Well Bottom Blues

There are moments I record here and moments I do not. Moments of terror or desire or shallow despair at the worthlessness of this endeavor. Why must I write? Because not to is to be a tourist.
— Bill Lavender,  “Tui”

I got lost after leaving the Alhambra and stopped for lunch. On the way I discovered a fabulous graffiti mural of Louis Armstrong.

It was almost siesta when I began my ascent of the blindingly whitewashed narrow alleys and stairwells of the Albicín, determined to stand at least at the foot of Sacromonte.

It was siesta and I was out of water and everything was closed as I descended the Calle Elvira down toward the arch in the heat of siesta.

I was spent and dehydrated when I got back to my pension. In my exhaustion  thumped up the stairs much too loudly and closed my door too hard in the middle of siesta, for which my hostess chastised me.

I was as much a pilgrim as people on Camino de Santiago when I began, but a tourist by the end of that afternoon.

•••

My tour of Garcia Lorca’s house in Granada was delayed 30 minutes by the private tour of a prominent matador. Once admitted, I confess I only understood a fraction of what the guy had said.

When we came to the room where he wrote I let the tour pass on and sat in his chair, and laid on the desk, my hand resting there my foxed first edition of the New Direction edition of his selected poems, edited by WS Merwin.

It had a new jacket cover of Spanish leather made in Barcelona by a bookseller and journal maker who stared at length at the title page and I think in that moment understood my request that he make the cover.

Camino de Santiago is not the only pilgrimage in Spain.