Lonely Spain

I returned from Spain 2 weeks ago.  I still do not feel normal, and I may not ever again.  Not the normal I was used to before my flight across the sea.  Spain...it was lonely.  It was beautiful.  I swam through the waves of the blue Mediterranean, my feet smacked the pavement of Madrid, my eyes cried in front of a Van Gogh, and my breath escaped to Guernica.  I spoke French in Alicante, chomped chocolate in Villa Joyosa, worshipped Christ in a church in Orihuela, and watched monuments burn during the Fiesta of Sant Joan.  Still, I felt lonely...inbetween the exploring and fire, lonliness prevailed and I hung out inside my head.  Would I do it again?  Absolutely.  I was there to better my writing.  Did it work?  I am not sure, yet.

I am working on three different projects.  One is a novel, inspired by Spain.  I am going to turn in the first 15 pages for my final assignment as part of the class in Spain.  It is the journey of a laid off Alicante teacher, his wife Maria, a cop in Madrid, and a spoiled rich American woman. The teacher loses his wife and his job, and his identity.  It is his search to find a place in this world that has completely torn him apart. The other is a short story about Arlene.  She is an older southern woman, who has never been anywhere, and her whole life revolved around her drug addict daughter and poorly written mystery novels.  Her daughter is now clean and she is determined to find a life.  But she doesn't know how.  The third is a creative non fiction piece.  I am hoping to submit it to an upcoming competition.  It is about me, in my awful early 20's, hanging out at after hour gay bars running up to older gay man and asking them if they knew my brother who died of AIDS when I was 14.  It tells the back story of me and my brother and how no one in my family ever told me he was gay or sick and how at 11 years old with my father in the drunk tank, I had to ask my mom about my brother.  It is about my search for redemption through his friends, wanting to know my brother when I was older.  We will see how it turns out.  How any of them turn out. 

I wrote poetry for the past year.  Terrible, crazy, nonsensical poetry.  I am happy to be back to prose.  I have been told I have a strong voice in my pieces, a voice painful, strong, and beautiful, like a violin.  I do not know if those compliments are true.  I do know that now when I write, I obsess over if the voice is there, whereas I use to just write.  Compliments are great for my ego, but I am not so sure if they help my writing. 

So Spain.  It is over.  And no one really wants to hear about it.  Maybe 5 minutes and then they are bored.  I have my pictures and my memories.  My grandma has pictures of Elvis to send to Sylvia, my host mom in Spain.  I miss Sylvia.  She was kind.  We spoke French because I don't know Spanish and she doesn't know English.  We both know French.  She is another story for another time.

I think I came back different.  Memphis seems different.  I am different.  How?  I am not sure yet, maybe my writing will show me.