traveler's lament

When you love someone and they’re far away from you, it’s hard to be in a new place and not think about them. It’s difficult to walk a street at night and see two people holding hands and not miss them. It’s challenging to hear a song emanating up from a bar, nestled between sweet smelling lilac trees and not want to dance with them. It’s a bit arduous to stand by the ocean, feel the miasmic sea spray engulf your form, close your eyes and listen to the roar of the waves crashing against the rocks and not remember their smell, imagine their laugh, miss the weight of their body against yours. It’s more than daunting. It’s downright painful.

Spain is a place of smells and sounds, much like New York City, but it’s ensconced in religion and surrounded by beach. Palm trees line the streets. Bunches of cacti serve as small gardens that separate left side from right side of the street. Young people sit at cafes and drink wine, and I mean young people. The bell tower of the church facing my balcony and chimes at every hour, sometimes incessantly, as if calling all Catholics in the surrounding vicinity to prayer. Every time it chimes, you are reminded…

The one you love is gone.

This country smells of sticky sweet honeysuckle and salt air. The night sounds of fiesta, clanking classes and wine being poured. It’s a soundtrack, a gyrating rhythm that your heart wants to dance to, but cant, because you are a stranger here. And you are alone.

Even the garbage smells clean. There are no rats surrounding dumpsters waiting for the next meal, because stray cats linger on the coastline, keen to their prey, standing guard by the garbage. Spain is a place of smells and sounds.

The tobacco here is so strong you can actually hear it being smoked. The smoke wafts up into the atmosphere, and dances flamenco around inhabitants of bars and beachgoers. The smell is invasive, but redolent, like a perfume that is overpowering but still smells good.

People in Spain laugh differently from New Yorkers. There is no pretense. There is no urgency. It’s not a laugh that might signify the last time you ever laugh in your life, like New Yorkers. Their smiles seem genuine, if not curious. Perhaps this is because I am the only Black person in Spain. People look at me and I smile and then they smile back. This is a good thing. I would hate to piss anybody off, as I don’t particularly care to know what jail in Spain is like. The sound of their laughter makes you want to laugh, too. But here, I am not privy to the joke. I don’t get it yet, so, I remain on the outside, and smile, and listen to the sounds, and take in the smells.

I am alone in my flat right now, which is very beautiful and spacious (even though there is no AC) and large and lonely when no one is in it. I guess that is the case for all things.

There are bats in the bell tower next to my balcony. I can go out and hear them singing. I hear them squawking, antagonizing, building their cacophony up to the moment when their numbers in chorus can match the sound of that omniscient bell, but at each hour the bell always gets the better of them, and of me.

Spain is a place of smell and sounds.