"If There Was Only Certainty and No Doubt, There Would Be No Mystery."
A Letter to Katie About Our Trip to Barcelona
“If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery.”
-Robert Harris
We’ve returned home from our holiday trip to Barcelona. Before sitting down to write in my journal, I made a cup of coffee and sat with a pile of letters that were jammed into our overstuffed mailbox whilst we were away. I’ve been in a kind of journaling rut, describing with too much boring detail, our everyday lives. Starting this dark morning reading letters and Christmas cards inspired me to replace my morning pages with a letter to Katie about our trip. Upon typing, I feel the pull to write about everything - the movies we saw in the lively theatres, so many stairs, my list of Things That Make Me a Monster, and our littlest tree for Christmas. But alas, I must leave things out. Katie and I have been friends for twenty-four years and all of these years have included an abundance of mail between us — even when we both lived in the same small town.
So this is my first ramble in a new section: Travel and Other Places (letters and journals)
Dear Katie —
It is dark and early, cold and rainy. I am still on Barcelona time which was an in-between time we landed on - not quite there, not quite here. Pearl was waiting on my studio stoop for me as I gathered my things. Oh how I missed her and the Five Acre Wood! Our trip to Barcelona was one of our least eventful of trips, which I hope means I’ve come back slightly changed. Change isn’t quick and I spent an hour in the night ruminating and lamenting old things left behind at an antique shop we waited hours to visit. It was a lousy decision, but a decision I cannot undo. I think of you and your effortless decision making skills when it comes to old treasures and hope some of that rubs off on me. I remember a time when accumulation wasn’t a burden.
I finished Louise Erdrich’s The Sentence which I enjoyed, but I am ready for a book that changes my life - or at least my dreams. Oh, actually, this did give me a very strange dream which I hope to put into a poem — but only one. And not one that I feel comfortable making public. I have a lot of catching up to do. I had hoped to start Night Bitch on the train so we can see the movie this week, but I didn’t buy that either. I was in a gorgeous English Bookshop called Backstory on our first day, the day before the food poisoning. I woke up first and ran out on my own, enjoying a solitary breakfast, visiting the books shop, and finding my way to the flea market. I had already walked over five miles and had seen so much before my family woke up! There were other books that beckoned, all with covers I much preferred to our American versions. But I immediately felt the weight of all my unread stacks at home — Margaux, why, why this always wanting? This decision to not buy the books haunted me as I sat on the plane watching The Boston Strangler. It is difficult to navigate this too-muchness. Having not enough forces a direction. When I used to travel alone — all those years ago — I’d bring at least three books with me and I always finished them, and often get more. I loved leaving the stickers on those books bought in other countries, part of a map of where I’ve been. The last time I remember reading so much was fifteen years ago in Israel when Søren was less than a year old and Walter was in Iraq. I read Georges Perec’s Life, A User’s Manual, Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, and three others who’s titles I cannot recall, during a two week trip with a baby! I didn’t have a iphone back then, and I have no memory of the weight of those big books I hauled.
At the moment, the phone feels like my enemy, always promising something better, something more, sometimes pulling through. We walked for miles each day and my body ached from the concrete and even more when I climbed into our airbnb cot-like bed with a saw dust pillow. I slept a deep but painful sleep.
