October 1, 2000 Sunday
It is a sunny fall day outside and Freddie still sleeps a lot but I am feeling better today than yesterday. I took a day off from practicing yesterday but last night when we were downstairs waiting for Luis’ second show to begin, Carlos showed me again a bulera pattern he had showed me one day after Freddie’s class. I was able to do it last night. So even “not dancing”, I am dancing a little. I also went through my new buleras from our group class, there on the stone floor next to the bar by the stairs, while we were waiting. I haven’t decided if I will practice today, but I might if there are no unexpected surprises. We have only three more shows for the Bienal and we are glad. We are full of shows right now! Today starts the beginning of our second and last month here. Time is rushing by. We hear that it gets uncomfortably cold in the winter so we are glad that we did not plan to be here then, but still I don’t want to think about returning home. Although I love our home, I am also in love with Spain. Maybe returning twice a year will help.
At breakfast today we ran into Angela the Gypsy rosemary seller whose photo from last year is on our web site. She asked us where we had been. Again, it is as if we had never left. She only comes by on Sundays and this is the first time we have seen her since we have returned. We tried eating partridge and rice for breakfast this morning, a Sunday special at el Corbobes restaurant. It was interesting. Before we left to eat, we talked to Paco this morning and will visit him this evening. He always seems happy to hear from us.
October 2, 2000
I did practice on Sunday. No one else was downstairs and it felt very private and spacious and luxurious. I felt as if I had the whole place to myself. However, soon after I had started to warm up, the public telephone in the Carboneria started to ring. That phone is also the official phone number for the Carboneria and it is always a way to reach Concha when she is teaching. I didn’t answer it because I was enjoying my privacy and didn’t want to deal with anything else. Then my movi rang and without thinking I answered that. Rubina and Luis were at the Alta Mira and Rubina wanted to practice but they couldn’t get in to La Carboneria because nobody was there and it was all locked up. It was they who had been calling on the public pay telephone. But now I was there and I could let them in. Rubina said that they would be there in fifteen minutes, but in reality it was half an hour so I got a little more time to myself. And there went the rest of my private practice time. But, I did have an excellent practice with Rubina until it was time to stop and get ready to see Paco. We were to meet Concha at the Alta Mira at six PM. I helped Rubina learn some steps and she helped me get some of my steps in comps and also helped correct some stylistic flaws in the new movements I am learning. And it was inspiring for me to dance my Alegras to her cante (singing).
In the early evening we went to see Paco and he is more depressed than before. He is ready to come home but his leg is not fully healed and he is still forbidden to go up stairs. We talked with Adn about putting an electronic seat on the stairs or putting in an elevator. He was thinking along those lines too and will look into it, but in Spain, things move slowly, so we don’t know when that will happen. They want to fix up the office next door to La Carboneria for Paco to stay in, but he wants to be in La Carboneria itself. In addition to this situation, Adn’s wife is expecting their first child in five days. I doubt that Paco will be moved before then, but we shall see. They were cleaning his bed and his room in La Carboneria today.
