Chronicles of Spain, 2003

By

Marianna Baskin Gabriel Mejia


Sunday, September 14, 2003

There was a time when I would have loved the thought of living in the white house, surrounded by dirt and fig trees, by the side of the road. We passed it on the bus from Sanlucar to Sevilla. The Andalucian countryside is still picturesque - spotted with “Ventas” (Inns) and white little houses. Spaces between the small pueblos.

Last night we went to la Fiesta de la Bulería in Jerez, - Freddie, Concha and me. In the afternoon we took the bus there from Sevilla and then rested in Hostel San Miguel, an old and funky hostel in the Plaza San Miguel in Jerez. We were up two flights of steep stairs in an attic room that smelled of mold. But, luckily there was an extra bed so Concha had her own place to lie down. We decided then that for sure we would take a taxi to Concha’s light and airy place in Sanlucar to sleep when the fiesta ended, which would be about four or five o’clock in the morning. By ten o’clock that evening we were standing in line to buy our tickets. It was held at the bullring. We sat to the far left but fairly near the front, on hard folding chairs on dirt, the dirt where they fight the bulls. All around us were the bleacher seats arising above us in a circle, some labeled for Sol (sun) and some for Sombra (shade). This is how the bullring must look for the bullfighters looking out at their public. The show went on until four that morning. The highlight for us was hearing the singer, Capullo, from Jerez. He was second to last and the whole audience woke up with his show. Last was Remedios Amaya, a black haired Gypsy female singer and the featured draw of the festival. But for us, Capullo was it. We also got to see Mercedes Ruiz, a famous up and coming dancer from Jerez who dances in a style reminiscent of Sara Baras. She was young and slender and she was very good but I wasn’t moved. Concha liked her dancing. In the line to the bathroom we ran into Diane Marvin from Santa Cruz. Diane, who is staying at Tibu’s house in Jerez, was there with Roberta and Charlie (Santa Cruz friends who now live near Malaga, in Spain) and Beverly Christi, a friend from San Francisco. Those were the only Americans we knew there this year, at least whom we saw. Last year there seemed to be many more Americans.

We also saw the singer Silverio Heredia and his wife Keka there. They live in Chiclana, Spain. They had visited us two years ago in Santa Cruz and Silverio taught a workshop in our dance studio then. Keka was pregnant. They now have a two-year old baby, Antonio. They will be in California again in October. If they are still around in November when we return, we will organize another workshop for them.

After the Fiesta de la Bulería the three of us took a taxi to our hostel, collected our suitcases and headed to Concha's place in Sanlucar, about twenty minutes away without traffic. We got to bed about five AM and slept and rested there all day. We are now on the bus back to Sevilla and I am typing on my palm pilot and my portable keyboard. This is an experiment that worked. It is much easier than writing by hand, although it weighs a little more than paper. I unfold a black square box about the size of a cigarette case. I open it and it turns into a keyboard. I then open the palm pilot, a slim little blue rectangular thing with a lot of memory. I slip it onto the keyboard and then I can type documents into it, like this. I also store all my addresses, appointments and documents I might want from my computer, like medication lists and directions, in it. So I can write my Chronicles on the “run” and then plug the palm pilot into my computer, push a button, and transfer what I have written into the computer. What a trip! This is what I love about the world of technology. I can re-write this, (and will) after I have put it into my laptop.

This is the first chance I've had to write since we arrived. Each trip is so different! We had help this year finding an apartment from a wonderful mother/daughter team. Delia, a youthful looking and acting gray haired woman in her 70s, is the mother. A British citizen, she was born in the US to parents of Spanish and English decent and as an adult she then moved to Spain. She and her daughter also lived in the US for ten years and so both of course speak perfect English. Her daughter, Francesca-Diana, a dark haired, slender half Gitana woman, is now in her thirties and is the other half of FlamencArte, their brilliant Flamenco organization, which is actually a cultural association. Francesca-Diana has danced professionally both ballet and Flamenco Danza Española. Last year she married Toshi, a gifted physiotherapist from Japan who is also a Flamenco dancer and aficionado. I happened to be at la Carbonería that night when they were having their wedding reception in the patio there. But I didn’t know them yet. They are also good friends of Paco Lira. FlamencArte is dedicated to helping Flamenco visitors get situated in Sevilla and Jerez. Francesca-Diana and Delia are wonderful people offering a wonderful and helpful service. They match the association's members to classes and lodgings. They give out bus schedules and bus passes and maps. They picked us up at the airport. They are a resource in themselves. They helped me get my e-mail and telephone set up, got our hostel in Jerez, tickets to Carmen, the flamenco theater with dancing horses, trumpets and drums, and now to a show with Antonio Canales, a famous Flamenco dancer. Concha and I went this last Friday night to the Carmen production and loved it, especially the incredible dancing horses. Concha introduced me to the choreographer, Salvador Távora, and to the lead dancer Lalo Tejada.

But now -more of our arrival in Sevilla. We had originally rented an apartment above the knife shop on Santa Maria la Blanca, where it turns to Calle San Jose and meets Calle Cespedes. It was in the middle of everything, right near Carmela restaurant and La Carboneria. But what I didn't realize was that the two flights of narrow, steep stairs would almost destroy my sprained ankle. I sprained it three months ago and have re-injured it twice before Spain, both times dancing at weddings! I thought it would be all better before we even went to Spain. But it wasn’t. And my re-injuring it had made the injury a bit chronic, which can be serious. I don't think of myself with special needs so I didn't know I would need an elevator or a ground floor apartment. But after dragging myself up once, I knew that I couldn’t do it and still walk, and in Sevilla you have to walk. Well by luck, Francesca-Diana is married to Toshi, Sevilla’s gifted physiotherapist from Japan. He looked at my ankle and told me that I couldn’t dance for 1 or 2 weeks, that I had to ice it twice a day and rest it or I could lose even my walking function entirely! My ligament was like a loose clothesline, all stretched out with no elasticity left. That scared me. The next day Delia helped us look for another apartment on a ground floor or with an elevator, but what we saw we hated and they were very expensive as well. We were discouraged, hot and tired. On the way back, passing through Plaza de Santa Cruz, Delia remembered a couple who had rented a beautiful apartment there. She called Francesca-Diana who called the owner and by incredible luck, it was available. It was cheaper than the one we left, much nicer than the expensive ones we had just looked at, has an elevator and marble floors, air conditioning and is Plaza de Santa Cruz next to the famous Flamenco club, Los Gallos. It is owned by the owner of Los Gallos, a woman named Blanca. We moved in that day. Unfortunately, we will only get half our money back from the other place, a month’s rent will be lost, but that is better than losing my ability to walk and dance. And we sure do love this new place. It is like a palace. It is very quiet and in a very luxurious and famous neighborhood. It is close to everything and so beautiful. The photos we have taken do not do it justice.

So what am I doing in Spain without taking dancing classes? I am learning to sing. Concha is teaching me to sing a Solea and she says that this will also make my compás (rhythm) that much better, and it is fun. Freddie has started to study guitar with Concha's nephew, Pacquito, a very gifted guitarist and a good teacher too.

We saw Carlos, Freddie’s other guitar teacher here, the other night. He took us in his car to visit him and his family in Tres Mil, the Gypsy housing project that everyone is afraid to go to. Carlos and his wife Pili have opened a small convenience store from one room of their house, a room that faces the street. That is where Carlos had first set up his recording studio. Now it is in another room. They are doing better than ever and their family seems well and happy. Carlos just bought a computer to do sound editing and to make CDs.

We are slowly getting adjusted to being here. The weather was cool and pleasant when we arrived but now we are into another heat wave. Even Sanlucar, a beach town where people come to escape the heat, was hot today. The bus zooms along the highway, now dark, filled with cars returning to Sevilla from the weekend vacations. The lights of Sevilla glitter in the distance. Spain continues to be a magic place for us, with beauty and ambience.

Plaza de Santa Cruz, where we live, in the Barrio Santa Cruz, was once settled by the Jews centuries ago. The narrow streets are mostly cool, even in the heat of summer. Nowadays it is filled with tourists and tourist shops and restaurants. Cars can enter Plaza de Santa Cruz, but not the surrounding streets. We are a minute away from the Murillo gardens, a beautiful park, soothing, with ceramic tile benches, trees and flowers. We are five minutes from la Carboneria, walking. Concha's oldest son, Quintin, played blues there the night after we arrived. It was fun seeing him perform in the patio, under the stars in the night sky. He is studying to be a sound technician in school. Our friend Rebecca, a Californian who has been living in Spain for two years now (see prior Chronicles), belly danced there that night too. Rebecca has been going out with Concha’s nephew Alfonso for over a year now. I noticed that she now seems close to and accepted by Alfonso’s mother too, Concha’s sister Esperanza. Her husband, Alfonso’s father, died this year of cancer.

Rafael, Concha’s singer husband, is now working at a bar that serves delicious seafood. We ate there Friday night after seeing the Carmen production. Rafael is such a good waiter that he just got promoted to be manager of another bar in Los Remedios, a fancy district next to Triana. He will start Monday. It is for the same chain, Hermanos Gomez. He will be going to Japan for a month with Concha in February to teach cante (singing) classes. His boss knows of this and is willing to let him travel and then return to work.

He and Concha will be coming to Santa Cruz in May. The Flamenco Society of San Jose is bringing Concha and Carlos to do a big show and to teach workshops. Rafael will teach cante workshops in Santa Cruz too. We are so glad to have all of them come to stay with us. It will be so much fun. And we love to have such incredible Flamenco artists in Santa Cruz and available for classes. We are hoping that we can even enlarge our dance studio before that.

Monday, September 15, 2003

I sit here, at a small round table covered by course white lace over a gray blue material, protected on top by a round pane of glass. My Titanium laptop, Oriental rug mouse pad, and mouse share space on the tabletop with the other electronic things and their cords, earphones, mini-disks and writing paper and paper already written on. Paquito Fernandez, Concha’s nephew and son of Curro Fernandez and Pepa Vargas, is giving a lesson to Freddie right now. It is 10:30 at night and I have already had my Cante class with Concha. I am learning to sing a Solea and it seems hard to do the palmas and sing it all in compás at the same time! But, I am improving and we are having fun. Today Concha brought over her sister-in-law Frasqui. Concha tried to get Frasqui to sing, but she wouldn’t. She is shy, but it seems to me that her soul is coming back after the shock of her husband (Concha’s brother) dying two years ago. She is smiling more and there is now more light in her brown eyes. I think she will start taking dance lessons from Concha again. She did when she was a child in Lebrija (when Concha was living and teaching there) and then Frasqui met Concha’s brother and married him, and I assume, stopped dancing. I wrote about the death of her husband, Concha’s brother, when it happened (see prior Chronicles). That’s when I first met Frasqui and at that time she/her spirit looked blank, in the midst of her grief and shock. Over the years I am seeing her life coming back, more noticeable this year than last. She and her daughter Conchita have been living with Concha and Rafael almost since her husband died. Concha feels that Frasqui is like her own daughter. Frasqui is only in her early thirties. She and Concha have always been close.

Frasqui cleans in the same bar where Rafael works as a waiter, or did until this week when he got promoted. She works in the early mornings and late afternoons and so has some of the day to her self. Concha says that Frasqui gives her all the money she earns but Concha doesn’t want her to. There are a lot of people living with Concha and Rafael right now. Concha’s brother is there, so is Carlos, an old family friend who builds, repairs, and jokes. He is working on Concha’s new studio in Triana right now. Concha has such an open and loving heart. She takes in those in need, especially family. The more I know her, the more I love her.

Paquito is playing some beautiful guitar exercises with Freddie. He is going to Japan for a month on Thursday so Freddie is taking a few two hour classes. He likes how Paquito teaches and of course how he plays guitar. We first met Paquito in La Carboneria, in the small stone room near the entrance. I think that was in 1999. He was sitting on a bench by the tables playing his guitar. I had to go up to him to ask him who he was, he played so well. I knew he had to be “somebody”. It turned out he was Concha’s nephew! Over the years we have gotten to know him. When Farruquito and Juana Amaya were in Berkeley and Santa Cruz this year we hung out with Pacquito a little and got to know him better. In Santa Cruz he visited our house when the whole company came to dinner! As I wrote last year, that dinner was requested in Sevilla by Raul, the guitarist “el Perla,” when I asked him last year what he wanted most when he came to Santa Cruz on tour. He answered, “a home cooked meal” but that it would have to be for the whole company. And so it happened. And that is when Paquito visited us, because he was one of the guitarists on tour with the group. And of course we got to know others in the group too. Now when we meet Juana Amaya on the street, which has been about three times so far, she says, “Hola Marianna. ¿Que hay? (How’s it going?)”. I watched her technique class the other day. I couldn’t take it because I can’t dance on my ankle yet. It was frustrating to watch and not be able to dance. But I enjoyed watching too. Juana has a humble, round moon face with brown hair tied back. She always seems to be wearing jeans and a tank top when I see her (except in class, of course). And what a great talent she is. She is currently one of the top dancers in Spain. When she mentioned that she is going to Japan and then other countries for a few months, I commented that she had a lot of work. She answered, “God Willing”. I saw her father bring her to class. He is a small, slender and dark Gypsy man wearing a hat in the old style. I passed Juana today with both her parents crossing the plaza near Bar Modesto on the way to Plaza de Santa Cruz. Her mother, I believe, is related (or perhaps is only very good friends with, but I think related) to Carmen, the singing cleaner at La Carboneria. She is also the mother of the famous Jairo who dances at Los Gallos and whom Farruquito was quoted saying was the best male dancer in Spain. They are all from Moron de la Frontera, the home of the famous Diego del Gastor, guitar guru for so many. Diego died in the 60’s or 70’s and has been a Flamenco legend every since.

I got up early this morning and went to the MAS, a cheap supermarket that is the closest to us that I know of. I had to finish shopping by noon in order to get the food delivered to our house, something we thought would be a good idea, especially since we had to stock up on laundry soap, olive oil, and other heavy staples as well as the fact that we both have our injuries. I made it in time; they said they would deliver it between twelve and two and I went home to wait. The groceries never came. I was very near the end of my toilet paper! Luckily Delia came by and we called the MAS when it opened again at 5:30 (after siesta) and she re-instructed the delivery boy, who had gotten confused earlier (and they didn’t have our phone number). Finally about six o’clock our groceries arrived! We waited all day!!! If you spend more than 30 euros you can get your groceries delivered for free. But is it worth it? Later this afternoon, after the groceries arrived, Freddie took our red shopping cart that we had stored at La Carbonería and went to get the other supplies we now decided we needed! He came back with cookies and pastries, cokes, olives, capers and coffee just after my singing class with Concha had started at seven. He was a gracious host, serving goodies and coffee to Concha and Frasqui.


Wednesday, September 17, 2003

I haven’t mentioned Luis’ arm yet. Luis Agujetas had a very serious accident the week before we came and almost cut his arm off with tile saw. He is going to physical therapy every day. We haven’t seen him yet, but hope to soon.

Rubina is back and we have seen her and she is doing well. Luisito, who fashions his singing and dancing after Miguel Funi, his idol, and our friend, Farruquito’s guitarist, Raul “el Perla” came by today during siesta and the Flamenco was great until the neighbors complained, just like last year. Luisito sang better than we have ever heard him, brilliantly. Oh well. Spain has great Flamenco but the neighbors don’t care. We didn’t even think we were making that much noise this time.

Luisito lent us his VCR and brought us over some Flamenco videos so tonight Freddie and I are staying home and watching Flamenco videos! We are both tired, probably the aftermath of staying up all night at the Fiesta de la Bulería. When we were younger that never fazed us. Now we need to rest more and we are doing that. We are more health conscious than ever after our experience here last year!

Ryan and Christine came to visit us in our new apartment. They now live on the other end of town with Rebecca so we haven’t seen them much. They are no longer a couple, but they have remained very good friends and are still very close with Rebecca too.


Tuesday, September 23, 2003

I didn’t write yet about Concha’s new studio. She rented a large warehouse in Triana and is fixing it up as a nice dance studio. Her group classes will start in October. It is a far and expensive taxi ride from Barrio Santa Cruz but if I leave enough time I can take a bus.

My ankle is slowly feeling a little better. I ice it at least twice a day. I (or Freddie) now put four small trays of ice cubes into our blue mop bucket and add water. Then I plunge my foot into it and keep it there for fifteen to twenty minutes. It has actually begun to feel good! I still keep using the oils, the ace bandage wrap from Longs, and the air cast from Dr. Press when I go outside. I put an extra ace bandage on it today because I took a group dance class with Torombo. Concha is still fixing up her new studio so Rubina, Amit and I went to visit Torombo’s class last Friday. It had been highly recommended by Francesca-Diana and Delia. We took a taxi to Plaza Pelicano and met Delia in the square there. She had come to show us the way to Torombo’s studio. We walked carefully down the little road, like a long, public driveway made of large, uneven stones, past the workshops and little rooms that line the lane. It was in this unusual complex that I watched Farruqito’s class last year, the one with the floor that turned to black dust. Torombo’s small studio has a side that opens to the lane and people can sit in chairs there to watch the classes. The Spanish masonite floor still turns to dust, but not like that the thick black dust of the Farruco’s old temporary studio.

