Sketches of Spain
A Letter Written But Never Sent
Villa de Nijar May 9, 2017
Dear Mom and Dad,
You would be delighted to know that I am currently on assignment in Spain, where I am both photographing and participating in a week-long Kundalini yoga retreat. I am sitting outside my little white stucco cortija at the estate. It is close to 9:00pm but because it is the south of Spain, it is still nearly broad daylight.
I associate you both with late nights and laissez-faire, worldly attitudes. I can see you as a couple fitting quite naturally into a Spanish lifestyle. Late dinners and friendships of the heart.
Spain is positively dripping with life - layers upon layers of it that feel downright voluptuous to a New Englander like me. Life in New England seems more...strategically placed, if that's the right phrase. In Spain, by contrast, it is effusively, riotously present. It cares nothing for borders, boundaries or personal spaces. It is indifferent to there being 25 different life forms already on a patch of earth. It will sprinkle several more liberally on top for good measure. I dare say it enhances the "flavor." Is this why Spanish cooking is so diverse, multi-layered and colorful?
We saw a Spanish wedding let out from the church in the local town square one afternoon, the women all brightly colored and perfectly groomed birds of paradise. I had never seen anything like it. I will say this: Spaniards know how to live.
Spain was also the last big trip you made together.
So tonight, I am looking up the mountain side behind the yoga shala where I have been taking pictures, practicing yoga, and building community for the past week. I look up to the wind-scooped hollow about halfway up the mountain where I spread some of your mingled ashes today.
I spoke to each of your remains, fingered the ash and bone fragments through the plastic of the little bags I brought you in. I remembered what these bones once supported - the arms you hugged me with; the teeth you ate good food with and that showed freely when you laughed; the feet that led me on adventures; the hands that held mine. I thanked each of you for your unique gifts, and then I cried a good bit.
When I was through, I commingled your ashes into one bag - Dad, by some strange alchemy of the ovens, you were the light/white one and Mom, the dark. A funny little reversal, but I suppose, in one way, it makes perfect sense. Dad, you were my sun and Mom, you were my moon. You lit my days and my nights.
When I had finished reminiscing and offering up the most heartfelt thanks a daughter ever mustered, I gathered myself for what I had come to do, and then hesitated.
The air was still and I fretted at what would happen if, after great ceremony, I let you go only to watch you fall immobile to my feet. I had come to set you free, not just to pour you out. But lo, when at last I was ready, a wind gusted up strongly out of nowhere and I watched you fly free over the mountain, over the valley and the little white stucco village clinging to the far slope - like barnacles on a ship's hull, and looking out over the Mediterranean in the distance. It was magnificently beautiful.
I enjoy thinking that you were by my side and saw it all. That you've seen the lovely trip I have been having and lovely connections I have been making at the shala below, and therefore also find this a beautiful and meaningful place to rest. Though of course you are never resting, but blowing and tumbling through the brush, ricocheting off of the mountainsides, wafting across expanses of warm air, landing in ponds, streams and the Mediterranean. Always and forever on the go now. Just as you were in life.
I invited all of our family who have passed - each one individually - to join me on the mountainside to spread your ashes. I forgot to invoke them in the moment, though, and I do hope they joined you up there with me. I like thinking of all of you there, reflecting together on two lives lived so well, and all the things that continue to connect us.
I asked you for a heart rock today and you did not disappoint, even taking care to make it a rich hearty red. I held it as a talisman as I climbed the mountain and trusted it would let me know when I had found the right spot. And because you knew that it was not my intention to keep it, but to give it another yoga friend (as part of an assigned kula-building exercise), you also let me find another auspicious thing on the way back down the mountain: a pearly white, quite large sea snail shell, miles from the ocean and sitting there for no obvious reason on the slope of a desert mountain.
Thank you for the heart. Anytime you deliver on one of my "asks" it makes me feel close to you. I hope I infused the heart with some of that energy so that it will pass to Sebastian when I give it to him on Thursday. Thank you, too, for letting me find something else for myself to still remember this remarkable day by. I love you. I miss you. Are these the new ways we must learn to communicate now? Please don't ever stop, even, and perhaps especially, if you see me having a hard time seeing, hearing, or believing you. I live for such moments regardless. I live for the flicker of recognition and hope they ignite.
This morning, Dad, I felt you near when I was by the beautiful eco pool on this stunning Spanish estate. Yellow jackets were out and no matter where I went, one always came and buzzed or crawled a few inches from me. All of its friends were hanging out in a cloud far distant - barely even visible. This one, however, came to investigate my glasses on the ground, crawl by my arm, or buzz past an ear. Just one. I would have been a little anxious at his unremitting attentions but remembered the yellow jacket mascot on your GA Tech Ramblin' Wreck coat you so prized when you went to college, and I no longer felt any fear. I knew that yellow jacket meant no harm. I felt you were just using him to say hello, and so I stretched more languorously in the sun, closed my eyes and let him buzz as he would.
Love forever,
Alexka
When I had finished writing this letter to my parents in my journal, which is shown below, I sat back to watch a joyful breeze pick up and play with the pages.
Join me now in doing nothing for 60 seconds. Press play and take in the view with me....
Sketches of Spain, in Photos . . . .
If Iceland and the North called me to rest, I believe it was Spain and the South that first coaxed me back to life. What's next for me then? Shall I travel to the East? Or to the West? And what lessons of redemption and evolution may await me there?
The First Nations talk of "walking the Medicine Wheel." According to that tradition, one travels to the North for a healthy mind; to the East for a strong, healthy body; to the South for strength of spirit; and to the West for inner peace. To complete the Medicine Wheel is to become fully human. Have I inadvertently stepped into the Medicine Wheel? And am I willing and able to walk the path of a full human being? Only time will tell.
“Why so worried? Release fear, invite expansion.”
May the blessings of Spanish quickening be with you!
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