Category: travel

I was back in Granada last week… long waffly post warning

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Such an ancient, powerful, spiritual place… where beauty and history are so preposterously tangible.
First time I’d returned since living there in the caves for 3 months, ooh mbe 23 years ago
where i went after prague, before south america and all the life changes that flowed from those adventures

chasing the ghost of my younger self, the uncanny feeling that i’d turn a corner midst the muddled streets of the albaycin, enter a square and there i’d be, sitting on the pavement huddled amongst friends, laughing, drinking… dogs, juggling, guitars, djembes
and indeed not that much has changed, around sunset, gatherings galore in the plazas, the spanish anarchist look will always be dreadlock mullet, drizzled with copious quantities of black garb
crusties and colourful pantaloons! this thing of beauty!

this time i was just there for 2 days, the first day a tourist amble around the beauties of the alhambra… never been in autumn before, the burnished colours of leaves
then the next day, a slow mosey up through the albaycin… a menu del dia in plaza lago… heart of the gitano quarter
blaring music, kids arriving on scooters, being scolded, then leaving, everything a soap opera, community, stories played out on the streets.
Onto the next square, cafe con leche, beer, a game of chess in the sunshine whilst listening to a rag tag busking band, the dipping and quirky almost arabic rhythms,
the fiddler, he was like puppetry dancing, smoking whilst he played, a huge column of ash jauntily dangling from the end of his fag
finally, for sunset, the slow climb up the hill to the church

a haunting and powerful sense of place, our stories somehow written on, absorbed by the landscape, there goes Rhona, dragging her wheeled granny shopping trolley, a scratched parched dry path, cutting up and across the valley, past gnarled dog eared cactii, off to fetch water from the fountain at the church, high on sacromonte
else sitting in a plump red chesterfield, outside K&R’s cave in the shit valley, fire blazing, Rasta, their dog, tongue lolling, persistently panting up and down the hillside after a stone, whilst claire squawks some cheerful story
now, lying on the bed, thinking long on muddled memories and the far flung shores of yesteryear

elegaic, i tell many stories about the caves, and that time, broad strokes, colourful, chaotic… too much borracho, the reality of it was much more complex
for me, Granada always has a strong, dark energy… Sacromonte, only holy fools would dare to live on the sacred mountain
mostly, thinking back, i am happy for such crazy adventures, for the heart connections… and grateful to all the lovely folk who looked after me

so it was, this time, at sunset, as we came down, winding our way along the goat paths, the alhambra glowing on the hill opposite, the snow capped sierra nevada mountains behind, lights starting to come on in the city below, the distant, somehow soothing, beep of horns
i stopped to look for claires cave, within 100 meters, but couldn’t quite say which one? familiar, home… and very much not
further on the hole in the wall, gateway to the valleys beyond, blocked up now, ‘ojo ladrones’… ‘look out, bandits’
then on the spur of a hill, a man stands alone, agitated, angry, he is bellowing at everybody walking along the path below, screaming at the sky, at the mountains…Maricon! Pueta Madre!
all this amidst the manifest beauty , the subtle fading light. Granada

leave it here? ha… should get on with work, wallow on, till fade out
what are we? but the triangulation of all our human relationships? the social ties that tether us, i doubt it
what are we? put your ipad on shuffle all songs, the spool that comes out? nope
rather, somehow, we are all the people that we love, when you turn to a friend, begin to tell a story, a story a thousand times told..
yet your own voice summons a goose bump excitement, the thrill, catch fire, as sweet smelling Roses endlessly blossom and entwine with our words
Granada
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….. oh and pics couple from last week, and a tiny sample from the one film of kirsts that somehow survived xx