Monday Rubina and I came back to try Torombo’s eleven o’clock morning class. Oh, how early that is for Freddie and me. But I signed up for a week, to try it out. Of course, when Concha’s studio is ready I will continue my private classes with her. On Friday Delia had told us (and I later read about it in a Flamenco USA interview with Torombo) that Torombo as a child was crippled and had to wear orthopedic braces and a metal boot. But Torombo wanted very badly to dance and then Isidro Vargas, a dance teacher and Gypsy from the neighborhood of San Juan de Aznalfarache, showed him dance exercises and gave him lessons and leg strengthening exercises and Torombo was able to heal himself. He said that what the metal brace could not accomplish the Flamenco boots did. Now he is one of the top dancers in Sevilla. We saw him dance at Los Gallos last year in his red boots. He teaches in red boots too and wears a Star of David around his neck along with a large gold cross that hangs below it. Monday he taught easy things, because of my foot he said. He taught a beautiful Silencio for an Alegrías. Today he did all footwork from the escobilla but he insisted that I dance even more lightly than I was dancing. He also lent me a cane and I took most of the class using the cane. Marianna la Coja (crippled)!!!! I hope not. Toshi comes again tonight to check my ankle. He had said that at the end of last week I could dance gently but I waited until Monday.

Unfortunately last Friday I had gone to Susana’s with Concha and I had forgotten about the two very steep flights of stairs up to her house. Although I climbed and then descended them extremely carefully, that evening after I returned home my ankle still hurt a lot more than it had been hurting. Things seem so innocent and then it is too late! Hopefully with the exercises Toshi has given me I will be able to re-build the muscle around the damaged ligament. Toshi says I am too old to have a ligament operation (and have it be successful)! He says that instead I need to build the muscles around the stretched out ligament, so I am doing the exercises. He told me last week that a dull pain is OK but if I feel a knife-like pain then to stop immediately. It is interesting understanding his Spanish spoken with a heavy Japanese accent! But I am getting better at my comprehension. Even Delia says she can’t always understand him, and he and Francesca-Diana live with her! He is such a nice man and Delia just glows when she talks about her son-in-law. They are all planning a trip to Japan next year to visit Toshi’s family.

We have been shopping and cooking more. I made lentils last night and have made Gazpacho a number of times already.
Amit, Aryeh and their eleven-year-old twins, Hagar and Yasmine are here. This trip seems to be inspiring both girls to want to take dance classes. Hagar already studies classical Flamenco guitar and Yasmine has already taken some Sevillanas classes in Santa Cruz. But now they both want to study Flamenco dance too. How exciting. Last Saturday we went out with them to eat at the bar where Rafael works. The girls had been anxious to see Carmen, Concha’s twelve-year-old daughter, whom they had befriended when Concha and her family had stayed with us in California the summer before this one.

And good news - Concha will be coming back to the US in May with Carlos Heredia to do a concert and to give classes. I will write more about it when I have the details. Rafael will be coming with Concha and plans to give some Cante workshops while in California.

Last night Luisito came over and we sang. He ended up giving us a cante class and we loved it. We learned some Alegrías.


Saturday, September 27, 2003

Tibu was killed in a car accident last night, on her way from Jerez to Sevilla to the Synagogue for Rosh Hashanah. She was going to meet Amit and Aryeh and their kids at the Synagogue and I was supposed to go with them. But at my class in Triana Concha got sick with the stomach flu and Freddie and I took her home before we went home. By then it was too late for me to change clothes so we invited them to come over afterwards. Amit called me later but she didn’t tell me that Tibu had never showed up. This morning, when we were at a dance class with Rubina, all our cell phones rang and Rubina answered hers and screamed. It was Amit with the news that Tibu had been killed on her way to Sevilla. Diane Marvin, our Santa Cruz friend who is staying at Tibu’s place in Jerez, had called Amit. Rubina, Amit, Aryeh and the girls all came over to our place and we just sat around in shock and talked. Tibu was an American dancer who moved to Spain many years ago and then met and married the handsome and famous Gypsy singer Manuel Agujetas, the older brother of our friend Luis. For a while they visited the States. They lived for a time in Santa Cruz at Madeline’s house where I met them. They had two sons. After they separated Tibu stayed in Spain and at some point bought a sweet little house in Jerez. It is actually a series of little houses surrounding a beautiful courtyard. This is where our friend Bobby stayed when we visited him in Jerez (see past Spain Chronicles). Tibu taught Flamenco dance there and housed visitors to Jerez in her spotlessly clean place. I remember that the year of September 11th, she was on her way to New York when the airports closed. She and I had talked about our hosting a workshop for her in Santa Cruz but we never managed to hook up in person and it never happened. Now, suddenly, she is gone. Mortality has slapped us in the face. There will be a memorial gathering for her at her house in Jerez tomorrow (Sunday) at eleven, but truthfully, her death has brought back our trauma from our car accident and I am afraid to drive again. Last night Freddie and I were watching videos of Manuel Agujetas when he was young, taken from the series Rito Y Geografía del Cante. I was thinking that this must have been how he looked when Tibu first met him. In the video he looked like the stereotype of the breathtakingly, handsome Gypsy. Later on, even when I met him, his face looked more “lived in” and hard. When I was thinking about Tibu and her life last night she was already dead, but of course I had no idea. I thought they were all at the Synagogue honoring their Jewish roots.

Last Tuesday night, after Toshi worked on me, the stomach flu hit me hard and I retched and retched. Today, Saturday, is the first day that I don’t feel queasy. Freddie had it before me and now Concha had it but she seems OK today. She has been at her new studio all day cleaning. I have taken two classes there. On a week from Monday she will officially start her group classes and she plans her grand opening for Wednesday, October 1. I wish it weren’t so far from here, but the studio is nice and big and Concha says that Rubina and I can practice there when we want. She put in a good floor, although I don’t like the “goma”, the rubber she put over the dance floor to mute the sound. Here is Spain everyone is afraid of bothering the neighbors! Concha has neighbors across the street from her studio but not on either side of her. Her building was a big old warehouse. Now it is a beautiful dance studio. It is near Hotel Triana on Calle Tejares in Triana.

Thursday night Concha, Frasqui, Rubina, Freddie and I went to see Antonio Canales dance in the Flamenco theater work of Federico Garcia Lorca’s “La Casa de Bernarda Alba”. We loved it. It was all danced by men wearing black. They played all the women’s parts, dancing in long skirts and mostly in black leotards (except for the suitor). But it was well done and it worked. The other major dancer was a young man from Moron de la Frontera whom we have seen dance at several Bienals, Juan de Juan. He is fabulous and seems to get better every year. The second half of the show was “Ojos Verdes” which I did not like as much. But the dancers were all good.

Since Freddie’s new guitar teacher Paquito Fernandez (Juana Amaya’s guitarist) is in Japan with Juana for a month. Freddie took a class this week from Raul “el Perla”, Farruquito’s guitarist. He is listening to the tape of his class right now. We got to know Raul last year (although we had met him other years) and it was Raul who had asked for a home cooked meal when he visited Santa Cruz this last year with the Juana Amaya and Farruquito group. Raul also seems to be a good guitar teacher. He plays beautifully. It was like being in heaven listening to the lesson.

And now Freddie and I cling to each other a little more, with the weight of Tibu’s death telling us how precious is our life together. Mortality is such a shock. We are still reeling with the news of this death.

Yesterday Curro Fernandez (Concha’s brother-in-law) met us at Concha’s new studio and gave us an advance copy of their new CD to listen to. It still needs to be re-mixed when Paquito returns from Japan. We may be distributing it in America. It is a CD where Curro (of la Familia Fernandez) sings and a number of major dancers and family members dance on it. These dancers include Concha Vargas, Juana Amaya, Farruquito, Manuela Carrasco, Jose Fernandez, and Miguel Vargas. It is already fabulous. There is a cut on the end, which was not on our sample CD, that is made by the Familia Fernandez, which includes Esperanza Fernandez, Curro’s daughter who is a famous flamenco singer here. I will write more about it when I know more.

This trip has been so different from any of the others. I guess each trip is different. I have done less dancing than before. But, my Spanish and Freddie’s too, has improved a lot. I miss Concha not teaching at La Carbonería, which is convenient and close to where we live, but everyone says that the floor there is deadly for the feet and the body and Concha’s new floor is great. Having her own studio also gives Concha the opportunity to give classes when she wants (except during siesta, because she does not want to risk bothering the neighbors). But Triana is far from Barrio Santa Cruz and an expensive taxi ride with the dollar below the Euro. Everything here in Spain is very expensive now. I have learned how to take the bus, but of course it takes a lot more time.

Monday, September 29, 2003

My sprained ankle is healing but now my other leg (my left) hurts from the top of my hip through my outside muscle into my knee. It feels weak and doesn’t hold my weight well. I feel like an old, crippled ancient! I stick my foot in ice water at least twice a day, wrap my foot and ankle with tape and ace bandages and still wear the air cast when I walk. But I am still dancing, although gently and not with my usual gusto. I am taking a group Flamenco class with Torombo (who regularly lends me a cane for support for some of the steps) and a private class with Concha in her new studio in Triana. But I complain a lot, and a lot of the steps Concha gives me, which she thinks will be easy on my body, hurt my left leg! I told Concha that she may have to call me “Marianna La Coja” (“La Coja” means “the female cripple”. There was a famous Flamenco dancer whose name was Enrique El Cojo). I don't know if I will be able to belly dance this year when The Armenians, Rayhana and Souren and Polly, arrive. Belly dancing is much worse on my ankle than Flamenco! And we hardly ever go to the Carboneria at night anymore. We are too tired!!! Yes, this is a very different trip this time.

Concha will have her studio’s “Grand Opening” (“Inauguracion”) on Wednesday evening and will start her group classes next Monday. She is doing a beautiful job with her studio. The Fiesta Wednesday should be a lot of fun.

Of course, everything has a damper on it with Tibu’s death. Everyone is talking about it and feeling it. She was well loved here and will be terribly missed. We all sent flowers. She was cremated today in Jerez. A son and her brother plan to arrive Wednesday from the US. Apparently, her car had broken down on the highway and she got out of it and was hit by another car. This is all I know at the moment. We don’t think she ever made it to the Synagogue (although there is some speculation that it could have happened on her way home. But Amit had tried to call her before the Friday night service and her phone had been out, so we think that if she had been there, she would have waited and looked for Amit whom she had invited. How strange and unpredictable life is.

The update on Tibu’s accident is very strange and sad. This is what was in the police report. She was on her way to Sevilla to meet us at the Synagogue as planned and her car broke down near Utrera. She called a tow truck and the tow truck driver attached her car to his truck. She was standing in back of the truck. A car on the highway, apparently a drunk driver, hit her as she stood there and sandwiched her in between that car and hers. At first she thought something was wrong with her legs, but there were severe internal injuries. She was taken to the hospital in Sevilla where she died around 1:00 AM. Jill had told me, just after we heard the news, that a car accident was not what she expected would happen to Tibu. I think that Tibu was very together and careful in many things. This was just a freak accident. There is no accounting for death and when it hits.

Thursday, October 2, 2003

The strangest, most interesting thing has happened to me. I have been very concerned about my ankle and leg and whether it means an end to my dancing career. Also, the lack of exercise and lack of dance specifically always depresses me. I wasn’t satisfied with the Bulerías’ Concha was showing me and I was upset that the steps Concha gave me hurt my leg and hip. Then I watched the videos of my last two classes the other night and on those tapes I saw behavior of mine I would never have identified in a million years! I saw beautiful things that Concha gave me that I rejected as not good enough. I saw myself being a very difficult person to please. I saw myself dancing rigid, rigid inside my being. I saw my part in my life. The other day I wondered why I had such trouble smiling, as I walked through the beautiful streets of the Barrio Santa Cruz. I was walking through the narrow pedestrian little cobblestone road and around the corner, all of it bordered on each side by high buildings. It then opens up on the Plaza de Santa Cruz, the site of a Jewish Synagogue many years ago. Now a cross stands in the Synagogue’s place. I tried to smile and it was an effort. Wheeling my cart from the grocery store, I felt old for the first time and realized that now I didn’t have to make way for the old people. I had the same right of way. I was an old person, with these injuries!

Then I saw my classes on videotape. Normally I watch the classes every time I tape, but for some reason this trip I hadn’t made the time to do it until a few nights ago. Well it blew my mind. I have been able to make changes that would have taken years of therapy, merely by watching myself on videotape. That is the same thing I do to correct my dancing. I watch the tapes of me teaching or dancing, and then I change what I don’t like. The visual aspect gives me a much faster learning curve. Now I see the same use as a wonderful therapy tool. Anyone who is feeling victimized or depressed or paranoid should videotape themselves interacting for an hour and then watch it. You can’t argue with a tape. I called Concha up and apologized for my behavior after seeing the tape. Today was my first class after that and I know I danced much better. I enjoyed it too. My leg is still in pain, but I am learning what not to do and hurting it less. I think it is improving too. Toshi has been working on me and now he has started on Freddie too. Freddie is in love with him. But this week Toshi is in Madrid studying Palatis.

Friday, October 3, 2003

Tonight is a service at the Synagogue for Tibu, and Rubina, Amit and I are going. I assume that Tibu’s brother and sons will be there.

Wednesday evening Concha had her studio opening (inauguration) and it was fun. But she closed the party down at midnight so she wouldn’t disturb her neighbors.

Saturday, October 4, 2003

Last night we went to the Synagogue. Paco Lira went with us. Tibu’s brother Andre was there. He is a lovely person and we enjoyed meeting him and talking with him. I only wish the circumstances of our meeting had been better! Tibu’s two sons, JoJo and Manuel were there too. Manuel, who is just twenty one, is deaf and has been studying at a college in Washington DC. He missed Tibu’s cremation (he couldn’t get back to Spain in time!) but at the service he was holding the bag with her ashes. It was so sad. The service had to wait until there were enough Jewish men there to form a minion (ten). Finally there were enough. It was small. There are still many people who have not heard the news yet. There was one person there, Pili, who had just heard that day. She was still in shock. Being there in that Synagogue seemed to complete things for me. I know Paco had been upset about not getting to the funeral in Jerez (which happened very quickly) so I am sure that this helped him too. At one time Tibu taught Flamenco dance at la Carboneria.

After the service a large group of us walked to a Flamenco Gypsy Bull Fighting Bar, Uno de San Ramon, near the Synagogue. There we ate delicious caracoles (Spanish snails), Manchego cheese and bread with our drinks. We talked for a long time in both Spanish and English, the language often being translated for those who didn’t speak both languages.

After that, Paco invited us all to La Carboneria. Almost everyone walked, but I drove with Jill and Amit. Jill is an amazing driver. She expertly negotiates the car she just borrowed from Lucy down the tiniest streets. She even had to back up when the street we were on ended up being blocked. Her thirty years living here has given her practice. But she was good.

Jill told me that Andre, JoJo and Manuel and she had gone to the site of the accident, near Utrera (near where Jill’s husband Pedro Bacan was also killed in a car accident). There was still blood all over the highway. They found Tibu’s locket on the street and her blouse in the bushes. The trauma was still there!

It has been raining here for days. The heat spell is over. The other day when I left for my morning class, I had to wade through two feet of water to cross the street! A lot of people just didn’t go out. But, because I am still wearing the air cast when I go out, I have to wear thongs. At least they dried quickly. It was almost like going barefoot in the rain. But of course my tights, bandages, and the material of the air cast got soaked.

My foot is bothering me a little more today. I think I did too many “golpes” in Torombo’s class yesterday morning. I want to rest my ankle now to prepare for Concha’s group classes, which start Monday. I am going to try taking both of them in addition to my private classes, since I will already be there in Triana at the studio.

Evening

I didn’t take either of my classes today because my ankle still hurts. Freddie is loving Spain more and more every trip. Now he feels like he wants to stay here longer during the year and perhaps return in the Spring for more time. Amit found out at the Synagogue that if you can prove you have Spanish roots you can become a Spanish citizen. Amit has ancestors from Toledo from the 15th century. When I told Freddie about this, he reminded me that his mother Bea’s grandmother, Margarita Garcia, was from Barcelona. Her daughter, Bea’s mother, was named Zapopa Garcia. I wonder if that unusual name, Zapopa, would help us identify her family. If Freddie can find these records he can apply to become a Spanish citizen too and then we would be part of the European Union and wouldn’t have to leave every three months like the law demands now. What an interesting thought.

