18 May 2006
decade
The past ten years are fucking with my head.
I came full circle without meaning to: ten years, almost to the month, from when I first was in Madrid alone.
Today I ate tortilla and drank wine at an arts cafe that I had visited with my boyfriend last year. Only last year I didn�t remember that I had once ordered a ham sandwich and a Diet Coke there.
Guernica made my cry -again- and I bought two fans and a necklace made of painted seeds. I found my old house on a map, something I also couldn�t do last year with the boy.
And it�s a year, almost, not yet, but it�s a year short a month of when my father died. The boyfriend and I had been in Alicante, Spain, about to knock on his grandfather�s door. Tomorrow I see the grandfather for the second time, again just short a year.
So much has changed in the past decade. Am I where my high school self would have wanted me to be? I sure hadn�t counted on most of what has happened, most of the people I�ve met, most of the places I�ve been and the things I�ve done.
The tortilla here is still amazing. And I�m an ass for not going on and on about what was the most exhilarating and educational week and a half of my life: the gig in Israel that ended yesterday.
I saw the sun set on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, prayed at the Western Wall, scaled Masada at 4 in the morning (and barely made it before the sun rose at 5:44), kayaked in the Jordan, floated and coated myself with mud at the Dead Sea, jeeped through the Golan Heights, learned to whirl flames on the beach in Tel Aviv, bathed in oasis waterfalls and pools, hiked through an ancient water tunnel, and generally had a great time.
But the past ten years are fucking with me. I�ll repack my backpack tonight and meet up with the boyfriend at the airport before heading out with his family to Cuenca.
betholindo at 14:13