The silken skin of my seven year daughter has taken on the warmth of this bed. I pull her tight and form my body to hers. I pull the comforter over my shoulders. She has curled around it like a sea snail through the night, pulling my edge slowly into her spiral shell. There is no light to block out. No alarm clock to check. There is only this day. And this fleeting ebbing night.
I try to return but there is no going back. It’s that whispering in my ear. I try to shut it out, close my eyes, find my way back to the barren waters in which she still swims. But the whispering has awoken me, has been alseep for too many years. I feel her beating body like laughter beneath my arm. I breathe in as she breathes in. Our chests collapse as one. And then I push back from this comfort and peel back the sheet. There’s no halting the tide. There is only giving in and getting up, finding a place where I can heed the call without waking her and the rest.
We arrived last night in Seville, for the Semana Santa festivities. It is said the Andalucians hold the passion for Christ like a fisherman does whiskey and I have brought the family here to witness their faith. Here the streets are filled with processions of men and women cloaked in tall pointed hats with holes for their eyes. They look like KKK members lost in the Old World’s ancient streets. For some 10 to 12 hours they slowly march, some with bare feet, carrying tall candles or heavy crosses on their backs to punish themselves for their sins. Some groups of 40 or more men carry massive floats gilded in silver of gold called paros that depict the Virgin Mary or Jesus’ passion. The men and women and children line the dirge-filled streets in their Sunday best. The pain for God’s fallen son who has died for them to live is real. It beats through every heart. It twists their faces like mothers with no sons.
I curse the key’s jingle as I prepare my escape. I have my backpack on my shoulders, my computer fully-charged overnight. These are the mistakes that threaten it all. A stirring child, a toilet’s flush, a too-loud zipper, a water cup’s clink, the sound of toothpaste between teeth, the faucet’s on and off – they are all potential disasters, the breath before the house of cards’ fall. I sneak into the pre-dawn with my phone’s GPS lighting my face. My brief recon from my porcelain tower has found a potential spot. It’s a coffee shop 15 minutes walk from here. Perhaps there I will find a corner of space, a table and chair, the noise of people to hush the sound of these clicking keys and returns.
Walking through the ancient streets of a new city at dawn is pure magic. The drug of discovery. Awareness. Potential’s promise. A fresh start and all that could be. I am the only one alive in this fertile wasteland. The narrow corridors bend as if stones and mortar know not of rulers and straight lines. Every step births new life. Like a desert’s stars as dusk falls. I stare in wonder all around. My feet swing like twin metronomes. The whispering grows louder. I turn off my phone’s map and feel my way though the cobblestone streets, between chiseled marble walls.
The ground is wet with the rain and tears. An old woman smokes. I watch her slowly breathe in and wonder how many years such quiet meditation has added to her life. A younger man is stacking tables outside. He knows the people will come. They will gather and drink café con leches or medianos until the sun zeniths, then cañas and kalimotxo’s until the early hours of the dawn. I ask him if I can come in, despite it being 10 minutes before the hour. He smiles and says no. I don’t need a drink, just a place to sit and write. But the man has his limits, and no guilt haunts his soul.
Further into the city’s heart, I feel lost and alive. I have made a wrong turn and pull the phone from my pocket. The satellite doesn’t like these narrow streets, these high walls. I’ve almost dropped off the grid. The blue dot is blinking between streets, between worlds. It blinks. It skirts. I spin left. I turn right. I begin to walk. And then I am found, the umbilical cord reattached to that satellite ever falling down. I retrace my steps, go straight where I turned right. And I’m on the right path, looking down at this blinking dot that is me as the walls narrow and bend, as an the sound of a window’s shudder curls up to greet the day.
But I’m missing it all. And I feel like a cheat. So I click the screen off and take leave the training wheels on the cobblestones in the cold mounds of wax. Looking up, I see an old man on a balcony above. He is wearing a white tank top and slacks. There are so many old people here. They walk the streets, gather with friends for coffee at every hour, smoke cigarettes, swim in the ocean with spandex briefs. I am enamored with this man, the new light of dawn in his eyes and exaggerating the moles and crusts of his skin. I am lost in that face, as I was on the map. Only this lost is through time and not space, a vision of myself an old man. And then a loud sound pushes a bolus of adrenaline through my heart and I feel myself jump. It is the sound of a fire hose tearing at the centuries-old stones. The street is already wet from the night’s rain, but the street cleaner has come to work anyway at this hour better meant for sleep. What does he think of the sound of rain on his window as he lays in his bed?
Writing is a funny little beast. I had lost it for so long. I wrote my first book when I was 24, my second two at 25. And then I didn’t write for two decades as I found myself sprinting a different path. Here, I have found it, that little voice in my head. It beckons me like any addiction, any passion, any love. I yearn for it like one does a new lover when she checks her phone to see if he’s messaged. It’s always beating just beneath, the surface and the things I do. The words I wrote yesterday are like putty in my mind. I think I’m thinking of driving or the kids fighting about what to watch in the back, how much longer until we need gas or how sick I am of these 20 CD’s that play over and again. But deeper in the folded recesses, in the shadows beneath consciousness’ light, I am only thinking of the words. That lump of clay. How it can be reshaped. Reformed. How this part can be trimmed and that other part stretched, pinched and pulled and perfected, for no eyes but my own.
And I think of what’s next. The formless clay that warms in my palms. I’m living a double life. This book is a force that lives within me. And at times I must heed its call, beat its heart, fill its lungs. We all have our crosses to bear through the rain-weeping streets and this life. And each cross demands its sacrifice. Like pushing away from warmth and love to lose myself in these streets, to finally arrive amongst strangers where their sounds will wash over my clicks. With the glow of this computer’s screen on my face. And these dancing fingers’ keys that would wake them and steal my chance, these fingers’ dancing keys that fill these soaring wings with wind.