Sunday, October 5, 2003

It is Sunday and we are about to take a walk through the streets. I have dressed up in my white linen skirt and matching blouse. Freddie is wearing his white Panama hat and his white Philippino wedding shirt. The gold guitar necklace he bought from Carlos Heredia in 1999 and his two Spanish gold chains sparkle and shine on his brown neck. His white hair is pulled back neatly in a pony tail. He looks like a Gypsy as he walks through the streets. Here that is what people do on Sundays, after church, they walk the streets all dressed up. They call it a “paseo”. My ankle and leg feel a little better today but I will rest from dancing and walk carefully.

Last night Amit came over and we did a little Yoga together. I didn’t realize before how out of shape my body has gotten. I guess that is normal for almost 59 years (October 23). But I still remember my body as being more limber. I do need to start doing Yoga regularly. I think that is how I can preserve my body a little longer. And hopefully that should help my left leg. Yes, getting old is not for sissies!!! Although I talk a lot about being old, I haven’t really felt old until now. I have always prided myself in having a youthful body that could defy age. Now I have to take steps to make that happen. With proper exercise and stretching I think I can probably extend my body’s “life” for more years. Last night with Amit I reminded myself of my mother. She always had a youthful image of her body even when it was old and slumped and out of shape. Now I understand her oblivious denial. Next to Amit my body looked like my mother’s! But I know I can still get back my flexibility if I get my discipline going again. And now I know that I need more than just Flamenco dance to do it. So I will make the time.

Tuesday, October 7, 2003

We have decided to stay here an extra week so we can attend a Farruquito concert. We will be returning home on the 11th of November.

Wednesday, October 8, 2003

Every time we walk past the patio and through the front door of our building, especially at night, I smell the jasmine. So now I associate this apartment with jasmine. I might have overdone my legs today. I took four dance classes and I practiced for over an hour. But it felt great and it didn’t hurt.

Torombo’s sister is teaching for him while he is gone this week and I took a wonderful private class from her on upper body and arms this morning at 10:00 AM. I had to get up at 8:00 AM - so early!!! But it was worth it. Then I took the group class at 11:00 AM. After that Freddie and I went to La Carboneria and then to Carmela’s to find Paco. We thought the Armenians were coming in today (after receiving a telephone call from Souren yesterday) but we (and he) forgot about the time change and that they will be leaving NY today but arriving here tomorrow morning! But we did visit for a while with Paco and Rebecca at Carmela’s.

Then we went home and I ate some leftover chicken and Freddie made me a salad and I packed some yogurt and green powder and I loaded my camera and dance bag into our red shopping cart and took off to catch the bus to Triana. I arrived at the studio around 3:30 and practiced by myself until my private class at 5:00 PM with Concha. I had learned most of the escobilla (foot work) for the Alegrías yesterday and I needed to memorize it before class! I did. So Concha gave me almost all the rest of it today. After my class I watched her teach a private class to Keiko, a twenty three year old Japanese student of hers who has improved immensely over the last year. She will be returning to Tokyo this February with Concha after living in Sevilla for over a year. There Concha will present her at the most prestigious theater in Tokyo where Concha will also be performing. Keiko seems nervous but I think she will do very well. She is a very good dancer and a nice person.

After Keiko’s class the seven PM group class was about to begin when two policemen knocked at the door. They served Concha with some complaint papers re Flamenco dancing, singing and palmas. The neighbors have already complained! Of course the double pane glass for the two pane-less windows has not arrived yet and the walls have not been insulated. Here in the heart of Flamenco, as I have said before, the neighbors seem to rule. So tomorrow I will not be practicing and I have to take my class at 6:00 PM, just before the group class so we will not interrupt siesta. Concha says that I can practice in the morning, but I have my other class in the morning and I do not want to have to make two trips to Triana in one day. I am considering returning to La Carboneria to practice, but the floor is bad there (and definitely not recommended for my ankle) and Paco has neighbor problems too, so I still can’t practice during siesta. I am not sure how I am going to learn the rest of the escobilla that I got today during class. Looking at it on video is not enough. Last night I looked at what I learned and I couldn’t believe it. It sounded great and very complicated and I couldn’t remember what I had done. It sounded much more complicated than it had felt dancing and learning it. I tried tapping it out with my hands while I watched the video. Maybe that helped me recall it today. But I had to move my feet too to get the patterns into my body. All those classes and practicing today did make my ankle a little sore. Tonight Freddie and I walked to a meat restaurant near Rubina’s on Calle San Esteban and my ankle hurt while we walked there. But the meat was delicious. We both felt a need for protein. It didn’t hurt much on the way back. Maybe I just needed to rest it for a while. I just soaked my foot in ice water and now I need to get to bed. The refrigerator door fell off this morning and the landlady is sending over her nephew to fix it tomorrow morning before we leave for dance class. I think it just needs a new screw. Freddie already went to bed. We are both exhausted but still having a great time.

But, just as I get into my intense schedule of studying my dance, the neighbors here in Spain put a crinkle into it. Now I have to re-figure out how to practice what I am learning. Toshi comes tomorrow to work on my ankle and leg and on Freddie’s back. Right now my sore leg feels OK. Hopefully that will last when I am in bed. Last night we drank Tila tea, a special herbal tea to relax you and make you sleep and we both slept wonderfully. Tonight I am too tired to make it.

I will need to watch my tape tomorrow. I wrote tonight instead of studying my tape, but with no practicing scheduled for tomorrow, I will make time to watch it. I also want to try to get to Menke’s to see if they have any Flamenco shoes that may fit me. And I need to get to a Clarins store to get more face creams. I am almost all out of what I use. Several of the old Clarins stores I used to go to are not there anymore. This happened last year too. Small stores are closing and big stores are getting bigger. Things are changing in Spain. In Sevilla more stores stay open during siesta every year, but in Triana, just across the river, things are more traditional and during siesta everything is closed, and between four and eight o’clock the restaurants are closed. The other day Freddie and I were starving and our restaurant plans were thwarted by the hour, so we found a wonderful supermarket and bought cold cuts, bread and cheese which we first took to the local bar to get coffee for us and for Concha and then we brought everything back to the studio. Sometimes it is hard to find the time to shop and eat!

Tomorrow we also want to find the time to visit and welcome the Armenians: Rayhana, Souren, Haig and Polly. Rayhana for sure will be arriving tomorrow morning. Souren is flying standby and we are not sure which flight Polly and Haig are on. How we are going to fit everything in a day still remains to be seen. At least we have leftover meat for lunch.

Thursday, October 9, 2003

The birds were singing as I walked through the patio to the door of our building after class. How beautiful Sevilla is. The weather is pleasant, with a faint breeze, but warm again. After all my dancing yesterday I woke up without pain, feeling good. But, after Toromba’s class today I was a mess. She has us dance so fast that I don’t have the control I need to take care of my ligament and I strained it again! Toshi worked on me tonight and I am going to rest it until Monday and then start dancing lightly and slowly. I canceled my afternoon classes with Concha today and my private class scheduled with Toromba tomorrow. I didn’t go shopping today. I just rested. And the Armenians arrived and the apartment I had arranged for Souren and Rayhana, Miguel’s apartment, seems to have fallen through. Paco doesn’t know where the key is! So they will sleep in our apartment tonight. It is so Spain.

I just talked to Rubina tonight and she said that Concha’s group class was great. Because of the neighbors, Concha worked on arms and upper body, just what I need, but of course I wasn’t there.

Sunday, October 12, 2003

My ankle is slowly healing again. As Toshi told me, after I re-injured it this time, it was not as bad as when I first arrived. And it seems to be recovering faster than before. I think one of the keys, besides rest, is soaking it in ice water. I am not dancing until Monday and am walking as little as possible. I love to walk everywhere in Sevilla but there are now many places that I take a taxi or a bus to instead of walking these beautiful streets. I am hoping that before we leave, I will be able to walk again freely, and without wearing the air cast.

Friday, again on Francesca-Diana and Delia’s suggestion, Rubina and I watched part of a class given by Angelita Vargas. The class looked wonderful and Angelita will be giving more of this workshop. Rubina and I have decided to sign up for a month. It is nice to have a “dance buddy” (Rubina) here. Angelita Vargas, (Francesca-Diana’s aunt) came to San Francisco in the 80’s as a member of the dynamic show, Flamenco Puro. Although a Gypsy too, she is no relation to Concha, but her style is similar. From what we saw, we know all the steps she was using in her choreography. I am not sure exactly what I think I will learn from her, but I want to study from this great dancer and Flamenca Figura for the experience of it. And I am sure that I will learn something that I am not expecting to learn! Angelita seems like a very nice person as well. It is fun this year taking classes from various teachers. I still think, after experiencing other good teachers here, that Concha is one of the best teachers and her dancing still excites something very deep inside me. But I am enjoying the experience of taking other classes and meeting other students.

Manuela Carrasco is giving a two-week workshop here in Sevilla starting this Monday. This is very rare and she is charging a lot of money for it. I am tempted to take it because it is Manuela Carrasco (one of my favorite dancers and a great Figura here). But, because of my foot, I am afraid. I also hear that she stresses intense foot-work which would most likely re-injure my weak ankle ligament. I think the timing also conflicts with the Torombo class which I have one more week of (already paid). I will probably drop Torombo’s class when my month is finished because there are only so many hours in a day and I want to take the Angelita Vargas class. And Concha’s classes are still my first priority.

After watching Angelita’s dance class on Friday, Rubina and I went to Menke’s because I wanted to look for a new pair of dance shoes. In 1999 I had ordered three pairs of shoes from Menkes, measured and made for my feet, and none of them had fit and I had returned home that year without shoes. Disgusted, I then tried Corales shoes (a cheaper company) and was dissatisfied and then I tried Yebra in Madrid (both stores by mail). Yebra shoes are not as strong as Menkes and their sizes vary according to the color of the leather, so some of them are too big and some are too small, but all in the same size number! So, I decided, since every dancer here swears by Menkes, to try them again. The size heel I use, boot or Cubana (low), is now a lot more popular than it was in 1999 and I thought they might have some ready made in my size (which they did not in 1999). I was right. They had two pairs. And my size turned out to be 4 1/2, not the 5 or 6 sizes I usually wear!!!! I bought a pair of red lace-up suede shoes and have walked around in them. I can’t dance until Monday, but they seem to feel great! I still like the lace up better than the buckle and so did not buy the black buckle they also had. I just couldn’t believe that my size was really that small! But they still seem to fit!

On the way to Menkes, Rubina and I passed a Flamenco dress shop and had to stop and look. I was looking for (and found) a simple black practice skirt to wear to class. Rubina ended up buying a beautiful dress that they are altering for her. I bought the black practice skirt. By the time we got to Menkes, Rubina had to leave for Concha’s seven o’clock class. So she left me there in Menkes and took a taxi to Triana. I had thought about going to watch, but I still had errands I needed to do before the stores closed. And I was afraid I would be too frustrated to watch and not dance! I ended up buying a beautiful skirt at Menkes in addition to the shoes! It was fun. The blond woman who works there remembered me from 1999! It is amazing. Then I walked to the Clarins store I had located nearby last Sunday (where I had bought my Clarins face products last year). I was able to get everything I needed. I was out of a lot of what I use because I haven’t been able to get to that store during business hours this year! It is much cheaper to buy Clarins here, even with the dollar still dropping in relation to the Euro, as Clarins is imported from France.

When I returned home, Luisito and Freddie were there. They had just finished a big grocery shopping to prepare for the upcoming three-day weekend. Luisito then gave Freddie a wonderful dance class. Luisito dances in the style of Andorrano (who was very influenced by Anzonini del Puerto) and Miguel Funi. This is an older style of Flamenco in which there is very little movement, no fancy footwork, and a lot of emphases on working in interesting ways with the compás (rhythm), accenting it, for example, with a twist of the hand or a subtle but surprising turn of the body. It is dynamic and full of surprises and I have always wanted to learn to dance this way, in the style of the old people. It is difficult because it is so simple and you must do it with “arte” to have it work. I ended up following some of Freddie’s class, carefully, because I was not “using” my foot and we were here in our apartment, upstairs! It was fun and Luisito turned out to be an excellent teacher. This year his art seems better. His singing is wonderful too and Freddie and I are now thinking that it would be great to bring him to the US. As I have written before, Luisito is one of the few young people in Spain to master and to carry on this particular style of Flamenco.

Yesterday Freddie and I went back to the Flamenco dress store I had been to with Rubina on Friday. The store personnel had been trying to get me to buy a style of dress that they would make for me in the material of my choosing. I always want new Flamenco dresses! But their hard sell seemed even harder and so we left with nothing. But that felt OK with us. I needed to exchange something in the Clarins store nearby on Calle Sagasta, so Freddie sat and had coffee and Orchata at an outdoor table in the Plaza de Pan where Calle Cuna, (the street that the dress store and Menkes are both on) leads to. Calle Sagasta also opens up to Plaza de Pan so I joined Freddie while the Clarins store was waiting for my product to be delivered from their other store nearby. This is a common practice with these stores. If they don’t have something in stock they telephone one of their other stores and someone walks it down to the other store. You have to wait between five and fifteen minutes. So I returned to Plaza de Pan (one minute walking) and sat with Freddie, people-watching, and ordered coffee and grilled mushrooms.

Earlier in the afternoon Amit and Rubina had called to say they were walking to the dress store to meet us (we had talked to Amit in the morning to invite her to go with us. We already knew that Rubina had scheduled a private dance class with Toromba that morning.) When they called us, we had told them that we had already left the dress store and were on our way to the Clarins store and to call us when they got near Plaza de Pan. We were just wondering where they were and why they hadn’t called us when we saw them on the other side of the square. We yelled to them and they joined us. Then we returned to the Clarins store where Amit bought a nice boar bristle brush for her twins.

After that we continued down a half a block to Calle Sierpes to look for a suit for Freddie that we had seen in the window of a fancy clothing shop when we came down window-shopping last Sunday (the stores are always closed here on Sundays, except for the very touristy stores). We arrived at the store just before two PM (closing time). Because Monday is Columbus Day (which is a holiday here because it was Spain who sponsored Columbus’ journey to find America), everything will be closed from Saturday afternoon until Tuesday! It is a three-day weekend. So everything closes on Saturday at one thirty or two PM and won’t reopen again until Tuesday morning. But we got to the store just before they closed and asked about the suit that had been in the window last week (and wasn’t now). They knew which one it was. It is a large pin striped black and white suit. Freddie tried it on. We called it the Al Capone suit. He loved it and now they are altering it. It will be ready on Thursday. He bought a nice black linen shirt to go with it. He plans to wear it in the Flamenco musical play that Stephanie Golino has written and is producing and directing in Santa Cruz, California. Freddie will play guitar and be a character (in all senses) in that play.

After that we all took a taxi to our house and ate cheese and jamon serrano. Luisito came by and we arranged to have another Bulería lesson for three of us over at Amit’s house that evening. Amit and Rubina ran to do last minute grocery shopping at the MAS, which now stays open on Saturday afternoons between five thirty and nine. This is another way in which Spain has changed. Even last year, the MAS closed like almost everything else at two PM on Saturday and didn’t reopen until Monday. Now they have added Saturday afternoons, which is nice for us. But it is further evidence of the changing life style here in Spain. It’s funny, in Triana, just across the Quadalquivir river, the hours have remained more traditional.

Rubina was there at Amit’s house with us, but she only watched the class while Freddie, Amit and I danced outside on Amit’s top story tile porch (roof). We danced very very lightly. The Giralda, (the most famous and very beautiful cathedral in Sevilla), was in the distance, it bells ringing the hours. As the light fell, the Giralda was lit up and we danced until the dark and the rain sent us indoors to eat chorizo, scrambled eggs and salad. It was fun and both Amit and Rubina agree that it would be wonderful to bring Luisito to America. We want him to both perform and to give classes there.

Freddie is throwing up again this morning and his stomach hurts. Concha is sick too, also with stomach problems. What is happening? Amit was going to interview Concha today for an article she is going to write re Concha’s next trip to the US in May. But Concha was too sick. Amit came over here and then briefly ran home to get some stomach medicine for Freddie. Rubina was having coffee for an hour at Café India on her way here, and when she finally arrived she was dripping wet and freezing. It rained very heavily for a while and Rubina forgot to wear a sweater, but she did remember her umbrella. They just left for Amit’s house (3:00 PM) because when they tried to practice here their feet made too much noise and I was afraid they would disturb the neighbors again. They invited me, but I don’t want to leave Freddie alone. Whenever he gets sick now, I worry a lot. Will he have to go back to the hospital? Will we have to leave here quickly to get Freddie back to the US? We have trip insurance this time, but we don’t want to use it.

