I Wouldn't Blithely Say

 

Listening to John Scofield’s “Kool” here in row twenty on United Airlines Flight 50 back home to Newark.  Appears we’re halfway over the Atlantic from the look of things in on the map over at next guys screen.  The gent in the seat ahead of me is watching some dark film where what appears to be a Chinese man and woman have been battling for the last eight minutes.  I do my best to ignore it.  I finished off Giles Trimlett’s “Ghosts of Spain” which I quite enjoyed.  There was a chapter there at the end that focused on Galicia, which provided a warm afterglow of our time there earlier last week.  Two rows up and off to the right someone is now playing “Imagine” and it is essentially impossible to not glance over and over again at John’s visage. 

 

There were not insignificant risks in traveling this month.  We were vaccinated, Spain’s number of cases was declining and unlike so many other places we might have headed to or from we were welcome in Spain and free to come and go in the US.   We were, in no small part due my younger daughter’s persistence, negative upon testing and registering these facts with United was straightforward.  As we sat there in the airport cafeteria reflecting on things, my kids seemed to all agree that this had been a good one.  Very grateful once again, that none of the many things that could have gone wrong did.

Hugh Thomas’ history of the Spanish Civil War is imposing. Nineteen pages into the nine-hundred-and-thirty-page brick I’m not sure if I’ll get drawn far enough in to where I’ll need to end it.  It is surely one enticing piece of the puzzle that merits more time.  But how much longer will I invest in this particular enigma?  Reading the Trimlett I noted some of the interesting (inevitable?) comparison point to China.  The turmoil and injustices of the last century, remain unexamined in the swift catch-up to wealth and normalcy.  I’d assumed that the western nations with Christian ideas of confessions were places where the mothers of “the disappeared” of Argentina would not rest until their children were remembered.   No stranger to confessions, Spain however did not set up truth and reconciliation committees after the death of Franco and the end of censorship.  Thomas suggests in his prolog to the 2012 edition that a monument be created that simply lists all the names of everyone died during the conflict, with no regard for affiliation. 

 Regardless of whether or not I decide to finish off the work or the other two or three that remain around the house, my brain feels well exercised having slammed all the titles I did in during the last six weeks to complement the two weeks of time in the Spanish indigo vat.  I won’t teach my Chinese history class the same way again.  Some of the platitudes I rushed through distinguishing the Conquistadors from Zheng He were naïve and I’d speak more cautiously now, knowing more about the kingdom they sailed from and the heroes like El Cid, that informed them.  I wouldn’t blithely say that Paris was the largest city in Europe during the twelfth century, juxtaposing it with Hanghzhou which was much bigger, without considering Cordoba.  And as always, I hope that this new component of civilizational, and historical mapping will make my girls stronger and give them more confidence and richness as they consider what it is they want to do, with whom and where.

Monday, 8/30/21

 

 

Beat an Early Retreat

 

We ended up speaking late into the evening, over one and then another bottle of white from Rias Baixas with the French family across from us there at the Mercado San Miguel.  No joke finding a place to sit in there, we had to cobble together our chairs and our tapas slowly, methodically and my family was chatting with theirs when I returned with a last few plates of food.  My daughters, the younger of whom’s French is pretty good, beat and early retreat.  We were left with four adults and their unfortunate daughter who was lovely and had strong English, but wasn’t able to cut away home, like my kids did. I tried for a bit but ceded my fledgling French to their somewhat better English and agreed that Covid was a mess, and that Spain was great, and that Trump had been wretched. 

This morning I lay in bed indulging in chapter after chapter of Giles Tremlett’s “Ghosts of Spain” which proved a much better read than I’d anticipated.  My older daughter came and knocked around 8:00AM reminding me that we’d discussed heading to the Rostro market this morning, early, before it closed.  The little one had already announced that she wasn’t interested.  My wife groaned when asked and suggested she wasn’t going to make it either.  I think this was the first time on the trip, well the second as it had happened with the pool in St. Vincente as well, someone else was pulling me on, asking me to join in on something.  Tempted, certainly to demur and finish this book I suited up, made some coffee and headed out as a duet with my older one. 