Freddie’s old friend from the Renaissance Faire, Trent Anderson and his wife Joanne and their son Ross are here for a few days. They arrived yesterday and are staying at the beautiful Hotel Casa Juderia near the Alta Mira, where my sister Lainey and her husband Ken stayed last year. Martina, our friend through my cousin Rosanne’s daughter Leilani, is here for two weeks taking a Spanish course, at the same school that Barbara Evans went to. Martina is even staying with the same person, Lola, in the Macarena, that Barbara stayed with a few weeks ago. Last year, in our luxurious dance studio at our home in Soquel, Martina and Leilani both took semi-private Flamenco technique and comps lessons from Freddie and me. We had a great time teaching them and it felt good to supplement what Martina learned in the group class she was also taking in Santa Cruz with the elements we considered important to learning Flamenco. We taught the girls what we consider to be the bones of Flamenco, how to hear the music, how to recognize the different forms, how to do simple counter time, and very important, how to accentuate the accents, how to dance the accents. So Martina is now in Spain. We went to the Tres Mil performance with her and she has watched some of Concha’s classes. She was going to Cadiz yesterday. Another old friend of Freddie’s just showed up today, Grant. Grant is also a friend of Freddie’s friend Feather’s, a guest at our wedding. But Grant found out through the Flamenco grapevine that we were in Sevilla and that is how Grant found us here at La Carboneria. He and his girlfriend will watch the Buleras class tomorrow with Freddie and then they will go looking for a guitar for Feather and hopefully for Freddie too. I have to wait around for my Palmas class at seven so I won’t go with them, but maybe Carlos will. He had said he wanted to. Concha was kind enough to change our Monday comps class to Tuesday for me because the show we were going to tonight at the bienal started at seven this evening instead of at nine or midnight like the others. The show we saw tonight was a wonderful guitar performance by Nio de Pura, Manolo Franco and some excellent guitar playing friends of theirs. We almost didn’t go but luckily we did, since we had the tickets. The music was great and it was a treat. Since tonight was warm and balmy, we ate dinner afterwards at the Bacalao, sitting outside at a table on the sidewalk watching all the people walking along the big street downtown near the Corte Ingls. Then we walked up Calle (street) Cuna to Plaza Salvador and turned left, passing Bar Europa where we used to sometimes eat breakfast last year, and then we entered into the small and narrow shop lined street that opens to Plaza Alfalfa. Freddie says that on Sundays this plaza is filled with people selling birds. He went once with Luis and I think I might have mentioned it in last year’s Chronicles.
From there it is just five minutes to Santa Maria la Blanca and to la Carboneria. The walk home took less time than the taxi ride there. And now we are home relatively early with a little space to write. My dance schedule here is changing again, at least for the next three days. Some dancers from California had told Concha about four months ago that they wanted four hours a day for three days in the first week of October, but they had not confirmed it since, so she figured they had forgotten. Then they called her yesterday to say they were here so she will teach them from ten in the morning to 12 noon. Then she will teach Rubina at 12 and me at 1:00. She will teach them again for two hours in the afternoon, probably from three to five after which she teaches the group buleras class, the Solea class and then the palmas class. Or, she may start them at two, after my class and give herself a break before the group classes. I’m not sure, but I got upset when she told me today because I won’t have a practice time before class, which I need. But then Concha said I should practice on the little rickety wood platform in the front room of la Carboneria. I will. It will be better than nothing. And I didn’t learn anything new in my class today anyway, only polishing and fine tuning what I am doing. I am only missing the Silencio now in my choreography. Concha had Rubina sing in my class because Freddie didn’t play for my class. He was too busy practicing for his four o’clock class with Carlos.
And in the buleras class today we learned something I already had learned in my Alegras, so I don’t have to concentrate on anything new at least. I just have to go over what I have already learned to cement it into my memory and to make my feet and body learn to do the steps better. Concha says I have made amazing improvements even since last year. But sometimes I feel discouraged, although I can see that I am picking up steps and choreographies much much faster than I did last year. Concha is a very encouraging person and I love her more and more. David and Clara are looking for an apartment in Sevilla to live in while Clara uses her grant money here. The pins are out of David’s wrist but his wrist has restricted movement and is still quite swollen. David’s sense of humor is there, however, giving him a surprisingly positive feeling, considering the enormity of how his injured wrist will impact his life. I wanted to just mention another interesting observation I’ve made. The really moving and good dancers seem to dance “shamanically”, dance as a link to the spirit world and the physical world. You could see the energy being channeled down from above by Manuela Carrazco; Concha has spoken of how she dances the spirits of her dead relatives; of course the Gypsies would have access and familiarity with and to the world of the spirits. It’s just not spoken about a lot in California. But I am convinced that part of the art of dancing, in addition to the steps and the comps, posture and all the other technique, is that of opening as a channel to the spirits, of bringing that spirit energy into the physical reality through dance. Probably we all know this but we forget to include it in the dance lessons. We also forget, often, to include it in our own dance, we work so hard on the other aspects. But I need to remember to work with the energy more and more because I know I can do it; I already do it with my journeying and at times when I dance, but not enough yet. Dancing is magic. Dancing is a prayer. Dancing is a powerful communication, a healing. Dancing is a moving of energy. And when I forget this basic knowledge, I forget how to dance. And when I see other dancers here knowing the same, it validates my own knowing. I never expected to get filled spiritually like this here in Spain. But that spirituality is at the root of the dance.