We haven’t been to see the Armenians perform yet because we have been too tired to leave the house late. We went to bed at midnight again last night, so early for us. And now I don’t want to visit Souren and Rayhana because I have to climb some more steep stairs and it hurts my ankle, and they don’t have a phone. I hope they decide to take a walk over here. We both love them so much and we miss them already! It was fun the night they slept over. It was like a slumber party.

We did finally get them into Miguel’s apartment the night they arrived. We were all sitting outside about midnight eating at El Cordobes when we saw Pisco, Paco’s son walk by. He is Miguel’s stepfather and he had a set of keys to Miguel’s apartment. He took us to the apartment, which had not yet been prepared for our Armenians. It had neither sheets, towels, nor cleaning supplies. So it was good that Souren and Rayhana slept at our house that first night. The next day Souren and Rayhana copied the keys and went to the store to buy cleaning supplies. They borrowed sheets and towels from Paco and began to clean. They and Polly are in the apartment now and are happy to be just next door to la Carboneria. Nothing in Spain seems to happen as expected or planned, but it always seems to work out.

Friday, October 17, 2003

Amit left on the 14th. Her plane was delayed due to weather and she missed her connection in Madrid and arrived home a day late, but safe!

Our friend Debora was robbed while walking down Rubina’s street after getting off the bus we had ridden together. She is Italian. We met her in Torombo’s dance class and she turned out to be a close friend of Alexi the violinist’s mother (see former Chronicles) and a former girlfriend of Alexi. She has started to go to Concha’s group class with us too. It was after one of Concha’s group classes that she and I and a German guitarist named Ulrich took the circular bus together that runs around Sevilla home from Triana. Debora needed to go to Plaza Alfalfa to pick up some bread so she got off earlier than we did and was walking up Calle San Esteban about ten PM. The street was filled with people. Then, without warning, a motorcyclist drove by and snatched the purse Debora had carefully slung around her neck and shoulder (the proper way). She said that she was thankful the strap broke or she would have been injured. The thief got her cell phone, bankcard, house keys and about four Euros. But Debora was traumatized. She couldn’t call anyone -and all her phone numbers were stored in her phone. She couldn’t get into her house that night without her house keys. She came to our house but couldn’t remember the apartment number to buzz us to open the iron gate and of course she no longer had our phone number! So she went on to La Carboneria and ran into Alexi’s new girlfriend who brought her to their home. Debora ended up staying with them until her landlord returned the next day to Sevilla to give her a new set of keys. After all that, she had to make a police report but the police near Corte Ingles had moved! I directed her to the Italian Embassy and they told her about the new police station next to the Giralda. She could not get another bankcard until her bank in Italy received the police department report so it meant that she could not withdraw money! Then she ended up getting this cold and having to miss her dance classes. I saw her on the street today and she said that her parents are coming to bring her home in two weeks! She also has a husband and child in Italy. They had been here with her in Spain but had returned home about the time we met her. Debora’s experience has made us all a little more careful and paranoid. Rubina was robbed on that street last December. Francesca-Diana was robbed the same way this year on a crowded street as she walked with a group of friends! We are hearing about more and more robberies again. For a while it seemed that Spain had become safer. Now that safety is disappearing. Someone recently mentioned that you don’t see policemen around on the streets any more. That is true. I used to see more of them in other years. Although it is scary, I have to remember that most of the crimes I hear about here are robberies but are not violent like the ones in America. People don’t usually hurt you intentionally here. They are after your money. You hardly ever hear about rape or gang killings, etc. But robbery is scary enough. I know people have to be very careful to properly lock up their apartments too to prevent robbery. Last year our apartment had a new alarm that was a response to an earlier apartment robbery there. Here in this apartment you must enter through a locked iron gate.

Last Monday I got the head cold and runny nose that is going around. I learned that in Spanish they don’t say that your nose is “running” (I learned because people laughed when I said that. So I asked.) In Spain they say that your nose is dripping, or more accurately “dropping drops”, “goteando” (gote is a drop). Each year we learn more Spanish, depending on our experiences. I have also learned the words for ankle and sprained! Now Freddie has this awful cold too. I am almost all better. But my nose is a little red. I got Freddie some medicine at the pharmacy today; cough medicine and a packet of powder to drink to stop the running nose. I took one too and I think it helped. I also bought Fosomax (for bone strength) here. It is cheaper here than in the states, in spite of the exchange rate. I also bought bandaids. Last night a fairly large part of the nail on my big toe just came off. I must have bumped it a while ago and not realized it, because it wasn’t bleeding when the nail came off last night. But it was tender and so I had to tape it with a bandaid to wear my Flamenco shoes today. It worked. This year my body seems so much more fragile than ever. And I just want to dance!

October 12, the last day I wrote, seems like so long ago. We have lent Rayhana Freddie’s cell phone so we can be in touch with each other. Being here without a phone can be frustrating. Now we call each other a lot and see each other more. Rayhana has been getting massages from Toshi over here and loves him too. He told her to do more stretches so we have started doing them together. Rayhana went with Rubina and me to watch Angelita’s class today. I took three of Angelita Vargas’ classes this week. After her first class on Monday, I got sick with this cold and went home and slept. I had to cancel my private classes with Concha for the week because I wasn’t up to them. I also missed my group classes with Concha and Torombo and Angelita until yesterday. Then I went to a great Concha group Alegrías class last night and then tonight Concha got sick again with this stomach virus and had to cancel class. I was disappointed. I am also enjoying my group Torombo classes and am trying to learn his beautiful Silencio for the Alegrías.

My Solea classes with Angelita did not go well for me. For one, I discovered that the floor of that studio at Endanza, the dance center where she teaches, that I had assumed would be a good one, was awful. This was not good for my ankle. Then, Angelita’s style has a lot of footwork with a lot of golpes, a flat hitting the floor with the full foot, and that particular movement is one of the worst I can do for my ankle. Thursday I was almost in tears and very, very frustrated because my foot was hurting and I had lost days of the choreography when I was sick and not in class. I told Angelita that I could not continue her class and then she said to come back again today and she would work with me on upper body, arms, hands, head, skirt, -all the things I really wanted. So I returned today, but that didn’t really happen. She had me do the footwork very slowly and lightly but that wasn’t what I needed. I needed upper body and less footwork. I needed her to dance more in class so I could try to absorb her style. She had us go over the choreography (which I had missed a lot of while I was sick) while she sat in a chair and watched us (a common form of teaching here). I did not want to pick up the style of the other students I was following to see what to do next and I didn’t really care about learning Angelita’s choreography as I already have a beautiful Solea from Concha. I was again totally frustrated and have decided not to continue classes with Angelita at this time. Rubina, on the other hand, is doing phenomenally in Angelita’s class and will continue studying with her with joy. She learns from Angelita as easily as easily as I learn from Concha or Torombo. Angelita is a perfect teacher for Rubina but the wrong teacher (at this time) for me. Angelita is a lovely person and a wonderful dancer and I am happy to have had the opportunity to take a few classes from her and to meet her. But at this point, I don’t get the joy out of the classes the way I do with both Torombo’s and Concha’s classes.

Almost everyone says that three classes a day are too much for my body anyway. And now I know which one to scrap. But, my body feels better when I dance more. At home (in the US) I dance three or four hours, at least, almost every day so here my body craves the exercise. I have a private class with Torombo tomorrow to try to get more of the Alegrías Silencio. Rubina has one just before mine and she has invited me to share her class. I decided to do it because I miss dancing! Her class will warm me up for mine. It’s hard to explain, but if I don’t dance hard or do certain steps, I can dance for hours and not hurt myself. I just have to really watch how hard I hit the floor with my feet and to stay away from too many golpes. In Torombo’s class today I really felt myself dancing again and I loved it. He encourages dancing from inside and feeling each movement. He also showed us yesterday how to continue the movement from the “profound” planta (a step made with the ball of the foot) through the body. Tips like this are invaluable to me.

Last night in Concha’s class we worked on the Alegrías beginning and the letra. Concha’s choreography is beautiful. Although the class had progressed while I was sick, I had learned enough of the material in other classes and other contexts that I could keep up well. That is the Alegrías that I want to do. I will insert Torombo’s exquisite Silencio into it. Concha’s classes move more slowly than many other teachers’ classes here, but I like the pace. I am also very familiar with most (but not all) of her steps and with her style, so of course they are easier for me than if I had not experienced her before. She is very thorough and makes sure that all her students learn the compás well. She has now insulated her walls and her doors. The toilet that broke soon after it was installed was scheduled to get fixed today. Hopefully that happened. The studio is still coming together, but it is very nice and Concha loves having her own studio.

I have a line on two different studios to rent to practice in and then I want to continue my private classes with Concha until she leaves in November. Last Monday after class we practiced in the studio Angelita teaches in. It felt good to practice, but that was the studio with the bad floor. Concha did not teach that night because it was a holiday (Columbus day) so I was able to go home and rest. But it was that night that I felt the sore throat come on that preceded this cold. Then the next day the cold hit me hard and all I could do was to stay home and sleep. I think I had gone to Torombo’s class that morning and was all set to go first to Angelita’s class and then to Concha’s class when I realized that I could not walk straight. I was very dizzy and was afraid to be walking in the streets that way. I did not consider being too dizzy to dance. But when Freddie insisted I stay home, I listened. Before I had been ready to leave I had laid on the floor on my back and told Freddie, “I’m sick”. Then I got up to leave and couldn’t walk. Luckily I listened to him. I called to cancel my classes and then I slept like a rock. Rayhana was here watching some belly dance videos and Amit phoned to stay she was stuck in London for the night. Rayhana took the call. I could hear some of it but I couldn’t move or respond. I felt like a rock. Toshi came to give treatments to both Rayhana and Freddie. I was “dead to the world”. When I woke up three hours later I felt a little better. But then I went back to sleep. That night Freddie went to Huelva with Luis Agujetas and Carlos Heredia on a “boys night out”. They had a performance at a Peña. I was still sleeping when they returned late that night. Now Freddie is sleeping nonstop. I guess this trip is giving him the rest he needs. But his immune system seems to be down, as he is getting sick a lot. But then again, so am I, and so are a lot of other people here! Wednesday night I dragged myself to Jesus the wonderful acupuncturist in La Plaza de Armas and he gave me a good treatment for both my ankle and my cold. I think it helped to push me through my cold. I feel much better today.

I just looked at the time because I hear them washing the streets below me. It is one AM. Freddie and I slept all late afternoon after I iced my foot after Angelita’s class. Souren came to visit and to bring us an English newspaper but I couldn’t wake up. I thought I might have dreamed his visit. But Freddie told me it had really happened. I slept so soundly, again, I must have really needed it. Freddie had a Toshi appointment at 8:30 PM and I slept all evening. Freddie joined me in bed after his appointment. We are now sleeping on the fold out couch in the living room because our bedroom bed seems to be causing some of my left leg problems. I got up to eat and then started writing and now it is late!!!! Time keeps flying.

One of the Americans at Angelita’s class, Cathy, a dancer whom I had met when she and her husband danced in a show with Andrea and Richard Black in Santa Cruz, California, is a physical therapist. She told me about a new drug they use in America for ligaments, Promo (I think is its name). It is like a sugar they inject into the ligament and it then strengthens the ligament. She also told me about a different theory of taping my foot, a “hard” taping. She has offered to help me tape it her way to see if it makes a different to my ligament. People are nice here.

Saturday, October 18, 2003

It is raining and I feel great. I had a fantastic private class with Torombo today. We worked on the Silencio and I did very well. Freddie dragged himself up from his sick bed and joined me. Now he is home and is sleeping again. When I walk to the C3 bus now I usually walk through the Murillo Gardens, the park that borders our side of Barrio Santa Cruz and the big street Menendez Pelayo. Today on the bus, a thin, older man made room for me to sit next to him. (I still wear my air cast, so it is easy to see that I am injured and should be sitting instead of standing). He was tapping rhythms gently with his feet. I listened for a minute and then asked him if he were a dancer, a Flamenco dancer. He said yes. I told him I was a dancer too, a student of Concha Vargas. He commented on the flower in my hair and then looked at the air cast on my foot and asked me to show him something with the arms. I did a little something sitting there on the bus, catching the energy with my hand. He said, yes, baile Gitano and we laughed. He knew about Concha’s new studio in Triana and said he lived nearby. Then he told me he was actually a singer. He was on his way to (or from) the doctor’s and got off in Triana before my stop. I did not ask his name. But I was warmed by the exchange.

I will be taking more private classes from Torombo this month, because, like Concha, he will be leaving the country in November. What a shame. Freddie and I have been trying to decide if we will stay in Spain for the entire month of November. Now one of my other reasons for staying is leaving! What will I do in November without Concha and without Torombo? I could go site seeing and visiting. I could practice. Perhaps I might be up to studying with Juana Amaya, but I am not sure that my ankle can take it. It did not hurt at all today in Torombo’s class. I will try a private class from him early in the morning on Monday and then use the eleven o’clock group class to review, practice and enjoy what I learned in the private class. Torombo used the word enjoy. I really enjoy his philosophy about dance. He really works on encouraging the dance to emerge from within, to be “profound” and not superficial. And he seems to have a talent for showing me how to achieve that.

Monday Rubina and I will look at a studio to rent nearby Torombo’s class. It belongs to Manuel “Polonio”, a frequent visitor to Torombo’s class. I don’t yet know more of his history or his relation to Torombo and to Flamenco. I do know that one day he brought his young son to class and they both played the rhythms on the Cajon. I will also call about renting another studio about a ten-minute walk from our apartment. I just have to figure out the hours I want before I call. And that is the hard part! Studio rental seems to be big business here in Sevilla. Dance students need a place to practice what they learn. The floors must be good and the neighbors must not be disturbed. I sure do miss La Carboneria and the easy dance studio there. But as I have written, now I must dance only on good floors. It is not worth the risk of re-injuring my ankle again. Now I am like the other dancers, scrambling for a place to practice.

Monday, October 20, 2003

I have been in dance heaven all weekend, ever since Torombo’s class on Saturday. I learned the Silencio, finally seeing it as a dance piece instead of just a series of unrelated, tricky steps. Rubina and Rayhana came over and we danced. I showed them the steps and sequences. Rayhana is interested in incorporating Torombo’s wonderful body moves into her Middle Eastern dancing. The three of us are really enjoying spending time together. We dance a lot together. Rayhana has a very good eye when watching Flamenco. I know that is because she is truly a dancer, in the deep sense of the word. Rubina also has a good eye in Flamenco. And I am able to pick up the steps more and more quickly. With the basis Concha has given me, the attention to accents and the clean footwork, I can now pick up new steps and patterns fairly easily. And my foot is hurting less and less. That helps a lot. So we all tried to sequence, under my direction, in our apartment, dancing so lightly on the marble floors, not doing the footwork, or course, because of the neighbors. I woke up on Sunday with the Silencio running through my head. And we went through it all day. But today, it was so early and I was so tired, there was nothing in my head.

Freddie and I got up so early today! We left our house at eight thirty AM and were down at the coffee shop in Plaza Pelicano for Torombo’s class today at nine AM. Stores are just beginning to open at this hour and everyone is going to work. The sun was out and the weather was brisk. I had coffee and fresh squeezed orange juice and a bite of Freddie’s tostada with jamon and aceite (more like a toasted English muffin with thin prociutto like ham and olive oil). I am not eating many carbohydrates or sugar these days and I am losing weight. I can eat oil and fat and protein and vegetables and I do. I miss my bread, but I am happier with my weight as it is now. So occasionally I eat of bite of Freddie’s bread.

My class today was again wonderful and I am excited about learning and dancing. Torombo is working on my body and carrying movements through. It’s hard to describe, but it is exactly what I need now. The joy is back. The excitement is back. I am happy.

Tomorrow Freddie will take a private baston (cane) and Cajon (box-like drum) class from Torombo at 9:45 AM. Then I will take the group class at eleven. Today, Rubina had the stomach flu so she did not come with us. But after class, Freddie and I went to see the “nearby” studio with Manuel “Polonio”, whom I mentioned earlier. As we walked for about fifteen minutes through the narrow streets of the Macarena, a poor district on the far side of Sevilla that has blossomed with dance studios and dancers, we questioned Polonio about his personal story. He has a fifteen-year old son who often performs Flamenco dance with Farruquito and Antonio Canales and Israel Galvan. We met Polonio’s younger son who played Cajon in Torombo’s class. He also dances. Polonio seems ageless, but may be in his thirties. He has longish short light brown hair, a weathered face, and teeth like many Spaniards, bad. His warm smile and shining eyes feel playful and alive. He used to sing with El Moreno, Farruquito’s father. I wrote about the homenaje (memorial) for his death in former Chronicles. We told Polonio a little about us, and the Spaniards who have performed and taught and stayed at our home. He knows a lot of the same group of Flamencos here that we do. When I mentioned Luisito, he already knew that Luisito’s father had just died. I don’t think I mentioned that. Luisito was with us when his mother phoned him to tell him that his father had had a heart attack in Almeria where he lived. Luisito did not think there would be time enough to go down there, but he immediately returned home to his mother and younger brother to decide what to do. Unfortunately he was right about the time element. His father died a little later. He was only forty-eight years old. Although Luisito was not close to his father, it is still a shock and a loss to lose a parent. He said it was like a thorn in his heart.