 

We followed a trickle of people which turned into a flow towards the Rostro Sunday market and soon found the beginnings of the long row of stalls.  First, I’d need cash. We asked one of the many cops about and he directed us down the road.  I got a shirt.  My daughter got some earrings.  But soon it became clear that we were progressing at different velocities.  So, we agreed to meet back by the public fountain in forty-five minutes.  The stalls started to look the same after the first hundred yards or so and I became interested in finding a gallery or perhaps some antiques in one of the stores along the side of the street stalls.  I visited one and another which were not particularly inspiring, but further down the road I cut off the main strip and entered an alley that led to a courtyard of sorts with two dozen different antique shops.  Here I could buy a twelve-foot watercolor of the Madonna with flying cherubs, or a life size statue of Augustus.  Culling about for the next half hour I found many things I’d have loved to secure, but nothing practical for my purposes.

I returned to a simple acrylic painting I’d notice on the way in of some fishermen with their boat on the shore.  I decided to ask about it and one gent found a lady who found another young gent with large forearms who told me it was a very special painting, a beautiful painting.  It was probably of Valencia and it was €1,200.00 which was rather beyond what I wanted to spend for something I was lukewarm about.  I thanked him and beat a hasty retreat, back to the rendezvous with my older daughter.  I explained where I'd been and we returned. I asked her help to find a painting I could take home but we searched in vain.  Nothing really made any sense until just at the end, as it often happens I saw a lovely water color of a moody urban shoreline.  It had a large, ridiculous frame but I was able to look beyond that.  I asked and he said it was of a town in Galicia.  Much better answer.  It seemed green and moody like Galicia.  “How much is it?”, I asked the old gentleman who asked a younger gentleman who said €250.00.  Much better answer.  “Yo quiero.” I indicated.   But can you take the frame off?  It will be hard to travel with all that.  He dropped the price to €220.00 sans-frame and we had a deal.  But his credit card machine wasn’t working so I needed to a long trek up and around to find another ATM machine.  Then, on the walk home, painting in hand we discussed just how we would pitch the story to my wife, who was bound to be skeptical about this new piece of art we'd just bought.

 

 

 

Sunday, 8/29/21

Clinic Full of Buoyant

 

Saved the metropolis for the end of the trip. Driving across Saturday morning Madrid, with a driver named Lovely.  I ask him something in broken Spanish and he replies clarifying that he's an English speaker.  Lovely hails from Lagos and we shift and discuss the West African community in Madrid and that fact that Fela has a song bemoaning Lagos traffic.  The moment of reckoning this morning, we’re off to a local clinic to get our antigen Covid tests.  We won’t be able to board the flight if any of us are positive.  I’ve already crafted out a special thank you to our younger daughter, should we all test negative.  But the alternative is rather real, regardless of the fact that we’ve all been vaccinated.  A happy ending where the risks were justified or a bitter lesson to reckon with, confronting the fact that they had not been?

 

A clinic full of buoyant young Spanish women are at the ready to help.  We each fill out a form and wait, but not for long.  Soon we are led down the hall.  One, after the other we are escorted to the room off the hall where a nurse penetrates our noses, deeply, uncomfortably and with that we are on our way.  “We’ll email you the results in less than thirty minutes.”  Just like they said they would.  I thank the staff and exit though before I do, I check one last time that they see plenty of Americans and that their test should be sufficient?  The blond with glasses assures me that all will be fine.  Out on the street we wait a bit beneath trees that look like walnuts but my Seek app suggests are Chinese Pistache.  A lady at the nearby café asks me a question and I say: “Yes.  It’s clear.” But I have no idea what she’s talking about and hope she directs her attention elsewhere.

 

The Uber driver on the way back is named Jose and it appears that Jose is from Madrid.  But more importantly he is playing glorious Newyorican music from the early 70’s.  One Fania All Star after another Pete Rodriguez, Ishmael Riviera and soon he and I are discussing whether salsa is popular or not, here in Spain.  His phone suggests a name I don’t recognize but that voice could only be Hector Lavoe and Jose confirms.  By the time we are approaching the Prado twenty minutes later I think to check my phone and the first result has already arrived.  My older daughter has tested negative.  Now, one after another the other results arrive and, after checking each one with some hesitation I exhale, confirming we’re all clear and there behind the Goya statue, in front of the Prado I make an elaborate gesture of thanks to my younger daughter, who’d been a strict disciplinarian about keeping masked the whole trip.  I’d grumbled about wearing one when no one was around in 110 degree heat in Toledo and more than a few other places, but now the thanks belong to her. 

