The coupling was good but I had to get back to California, to teaching. I’d already played enough hooky at the start of the new school year. My guy was staying on, renting a Ducati and motorcycling through the Pyrenees for another week. I was invited to join him for that as well. But there was school. And I also knew he’d be happier alone on his bike in the landscape. He is happiest alone. I understood that; it was not something about him that could be changed. We had our week, glorious, then we kissed goodbye at the yacht harbor and I tried to leave any feelings of wanting more from him there.
Is this true of myself as well? Am I happiest alone?
The dusky light gives way to streetlights on the gaudy Gaudi structures erected incomprehensibly in the middle of, next to, juxtaposed with, the surrounding architecture that looks nothing alike. Where were the city planners when this city was built? Barcelona is a wild conglomeration of architectural styles, shapes, heights, and colors. I breathe it in, adjust my eyes to the shifting twilight, move the tiny headphone buds deeper into my ears to learn the history, where to focus my eyes and thoughts, as we pass through this chaos of sights-to-see.
I hear bits and pieces:
The Olympics were here in ___.
There is the Jewish Hill….
The __ Museum, _ Library, ____ Theatre.
In the giant downtown gazebo, are those Russian ballerinas pirouetting?
A series of fountains spew color-lit water bursts in sequence to a Bartók symphony!
Now, fireworks explode into skies between buildings.
Hundreds, no thousands, of people are out walking the streets.
Wow, Barcelona! It is ALIVE! Is every night like this?
No, of course not. I happen to have a 12-hour layover in Barcelona on a festival occasion, a night when free ballets and symphonies and theatrical performances are taking place all over town, lending a glow, heightening our pleasure, focusing the eye out of the chaos of so-much-to-see into the framework of the arts: dance, music, language. Over there, young spoken-word poets are rapping hip-hop beats; here, it’s Shakespeare in Spanish; now, a celebratory speech; in my ear, the stories of Barcelona’s past and future. I see it all from my perch on top of this slow-moving red bus.
Having circled one loop of city highlights, I step off the bus and enter the strolling crowd of pedestrians on La Rambla. On any night of the year, I had heard, what you do most especially in Barcelona is walk La Rambla with its outdoor cafés, restaurants, shops, and galleries. It is nighttime now and I am on my own in the teeming city, fearless.
I have walked on fire.
The worst things I could have imagined when I was a naïve and arrogant young woman all have happened: robberies, rape, death of my baby girl, death of my marriage, death of myths of how life is supposed to be. There’s no such thing as supposed-to-be! I know this now. There is only HOW IT IS and (like Barcelona) life is like this: chaotic, unpredictable, dynamic. And, it is also orderly (like symphonies and ballets), predictable (there will always be hundreds of pedestrians walking La Rambla), and energized (life is forceful, changeable).
I’ve changed. I never thought I’d feel this kind of free joy again, this loose/liberated ability to couple and part, this independent willingness to enter the stream of strangers, strong, happy, one of them.
Near midnight I find a pleasing restaurant – a clean, well-lighted place – with more people than you’d think would be out dining at midnight (unlike at home, where everyone is ready for bed by 8pm, my bedroom community of early commuters and high achievers).
I order red wine and a bowl of soup. The bread arrives with the wine and I serve myself my own holy communion. I chat with a Dutch man dining alone at the next table. He’s living here for a month, studying art and Spanish.
“How long are you here for?” he asks.
“Twelve hours. And it’s half-over.”
We smile and talk across the space between us as we eat, then I head back out into the streets and join the crowd.
Half over, like life? Not over yet.
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank the editors who previously published these stories:
Firewalking: Sideshow (1997)
Someplace Else: Sideshow (1992)
Emporio Rulli: RedbridgeReview.co.uk (Summer 2006)
Raven: The Best Travel Writing 2006 (Travelers Tales)
Love Is Blind in One Eye: ChickLitReview.org (January 2007)
Alive in Lisbon: The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2008 (Travelers Tales)
12 Hours in Barcelona: The Best Travel Writing 2010 (Travelers Tales)
This is a collection of short fiction, except for Travelers Tales stories, which are nonfiction.
About the Author
Marianne Rogoff is the author of the memoir Silvie’s Life (Zenobia Press, Berkeley, 1995; Gradiva, Lisbon, 2006), which has been adopted for courses in medical ethics and optioned for film. Travelers Tales has published her stories in The Best Women’s Travel Writing (2011, 2010, 2008) and The Best Travel Writing (2006). Her feature essays and book reviews have appeared in The Rumpus, San Francisco Chronicle, and Bloomsbury Review, among others. She teaches Writing & Literature at California College of the Arts and Big History at Dominican University, and leads annual weeklong trips for writers to Mexico, Spain, and elsewhere.
Read more at mariannerogoff.com
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Love Is Blind in One Eye Page 5