As we walked to his studio, Polonio showed us the street that Juan del Gastor and Lucy live on. Earlier we had passed Endanza, the dancer center on Calle San Luis. Near Calle Feria, where Freddie lived in 1985, we turned. There under some picturesque apartments with wrought iron balconies, was Polonio’s little studio. Two women were dancing in it but we entered and sat in a tiny back room and looked at the scheduling book and talked. The only hour it was free was at two PM and that was too late for my needs. I will call the other studio tomorrow. I had wanted to practice closer to Torombo’s studio at twelve thirty or one. That isn’t possible. So I will check into the other studio that is closer to our apartment. Polonio also has an apartment for rent above the dance studio but Francesca-Diana told me later that it is claustrophobically small.

When we left the studio Polonio invited us for a “cervecito” (a little beer) so we accompanied him to a nearby bar. Here in the Macarena things feel to us more like the old Spain. Even the prices are cheaper. In the bar the old, toothless men sat playing dominos and drinking beer. Most of the time I was the only woman in the bar. They didn’t have mineral water or fresh orange juice and I hadn’t eaten breakfast so I had two tapas (little appetizer servings). I ate meat and tomatoes and some delicious whole mushrooms cooked with olive oil and garlic. I drank tap water. Freddie drank Cerveza Sin, beer without alcohol. Freddie and I are both liking the Macarena area this time and are thinking of renting an apartment there next year. In 1999 it used to be more dangerous and filled with drug addicts, whom, rumor had it, would threaten people with AIDS infected needles when they were robbing them. But now, in the residential areas, we have heard, it is no longer dangerous. It might be more dangerous in our area, in the Barrio de Santa Cruz, because our area is where there are more tourists and tourists are targets. You don’t see many tourists in the Macarena; the foreigners you do see are mostly Flamenco students. There is an old, neighborhood feeling about the Macarena.

Around two thirty we caught a taxi home and took a nap. We were both exhausted but exhilarated. I woke up with enough time to eat a yogurt and some green vitamin powder, to refill my water bottles (we have a Brita water filter which we keep here in Spain) and to walk to the bus to take Concha’s seven o’clock group Alegrías class. That was my day today. While I was at Concha’s class Freddie went out to the pharmacy and bought medicine for Rubina and took it to her. She was still very sick, he said, this evening. Hopefully she will be better tomorrow.

Now we have to find time to get more groceries from the MAS as well as to cook again. My birthday is Thursday but I feel too busy to be very excited about it. I am thankful that my ankle and leg are letting me dance again. That is my best birthday present. But I still have to be very careful and to continue icing my foot.

Saturday, October 25, 2003

After I wrote last, I called my other dance studio contact, Maki. She is a Japanese woman who has been living in Spain for fifteen years. We first met her through Carla and Miguel Ochoa in 1999, but we have many friends in common. Maki was also at the Synagogue with Carmen Ledesma for Tibu’s memorial service here in Sevilla last month. We know each other by sight but have never hung out together, although in 1999 Carla urged me to call her when I went to a performance, saying she was always a person who was up to going to a Flamenco show! Maki has a dance studio about a fast fifteen-minute walk from here, the closest that I know of other than Juana Amaya’s studio. And Francesca-Diana assured me that Juana never rents her studio when she is away, so that one was out. I was also told that Maki primarily rents to Japanese because they take good care of the studio. She has had problems with other people, such as them leaving the country and not returning a very expensive studio key. Francesca-Diana and Delia called her first to ask her about my renting the studio. Then I called her last Tuesday to set up the appointment. I was again in heaven because it was important to have a place to dance. I used it twice last week, that same day Tuesday and then again on Wednesday. I decided to skip the practice on my birthday on Thursday. The earliest slot available each day was at five o’clock. I then had to leave at six, go home, fill up my water bottles and drop off my camera, and then immediately head out again to catch the six thirty bus for Concha’s class! Not only was it exhausting, but my ankle hurt both walking there and walking back. And Tuesday I had to go there two times, the first to see the studio and to pick up the key and the second to practice at five. After the first walk there and back, each time I would pass the little street off Menendez Pelayo that led to Juana’s studio, I would pray for that studio instead so I could save my ankle. Walking hurts more than dancing! But at least I had a place to practice and that felt good.

Friday Freddie got the flu again and Friday night there was a very special Flamenco show, an “homenaje” or benefit for a singer, Antonio Vizarraga, who was hurt recently in an accident and could no longer sing to support his family. I had planned to take the bus with Francesca-Diana and Delia at six that evening. I decided to skip my five o’clock practice so I could meet them at the bus. I couldn’t practice until six and meet them at six, so I chose going with people I knew rather than take a taxi and not being sure of where I was going. But my plans changed a little.

Freddie had a relapse of the vomiting flu Friday morning and for a while yesterday he seemed stopped up like last time in California when he went to the hospital for fecal impaction. Remembering what they did for him in the hospital, I bought him an enema and suppositories from the local pharmacy and he is finally much better today. Now it just seems like a bad case of the stomach flu again. An herbal remedy recommended by Francesca-Diana, Milenrama tea, seems to help the nausea. I also bought him Suero, a Spanish equivalent to Gatorade, to replenish his electrolytes. And today Freddie seems much better, but not yet well.

Last night was the homenaje for Antonio Vizarraga, the singer who had an accident and hurt his brain and now can’t sing. Torombo danced and so did the Farrucos. Carlos Heredia and his group played. Also Pacquito Fernandez and Raul el Perla played guitar. It was very moving. The show had only two days notice and very little advertising (only word of mouth) and was in a University (Universidad Pablo de Olavide) outside of Sevilla. And it was filled, mainly with Gypsies and some dance students. It was the show of shows and only cost twelve Euros. It was the kind of show everyone waits for and dreams of. Rubina was well enough to come (she has had the flu and a sinus infection) so we went together.

Paquito had come over Friday afternoon to give Freddie a guitar lesson and Freddie was too sick to remember he had one so of course he didn’t cancel it. Pacquito had planned to bring Freddie to the homenaje, but sadly, there was no way Freddie could get out of bed for either a class or a show. So Paquito hung out with Rubina and me and then drove us there. That way I got to stay with Freddie and take care of him much longer. We didn’t leave until seven thirty. And luckily, we were with Paquito and his car. Paquito drove us back too, although he lives outside of Sevilla himself, because no one could get taxi s on a Friday night there, away from everything! When you called for a taxi the number would be always busy. Francesca-Diana says they just leave the phones off the hook. As Rubina and I left with Pacquito, I worried about the other people there trying to get taxis. This morning I found out that Perla had ended up taking Francesca-Diana and Delia home after they had a long wait trying to call a taxi in the cold!

But, to backtrack a little, I had another private class with Torombo on Monday. I had learned what he taught me on Saturday so he gave me more material and some polishing.

The next day Freddie took a fantastic private baston (cane dancing) class with Torombo. He loved it. Wednesday we had a day off from our private classes. I just took my group classes with Torombo and with Concha. And Thursday, on my birthday, I had another private class with Torombo (at nine thirty in the morning) and I had a great breakthrough in that class. Somehow Torombo has figured out how to make me ground myself, dance more deeply. The “plantas” (step made with the ball of the foot), he says, should be profound, should be deep, as if searching for water deep in the ground. According to Freddie, it totally changed my dancing! What a great way to start my fifty ninth birthday! Then I went grocery shopping at the MAS. As I left Plaza de Santa Cruz I passed the construction that has been going on “forever” behind our landlady’s house. I asked the young worker there if it was almost done and he said it had just finished. He seemed to be cleaning up, taking down the scaffolding, etc. When I returned from shopping he was there with some other men, finishing up. He smiled and said good-bye and the other men smiled and said hello. I experienced myself as an attractive woman, with men still noticing me and smiling. It made fifty-nine years not seem so old. I hear forty-year old women say they feel that they look old and unattractive. And I know that at some time I really will look like an old woman. But I know now that that time has not yet come for me. And that too felt like a good birthday present.

And speaking of birthday presents, Wednesday evening when I arrived home from Concha’s class there was a giant bouquet of incredible flowers. Elun (my son) and his wife Donna had sent them. In Spain the bouquets seem to be bigger and more beautiful than in the US. This one was spectacular and of course it is always wonderful to be remembered on my birthday. I have to say I have the best son and daughter-in-law that anyone could wish for. I am so lucky! That night I also had my Toshi massage appointment for my ankle and Toshi brought over a lovely card from him and Francesca-Diana (his wife). He had written my birthday message in beautiful Japanese script. The card had two delicate roses on the front and said “Thank You” in English. I assumed, and this was later confirmed by Francesca-Diana, that Toshi chose the card for the roses and not for the English words, which really didn’t matter. Toshi does not speak English. It was perfect.

Later on Thursday, my birthday, Rubina and Rayhana came over. I called Concha and told her that I would not be at group class that evening. Freddie had encouraged me to stay home and to celebrate my birthday so I did. Rubina left and came back with a cake from a fantastic bakery in Plaza Alfalfa. Freddie cooked a delicious stew. Rubina was still sick so she went home to sleep and Rayhana and Souren came by and we ate dinner and celebrated my birthday. Freddie and I had planned to go out, but we were too tired so I studied my Torombo class tape, which seemed to me more exciting than going out! That way I felt prepared for the group class on Friday morning. I got a phone call from Amit and her family in America, which I missed. But I did get the message. I got other birthday wishes from family and friends by e-mail and I also got phone calls here from my Spanish friends. Rayhana brought me a beautiful pearl necklace and earring set. It was a wonderful birthday. Although low key, it was just what I wanted.

As I mentioned earlier, I had rented a studio from Maki, but it was a fifteen-minute walk to get there and it hurt my ankle to walk so far. Then when Paquito came back from Japan a few days ago (remember, he is Juana Amaya’s guitarist) I talked with him and he asked Juana (who leaves the country again on Sunday) if I could rent her studio. She said yes so I called her last night before we left for the homenaje and I can start today. It is only a five-minute walk from here. It is off Menendez Pelayo, before you get to the Internet place. I meet her at one forty-five today.

Freddie and I had scheduled two private classes for today with Torombo but I canceled both classes this morning because Freddie is still sick, it is raining heavily, and I am tired and am afraid to push myself. I could have gone by myself and taken my class, but perhaps I am learning not to push myself so hard. I will take my private class on Monday instead, although I have to get up at eight AM and that is very early for me. But Torombo’s classes are worth it. And today I can practice for two hours at my leisure in Juana’s studio! It feels good to take another day off although it is almost noon now and I haven’t eaten breakfast yet and I have to leave here by one thirty. But I am enjoying writing. Freddie is sleeping.

Tomorrow we have plans to visit Rebecca and Ryan and have lunch. But yesterday Concha told me she is dancing at the Flamenco World Festival at five thirty on Sunday so perhaps we can change the time for lunch so we can all go see Concha dance! Rebecca is still romantically involved with Concha’s nephew Alfonso. They are a cute couple. Alfonso has started studying Flamenco dance with Concha in her beginning class at eight o’clock in the evening. Rebecca sometimes takes Concha’s seven o’clock class, the one I am in.

The rain continues and Freddie sleeps and I will stop writing and eat. What a quiet and relaxed Saturday.

Evening

Of course almost nothing in Spain happens as organized. Juana’s cousin, who was supposed to be in the studio until two, never showed up and the little bar on the corner did not have the key. I waited outside the studio in the rain and then called Juana on her móvil. She said to come to her house and she would give me her key. So I trudged back to the Barrio Santa Cruz, a minute away from our apartment, to the address she had given me. But I didn’t know which buzzer to push. So I phoned again but this time her phone was turned off. Then I called Rubina, who had come once with Carmen to visit Juana’s mother, to see if she knew which one was the buzzer to Juana’s house. She confirmed that I was in the right building but didn’t know which buzzer. So I pushed the bottom buzzer and asked for Juana Amaya and the man who answered didn’t know anything. But Juana, who lives on the ground floor, heard me then and came out with the key. It was her personal key and I needed to bring it back that evening because she needed to get things from the studio that night for her trip on Sunday. I changed today’s time to five o’clock because I didn’t want to tire my ankle. On the way to Juana’s house I had passed Carmela and peeked inside and saw Paco sitting with his son Pisco and Pisco’s wife Toni. I stopped to say hello and Paco wanted me to stay for a drink but I told him I had to get the key to the studio and would stop by on my way back. So after I left Juana’s, instead of going straight home to rest, I went back to Carmela and drank orange juice and coffee with Paco. I hardly ever get to la Carboneria at night this year, so I like to visit with Paco when I see him. After that I went home, ate some of Freddie’s stew and slept for an hour. Freddie is still not eating but he was feeling better. He is sleeping a lot.

At four thirty I pulled myself up out of bed and forced myself to go to the studio. I was tired. But Juana’s studio is beautiful. It is the best I have seen in Sevilla. But even her masonite floor sags and bumps in the middle. I practiced for two hours and realized how out of shape I have gotten because of my ankle. I went through my old Solea and tried to remember my old Siguiriyas. I missed dancing to Freddie’s guitar. I also worked on the things I am learning from Torombo and practiced some difficult footwork. I know that this practice will do me good. And it did feel good. I will not practice on Sunday because we are going to the Flamenco World Festival to see Concha dance. We have postponed our lunch with Ryan and Rebecca to the following Sunday. Rebecca told me today that Ryan now has a job in Tarifa on the weekends working in a hotel. I remember that Ryan and Christine used to love Tarifa and used to go there to get away. It is on the Spanish coast, near Morocco.

Monday I have scheduled to practice from two to four in the afternoon through Wednesday, the exact hours I wanted. Thursday afternoon we are supposed to go to Cordoba with the Armenians who will do a show there. We will spend the night and return on Friday. I will miss one group Torombo class and probably two group Concha classes. I am torn, because that will be Concha’s last class. And I don’t want to miss my classes. But it should be fun to get away and visit Cordoba. As I was planning my practice schedule today I realized that I don’t have much time left here.

When I returned Juana’s key tonight she was not there, but her father was and he assured me that the key would be in the bar for me on Monday. He also confirmed that I did not want a Sunday practice. He was very nice. It’s too bad I couldn’t have organized this studio two months ago! The next two weeks of practice should make a difference. Juana starts her classes on November 3, and then we will talk about a new practice schedule. Concha won’t be here then, so I will have more time in the afternoon and evening. This next week it feels funny to be missing Thursday and Friday of my practice already. But these are the choices.

Sunday, October 26, 2003

Freddie is still sick so Rayhana and I went to the Feria Mundial del Flamenco today. It is a fair held in the Palacio de Congreso, a big exposition center in the outskirts of Sevilla. It reminded me a little of the Belly Dance Fair, Rakassah. There were many booths representing stores selling dance dresses and accessories, mantons, shoes, decorative Spanish hair combs, jewelry, music, cajons, guitars. There was a cafeteria selling delicious food. Rayhana and I shared a plate of stew. The man standing next to us at the counter was just starting to eat his and we asked what it was. He let us both taste his and it was so good we ordered it. Then we leisurely strolled over to the room where Concha was about to perform at five thirty with Curro Fernandez (cante), Antonio Moya (guitar) and his wife (cante), Curro Vargas (Concha’s son, guitar) and another female singer, Encarnación. They represented Lebrija. This whole fair was put on by the tourist government office (I think).

We saw Concha’s two sisters Esperanza and Pepa (Curro’s wife) and walked with them to the front of a mob of people at the door. The guard at the door refused to let anyone in, saying it was already full. But she let Concha’s sisters in when they said who they were. I said I was with them and Maki, who was standing up in front, also said I was with them, but they said wait. A man next to me got very upset because he had been waiting and couldn’t get in. I told him, truthfully, that I couldn’t move, because I was actually sandwiched in that mob. Then Elena, Concha’s agent came by and told the guard that I was part of Concha’s group. So Maki and I got in and they didn’t want to let Rayhana in. I insisted, saying that she couldn’t speak Spanish and she was part of us and I reach for her hand and pulled her in! Inside, in the front row, were Souren, Haig and Polly, and Conchita (Concha’s niece) and Carmen (Concha’s daughter). Rayhana shared a chair with Polly and Souren and I shared a chair with Souren and Conchita. I saw that Elena was going out and getting those people in who were special to Concha, such as Carmen Malpartida and her daughter Anais, the older Japanese couple Conchi (who is a long time student of Concha’s and owns an apartment here in Sevilla and spends half a year here) and her husband, and others too. Jill and her son Sebastion were there. Also in the audience were Juan and Lucy, and many other friends of Concha’s. I think almost all of Concha’s close relatives were there, including Alfonso and Rebecca. The only person who didn’t get in, I found out later, was Keiko, because she was there with five friends and being a bit timid, didn’t think she could get them all in, but Elena told her later that she could have and Elena had wanted to get her in. Keiko was sad and disappointed about missing the show. She was at the dressing room with the rest of us to congratulate Concha. And Concha danced magnificently. I wish I had brought the video camera! I didn’t think I could see two such spectacular shows in one week.

