poetry in the afternoon
Still 4 Days 'Til Granada
Hostel and bus reservations made for Granada, and for cheaper than I expected too (and sure enough, I do feel better). Perfectionist brain, as always, is afraid I screwed something up somewhere, of course, but when I calm myself I know I did it all right and I will be okay even if I didn't. Unfortunately, I am not staying at Hostal Venecia again; I tried calling for almost an hour and couldn't get through, so I don't know what's up over there. I'm at a different place now instead, called Oasis Backpackers' Hostel, which looks more than serviceable for my needs. Snuck in and nabbed the last available bed for the night online, which is good luck on my part.
I'm a little sad that I won't be back at Venecia, but maybe it's for the best. I think it's better not to try to slavishly recreate a past experience, and instead let the experience stand for what it was without trespassing on the memory. And I can't recreate it anyway. I'll go back to the Alhambra and the Albayzín, but I won't ever see them again for the first time. I'll go back to the mirador, but I'm not bringing my guitar (what's the point?) and I think I'd feel more silly than spiritually attuned singing Jeff Buckley songs out into the night all by myself. And as much as it pains me to say it, I will most likely never see or talk to Chantal again or find out what happened in her life when her trip was over. But at the same time, if it weren't all so ephemeral, if it weren't brief, it would lose its resonance because it would become ordinary.
Speaking of which, I have a really cool entry about bullfighting and death half-written in my head, but I'm going to save that for later because for now I want to share with you the beautiful, beautiful, beautiful poem that was on the wall of one of the Metro cars I was in yesterday (in Madrid they have this cool "encourage reading" thing where they'll put like a poem or a little chunk of a story or novel tacked up inside the cars, which I think is insanely cool).
Nadie comprendía el perfume
de la oscura magnolia de tu vientre.
Nadie sabía que martirizabas
un colibrí de amor entre los dientes.
Mil caballitos persas se dormían
en la plaza con luna de tu frente,
mientras que yo enlazaba cuatro noches
tu cintura, enemiga de la nieve.
Entre yeso y jazmines, tu mirada
era un pálido ramo de simientes.
Yo busqué, para darte, por mi pecho
las letras de marfil que dicen siempre,
siempre, siempre: jardín de mi agonía,
tu cuerpo fugitivo para siempre,
la sangre de tus venas en mi boca,
tu boca ya sin luz para mi muerte.
"Gacela" literally means "gazelle" but I suspect it is also the specific poetic form this is written in, though I don't know exactly what that is. Anyway, this is my extremely poor translation of it, which is utterly without poetry because I wanted you to get the sense of what it actually said, and because my time to do a good translation is limited. Y'all should all learn to read Spanish, cause nothing else will do this justice:
Nobody understood the perfume
of the dark magnolia of your belly.
Nobody knew that you were martrying
a hummingbird of love between your teeth.
A thousand Persian ponies were sleeping
in the plaza with the moon before you,
while I spent four nights encircling
your waist, the enemy of snow.
Between brick and jasmine, your gaze
was a pale bough of tiny seeds.
I searched, in order to give you, upon my chest
the letters of marble that say forever,
forever, forever: garden of my agony,
your fugitive body forever,
the blood of your veins in my mouth,
your mouth already without light for my death.
Two words for that: Holy. Shit. Almost makes me wish I was still writing poetry - but then again, the fact that poems like that exist and I could never hope to match them is one of the reasons I gave it up in the first place. So right now I'll settle for getting some work done on Ghost Moon for once.
What is is about Spain that always makes me gravitate toward the most depressing writers and musicians, all of whom died awful deaths at a young age and left behind a body of work that's just as depressing as their histories? I'm incredibly happy here, really, I'm just wallowing in melancholy because I seem to like it for some reason. Weird.
Hostel and bus reservations made for Granada, and for cheaper than I expected too (and sure enough, I do feel better). Perfectionist brain, as always, is afraid I screwed something up somewhere, of course, but when I calm myself I know I did it all right and I will be okay even if I didn't. Unfortunately, I am not staying at Hostal Venecia again; I tried calling for almost an hour and couldn't get through, so I don't know what's up over there. I'm at a different place now instead, called Oasis Backpackers' Hostel, which looks more than serviceable for my needs. Snuck in and nabbed the last available bed for the night online, which is good luck on my part.
I'm a little sad that I won't be back at Venecia, but maybe it's for the best. I think it's better not to try to slavishly recreate a past experience, and instead let the experience stand for what it was without trespassing on the memory. And I can't recreate it anyway. I'll go back to the Alhambra and the Albayzín, but I won't ever see them again for the first time. I'll go back to the mirador, but I'm not bringing my guitar (what's the point?) and I think I'd feel more silly than spiritually attuned singing Jeff Buckley songs out into the night all by myself. And as much as it pains me to say it, I will most likely never see or talk to Chantal again or find out what happened in her life when her trip was over. But at the same time, if it weren't all so ephemeral, if it weren't brief, it would lose its resonance because it would become ordinary.
Speaking of which, I have a really cool entry about bullfighting and death half-written in my head, but I'm going to save that for later because for now I want to share with you the beautiful, beautiful, beautiful poem that was on the wall of one of the Metro cars I was in yesterday (in Madrid they have this cool "encourage reading" thing where they'll put like a poem or a little chunk of a story or novel tacked up inside the cars, which I think is insanely cool).
Nadie comprendía el perfume
de la oscura magnolia de tu vientre.
Nadie sabía que martirizabas
un colibrí de amor entre los dientes.
Mil caballitos persas se dormían
en la plaza con luna de tu frente,
mientras que yo enlazaba cuatro noches
tu cintura, enemiga de la nieve.
Entre yeso y jazmines, tu mirada
era un pálido ramo de simientes.
Yo busqué, para darte, por mi pecho
las letras de marfil que dicen siempre,
siempre, siempre: jardín de mi agonía,
tu cuerpo fugitivo para siempre,
la sangre de tus venas en mi boca,
tu boca ya sin luz para mi muerte.
"Gacela" literally means "gazelle" but I suspect it is also the specific poetic form this is written in, though I don't know exactly what that is. Anyway, this is my extremely poor translation of it, which is utterly without poetry because I wanted you to get the sense of what it actually said, and because my time to do a good translation is limited. Y'all should all learn to read Spanish, cause nothing else will do this justice:
Nobody understood the perfume
of the dark magnolia of your belly.
Nobody knew that you were martrying
a hummingbird of love between your teeth.
A thousand Persian ponies were sleeping
in the plaza with the moon before you,
while I spent four nights encircling
your waist, the enemy of snow.
Between brick and jasmine, your gaze
was a pale bough of tiny seeds.
I searched, in order to give you, upon my chest
the letters of marble that say forever,
forever, forever: garden of my agony,
your fugitive body forever,
the blood of your veins in my mouth,
your mouth already without light for my death.
Two words for that: Holy. Shit. Almost makes me wish I was still writing poetry - but then again, the fact that poems like that exist and I could never hope to match them is one of the reasons I gave it up in the first place. So right now I'll settle for getting some work done on Ghost Moon for once.
What is is about Spain that always makes me gravitate toward the most depressing writers and musicians, all of whom died awful deaths at a young age and left behind a body of work that's just as depressing as their histories? I'm incredibly happy here, really, I'm just wallowing in melancholy because I seem to like it for some reason. Weird.