Carlos’ baby’s baptism is this Saturday and it should be fun. It will be outside because his house is way too small for his many friends and family. He will build a fire to cook meat and a fire to warm us. He asked Freddie and me to save all of Saturday for him.
Carlos is working hard in the guitar classes with Freddie on the details of changing Freddie’s technique, figuring out why things aren’t working and then correcting them. Freddie is doing incredibly well. And, the night before last Freddie went with Carlos, David Serva (Jones), Arturo, and Grant to look for a new guitar, to continue the guitar quest started last year when I wanted to give Freddie a new guitar for his sixtieth birthday. Last year he couldn’t find a guitar he like better than the ones he already had. But this year his luck changed, and Freddie found an incredible Conde Hermanos guitar with a deep rich almost velvety sound. It is absolutely beautiful. Carlos has a Conde Hermano too. It is made by the nephews of the famous Esteso guitar maker. Esteso is dead but, like the Farrucos, his reputation and legacy live on in the younger generation. Hermanos Conde is considered to be the successor of Esteso. Freddie’s guitar was made this year, in 2000. It is the first new guitar Freddie has ever owned, and he certainly deserves it! The guitar face is spruce and the back and sides are rosewood. It has an ebony fingerboard and a mahogany neck and a rosewood bridge. This guitar is magic and very beautiful, both in looks and in sound. This is the guitar we were looking for last year and is the belated present for Freddie’s sixtieth birthday.
The day before the baptism, in Concha’s palmas class, we did tangos and rumbas. Concha had me dance, telling me to do my belly dance movements and everyone loved it. Concha told me emphatically that this is the way I should dance to these rhythms. So the next day, at Carlos’ party, the music was mostly tangos and rumbas and Pili, Carlos’ wife begged me to dance and pulled me up, so I danced, using my belly dance movements, encouraged by my experience in Concha’s class the day before. And it was perfect. I was comfortable and people liked it. It was nice to be able to participate, to be invited to participate.
The party took place in the street outside their house in Tres Mil, the gypsy housing project near the edge of Sevilla. This street, which I wrote about last year, does not have cars, but it does have a lot of foot traffic and kids (mostly) on motorcycles “motos” zooming through occasionally. Carlos had an improvised barbecue going and enough food for an army, many cuts of pork, jamon serrano and other choice Spanish cold cuts, olives, manchega cheese, and specialty dishes I couldn’t even identify. They had many kinds of hard liquor and wine and coca cola and even cerveza sin (near beer) for Freddie. There were tables and chairs outside and people sang, danced, played guitars and did palmas. The night stayed warm and the generations of family and friends stayed late. Some of our American friends were there too, Roberto and Alicia Zamora, David Gutierrez and Joanna, David Serva (Jones) and Clara Mora, Trina, who, using her Fulbright grant, had just finished making a movie about Luis’ life, and another woman, her friend from New York who is also living in Sevilla. Jill, Pedro Bacan’s widow, came too. I think of her as both American and Spanish because she has lived in Spain since the sixties. And of course, Concha and Rafael and their children Curro and Carmen were also there. Luis was there too. Paco was still too immobilized to be moved from his bed so we missed his presence at the party. Freddie and I stayed later than our other American friends, until two thirty AM, and then Carlos, Pili and their nine year old daughter Sarai (who often comes with Carlos to the Carboneria when Freddie has his lesson) drove us home because Carlos thought it might be too dangerous to try to find a taxi.. We found out later that the others who had left earlier had had to wait twenty minutes to find a taxi, even though I had called for two telephone taxis on our movi phone. Carlos and Pili now have five beautiful daughters, from sixteen years old to two months old !!!! Yesterday Roberto and Alicia left to return to the United States. It has been fun taking Concha’s five o’clock buleras class with Alicia and Joanna and I will miss Alicia’s presence. Yesterday, hours before Alicia left, she took one last class and Concha made sure to give her a lot of material to take with her. Alicia catches on quickly and will probably remember and use most of what Concha gave her.