Afterwards, Concha went to the bar to talk business with Elena, and Jill, Sebastion and I (and many others) went into an enormous hall to hear Moraito play guitar. This was the Jerez group. Jill says they always get the big halls. It was packed too. Then Jill drove me home in spite of the fact that she lives in the other direction. I really appreciated it, especially since it is still raining.

I did two loads of laundry this morning with the optimistic feeling that the sun would stay out, but it didn’t, and all the clothes I put on the clothesline on the roof got soaked. It thundered loudly about ten minutes after I had hung up the first load. Then the sun came out and I hung up the second load. Then the rain started again and tonight it is raining hard again. I can’t change the sheets on Freddie’s bed (he is sleeping in the bedroom while he is sick because he is afraid I will catch it) until the sheets on the line dry!

And unfortunately, tonight I have a headache and feel a little under the weather and my ankle was aching. But I soaked my foot in ice water and I will stop writing and go to bed early, because I have a private class with Torombo at nine thirty tomorrow. I don’t think Freddie will make it.

Stephanie Golino, a friend from Santa Cruz, called on my móvil while I was in Concha’s dressing room. She is in Cordoba until Wednesday and will come to Sevilla for the day tomorrow. I am meeting her here at the apartment at twelve thirty, when I return from class. I have to leave again at one thirty to practice in Juana’s studio at two. She might come to Concha’s seven o’clock class with me, depending on the train schedule. I had better get to bed. I miss sleeping with Freddie and he is missing all these good shows. But he is starting to eat and feels better and better.

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

Stephanie came and went in a day. It was great seeing her and she took Concha’s seven o’clock class and did phenomenally well.

I am loving having Juana’s studio to practice in. Today I danced five hours! I took another private with Torombo and took his group class right after. Then I practiced for two hours and later took Concha’s seven o’clock class.

Sunday, November 2, 2003

Freddie and I went to Cordoba Thursday with Rayhana after Torombo’s class. Polly, Souren and Haig had gone on ahead of us to do their sound check. We arrived by Ave (fast train) after forty-five minutes and then took a taxi to El Quiñon (the “vegetable garden”), an “alternative center”, gourmet, organic restaurant serving traditional and international meals in the country just outside of Cordoba. The six of us shared a large room in back of the stage to hang out in and to sleep in. There were thick foam rubber mattresses made up as beds with wooden and cloth screens in front of some of the beds. It was like a slumber party. There were two bathrooms with showers, one for men, one for women. The room looked like a seminar room, a room for large classes.

To enter the compound you walk through a lush garden, by a large rabbit hutch, and past roses and morning glories. El Quiñon is owned by a delightful brother and sister team, Arturo and Marian. Before the Armenians started their show, we were served a sumptuous Middle Eastern meal of lamb and couscous. Then Freddie and I were given a little round table to sit at in the front right by the stage and a tripod to facilitate our videoing the show. The room filled up with people coming for dinner and to see the Armenians.

Afterwards, when the public had left, Arturo brought out his Flamenco guitar and Freddie cleanly and beautifully played some of his difficult Carlos falsetas for us. I soaked my foot in a bucket of ice water, to everyone’s amazement. It helped my aching foot. I hadn’t had time to soak it before we left Sevilla. That morning I had taken a private class from Torombo and had worked on where to put the “llamada” (the call) in the cante (the singing). This theme continued into the group class and we worked with most of the forms related to the Alegrías. We concentrated on Romeras, Cantiñas, and Alegrías. Then Torombo decided to give the same lecture and teaching to the next class, his advanced class, so I decided to stay and hear it again, as I was going to miss my Friday class because we would be in Cordoba. I called Freddie to advise him of my delay and arrived home by two instead of twelve thirty in the afternoon. We had planned to meet Rayhana at three to leave for the train station. I had to shower, finish packing, go to the bank and eat, but I didn’t have time to eat until we arrived at the train station. But we made it, and I studied some of my class on the way to Cordoba. I had another class scheduled for Saturday and I knew that I wouldn’t have time to practice before then. But Rayhana and I ended up talking most of the way. Freddie watched part of a movie in another seat across the aisle.

But I did watch most of the rest of the tape the next morning, because it was raining “cats and dogs” still so we couldn’t go on the site seeing tour we had planned the night before. We had wanted to see the summer palace of the old kalif, a Moorish ruin that has been partially restored. It is just a short ways from El Quiñon, but the rain stopped everything. So that morning was a quiet one of waiting and walking around the grounds when some of the rain let up. Freddie took a lot of photos and found some bamboo cane to make a cane from. He is studying both baston (cane rhythms or palos) and cajon (a drum made out of a special box) from Torombo. Freddie tried to melt some black plastic over the wood stove in our room, but it broke. He had wanted to make a handle for his cane. I reviewed my tape and Rayhana watched some of it. Polly sat in the other room and wrote in her journal. Souren played solitaire. Haig walked around and looked at things with his hands in his pockets and refused to have Freddie take his picture. But Freddie snuck some anyway. Rayhana also came and joined Freddie outdoors and later I did too. It was beautiful after the rain let up. The water drops were still dripping from the flowers and green leaves of the bushes. The air was moist and freshly washed. This is a paradise in Cordoba. El Quiñon is almost all solar powered, except for the lights. Arturo put in the solar energy himself. The gardens supply the organic vegetables (and probably fruits) for the dinners. The stage was lined with rose petals, which were most likely from the many roses still blooming in the garden. Inside, tapestries are hung on the walls. The staff is warm and welcoming. A son of a family member works the sound equipment. The cook brings her blond toddler to work. It feels very much like a new age, conscious family. I looked at the menu just before we left. The prices are surprisingly low! I highly recommend going there for dinner. It is open Thursday through Sunday. I have heard that it is exceptionally beautiful in the summer and early fall. And Freddie says that it reminds him of the old Spaghetti Factory in North Beach, San Francisco. Its website is: www.elquinon.com/

Friday night we were going to see Carmelia Montoya after we returned from Cordoba. We took a nap at six and set the alarm for eight that night. I awoke from a deep sleep and didn’t want to go anywhere. I called Delia and Francesca-Diana to tell them we wouldn’t be meeting them. Francesca-Diana wasn’t going either. Then I helped Freddie set up his baston class tape at the computer and I went back to bed. Freddie watched and listened to his tape and I heard the baston rhythms in my sleep. Hopefully that helped me learn more too. I liked falling asleep to the sound.

Then this morning we both had private classes with Torombo from eleven to two. I took the first hour and Freddie the second. Today, November 1st, is a holiday here in Spain, All Saints Day. People go to the cemetery to visit their dead. When we arrived at the Plaza Pelicano the little bar where we always meet Torombo was closed for the holiday. As I looked around the plaza Torombo came out of a door and signaled to me that he was in a little restaurant there. He was there with his wife Dolores, her mother, and their two little girls, Lole and Triana. Dolores and her mother were going to the graveyard to honor Dolores’ father, who was the brother of Manuela Carrasco. The two girls, six and seven years old, came with us to Torombo’s studio. There he pulled out a little table and set it up outside in the new sunshine for the girls to color on. They also had their dolls to play with. Occasionally Torombo had to reprimand them, but on the whole, they were very well behaved. Towards the end of my class Torombo had one of them dance for a minute. She was wonderful and so cute! Freddie played with them during my class and gave them money to buy candy and junk food, which they loved.

Then Freddie took a cajon class and Torombo taught him some of the rhythms that are in the Alegrías that I am learning. It was fun. We scheduled our private classes for the last week, the week that starts on Monday. Freddie will continue with a mix of baston and cajon. But they might add singing into it. I have three more lessons scheduled and that’s it. Then Torombo goes to Japan and we get ready to go home.

Into all this I have to schedule more practicing. I return Juana’s key at ten in the evening tomorrow night. I picked it up from the little bar today before they closed and I practiced today for two hours, from nine to eleven in the evening. Rubina came with me and that made it more fun. She helped polish my steps and I taught her some steps she needed to re-learn. We did palmas for each other. We are going to the studio again tomorrow at noon. She will sing for my dancing. At two Rayhana will come over. She spent hours today here cooking for the meal we are having at four o’clock tomorrow. Originally Rebecca and Ryan had invited us to have a four o’clock lunch at their house near the Macarena. But then Rayhana had offered to cook and she wanted to do it in a house with an oven. So we are doing it here. She is a gourmet Italian cook. So she cooked here today and will finish tomorrow. Rubina came over and helped her with the end. Freddie helped cut things up. I studied my class tape from today and took a rest for a short while. Finally I gathered my energy and went to practice. I need to, with so many private lessons scheduled.

Tomorrow I will practice and then return to help Freddie clean up the house for our guests. Rayhana has made special food for me. I have been on a modified version of the Atkins diet since shortly before we arrived here. From the time I discovered that we had a scale and started weighing myself, I had lost four kilos. After two days in Cordoba, off my diet, I gained two back, but I think I can lose them quickly too. I am back on the diet, which means almost no carbohydrates or sugar. So everyone else will eat lasagna and I get a meat and eggplant sauce! So many people here have been commenting on my weight loss. Inez Bacan said I looked younger every year! Today Dolores’ mother made a comment about what a young looking body I had. My diet is working and I am grateful for the support of my friends.

Torombo is starting to create spaces in the steps I have, the next step in the polishing. He is so poetic when he teaches. When I do “plantas” now, I think about my feet searching for water. There is a bull-fighting step, where I keep the bull looking at my hand as I slowly turn. At the end I lift my hand for the bull to run under it. Sometime I would like to translate a set of quotes of Torombo. He comes up with some incredible images. He continues to remind me to let me feet ground, to let them search deep for water. And my arms will reach to the sky. A certain hand movement combs the air. Another step opens before it ice-skates. The waist turns and turns.

And so I will be getting up at eight in the morning Monday, Tuesday and Thursday to get more poetry.

Concha got sick and canceled her group class from Wednesday on. I talked to her today and she is feeling better. She goes to Switzerland on November 4 and she has to be well for that. I will call her again tomorrow to say goodbye. I missed the private class I had scheduled with her because she got sick. I am looking forward to spending more time with her and studying intensely with her again when she comes to California at the end of May.

Tuesday, November 4, 2003

Voting day I notice as I insert the date. Rayhana is getting her last massage from Toshi. I am taking Freddie’s Toshi appointment tonight because I hurt my ankle again.

Paquito is here giving Freddie a guitar lesson. When Pacquito played the guitar earlier I just had to move my hands and arms and chest - to let the music through. I didn’t dance with my feet, my wounded ankle kept me rooted to the ground, but my upper body let the music carry me and the dancing made me feel whole again. Freddie is really enjoying his classes with Paquito. He likes the falsetas he is learning, of course. And he seems to learn well from Paquito’s style of teaching. He is also having fun. And I always love having the house filled with beautiful music. So I too enjoy Freddie’s classes with Paquito.

I danced for five hours yesterday and felt so good that I then walked to Calle Sierpes to do some last minute shopping. I only had a few errands. On the way there I ran into Freddie and Luisito by the Giralda. We walked to Plaza Salvador and Plaza de Pan together. They had been investigating how to mail the beautiful old Sevilla tiles we had found in the garbage about a month ago. Then they were going to see a friend of Luisito’s who needed money and was selling an old guitar from 1954.

I went to the Clarins store and then to Menkes and then to look at a beautiful little mantoncita (a little shawl) I had seen in a store window. Then I walked to the Elena Bernal store on Calle Sierpes to see if they had that type of mantoncita cheaper than the first store. Elena Bernal’s, who used to carry wonderful mantoncitas, was three times as expensive and not as nice so I returned to the other store to buy theirs. There I tried on a blouse for my new dance skirt that I had bought at Menkes’ about a month ago. I haven’t found the right blouse for it yet. My movil phone rang and Rubina was inviting us to a mole dinner she had made at Rayhana and the Armenians’ house. I called Freddie and told him to meet me there and then slowly headed to their house. I did pass some boot stores and did find some comfortable, wide toed, flat, rubber bottomed, zip up coffee brown suede leather boots. They were just what I have been looking for. I can wear them in the rain. My feet will stay warm and dry and I don’t have to wear my other boots, the beautiful soft leather ones with the small square heel. I bought them in Jerez several years ago and I love them. But this year my ankle rebels at heels that aren’t supported, such as non-Flamenco high heels. I was so sure that my ankle would be healed by now. But it isn’t.

By the time I reached Plaza Alfalfa my ankle was hurting. I limped slowly on, perhaps a mistake. It was only five more minutes to Rayhana’s. In hindsight, I think I should have walked back to a place to sit and I should have just called. But I didn’t. Then I climbed their steep stairs carefully, hanging on to the strong iron rail and using it to pull myself up. I was being careful. It is the first time I have been to visit them, because of the stairs, since I helped them get the apartment when they first got here!

Rayhana and Rubina got some ice and put it in a towel for my ankle. It felt a little better by the time Freddie got there, ate something, and we then visited and then went home. I can’t believe that this is almost over. Rayhana is leaving Friday, early morning. We plan to leave Tuesday unless we extend our trip again. I need to call our landlady to see if we can stay here another month. We are not ready to go home yet. We need time to relax, with no classes. We want to see friends in Granada, and maybe visit Ronda, which I have never seen. We want to relax a little, to vacation, before we return home.

And now my ankle hurts again. I went to group Torombo class today. This week it is the combination of the two classes, ours and the advanced class and it is a two hour class. Yesterday went very well. We reviewed the letras and the Silencio. Freddie said I looked great. Today Torombo started to give us his Bulería which is what ends the Alegrías. It had some very fast footwork, which I could do. But, I couldn’t do it with enough control and I re-injured my ankle the same way I did in his sister Torumbita’s class, by doing footwork too fast for my ability to control something. My foot started hurting and then I tried to just do the walking without the footwork, but there was running and I couldn’t do that. I sat down. I had just broken my palm pilot at the beginning of class when it dropped out of my dance bag and onto the hard floor. The glass broke so I can’t use it. Then I had to stop class because my ankle hurt. Then I thought about our leaving on Tuesday and I could not stop crying. It was a lot about fear of my ankle getting worse, some pain, but also anger at my disability and of course feeling sorry for myself. I called Juana and canceled my studio time for today. Freddie arrived for his cajon lesson and he just hugged me and held me. It was the first time I could really stop crying. It felt so good to hug him. Maybe unconsciously it reminded me of what is really important. Freddie and I have each other, soul mates, friends, lovers, husband and wife. We are here in Sevilla doing what we both love best (other than each other, perhaps), Flamenco. We are delving into the singing, exploring the rhythms with cajon (pronounced cahone) and baston. We are weaving the dancing and the guitar. It has turned into such a rich, textured trip. Again, we have both made improvements after much disappointment and struggle and despair. It seemed as if it weren’t going to happen this time. But low and behold, progress is happening.

I sit here writing. Rayhana is still in the bedroom getting a massage from Toshi. Freddie and Paquito are playing a concert (really Freddie’s lesson) and their music is flowing through me as I write. “Mas suave” Paquito says, and Freddie softens his sound even more. Paquito is patient, encouraging and helpful.

I had my massage with Toshi. He says I did not ruin my foot and that I did not greatly injure it this time. I am glad. He said that if my left leg continued to cramp up and wake me in the middle of the night like it does, when we return home, to get it tested for both nerve damage and circulation problems. But he thinks the problem is really muscle exhaustion, tiredness.

Freddie just bought a new guitar, a 1954 Manuel Ortega Flamenco guitar. It belonged to a friend of Luisito’s, a man six months younger than Freddie. The man, Salvador, has given up playing and needs money. He was a great afficionado in his day and was friends with Antonio Mairena, Niña de las Peinas, La Pipa (the grandmother), all the old ones, Freddie says, and that the stories this man told were fantastic. Freddie told him that he had been here in Spain in the late fifties/early sixties and the “old man” said, “Those were the days.” Freddie says he wants to keep in touch with him, that he is a “really neat old man.” There was a nice connection between the two of them. I never got to meet him. Luisito took Freddie to look at the guitar last night and Freddie called me from the man’s house. He fell in love with the guitar. He says it plays really well with very little effort. He is sitting on the couch now playing it. And I should get to bed soon.