We’re early and stand in a short line of people who also already have their tickets and soon I am standing before El Greco’s El Caballero de la mano al pecho; The man with his hand on his chest which has stared back at me from my virtual ticket receipt for weeks now.  Here are the portraits that adorn the covers of all the biographies I’ve recently read.  Hi Charles V, Hey there, Philip II.  What a remarkable transition Goya makes from the La maja vestida in 1804 to the darkened, terrifying La romería de San Isidro in 1823.  Early, at the beginning of Covid, we’d done a large puzzle of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, and considered it all in great detail, and now, here alive before us.  Wait, there’s some Albrecht Durer and wait, these are by Tintoretto!   I pushed my kids for as much as they could take before the mood shifted and then acknowledged that it was time to go after an obligatory run through the gift shop.  Yes.  I do want a refrigerator magnet of that man with the long-fintered hand on his chest.  Outside we marched past the Goya statue, up the stairs and this time hailed a cab with what turned out to be the first of many young, female Ecuadorean cab drivers we were to have here in the capital. 

 

 

 

Saturday, 8/28/21

Crowd in Goya's Pilgrimage

 

If you’ve gotten used to the “EZPass” way of paying tolls here in New York, the traditional coin-toss is suddenly stressful in other places.  More than a few times on this trip I’d rolled up to tolls, put my card in, had it not accepted.  Fuddled for bills, scrummaged for coins, only to find that this only a place to grab a ticket.  At one garage in Cordoba, I had a line of four cars beeping at me which was soothing.  This morning speeding out from Pontevedra towards Santiago de Compostela I asked for money as we approached the toll.  My older one asked: “How much?”  “Look, just give me a big bill and leave it up here.  I’ll get you back later.’ This, I was told, had been “rude.”

 

We’d gotten a late start as usual, and I was keenly aware that the site online had suggested the famous Cathedral would close at 2:30PM.  I met some fugly traffic coming into town but eventually got the car settled at a public parking spot and told everyone we’d need to hurry if we were to make it on time.  It was a schlepp up to the Cathedral and by the time we’d got there it was just 2:30PM.  Fortunately, whatever had been written online was wrong.  The building was open and we got ourselves in line to enter.   As we turned the corner with the line I noticed at the entrance to the adjacent Cathedral museum, a site we wouldn’t have time to visit, a large photo of a woman looking up at God with the word fe written at the bottom.  “Faith” would certainly be required to believe that St. James not only preached here but that his body miraculously returned here from Palestine after his death. 

An urgent, living edifice, the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela breathed an immediate, rather than merely a historical relevance.  Finally, a Church that didn’t charge us to enter. It reminded me of visiting a temple in Varanasi where the pilgrims were extremely serious about their devotions and where I’d felt out of place, in comparison.  Eyes are bought upwards towards an elaborate orange, green and gold pattern in the ceiling.  And the alter . . . what remarkable amount of Atahualpa-gold must have been melted to make this priestly backdrop.  It isn’t hard to see why Luther and his cohort would have been repulsed by all this finery. 

Outside, we hadn’t much time to explore further, and everyone was hot.  Five or more hours of driving still lay in front of us.  We opted, reluctantly, for one of the café’s there in the square outside the cathedral and had a middling lunch.  They warned us that the food would take twenty-minutes, so I took a stroll around to the front of the remarkable sandcastle-like edifice with the stone, quarried locally which seemed a different hue, a different consistency than the ones in Castile.  One after another, groups of the athletic faithful charged into the square with cheers and Galician bagpipes playing in accompaniment.  It occurred to me that this must be tradition at the end of the arduous pilgrimage, like the boisterous crowd in Goya’s Pilgrimage to San Isidro.

Friday, 8/27/21

Overcast, a Bit On

 

Finally got around to Giles Tremlett’s “Ghosts of Spain” yesterday and was glad to find it more substantive and analytical than I’d expected.  Reading on a couch here in the rural peninsula of San Vincente do Grove, in Galicia I was particularly intrigued to note that while Galicia has, like the Basques and the Catalan’s its own independence movement, that both Francisco Franco and Fidel Castro both hail from the place ancestrally: (Ferrol & Lancara, respectively).  Tough soil, it would seem.  I’d been plodding around in medieval and baroque Spanish history before coming and once here, have made my way through some lighter fare.  I had to take some time to re-research just why it was Franco wasn’t all in with the Axis in WWII and how it was he wasn’t toppled at the end. 