I have been fighting a cold and have not had a lot of energy, but I am still taking class and dreading the time we will have to leave. I have so much I want to learn.
David and Clara finally found an apartment on Calle Aire which is a few blocks away from us and they moved in on Sunday. It has unlimited hot water and they have invited us to take showers there! What a treat. Now to find the time to take advantage of their offer!!!! Sunday I taught Lola, the woman with whom both Barbara Evans and Martina stayed, how to shamanic journey and we traded for Spanish classes. Freddie took two hours with her last night and it was very good. I will take a two hour Spanish class with her this Friday. Up on our larger verandah today, outside our room, sitting on the old scrolled wrought iron chairs on the blue and white square tiles, I take in the early evening breeze in the stillness of my sitting. The brick church with its bell is pleasantly familiar as is the white wall with the statue of Saint Anthony in its alcove. To my right, on our verandah by the neighbor’s old white wall, is a bathtub/planter with green plants trailing out of it. There are large tin cans next to it with more plants in them; two of the cans are bright blue. Mariano, the young gypsy who has been working for Paco for many years, comes up to water the plants every few days. I guess the drip system is not working correctly. Today he takes down a bucket of trash. He is cleaning the roof and painting it to protect this room against leaks when it rains. It leaked a year ago in the spring when we were last here, and we are told that it leaked again last winter. Maybe this time Mariano’s work will do the trick. As I look at the plants, including a small palm and some sort of tree, I see the stacks of tile in the corner and the unfinished projects of a creative mind. Will Paco ever get up to this porch again to see them? He must be directing Mariano’s work. Since Paco’s fall there has been a feeling of pathos here, as if an acknowledgment of his mortality. Now I wonder how many years, if any, we will be able to continue coming here, to the Carboneria, as guests of Paco. His unfinished projects grow in spite of his fall. His vision is here in this room, as it is in all of la Carboneria. And Paco, still bedridden, watches the television in his dark wooden room, still entertaining the multitude of visitors who love him and wish him well. Beautiful pieces of art and furniture, knick knaks and statues, vases and paintings adorn the room or sit on the shelf hung from the beam above the foot of his bed. In our room there are still stacks of ornately carved, wooden and guilded old frames and paintings stored indefinitely in the far corner. It is obvious that Paco collected many beautiful things in his lifetime. Will he collect more? Is this what age does? Paco’s mind is still alert and he loves to listen to and to watch the news. He is still involved in the world. Am I just being morbid? This whole trip seems to make me think about age and mortality; the human cycle we are in. My mind tries to make sense of the human condition. We are born, we live, and we age and die. Why is that so hard to accept? Humans for years having been searching for immortality. Perhaps that too is part of the human condition.
And then at the beginning of class, before I realized that I was too sick to take it, Concha gave me and a Japanese dancer who looks old a special buleras she had created specially for us older women. The whole class wanted to learn it so she taught the combination to everyone. It is put together with steps we have already learned in the class and is actually very nice. But I felt mortified at having to have a special buleras for old people. It is not what the “old people” do in the videos which is what I had asked for. But I didn’t want anything too easy, although with good styling it isn’t really easy. I think I didn’t want to be told that I shouldn’t do some of the other steps because they don’t look good on old people. I brag about my age but then get insulted when people treat me as old. I still don’t feel old. It’s just that my body won’t move as fast as a young person’s. At least my stamina is still there, better than many people much younger. But an almost fifty six year old body doesn’t have the strength of a twenty six year old body, no matter how strong I am now. I am still conflicted by this natural human process of aging that I can’t control anyway. So why be conflicted? I need to just accept it. Fifteen or twenty years ago I could power through a cold on sudafed and hardly feel it. Now I can’t, although I tried. Why is it so hard to accept that my body is doing exactly what it was designed to do and that it is on the deteriorating part of the cycle. It has served me well and it still does. And I don’t want it ever to stop. Ah immortality. What a theme for humanity. At least I know I am not alone with this dilemma. I always wanted to accept aging gracefully but perhaps I never defined “gracefully”. I remember my mother telling me that once she looked in the mirror and thought, “Who is this old lady?” How do I accept my age and not be limited by the acceptance? Obviously I am not too old to dance and to work on my dancing. Being old doesn’t mean I have to just stop. It just means that there are certain steps that really do look better on a sixteen year old like Graciela than on me at almost fifty six. These young people with their full lives ahead of them stir up the nostalgia in me. And maybe it is being in class with so many young people that brings up the awareness of my own age and my mortality. Last night Freddie spent lots of time with David Serva (Jones) again. Luis sang most of the night after I went back up. But I was too tired and sick to stay down anyway. When I see Freddie and David together I realize that they are both older men now. David walks with this beautiful cane because he broke his pelvis as well as his wrist in the bicycle accident. When he and Freddie talk about the past, it is about a past long before many of the people here were even born. They must be old. Their hair is white, they are missing teeth. And yet they continue to be two little bad boys still hanging out together, still able to hang out together as they age. But there will come a time when age will change it. How much time do they have left? They had better use what they have now. And then if they have years and years left that is great. And if they don’t, at least they will have had what they are doing now. Accepting the aging process means making choices based on that acceptance. There is less and less future to think about and more and more now to live.
