(no subject)
Most days I wake up hot under the eye of the sun pouring in through my rickety apartment window. The walls are spring green, which I cannot decide whether it is abhorrently ugly or 60’s-tacky, like my grandmother’s kitchen. In Seville, mid-April is already hot with temperatures in the mid-30’s centigrade. This year is projected to be hotter than average and my three roommates and I have already sold our heavy winter clothing.
I work at a tiny bar built underneath an inn. We serve sangria and beer, paella and tapas. The family who owns the place gave me a job because I am the daughter of a friend of a friend of some cousin. I never formally applied; most jobs like this are given based on whom you are related to and how well you can balance plates on your forearm across a busy room.
“I need another waitress; it’s almost summer,” Mama said. She takes pity on me because I am so far from home. After closing, she slips me leftover rice in a doggy bag. When she speaks she fans her face and eases onto a stool.
“I have a girl. I know her cousins. Son buena gente,” and just like that, I was employed.
That summer before I visited Venezuela and Ecuador with my two exchange students: Angela and Natti. We spent a week on Margarita Island, reading under big floppy hats and brown sunglasses. I nearly dyed my hair black to ward off danger as Venezuelans were in a state of civil disrest. Riots in Caracas are not good places to be a blonde American. After I returned home I spent the rest of the summer making coffee and doing farm work in the next town over. By my third semester of college I had saved enough money to spend the month of December in Melbourne visiting friends. I returned for another semester before I took this year off to work in Spain.
Arriving in Seville, my three friends and me moved into this crummy apartment just off the main plaza. Rent is cheap and so is the room. For money I work at the bar and take photographs to sell as postcards in tourist shops. Most of my free time is spent studying flamenco dance with the local girls. Our teacher is an old woman who began dancing at age ten in Basque caves. Her mother is Gitano and my rhythm will never be as good as hers. We never have set classes, but just drop in when we have a spare couple of hours to pound on her wooden floors. When we arrive she stands up out of her red velvet chair and puts on her shoes. When she dances she gets a pained look on her face, as if she is not Seville teaching us malaguena, but back with her sisters and cousins, seeing who can pound out a full compas the fastest. When she returns to the present day, she teaches us hand movements and rhythms until the balls of our feet are worn to the bone.
Most of all, being a flamenco dancer is what brings me to life. I feel like I am a tiny part of something much bigger and much more ancient than I; a tiny star in a big constellation.
~The Spain book closes and I put it on a shelf. I reread it when it's dusty and sigh myself to sleep.
I work at a tiny bar built underneath an inn. We serve sangria and beer, paella and tapas. The family who owns the place gave me a job because I am the daughter of a friend of a friend of some cousin. I never formally applied; most jobs like this are given based on whom you are related to and how well you can balance plates on your forearm across a busy room.
“I need another waitress; it’s almost summer,” Mama said. She takes pity on me because I am so far from home. After closing, she slips me leftover rice in a doggy bag. When she speaks she fans her face and eases onto a stool.
“I have a girl. I know her cousins. Son buena gente,” and just like that, I was employed.
That summer before I visited Venezuela and Ecuador with my two exchange students: Angela and Natti. We spent a week on Margarita Island, reading under big floppy hats and brown sunglasses. I nearly dyed my hair black to ward off danger as Venezuelans were in a state of civil disrest. Riots in Caracas are not good places to be a blonde American. After I returned home I spent the rest of the summer making coffee and doing farm work in the next town over. By my third semester of college I had saved enough money to spend the month of December in Melbourne visiting friends. I returned for another semester before I took this year off to work in Spain.
Arriving in Seville, my three friends and me moved into this crummy apartment just off the main plaza. Rent is cheap and so is the room. For money I work at the bar and take photographs to sell as postcards in tourist shops. Most of my free time is spent studying flamenco dance with the local girls. Our teacher is an old woman who began dancing at age ten in Basque caves. Her mother is Gitano and my rhythm will never be as good as hers. We never have set classes, but just drop in when we have a spare couple of hours to pound on her wooden floors. When we arrive she stands up out of her red velvet chair and puts on her shoes. When she dances she gets a pained look on her face, as if she is not Seville teaching us malaguena, but back with her sisters and cousins, seeing who can pound out a full compas the fastest. When she returns to the present day, she teaches us hand movements and rhythms until the balls of our feet are worn to the bone.
Most of all, being a flamenco dancer is what brings me to life. I feel like I am a tiny part of something much bigger and much more ancient than I; a tiny star in a big constellation.
~The Spain book closes and I put it on a shelf. I reread it when it's dusty and sigh myself to sleep.