 

As my kids say, other people go on “vacations” and generally lounge around somewhere, by a pool for their holiday. We “travel” and often travel hard.  These few days here near O Grove were intended to be more vacation-like.  The first day was pool and ping pong.  When my daughters finally awoke yesterday morning we began talking about a walk to the beach.  A small, peninsula, there is water all around us.  Before we left, I wanted to call and double check that my reservation up the road at Culler de Pau wasn’t a mirage.  I’d called a half a dozen restaurants yesterday and when they said “nothing tonight” I asked, how about tomorrow and the booked me. It was only later that I realized that this is the Culler de Pau which is Michelin starred and had appeared booked out for the next month when I had tried to book a place from back home.

 

I called to check and they reconfirmed but the phone cut off before I could answer their questions about the menu.  We headed there first on our walk and I was able to preorder the tasting menu for three and one for a vegetarian.  We debated which “beach” to go to after that.  Overcast, a bit on the cold side for August no one wanted to get wet, just connect with lands end.  We headed down to the “Praia Area das Pipas” beach and had a walk along the rocks.  And while I never would have done this in the past the most marvelous thing about this walk for me was identifying new plants. I must have noticed thirty new plants and identified them all on this walk alone. 

 

My Seek app tells me they were: Fennel, Bristly Oxtongue, Japanese Camellia, Jimsonweed, Chinese Gooseberry, Apple Ming, Common Passionfruit, Jointed Charlock, Tomato, Wild Leek, Common Lamb’s-quarters, Common Bracken, Greater Bird’s-foot-trefoil, Common Lantana, Angel’s Trumpet, Wand Mullein, Common Vervain, Oregon Oak, Sea Holly, Dead Man’s Fingers, Common Golden Thistle, Sand Stock, Common Andryala, Purple Viper’s-bugloss, Gorse, Pampas Grass, Pink Knotweed, Red Valerian, Sea Kale, American Pumpkin, Slender Wild Oat, Sweet Chestnut, Cape Honeysuckle, Common Lavender, Miniature Umbrella Tree, Purple Shamrock and Purple Allamanda.  Not that you were asking. 

 

A late lunch at Gastrobar Pensión Casa O Chasco, which we’d stumbled on, returning home.  My call with a client was cancelled as the poor gent notified me that he’d come down with Covid.  I repositioned my mask and came home more time with Giles Tremlett and then a long siesta, more reading before realizing that it was coming up on 9:00PM much sooner than I’d expected.  Walk?  No, my younger daughter insisted her legs were still chafed after that last walk. And she was correct in remembering that Culler de Pau had a parking lot in the back where I was surprised to find a northern red oak, just like back home.

 

Ah, they took good care of us there, last night.  My older daughter had been close to tears the night before when, yet another restaurant suggested they could accommodate her vegetarianism with a ‘grandma salad.’  We had the tasting menu with plenty of wonderful local seafood and for early each dish she had an alternative.  They started my wife and I on a sherry from down near Cordoba but every other grape was from nearby or indeed from northern Portugal which is nearby.  A small fortune, certainly when all was done but every single member of our quartet seemed happy and, after spending nearly three hours there we left in a buoyant mood, one and all. 

Thursday, 8/26/21

Then They Couldn't Hear

 

I got my laundry out on the drying rack first thing, this morning.  Tee-shirts mostly seem to get sweaty and smelly damn fast and I’ve gone through two shirts per day.  It’s misty outside.  Fitting, I suppose I’ve always imagined Galicia as something like Britany; rocky and cloudy.  There weren’t any of the basics like coffee here at the place when we got in last night, and nothing’s walkable, so I vowed to drive off early and get some stores before everyone else woke up.  I’ve cancelled most of my calls this week, but held on to one that’s starts at 10:00AM. The supermarket opens at 9:30AM. It’s a ten-minute drive away.  I reckoned I had plenty of time. 