I can hear the rain outside. Now I wish this room had a heater. David and Clara called and invited us to go to the flea market with them, but Freddie, who loves the flea market, said he was too sick. He is still in bed and it is almost one in the afternoon. We ate some left overs from a restaurant meal for breakfast.
Freddie thinks I talk about mortality too much, but that is what is on my mind right now, probably because we are both sick. The changing weather certainly got to us. And perhaps my upcoming birthday brings these thoughts up too. At least being sick gives me time to write. I will also try to put some photos up on our web page today. I guess dancing does take up a lot of time.
Have I described David Serva (Jones) and Freddie’s history together? They met when David was seventeen and Freddie was about eighteen or nineteen and they both played Flamenco guitar at the old Spaghetti Factory in North Beach in the Bohemian era of the fifties, before the Beatniks. Talking about the Spaghetti Factory would not be complete without mentioning the infamous Richard Whalen with his black vampirish cape, white navy pants, and hand made flamenco boots he had made himself. It was Richard Whalen who kept the flamenco alive and going at the old Spaghetti Factory in the late fifties and on until it closed in the eighties. He was also a father/mother figure to the young Flamencos working there, including guitarists, dancers and singers. Freddie had talked Richard into hiring David to play at the Factory shortly after David had arrived in San Francisco. David and Freddie became good friends and had many wonderful adventures together, from working parking cars at the Shadows restaurant, to working in Berkeley at the Cabal and Jabberwok playing Famenco guitar, and of course working at the legendary old Spaghetti Factory and Excelsior Coffee House.
After working the night at the Spaghetti Factory until two AM David, Freddie and Paul Shalmy would climb into David’s old woody station wagon, go to the gas station and clean all the windows, gas up, drop uppers and drive to their ritual place at Las Pulgas water temple on Skyline boulevard. From there they would head down to Davenport, arriving in the early morning, taking uppers and drinking red wine and playing music on the beach for the rest of the day. David and Freddie both lived in apartments in a little dead end alley in North Beach, San Francisco called Windsor Place. Freddie’s apartment cost twenty five dollars a month, but he couldn’t afford it so he had to take in a room mate and then they still couldn’t afford it. Then Freddie and David went to Denver and played in a night club there called the Exodus. From there they went to New York where Freddie opened up a guitar shop. It was on this trip that they both got involved with the Broadway production of Man of La Mancha and they both played guitar in that production.
Eventually David moved to Spain where he continued to play guitar. He has been living here now for over thirty years. Although with David living in Spain, they of course did not see each other as much as before, David and Freddie kept in touch and visited when Freddie was in Spain or when David came to the U.S. The stories of their escapades in the romantic Flamenco era of the Bohemian fifties will have to someday be its own book. I keep threatening to tape their reminiscing, especially when David was in the U.S. and Paul Shalmy was with them. With this background, is it even more poignant to see David and Freddie hanging out together now.