Tomorrow I will make myself call our landlady to see if there is a possibility of staying. I just can’t imagine getting us packed in so little time. I am not ready. I don’t feel like performing anymore, because I still am worried about my ankle letting me dance well. But of course, I will be better than I was before I came to Spain. My eyes still remind me that they did a lot of crying today. I have that after-a-long-cry feeling.

Almost every morning that I take a class from Torombo we drink coffee and fresh squeezed orange juice at the little café in Plaza Pelicano near Torombo’s studio. Juanito, the man who works behind the counter, is a friend of Torombo’s. The other day Juanito helped Torombo set up his new móvil phone, a present from Torombo’s mother. Yesterday and today I ate delicious deer meet, cooked with vegetables by the older man, the chef, Paco. I asked them today if they minded my writing about them and putting them on our website and of course they liked the idea. Their bar is called El Balcon Del Pelicano, and is on Calle Santa Lucia No. 16, Sevilla 41003. Telephone: 954-41-07-82. This is near the Trinidad area. They are lovely people. And, as I told them, I think they have the cleanest bathrooms in all of Sevilla. And they always have toilet paper. What a resource! Paco man smiled proudly, obviously very pleased, when I told him that. I think the clean bathrooms are his doing. He is also very proud of his cooking.

The older woman who is often there, I found out, is Juanito’s mother. Freddie says she always has a big grin on her face. We like her.

Friday, November 7, 2003

This has become one of my favorite ways to write, during Freddie’s lesson with Paquito. We have been hanging out with Paquito a lot and every day we like him more and more.

We are staying here another month and we are both so happy about this. We will return home on the tenth of December. It means an extra hour waiting in the Chicago airport, but it is worth it. My cares seem to have dropped off me, now I am feeling so inspired, so excited, so good - so wonderful and happy. I had no idea that I was so upset about leaving. I hadn’t really a clue until we changed our plans and my mood lifted so dramatically.

Today was my last class with Torombo, at least until Nov. 26 when he returns from Japan. In class we all danced the Alegrías letras we had learned. The people who knew it best danced it in pairs, facing each other and locking in one another’s eyes. It was beautiful. Then Torombo looked at me and asked me to do it alone. We had three guitarists and Torombo sang his heart out to each of us and played the cajon. I got inspired and danced it. I blew one little break and put it in too early in the cante and didn’t do it well because I knew I should have waited another compás to come in… but it didn’t matter, really, because I kept on and danced the rest well. I felt good afterwards. After I danced, Torombo announced that I was sixty years old. I corrected him and said fifty-nine! But old is old and I always say that I’m almost sixty. It just sounds so old when I think about it.

Then everyone else who hadn’t danced yet was called to dance, one by one. It was beautiful. Torombo encouraged people to dance from their heart, to just dance. For those who didn’t know the choreography he said to just dance anything from their heart and they did. Torombo even had each guitarist get up and dance and then he also got the spectators watching his class to dance, including Freddie. It was a very high class and a great way to end the week. Now I will start my vacation. I canceled today’s practice at the studio because I needed to finish writing the e-mail home about our change of plans. We had a lot of plans and we are still in the midst of resolving how to do things now that we are staying! But at least now everybody is informed. I spent over two hours each day just writing e-mail about our change of plans. Now I will start calling people to say hello and to visit! Better late than never!

After my great class today Freddie had his last baston lesson from Torombo. But of course he will continue studying guitar with Pacquito. He is learning some beautiful things that he can already play well. He is certainly getting in more music now than last year. He seems to be just really getting into it. It would have been a shame for him to leave at this stage. And I am experimenting with the idea of vacation and relaxation and shopping. I think I need a time to take all of this in that I have been learning, to take it deeper and to start to assimilate it. I will continue practicing though, so I don’t forget what I have learned. When I lie down my left thigh is still cramping up and waking me up at night so I am wondering if this rest will help the muscle. I am looking for a cause and a solution. I know I need to stretch more. I assume that my left leg is compensating for my weak right ankle. At least I feel that I don’t need to wear the air brace right now to stabilize myself. My boots help that. So do the extremely comfortable sensible rubber soled shoes I bought. But the edge of one just rubbed my ankle raw today. I have added a bandaid. As I was walking the crooked cobblestone bricks on the way from Torombo’s studio today, walking to the clean bathroom at El Balcon, I marveled at the comfort of the shoes and how my foot didn’t twist like it did in my thin-soled thongs and even my other shoes that I have been wearing. I was amazed at the difference. Rubina has been trying to get me out of the thongs, but they were the only shoes that I could wear the air cast with. Freddie also wanted me to stop the thongs, but I had nothing more comfortable. Now that I have my new comfortable and supportive boots and my comfortable and somewhat supportive shoes I am aware of the difference. Maybe this will help to heal my ankle more. What a process.

And my ankle definitely played a role in our decision to stay. I want it to heal more before I travel. And we were supposed to do a performance right after we returned. I started to worry about traveling and my ankle and wondering if I would even be able to dance shortly after my return. If I did, I knew that I would bring some of Spain back in my dance. That seemed good. But staying seemed more sensible so we found someone else to replace us and we are working out details of how to do things. But it feels like the right decision. And when I did two Shamanic journeys about staying longer they both were very strongly in favor of staying. So we plunged and we have changed out tickets. And Freddie just learned more important things on the guitar tonight from Paquito.

Last night we took Rubina to see and hear Macanita sing and Juan de Juan dance. We bought our tickets when it was first possible so we would get good seats and be sure to get in. Actually FlamencArte stood in line and bought our tickets. Delia got up early and spent the time. That is another advantage of being in FlamencArte.

Paquito gave Freddie a guitar lesson before the show and then drove us there, to the El Monte theatre near Corte Ingles. The show was sold out and Paquito didn’t have a ticket so he just went in through the back door. They are all his good friends. After the show we went to “the” place, a bar near the theatre where we had tapas. All of the performers showed up and hugged Paquito. We were introduced to them too. Juan de Juan’s singer, Joselito de Lebrija, is the same singer who came on tour with the Juana Amaya and Farruquito group and was at our home afterwards that evening in Santa Cruz, California. Due to a request from Raul “El Perla” last year for a home cooked meal when they came to Santa Cruz, the whole group came over to our house for dinner after their show there. Pacquito was there too.

And now this year we are hanging out with Paquito more than ever and having a lot of fun. At the Bar last night he made me a beautiful white flower out of napkins. I am wearing it in my hair even today and it is holding up. He singed the petals to give it some color. It is really incredible. He went with us last night to Rayhana’s, to say goodbye to her. Rayhana left this morning. I will really miss her. I love having positive, fun, and loving people in my life.

Today, at the beginning of the lesson, Paquito and Freddie were talking again about Freddie’s new Ortega guitar. Paquito’s father-in-law was a guitar making student of Manuel Ortega, now dead, the maker of Freddie’s new guitar. Tomorrow Paquito will pick us up at noon with his wife Pilar and almost-five-year-old daughter Solea and we will go to Triana to meet his wife’s father and see his guitar shop. Then we will have tapas. It should be fun. This will be the first outing type of thing we have done with him and his immediate family together, outside of things directly involving Concha.

Paquito and I talk about computers and music programs. He wants a Mac, which I have and love. He is also into vitamins and organic foods and he and I talk about that sometimes too. He is fascinated by the old Bohemian, hippy part of us and what we did in that time before he was born or when he was very young. Our nineteen sixties and seventies were both filled with art and counterculture. Paquito says he has a lot to learn from us. And we have a lot to learn from him, too. And we like each other.

And then there is the thread of Flamenco, not to be underestimated. Last night Rubina, Rayhana and I were doing Flamenco steps up in Rayhana’s apartment. Paquito likes that we are always doing Flamenco, thinking Flamenco, dreaming Flamenco, just like him. And beautiful Rayhana turns the Flamenco steps into belly dance steps.

Paquito has given Freddie an exercise to do with his fingers for five minutes every day, combining two different exercises. He thinks this should really help straighten out Freddie’s arthritic fingers. He asked me to make sure Freddie practiced this. He doesn’t know Freddie yet in this way. Freddie is a fanatic. Freddie’s only fault will be if he practices it too much and tires his fingers. Freddie loves to practice and that is mainly what he does when he is not sick. He is practicing right now and Pacquito just left. No one has to get Freddie to practice, just maybe to do other things!

So Freddie and I are both having our breakthroughs. I think this month will be very fruitful as well as fun.

I took our landlady the rent for the extra month we are staying, this evening at eight. We still haven’t been to Los Gallos this year, which she owns. Los Gallos is the Flamenco club in our square, Plaza de Santa Cruz. It is the best Flamenco club in Sevilla and we haven’t been once this year. It is expensive so it is not an every night thing, but they have wonderful dancers and it is right next door. Torombo danced there for years until, he said, that his heart went out of it and he wasn’t really dancing any more, he had become mechanical. So he quit Los Gallos and held on to his integrity. Now his goal is to teach people to dance from their hearts.

As Freddie listens to the tape of his tonight’s guitar class with Paquito, I hear Paquito saying, “Eso e’, Freddie, Eso e’. (That’s it, Freddie, that’s it). And Freddie is doing it.

Sunday, November 9, 2003

We spent the whole day yesterday with Paquito, Pilar and Solea. I canceled my practice.

Tuesday, November 11, 2003

Another Freddie lesson with Paco (Paquito). Rubina is here, sitting in a chair listening too. She made a delicious chicken soup out of what we had in the refrigerator. She had joined me at the end of my practice today and helped me put a counter-time step in the right compás. It was so nice to have some company in the studio. I felt tired and it was hard to get into it today. I practiced some of Concha’s Alegrías escobilla. It was hard to remember. But at least I was there, letting my body remember how to dance! And then Rubina came at the end. And it is so nice to have such a good friend.

To back track, I still have been so busy trying to deal with business from here, and needing to let more people know of our plans. Now I think I’ve done it. But it cost me so much time and energy!

Saturday we, Paquito, Pilar, Solea and Freddie and I, went to Paco’s father-in-law’s guitar making shop in Triana. It was wonderful. Then we walked around Triana until we decided to go to the Gypsy flea market that happens on Saturdays near there. Freddie needed a winter coat and he found a long one there for twenty-five Euros! I got a pair of Lycra jeans with embroidery on them. Pilar, Paco’s lovely tall, slender, longhaired Gypsy wife, is altering them for me. Freddie also got a great pair of striped Lycra pants for twelve Euros. He had seen similar ones in the stores for one hundred Euros (that we had not bought).

After the flea market we went to a restaurant in Triana that overlooked the Guadalquivir River. Then we stopped by our house briefly to drop off Freddie’s guitar and drink green tea and we proceeded to head for Paco and Pilar’s house just outside of Sevilla. Although they loved Triana, where Paco had been raised and where Pilar had spent a lot of her childhood, they wanted a safer place to raise their young daughter, Solea. When she was one, strong-minded Solea had wandered out into the street, scaring her parents to death. Right then they made the decision to move. Where they live now is on a dead end street where their house and the house next door are the last ones on the block. The kids all play outside together in the street, riding bikes, playing ball, and it is safe because the only cars that drive there belong to their families. It reminds me of the dead end street that I grew up on, and I remember its sense of community and safety.

Paco has converted his garage into a music room. Sometimes he lifts the garage door so that it is open to the street. He can watch Solea play from there. Solea is a Daddy’s girl and even looks like Paquito. She has her own guitar made by her grandfather. She has a little toy, plastic piano that works and a toy microphone she plays with. At less than five years old she can sing, for example all of the words in a Tango, and have the correct facial expressions as well as tones and compás. Of course she is accompanied by one of the best guitarists in Sevilla, her father Paco Fernandez. She can dance already too. Solea is being groomed to be an artist and shows every sign that she will be one. Her personality is strong, outgoing and gregarious. She is full of emotion, both happy and sad, and projects her feelings very well! She has a strong charisma and a charming personality. And she seems to love Flamenco. Sometimes she seems well beyond her almost five years of life. I think she is very intelligent and precocious.

We spent a pleasant evening with the three of them, including watching the video of Solea’s “baptismo” (baptism), which was a who’s-who-of-Flamenco celebration. Juana Amaya is the Godmother. Of course Curro Fernandez, Esperanza Fernandez, and Concha Vargas (all close family) were there, as well as Manuel Molina (of Lole and Manuel) and Luisito Peña, and many other Flamenco “figuras”. What a great video. What a great party.

Around eleven o’clock that night we made plans for the next morning to go for the horse and buggy ride that Freddie and I always talk about but never get around to. Solea was the most excited. Pilar gave me some earrings and a beaded necklace of hers to remember her by after I tried to give her my new Lycra jeans that looked better on her than on me. But, although they fit her perfectly, she insisted on shortening them for me! We almost had a fight about it. So I finally gave in. Later they drove us home and then came by the next morning and picked us up again to go for the horse and buggy ride.

Before we left, we all looked at some of the photos we had taken the day before. I had them already downloaded into the computer! Then we drove off to Parque Maria Luisa, the biggest park in Sevilla and very beautiful. We parked the car there and caught a buggy. When Paco asked the price he called the driver “Primo”, cousin. This is common among the Gypsies and Paco is full Gypsy. As we rode around Sevilla, Paco discovered that the driver he called Primo knew his family and was a close friend of some friends. Small world!

After the ride we went out to eat at a restaurant that used to serve bull’s tail stew (rabo de toro). From there we decided to visit the Bull Fighting Museum, which was nearby in the Bull Ring. It was interesting.

We have planned a trip to Ronda together and perhaps will also make it to Granada together. Pilar is a lovely person and we are so glad to be hanging around with Paquito and his family. Pili’s (Pilar’s) birthday is the nineteenth and we have been invited for dinner.

After the Bull Fighting Museum we drove over to the Maestranza, the biggest, most prestigious theatre in Sevilla. It is newer and bigger than the Lope de Vega theatre but doesn’t have the same kind of old-fashioned ornate elegance. We were trying to get two tickets for Pilar and Paco to see the long sold-out Farruquito show that night. Freddie and I of course had ours already, thanks to FlamencArte. Paco and Freddie went into the theatre to see what they could find (in the way of people needing to sell their tickets). Well first Freddie came back with one ticket. Pili and I waited in the car because it was raining. The one Freddie got was a cheap one, way high up. Freddie and Paco, sometimes with Solea, kept going back to see if anyone was selling a set of tickets. And finally they found two, fairly near us, in the same section. So we all went back to our house to rest and beautify. I called Rubina and we gave her the first ticket Freddie had bought. She met us later at the theatre. After a short rest at the house, the five of us piled back into Paco’s car and drove back to the Maestranza. The show, as expected, was wonderful. Rebecca was sitting in front of us. Instead of taking her boyfriend Alfonso, she had taken his mother, Esperanza (Concha’s sister). Esperanza’s husband died this last year. I thought it was a beautiful thing of Rebecca to do. She only had enough money for two tickets! After the show, in which Solea had fallen asleep, Paco and Pilar took us home. We were exhausted and happy. What a full day.

Wednesday, November 12, 2003

Yesterday, Tuesday, Freddie had another lesson with Paquito. It was great. Freddie had scheduled one with Raul also, earlier in the day, but Raul had suddenly been called to Madrid and couldn’t come. He and his girlfriend had come by to visit on Monday, interrupting a nap Freddie and I were trying to take. Then I reluctantly left to go practice because I had already rented the studio. But, as it turned out, I didn’t practice because the key wasn’t at the bar and I was too tired to then go to Juana’s house to pick it up and then back to the studio. So I canceled. Of course when I returned home the music had stopped and the guests were leaving.

That night I had made an experimental CD of the photos we had taken Saturday and Sunday and I gave the CD to Paco on Tuesday and he called that night to say that it worked and they could see the photos on their set up. Freddie had taken some beautiful ones of Pilar, Solea and Paco on Sunday while I had rested in our bedroom for a few minutes before the show.

I can’t remember Monday clearly or some of Tuesday. I know that I saw Rubina on Tuesday. She came to the end of my practice and helped me. I wrote about that on Tuesday. And one day, it must have been Monday, Freddie and I went shopping. We left in the morning and ate breakfast out, near Mateos Gago street (near the Giralda Cathedral). We hadn’t intended to go shopping, but as we walked home after breakfast we passed a little store on a side street selling mantoncitas (little mantons, “shawls”). We bought some beautiful hand embroidered silk mantoncitas at a very reasonable price. I returned back there today to buy another one for a birthday present for Pilar. I asked the man how come he had such nice things at a reasonable price in such a tiny store and discovered that he is part of a bigger store. The big store on Calle Sierpes sells the big Mantons. We had looked at them in other years and they were beautiful but way too expensive to think about. Our taste was better than our pocketbook. But now we have discovered that what looked like just another “tourist shop” was in reality a gem. The man who runs it is very nice too.