 

Parking in O Grove at 9:30AM on a Wednesday was like trying to park in Noe Valley on a Friday night , only more complicated because in addition to their being no spaces the rules aren’t particularly clear.  I sailed past the supermarket and eventually found a place a five-minute walk away.  Parking up on the curb was the best I could do in this clumsy, oversized SUV.  When I left the house, I’d thought wearing flip flops was a crack idea.  It wasn’t and I was limping by the time I reached the market.  Grabbed a bunch of things quickly.  Asked the same nice lady in a bonnet to show me the coffee and then the bread.  Returned to her when the check-out gal reminded me I’d need to weigh these bananas and peaches.  And limping back down to the waterfront where I’d left my car, I realized I’d need to take this call, sitting in the vehicle.

Call went alright, at first.  Then they couldn’t hear me.  Called back, and then muted as the GPS directed me out of the city and by the time I got back home, one of my other team members reporting in, I decided to take a left and head up into the woods I hadn’t otherwise seen here. They were lovely but then the road got thin and thinner. Ferocious stone walls closed in on tight turns and, coming upon one egress, discussing a deal, I really wondered if I could make it through without scratching this vehicle mercilessly. 

Later that day I heard something I haven’t heard in a while:  both my daughters call me to come splash around in the pool.  Cloudy, cold, I put down my work and mounted the requisite bravery to descend into the cold pisquina.  It only took that one dive in, my head underwater to give me swimmers ear, like I knew it would.  Too much wax up there. Later we all went down in the basement and played a few rounds of the Chinese national sport: ping pong.  Like chopsticks, any true Chinese person has the proper way to hold a ping pong paddle, that ain’t a bit like the way I grabbed it, and I teased my daughters that this was a qualifier as to their avowed Chinese-ness.  “Look at the way your mom holds the paddle.”  I managed to defeat my wife, but only just and only because I can serve OK, but can’t hit much back when challenged. Chill day.  And more of it for tomorrow.

 

 

 

Wednesday 8/25/21

Razors Were a Form

 

The university, first with its frog on the skull façade and then it's unfathomably tall nave that breathes alive with its jeweled pattern, is the oldest in the world.  (The Confucian exam hall in Dongcheng might have been older, were it not boarded up in 1905 and sacked during the Cultural Revolution.  One feels dwarfed, as intended, head cocked back trying to contemplate the height of the spires and it makes me anticipate the intimacy of the adjoining Catedral Viejo, which is more of a Romanesque construction with an interesting alter of narrative paintings presumably from before Spain had gold to lavish with impunity.  The girls and I enjoyed laughing at some of the facial expressions of the faithful within the Renaissance paintings in the cloister and we continued to riff on how inspid one or another facial expression was, until we were back out in the sun.

Later in the Plaza Mayor we found a place for lunch and ordered things quickly. Later when I went inside to see about charging my phone, I saw some remarkable tapas dishes laid out under the counter and went to find the waiter to order these one of these and one of these and one of these, as well.  We stayed until not long after 2:30PM and then I got ready for the second time during the trip to drive out of town and conduct a conference call.  Somehow the exit from the medieval garage was easier than the descent down into it. 

 

With the day before us we went north and the west riding over and around Portugal and on towards the mysterious territory of the Gallegos.  Something in the soil, certainly.  Both Francisco Franco and Fidel Castro hail from Galicia. Site of Europe’s largest fishing fleet and the point from which most drugs are smuggled into the continent.  And after many hours and many days considering the dry, savannah of Castile and La Mancha and Leon it is remarkable to drive over the mountains and down into the verdant, hilly territory that suddenly feels like Ireland.   Something about Rias Baixias I immediately felt attracted to.

Carlos, our Airbnb host made a valiant effort to find us one or another or another reservation.  How about one at 10:15PM?  My older daughter sighed.  I asked if we could figure out the internet first as it seemed not to be working and this would be like a house without oxygen for my family.  By the time we called back to the retaurant to confirm the table was gone.  Eventually we found a spot at the Castro hotel and though they didn’t recognize us at first as we walked in through the kitchen they eventually acknowledged that we had a proper reservation and could join the others on the porch over the sea and we got a lovely seat there, out back overlooking the boats in the bay.  My wife wanted seafood.  The food of her youth.  And when she asked, I said that ‘razors’ were a form of clam.  She ordered them, while I got the seabass.  She was thrilled when they came. Chengzi, these were a popular dish from her childhood on the Bohai Sea which she hadn’t had for years.  The local wine was really good too.

 

 

 

Tuesday, 8/24/21