I have to get my mind out of my dance now, and let my emotional and intuitive part dance to the music. I need to keep my channels open so I can let in the dance and the connection to the universe. When I was little I received a message from somewhere that this emotional part was not OK or shouldn’t be let out in public, or was dangerous to me. So I compensated with my mental side and developed a strong and protective mind in order to survive in the world. Now it is time to let my mental guard start to relax and share time, when appropriate, with my emotional, creative side. What a concept!
Tomorrow Paco’s two new grandchildren get baptized in the same church we went to for Paco’s granddaughter Alba’s baptism last year. Alba’s new five month old sister is Luna. Adn and his wife’s new daughter is Candela. We might not make it to Granada this time and neither to Cordoba or Ronda or even Puerta Santa Maria. We had also hoped to take a dance class from Miguel Funi too but even Lebrija seems too far now. Shihoo, the Japanese dancer who has been living in the Carboneria for these two last weeks, leaves tomorrow. We will miss her. She is a nice and giving person and a good dancer and palmera. Concha is getting ready to go to the United States and we are getting ready to go home. I had a Spanish lesson from Lola today. She is an excellent teacher and will come back again next week. I am glad I traded her the Spanish lessons for teaching her to do the shamanic journey. It has been pouring rain outside this afternoon and it feels more and more like winter. We now have an old white square electric heater in our room. It makes a big difference.
The baptism last night was in the same church as last year, Iglesia San Martn. Paco decided to go at the last minute and took a taxi there with Concha, Rafael, and me. Freddie stayed home to rest, as he is not too big on churches. Afterwards we came back to the Carboneria to eat at the many tables set up in the upper patio room where we have dance classes. I remembered Alba’s baptism a year and a half ago, with its similar celebration, just days after Freddie and I had landed in Spain. That night there was lots of music and dancing and Luis sang and sang and turned forty nine that midnight. Last night Luis and Rubina were in Jerez where Luis had a singing job so they were not able to attend this baptism. Rubina has been taking dance and palmas lessons consistently from Concha and is doing well. Freddie and I are proud of her for following her path and doing what she came to Spain to do. She will be here for six months.
And Freddie and I have just one more week here. It does seem too short. I will be fifty six tomorrow but we never got around to planning anything and then I scheduled a Spanish class for myself, forgetting all about my birthday.
In my mind I am preparing to leave. I still need a cardboard box, in reality, so we can ship a few things home this week. I have no idea how we are going to carry two guitars, two video cameras, my laptop computer, and our suitcases with Freddie’s bad arm and aching back. But I assume we will manage.
Last year we arrived at the Sevilla airport at least two hours in advance and the airport was closed. It opened up shortly before our seven thirty flight was scheduled to leave. So this year I have to call to find out exactly when it opens, because I have forgotten. Luckily, last year Susa drove us to the airport with Luis so we had people to wait with. We haven’t asked about a ride this year yet. I would like some strong man to help us because we have to drag our suitcases down the many stairs and we can’t do it the night before because the Carboneria is open until four AM and so there would be no place to store them. And actually, Freddie can’t drag them at all because of his arm and back. Ah logistics. Ah, the end of this Spain trip. It is Sunday and I want to put some clothes in the washer so I can hang them to dry before we leave. The old washing machine from last year is still in the bathroom and takes over an hour to go through its wash cycle, so I have to start soon.
I shouldn’t cry about leaving in nine days. Many people only spend one, two or three days in Sevilla. We have been lucky to have planned two months. The time here just moves quickly, perhaps because the Spanish never seem to be in a hurry. I haven’t adopted that habit because I am always eating with just enough time to get back to a dance class, and if the cuenta (bill) doesn’t come right away I have to rush. In that way I am very un-Spanish.
