sad part is that there were other homeless immigrants there, and it just made things seem so finite and replaceable.

came back up to tarragona, a significantly shorter train ride, and walked to celia's in the rain. sat down under my umbrella in a door stoop and listened to leonard cohen .. very nice in the rain, humbling and melancholy. celia and all of her friends are 6th year med students (bravo!) and this is their finals week, so i'm a bit on my own. as usual, i'm out in the streets drawing, reading, and playing music. these days i'm doing about 2 or 3 drawings a day, either in pencil, or in charcoal or sanguine on colored paper. today i drew a very sad, melancholy boat in the sea, the cabin was about the size of a small closet. i have my return ticket for january 22nd, where my dad will pick me up in atlanta. spend a few with him, working on his house, a potential trip to jamaica (yes!!), and then up to ohio.

ive learned a lot here during my stay in spain. of course, i wanted to visit friends, practice my spanish, work with emaús here in sabadell, enjoy the weather, etc. however, i also wanted to prime myself for the upcoming 2 years in peace corps, the solitude, regrets, hopes, etc that i will face in the kyrgyz republic. i learned a lot about solidariy with the immigrants with whom i was living and the down and outs i sometimes met in the street while i was drawing. small acts of kindness that can mean a lot to someone. someone here told me that what he's doing doesn't matter, but why he is doing it. there may be some validity in that. one of the philosophies in the emaús house is that when confronted by the suffering of others, you may feel so much injustice in the situation that their suffering becomes your suffering, and you work together to overcome it. in my experiences with others' suffering here (and my own at times), i've felt moved by this ideology, though it may have been only small amounts. the first time i went overseas, i was a bit unsure of how life would be when i got home, i wasn't sure of how i'd "changed" in my time away. i feel that when you leave your comfort zone for an extended period of time, there are two variables changed -- you, and your environment. when you return to a comfortable environment, there is only one variable remaining -- you -- and you can observe more accurately changes in your perspective or attitude. this last step awaits me across the atlantic ocean! see you soon.