In Which Team Pants Click Castanets

Flamenco!

Our hosts, after guiding us through the maze of Granada's street for sumptuous meals, more great drinks and more delicious food, brought us to a tavern in the upper hills frequented by local gypsies. We entered a narrow, white walled, darkly lit cavern with a small stage at the end and were taken to a small table near the front of the room and ordered mas tinto de verana. The crowd's electric buzz created a palpable fission echoing our day's wonder and magic.

A few minutes later, the flamenco guitarist and cantor glided through the crowd to the stage followed by three young dancers in full regalia. They calmly took their seats traditionally placed around the edge of the stage. The guitarist begins to strum with a measured fervor. Someone else claps, beginning the pulse so characteristic of the form. As the beat and music took over the hall one of the dancers, as though vaguely possessed by the rhythmic strain, her face pained with a look of sorrow or lost love, began to slowly stomp and spin her body, flaring the scalloped folds of her long dress. Her eyes opened. She stared into the body of the crowd like she was taunting a slave or teasing a suitor. Her glance, as she danced, occasionally dropped to the floor. Then with a laughing smile, looked up with just her eyes. So dark. So sensual.

We all felt the passion of the dance, the notion of placating tourists for cheap dance dollars now gone from our heads. These people were there to perform something they felt was a part of their souls. They threw their bodies into the dance, the music, the song. The tempo would abruptly rise with the command of the dancer's footfalls, speeding to a crazy rapid blur, and then slow to a beautiful and dulcet pulse. When the dancer sped to the final climax of her dance, all whirring and clacking contrasted with the svelte gyrations of a passion, her triumphant pose seemed more statuesque than any actor I've witnessed. A real source of passion somewhere in these hills, I mused to myself.

Three more dancers, each lovelier than the last, took their turns turning and carving the floorboards of the stage with their heeled shoes. Enchanting and haunting, their eyes might occasionally meet ours and chills would blossom like goose flesh.

A brief pause before the next dancers took the stage. This time we would witness bailaores, male flamenco dancers, who's abilities put all others to shame. He finished his extraordinary dancing with a flare and finish that was soaked in a gentle and graceful humor borne from serious competence. Flawless.

We left the evening singing down the streets, my fingers working the beautiful castanets I purchased from a gypsy outside. Percussing and laughing a staccato, we all danced our own personal flamencos on our way back home.

In Which Team Pants Kick Ass and Take Names

Upon waking in our pension, the alley below comes into aural focus like a distant television set left on overnight on the Noisy Malaga Street channel. The Andalusian sky; a crystal azul mocked by solitary clouds who defy the expanse of sun-filled sky. The day is ours. We've left Holland behind. The snow, the wet cold, and the mistakes. Oh yes, we made mistakes in Holland. I am a savvy traveler, made all the more so by loosing my wife for forty-five minutes during a snow storm. But I digress...

The autobus North to Granada passes between the small mountains which separate the town from the Mediterranean. Some hills are covered with scrub. Scruffy Brillo pads bereft of greenery, balding like middle aged Greek man in a brash sun. Occasionally we see the ordered olive rows, but I wonder where the grass grows? There is none. The scenery looks like California, and then I remember the spaghetti westerns filmed here, and I say, "ah." "This land was designed by Hollywood executives and producers to appear Old West, without the fuss of paying union wages!"

Arriving in Granada appears much like arriving in Mexico: cheap buildings with advertising written in that machismo font that gives me hives. Until descending into the valley, one might believe it all looked like that. The Franco-inspired, near communist grandeur reflected in the monumental fountains and architecture suggests otherwise. It only hints at a regime's belief that all this ancient city served to highlight their impunity and divine right. But the ancient withstood the brief shadow of dictators as easily as the reigns of caliphs and catholic demagogues. Here are the baths fed by aquaducts still in use, built over one thousand years ago. Here, a catholic church is easily recognized as Muslim in style, bells replacing the muezzin's voice in the arched windows of the tower. Each most likely built on the backs of the poor or enslaved.

Our host's house is magical. Shaped like a U with an open courtyard in the middle, the stairs bring you upwards to a rooftop patio under the gaze of the Alahambra. Upon arriving, we quaff mas tinto des verana (i've butchered the spelling in favor of phonetics) and I get a lesson in slicing Iberian ham. It's placed in a convenient stand and shaved to produce paper thin, succulent slices. These hams are curred three thousand meters above sea level in the dry air of the sierra nevadas. The rare air produces rare flavors and savory "tops" to beverages.

The drinking continues until one in the morning. We weave the streets taking in pubs and tapas, bars and wines, savoring the different scenes as we eat and drink our way through the night.

We sleep like dogs.

In Which Team Pants Arrive in Spain

"No, you don't know."

These were the first words my wife uttered to me when I answered, "I know" to her question, "Do you know how much I have wanted to be here?"

Well, as it turns out, I didn't know. She's alive here in a new way. Not to imply a lack of life elsewhere, stateside and all that. To the contrary; Spain, and most of Europe it seems, evulses a creative surge in my girl's demeanor, her vivre, her happiness. It is no mere accident her name is Felicity. But it is not always evident, say, if you're her dialysis patient trying to refuse treatment, that she's a happy happy girl. It's not always evident that she is searching for the best in everyone. It's not always right at the surface that this woman gives one hundred percent of her energy, all the time, to whom upon which she focuses. She just is; trust me. And here, in Andalusia, the blossoms are in Springtime.

Malaga greets us with a warm, Mediterranean breeze that blows the night's darkness in swirls around the lit lamps and shiny streets. The evening involves us intricately with gentle nudges and eddies that pull us onto further corners of it's glow. Malaga.

Our pensione is called Rosa. La Senora calls to us after we arrive and acknowledges they do have vacancy. "Arriba" she says. From where we are not sure. Felicity thinks senora is behind a door to our left. But I believe she's on the landing above. She is. I say, "Arriba. Si?" "Si." She replies, and we climb the four flights of stairs towards her voice. On the top stair landing we are presented with a lovely, albeit tiny, room with a small balcony overlooking an even tinier (tinyer?) alleyway from which the smells and savory scents of fresh fried fish flow upwards through our open doors. Now, with my wife hungry for Spain and fish, we descend upon the alley with the gusto of a tomcat to the mouse carcass.

Our fat and balding servant does not speak english. That's OK. I'd have been disappointed if he did. I don't speak Spanish. Ha! Far from it. I speak a universally understood colloquial spooge of hand gestures and facial expressions largely gathered from my travels in the U.S. They seem to go over nicely here, except when it comes to verbs and nouns. I defer to my wife.

We did eat. I swear. The fried octopus made me weep. It was bomb diggity good eatin', to paraphrase the Cajun folk. The baby mussells, drowned in butter and lemon juice did for to make a salavation or two. We et. We did depart, well fed. We did expotition. And that's a story for manana. Which brings up the question: how do you spell the word describing the letter N with the funny squiggle cloud over it? Enya? Sail away, sail away, sail away....


I remain,


soup