Today we went to a venta (restaurant in the country) in the tiny out of the way pueblo El Arco de Colina with Clara, David, Jill, Pepa de Benito and her husband Antonio Vargas and their three year old granddaughter Amalia. There are several restaurants here on the wide dirt street, each out of sight of the other. We ate outside, on the opposite side of the street, at one of the white tables shaded by yellow umbrellas on the red, packed dirt. This meant that the waiter had to leave the restaurant and walk across the dirt to the outdoor tables. But there was hardly any traffic so it seemed like the street was part of the restaurant. The meal took forever to get served, but luckily we started out with beer, then this year’s young white wine “mosto”, and next this year’s green olives, cabrillas (Spanish snails), delicious little pork chops, tomatoes in olive oil and grated garlic, and salad with the traditional tuna on top. Hours later our rice with duck finally arrived but it was very rich and had a lot of small bones in it and we liked the hors d’oeuvres better. This time we were not in a hurry and the long meal was enjoyable because the company was so good. Pepa is the wonderful singer from Utrera who sang in the Bienal show at Hotel Triana where Concha danced and Miguel Funi danced and sang. While we were eating, Clara interviewed Pepa for her project on Flamenco which is funded by her Fulbright grant. Pepa talked about Flamenco, her family history and how she met Antonio and their wedding. I found that I understood most of what was said, which amazed me. Pepa and Antonio are both warm, intelligent, and nice people. Pepa’s family is the famous gypsy artist Pinini clan. I was able to understand this in Spanish. I checked my accuracy with Jill on the way home. So it turned out to be a wonderful day. The sun was warm today. We walked to another restaurant for dessert and coffee. This restaurant’s garden opened to the dirt road and its front opened to the paved road we had driven on to get there. Freddie says that the red dirt of this street is like the earth in the bull rings. We ate in the garden where Amalia played. When we had gotten up after lunch, we were all stiff from sitting so long. Pepa mentioned that her knees hurt so I asked her if she wanted me to put oils on them when we sat down in the garden for our coffee and dessert. Clara encouraged her and she said yes. Luckily the oils worked again and the pain left her swollen knees. Next I oiled her shoulder and then her fingers. She was ecstatic. I had brought four emergency oils with me. After working on Pepa, I oiled David’s wrist (the one he smashed on the bicycle). He has started to play guitar again and is working up his stamina. After that I worked on Jill’s shoulder. I had worked on both Jill and David before and those applications had helped so they were eager for more. Then I worked on Antonio’s head ache and that helped too. Then Freddie, with his universal humor, showed Antonio another way of head relief by cracking his own head with his hands. This is a trick that always amazes and horrifies both children and adults. After that I put oils on Clara’s sore throat. For me, the oils work best on body aches such as strained muscles and tendons and ligaments. And they also work like magic on migraine head aches. I just love it when the oils help people. Pepa asked if I would come to her home to put more oils on her and I said yes if it were this week because we are leaving next week! I told her to call Clara to arrange it because I still have a great reluctance to speak Spanish on the telephone, although I do it quite often now. Clara had invited Concha and Rafael on this outing too but they already had other plans and couldn’t make it. I wish they could have come because we had such a nice and relaxing day.
My son Elun called from California to wish me a happy birthday and we had a nice long conversation. I might not have given him enough dance and music, but I gave him support for his intellectual capacity and he is now finishing his Ph.D. in history at UC Davis. Not only that, he is a wonderful person and I am very proud of him. Our friends Johnny and Celeste called me too from California for my birthday but I was in my Spanish class so missed talking to them. Birthdays can be such a nice ritual to receive expressions of the love of friends and family. And e-mail sure makes the world closer. My dance is coming along and the changes are showing. I am happy about it now. I have come through the depression and despair and questioning that being here in Spain seems to stimulate for me. I just don’t feel ready to leave here yet. And, I guess that is good.
The delicious smell of jasmine wafts up to me as I step onto our small verandah to check the weather. I have been smelling jasmine also as I walk along Cespedes street. In the spring of 1980 the smell of orange blossoms colored my memory of Sevilla. Now, in the fall of 2000 I will remember the scent of jasmine. Freddie says that the jasmine vines in the patio are shedding their flowers now and are leaving a white cover of petals on the tables.
I received an incredible, large bouquet of beautiful flowers today, Wednesday, during my five o’clock bulerias class from my son Elun and his wife Donna. They are for my birthday and are beautiful. I took a photo of them and will eventually put it on our web page. I had no idea that they would send me flowers here!!!! The class was very impressed too.