One of my favourite parts of the trip was a dim shoebox of a tea room in the Gothic Quarter, called Salterio, which we discovered in an uninhabited alleyway that my phone led us too. See. It was an intimate and shadowy tea room. My Rosemary, Cinnamon, and Licorice, tea was ambrosial — I must repeat this at home. I drew in my journal as my family played cards on the tiny, over-stuffed table of teas and a sardo to share. Next to us were two young people from Philadelphia or New Jersey. I tried to engage in conversation. Though they were polite, they were completely uninterested. One was struggling the entire time to write a postcard and even referred to it, strangely, as just, a card. The other tried to offer some helpful hints but was obviously also inexperienced. It was curious eavesdropping on these two worldly students, on break from college, struggling throughout an unmemorable conversation to write out a post card. I remember being interested in talking with strangers when I travelled, and have an abundance of stories in my journals from that time. I suppose there were plenty of people that I wasn’t interested in talking with as well, those people forgotten. I am at that invisible age. Do we read about social media and it’s effect on the otherwise invisible, middle-aged people? I did notice quite a few women - just older then me - double taking around my shoes which, though I love them, seemed barely worthy of so many double takes. It happened enough that I began to look down to try to uncover what they were seeing. Was it the big tear in my threadbare oft’ worn dress? Our airbnb was 135 steps up, and I stepped on it during one of the ups, tearing it quite a bit. Though I had a bookbinding needle and a little thread with me, I didn’t have time to mend it, so it hung. Or was it the gingham skirt I had layered over the dress. I laugh every time I re-hear in my mind, Silas’s telling of a story from his last soccer game with his new public school team, at a hippy dippy school much like Open Connections where he’d been going previously. His new friend said, “Look at that traditional couple!” and Silas, surely embarrassed said, “Those are my parents and believe me, they are not traditional. They are just very, very weird.” With all of the tv shows and instagram accounts featuring trad this and trad that, could the women of Barcelona, upon looking at my layers, be wondering where the rest of my flock is?
Another favourite part of our trip was our too-short visit to Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey. The air was clean and delicious, without the exhausting and endless smoking of the city folk. The clouds were as abundant as they are from an aeroplane, but with the mountains in the background, we could watch as they sped and transformed through the sky. “I want to join a monastery”, I said, “become a monk.” My family laughed, “A nun maybe,” said Walter, but Søren and Silas confirmed: if I were to be either, it would have to be a monk. I really needed some alone time. Our train ride was enjoyable, but the tables were reduced to tiny nubs. Walter, Søren, and Silas used their thighs and a Rogue Backpack as their makeshift table for Cambio. I scribbled in my journal upon my lap, struggling to balance the paints — grateful for my over-used but deformed water brush. The return, however, had us standing up and packed in against other bodies, a kind of loose tin of sardines sloshing at the starts and stops, unlike the over-packed, fart-thick trip to the Olympic Stadium to see a soccer game. There we could barely lift our arms to cover our noses and mouths to lessen the stench. We arrived late to Montserrat so didn’t get to hike up. When we endeavored to hike down, our phones told us our room for error was one minute before the last train. In a world without phones, what would our adventure have looked like?! We decided to get in line for the yellow bucket down. Leaving a place wanting more, I’ve discovered, is often best anyway. Though in this particular circumstance, the walking for sure would have been best. And if we missed the train, we’d just have had to hike back up and stay in the monastery, where I would have been able to decide if monkdom is my true calling.
The sun is just starting to rise over the horizon which I cannot see in our valley, blueing and purpling what I can, creating silhouettes of Tulip Poplars, Pines, and the Dawn Redwoods.
I wonder, Katie, how my Barcelona reflections will find their way into my next patch of time here in this world. I am thinking of starting this new year with a word again. The one that keeps rising is Flourish. I must somehow distinguish the entrapment of too-muchness from abundance, and create space for things to grow, whilst closing the doors to so much else.
I look forward to our next encounter, and will hopefully bring some Rosemary, Cinnamon, and Licorice tea for the table.
With love,
Margaux
My, my, what an adventure, both good and not. You would have found me dead by the roadside. My imagination took me to the bookstores and shops. Years ago I learned to buy it when I saw it. All this minimalism, a fad, can be too exhausting. I reserve that thinking for clothing and plastic stuff for environmental reasons. Treasures I do not pass up. How did you get food poisoning? Awful. I would have wanted to sleep in the monastery. Too explore!
This seems such a good way to tell a travel story. I like it much better than so much of the contemporary travel writing I find bland and floffy (I intended to write floofy but out came floffy and it doesn't feel wrong). I too sometimes have inclination toward monkdom, but never nundom. I usually conclude however that my native inner rebel would cause too much trouble. Maybe there is a happy medium somewhere. Thank you for sharing the letter Margaux! I love buying books in other lands...