I am getting the contra tiempo (counter time) in a new way, a way that seems magic. For the last two days most of my lessons have been on contra tiempo and at last I am feeling as if there is an elastic ball between my hands that will do either the counter or the “basic” while my hands clap the opposite. And when I do it with my feet I feel a little bounce of my knee, of my foot springing up, when my step is in counter time. I am stepping between the beats as a child steps between the cracks on the pavement or over the stones in hopscotch. There is a playful feeling as I begin to play with the music. This, counter time, is an underlying concept in Flamenco but it is hard to convey and hard to get. It is counter time with specific accents that go with the music. It is strong and sure and never tentative or faltering, as I have tended to be. I feel as if I have entered another world, another sphere of reality where I can feel the energy and move the energy more and more easily. I have written of this moving the energy before, over the years, but now I am learning a way to access it and harness it so that I call it in almost every time I dance instead of at rare, wonderful moments that I cannot control. Of course, there will always be rare, wonderful moments, but now they will be at a more advanced level for me. Our plan for when we return to Spain next year, or next spring if Freddie and I can make it, is to work on counter time and my foot work and not learn more choreographies just yet. Then the next time I come after that, we will work on upper body and arms. I am also trying to work on strength and assurance in my dance and the contrast between the strength and the softness that colors Flamenco.
I had a good class today and was able to get the contra time in a swing, learning to switch from one counter time step to another, at will, continuing to feel the feel of it, to keep the communication between the palmero and my feet, the twin bounce of alternating time, the play with the rhythm. I am learning to do the same with the guitar and Freddie is learning not to slow down and carry me when I fall off the beat but to keep the rhythm constant so I can climb back on. The guitarist is supposed to follow the dancer like Freddie is following me, but not when we are just working on it, because I need to learn when I am slowing down the compass. And I am learning and correcting this. The dance is magic and I feel privileged to be able to join it. Yesterday I had an hour and a half class from Concha that was almost all counter time and I struggled and just barely was able to get what she showed me. We also did palmas and I found that I had a harder time doing the basic than the contra, but now I can do the basic too. So all the hard work has paid off because today the contra just happened without my having to struggle and push. It is amazing and I am totally thrilled. We are working on both palmas and feet with the counter time and I am getting it, finally !
I have been dancing Buleras again with Carlos group, but I still feel in between stages and steps and ways of thinking so I am not that happy with what I am doing. Enrique’s singing is different from Concha’s. So is Inma’s. And the music goes much faster than I am used to, with a modern, pushing beat. So it feels very different from dancing to Concha’s laid back but strong and energetic heavily accented bulerias from Lebrija. Freddie says I am much better in class! But my form at least looks better and the video Freddie took last night and the night before looks better than it felt to me. In class today we did contra tiempo for an hour and a half. I love it. I am going to miss Concha so much. We have so much fun together and I am learning so much, things I have always wanted to learn and didn’t know how to learn. Concha has a true gift for teaching and this gift is developing like the most beautiful fireworks, which just when you think they are perfect, they burst into something even better. Concha’s teaching is like this. She says that now I am ready to understand more, than I can understand. It is so exciting. I know that I will take all this in while we are in California, that I will integrate what I have learned in these two months into my dance, that I will learn it and deepen it and practice it to make it stronger and perhaps faster. I will work on my posture and my style. I will work on my contra tiempo and my accents. I will work on practicing and mastering the steps and footwork I have been given as well as retaining and polishing the beautiful Alegras, Siguiriyas, Buleras and Tango I have learned in the last year and a half from Concha.
I miss Concha a lot, but I cant call her because she is in New York. When you work with someone that intimately every day you either love them or you cant stand them. I love Concha and could easily work with her two more months at that pace, if my thighs would hold out. So Freddie and I plunge into our American lives again, here in our Paradiso on top of this hill in Soquel. We have tapes and photos to send to Spain, when we copy them. We have letters to write. And we have memories living inside us, in our hearts, in our souls, in our bodies. And the pulse of Flamenco continues inside us, carrying us on through this next stage of our lives.
Flamenco Romántico
Marianna & Federico Mejia
http://www.flamencoromantico.com/
E-mail: LaMarianna@aol.com