On the way home we tried to get Freddie to the shoe store on Santa Maria La Blanca where I got my comfortable shoes. I got fixated on Freddie having comfortable shoes too. But the store was already closed for siesta by the time we arrived. So we went home, started napping and then Raul El Perla buzzed to announce his visit.

So that was Monday. And Tuesday I was still tired. Today, I couldn’t practice because I had a telephone meeting scheduled about some business from the States at four o’clock. But I had to meet Juana at two, after her class to discuss the new practice schedule. The class was almost finished. Pola was singing and Ryan and Ulrich were playing guitar with a third person. Lucy was taking the dance class. A student of Juana’s needs to practice at four, and it makes sense that Juana’s students should have priority in her studio. I am very lucky just to get to use her studio. So now I have an hour-and-a-half slot from two thirty to four.

After I returned home and had my phone meeting, the buzzer rang and Pilar and Solea were downstairs. Freddie had left early in the morning to go to Triana string, tape, and guitar-stand shopping with Paco and still had not returned. Pilar, Solea and I hung out and then Paco and Freddie returned. Then I had to leave. I wanted to take Juana’s new class that she said was at a “softer” level (better for my ankle) than her two morning classes. I was excited because I had wanted to study with her. But I was still tired too. And I didn’t want to leave our company. (But they left shortly after I did).

Juana tried to start her new class today at six, but not enough people knew about it and showed up. So she just gave a class to her ten-year old daughter and her daughter’s teenaged cousin from Moron. The two girls already had footwork like bullets. They had only been studying this choreography for four or five days. This was the beginning of Juana’s daughter’s formal learning. She was somewhat reluctant at first, but by the end of her class she was dancing with more enthusiasm. The other would-be student and I watched the class. What a different world to grow up dancing Flamenco and not having to struggle with compás or for that matter, learning Spanish! Juana’s daughter is learning English. She is in her second year. And Lucy comes over and tutors her. I am learning more and more about the interrelations of people here. Of course Lucy, who is English, is married to Juan del Gastor who is from Moron. So is Juana from Moron. And, I think, they are related. That all counts. Sometimes I forget that Juana is from Moron because she is such a figura (famous and well respected Flamenco artist). But I am sure that she is the young Gypsy girl that Anzonini told me about in 1980, who danced so well and whose family, to his infinite dismay, had abandoned Moron and moved out of the Gypsy community to Sevilla. But Juana did not abandon her dancing and went on to fulfill her promise.

The other thing that happened was that the Carboneria was shut down. Sunday when Rubina passed it on her way home from the Farruquito show, it was closed with a sign from the government on the door. Today Pola told me that it was open again. Apparently the authorities had shut it down because the neighbors are always complaining and may have even gotten a lawyer. All these years Paco Lira has never bothered to get a business license for the entertainment part so they can close him down when they want to. I don’t know the full story yet, but it seems somewhat serious. The neighbors in Spain are scary when they don’t like Flamenco!

I have to go to bed. It is already past one AM. We are going to Ronda Friday and will spend the night. I looked up hotels on the internet but we will probably just go and see what we find. Paco and Pilar will leave Solea home for this one. We sure are having fun with them.

Thursday, November 13, 2003

Last night, after I returned from Juana’s class that didn’t happen, Freddie was cooking a stew. It was a little after seven and the stores close between seven thirty and eight. I put down my blue dance bag and told Freddie, that if he could take a break, I thought we should go to the shoe store before they closed this time and get him some comfortable shoes to wear to Ronda. So he stopped in the middle of what he was doing and we walked to the store where I had bought my comfortable shoes on Santa Maria la Blanca, less than five minutes away! I really enjoy the close walking distance of so many things here. This time they were still open and Freddie bought three pairs of comfortable and beautiful shoes. This year the styles seem to emphasize comfort and this store is into both quality and comfort. I ended up buying a pair of low, lace up boots that are as comfortable as my new walking shoes but support my ankle even more! I can wear them even with the sore on my foot. Of course everything in Spain takes longer, and we were starved, but happy, when we finished.

Since it was after eight, I suggested that we walk home the other way and if Las Teresas, a famous tapas bar in Barrio Santa Cruz near our house, was open, we could finally eat there. It was open and it wasn’t crowded yet and there was a table by the window. We have passed it almost every day this year and either it is closed or not serving food or so crowded we would have had to wait a long time. Miguel Ochoa had told us about it in 1999 but we had not eaten there. The food was exquisite. We felt like we were on a date. It was nice to be just the two of us eating out. So often we go with friends, which we love too. But this was romantic.

Yesterday, during the day, after they were done shopping, Paquito took Freddie to some Flamenco bars in Triana and he met some really nice Gitanos there. Freddie drank near-beer (Cerveza sin) and socialized (practiced his Spanish). He says he was really into people yesterday, talking to them. Freddie’s Spanish (and mine too) has improved in leaps and bounds this year. He is picking up more and more phrases from Paquito.

Thursday, November 13, 2003 Night

Solea calls Freddie her “Amiguito Fredito”. Like all kids, she is madly in love with Freddie. Paquito, Pilar, Freddie and I went to Triana shopping this morning. Solea was still in school so she couldn’t come with us. Then they dropped me off at our house at two PM because I had scheduled a practice in Juana’s studio at two thirty and Freddie went with Paco and Pili to their house to eat and play guitar. They all returned about eight at night. We are packing to go to Ronda in the morning. We will spend the night there.

Souren came by today. He said that he had come to visit a number of times but we had not been home. Souren, Haig and Polly had been in Granada for several days and had just returned to Sevilla. They leave Spain on Wednesday. Souren said that La Carboneria is open again but has entertainment only in the little room, not the big room. How are all the people going to fit? We haven’t seen Paco Lira for a while. When we return from Ronda we will visit Paco and call all our friends.

Saturday, November 15, 2003

We had a magical stay in Ronda. After checking on the internet and calling one hotel, we decided to just go there and see what was available. We drove to the Tajo, the deep, vast canyon that is a landmark of Ronda and runs right through it. We walked into a fancy three star hotel that faced the Tajo but we didn’t like the rooms that they had left. None had a view and none had a double bed. And the hotel was fairly expensive. They assured us that the other hotels with a view were four-star and would be a lot more expensive, so we didn’t even try them. Instead, we looked at the Tajo and took photos. Then we got into the car, which was parked in a temporary spot of the hotel that we didn’t take, and started to look for a place to stay that night. We crossed the bridge. There were little souvenir shops and restaurants on both sides of the street. We passed the museum. Then on the right, at the second street, we saw a hotel sign and turned up the hill. A beautiful, fancy old house, on our right was the Hotel San Gabriel. We were ushered into a little office inside the elegantly appointed house. The short- haired blond woman who was in charge showed us three rooms, two with double beds. We fell in love. It was like being in a fairy tale. Each room was different but beautiful. So of course we all unanimously decided to stay there.

After we put our things in our rooms, we went for a walk with the video camera and the digital camera and later we stopped at a restaurant to eat. We explored the museum and the shops. In one shop Paco ran into someone who knew him. In another shop we met another person who knew his family and then he recognized the daughter of the famous Flamenco singer, Rancopino. The daughter, Ana, was to perform there that night with her cousin Rosie and with Ana’s fifteen year old brother playing guitar. The friend of Paco’s said he would take us first to another place and then to hear Ana and we arranged to call him at eleven thirty that night. Meanwhile we located the local Peña, the local Flamenco community club, and found out that a singer would be performing there that night.

We went to Peña Flamenca Tobalo de Ronda that evening around ten o’clock. When we arrived at the Peña, of course more people knew Paco and his family. Paco had even performed there in Ronda with his family when he was younger. Freddie and I really enjoyed the singer. Everyone seemed excited that Paco Fernandez was there in the audience.

We ate some tapas, including Freddie’s favorite grilled shrimp, and cheese and olives too. Then Paco’s friend met us there and during what I assume was only the break, we left for the next place. This was a dismal bar that reminded me of a western bar. The taped music was loud and boring. The smoke of the cigarettes made my eyes water. When the entertainment started it was still boring and I said that I wanted to try the next place. I was tired and ready to go to bed, really, but I wanted to see what else there was. I think we were all glad to get out of there.

We walked several minutes through the streets of Ronda to another bar. Shortly after we arrived there, Ana and Rosie started to sing. They sing mainly rumbas, very light Flamenco or Flamenco-Pop, and Paco requested at least one Bulería. The performance was geared to young Spanish people in general and not to Flamencos particularly. Ana’s father, Rancopino, is a true Flamenco singer and very well respected. But Ana’s singing entranced us, and as far as I was concerned, I didn’t care what she sang, only that she sang and I got to listen to her! Her voice had so much control, depth, softness, strength and feeling. She was just incredible. There she was, I think still a teenager, certainly not very old, her head slightly forward, her back slightly slumped, in front of a microphone. She wore a white fashionable tee shirt with half of each sleeve cut out except for the thin material attaching it to the other half of the sleeve. Her low-waisted hip hugger wool pants looked like jeans from far away. This young Gypsy girl, normal looking and nondescript, stood up there, next to her older cousin Rosie, and opened her mouth. Out of her mouth came music that woke me up and made me excited! I couldn’t believe it. Ana sang the most beautiful music and I just couldn’t get enough. She sang well with Rosie too and Rosie sang well too. Ana’s young brother, the guitarist, sang well also. But it was Ana’s voice that went deep into me and thrilled me. The whole night was worth hearing her sing. We had photos taken with all of us in them and we told her that we would get a copy of the video we had just made there to her after we returned to the US. This experience made us all feel even better!

We arrived back at the hotel exhausted but happy and satisfied and we all got to bed around four in the morning.

The next day I woke up first and Freddie and I went for a short walk to buy some cheap and very nice leather change purses I had seen the day before. Then we packed our red suitcase and found out that check out time was at noon but we could stay a little longer if we needed to. “No pasa nada”, said the boy in charge in the morning. (Nothing will happen if you don’t leave exactly at twelve). Finally we woke up Paco and Pilar, who were embarrassed that they had slept so long. But they needed the rest, without a child to take care of. We went out for breakfast and then it started pouring rain. We walked to some shops and bought a few souvenirs we had seen the day before, but the rain made it difficult, especially because none of us had brought raincoats because the day before had been sunny and relatively warm. Pilar and I both had our warm clothes packed safely in our suitcases, which were in the trunk of the car.

After battling the rain outside, Paco put on Freddie’s new coat and went to get the car while the three of us waited in a store. Next we tried to drive down to the bottom of the Tajo. Paco, especially, really wanted to see the bottom of the Tajo. I couldn’t walk that far because of my ankle, which is slowly healing. So we tried to drive. The road took us down, but far from the Tajo, to someone’s private home. Pilar got scared because we were isolated and driving on curvy roads, but the drive was beautiful.

After getting up to the top without getting stuck, we decided to drive on to Grazelema, one of the white towns, and supposedly the most beautiful, that dot the countryside of this area and make it famous. The roads wind up through the mountains, old, curving and narrow.

Before we got to the turn off for Grazelema, we saw a sign that said Gastor. This was the little mountain town that was the birthplace of Diego del Gastor, the famous guitarist who lived most of his life in Moron de la Frontera. We decided to pay homage to Diego and to visit Gastor, which none of us had been to before. We ate a late lunch there in a very typical restaurant. It was still raining hard. We were told at the restaurant that we could still reach Grazelema before dark so we started out again.

We started to sing about Grazelema as we approached a beautiful white pueblo nestled stereotypically into the side of a hill. It was a picturesque postcard type of pueblo. It turned out to be Zahara, which is on the way to or near Grazelema. We never did figure out which.

But the dark overtook us before we actually got to Grazelema and we found ourselves driving these narrow, curvy roads on the side of a huge mountain, in the dark, in the slippery rain. We felt like we were in the middle of nowhere. Pilar got very scared and started praying and held on to my hand tightly. We were in the back seat. Paco did a marvelous job of driving us. He loves the country. Pilar is a city girl and seems to get scared easily. When we finally arrived in Grazelema it was way too dark to see it. So we got directions to get to the road to Sevilla and took off again. When we came down off the mountain and back to a highway Pilar relaxed.

It was a wonderful trip and we didn’t want it to end.

We stayed at Hotel San Gabriel,

C/. Marqués de Moctezuma, 19 Ronda, Spain

Tel: 952-190-392 Fax: 952-190-117 e-mail info@hotelsangabriel.com

We saw and heard Ana, daughter of Rancompino, sing. She is incredible. She sang with her cousin Rosie. This is part of our experience of Ronda, of our magical trip there with our magical friends, Paco and Pilar.

Monday, November 17, 2003

Omar and Saba came to Sevilla yesterday. As we were driving back from Ronda last night our móvil rang. It was Polly who told us that Omar and Saba had arrived and that they were with them. We told Polly that we would call when we arrived home. Omar is a Berber from Algeria and his wife Saba is from Iran, although both are now American citizens. Freddie and I have both known Omar almost forever and he and Freddie have been good friends for years. Omar plays the oud and other North African instruments and teaches the North African Andaluz style of music. He goes to the music camps just like Freddie and I used to before we got together! Freddie and Omar love to play music together and Omar is used to jamming with Flamenco. Saba has been playing drum with Omar. She also studies Flamenco dance. They both were there for us and helped us a lot around our wedding, in setting up and in cleaning up. Before they got together Omar even lived with us for a while. So Omar and Saba showing up in Sevilla on their first trip to Spain was a big deal for us. And it was a surprise.

Omar and Saba had been in Paris for a week. It was cold and things were expensive so they decided to come to Sevilla. They had written to us earlier with that idea in mind as a possibility. But they thought we had already returned home so they hadn’t contacted us nor had they expected to find us. The found La Carboneria and they found Paco Lira there. After they told him they were friends of ours Paco asked them if they knew Souren. Omar had met Souren at music camp and Polly too. So Paco sent his son Sergio next door to their apartment and Polly came back and took Omar and Saba up to their house, the Armenians’ house. This was after Paco had generously showed them around La Carboneria. Later that night, after we had called them back, Omar and Saba walked from the Armenians’ house towards Carmela, and Freddie and I walked to meet them. We brought them home, through the wonderful, narrow streets of Barrio Santa Cruz. Omar and Saba had already fallen in love with Sevilla!

They were staying in a hotel near the airport, part of their package deal, so instead of returning to their hotel last night, they stayed at our house. Saba has a cold and needs rest. Today we went to a party at Rebecca and Ryan’s house. We took Paquito, Pilar, Solea and Pepa (Paquito’s mother, Concha’s sister). Omar and Saba went back to the hotel to get their instruments and met us there later. Concha’s other sister, Esperanza was there too, because she is Alfonso’s mother and Alfonso and Rebecca have been together now for over a year. As I said before, Rebecca took Esperanza to the Farruquito show instead of Alfonso!

When we left the party in the evening we were hungry, so after we dropped things off at the house we went out for tapas. Pepa had gone home with Esperanza when Rebecca had to go to work (Belly Dancing). So we put Omar and Saba into the car with us and drove off! We all ate at Las Teresas, the tapas bar that Freddie and I have finally discovered after years of knowing about it but never eating there. They knew Paco there because he used to eat there a lot when he worked at Los Gallos.

In Ronda Pilar started to call Paco, “Paquito de Ronda” because it seemed like everyone knew him there. Then Pilar and I started to call Freddie and Paco the “Banditos/Bandoleros de Ronda” because they are both so fascinated by knives and weapons, but especially knives. Freddie bought a knife for Paco (that Paco had been admiring in the store window) as a present but Paco made Freddie take a Euro for it because he said it was bad luck in the Gypsy tradition to receive a knife as a present. So he paid Freddie a Euro for it! Paco loved the knife.

The two bought bastons (walking sticks/canes) and took photos! They are so similar it is amazing. And Freddie is older than Paquito’s father Curro. I am the same age as Pepa, his mother. But, the more we hang out with Paco and Pilar the more fun we have. They are wonderful people and have become good friends.

I missed having my Palm Pilot in Ronda and have had to write all this upon returning. I broke it (as I wrote earlier) and it will cost almost as much to fix it as to buy a new one so I have to wait until I return to replace it. Meanwhile, I miss my computer-on-the-go. How spoiled I have become.

I am enjoying the results of my diet. I wear my new Lycra jeans and my Spanish leather belt and feel like a teen-ager. I am thin enough, but when I go off this diet I still seem to gain weight. I think I need to stabilize a little more, but I love feeling “thin enough” again.

For the last two days I have walked without my ace bandage. I am healing. My new shoes probably help, along with time. I didn’t ice my foot while we were gone and it did hurt from all the walking, but it is still getting better.

We have our next Toshi appointments on Monday, tomorrow.

Monday, November 17, 2003

Omar and Saba are both sick, but Saba just got on antibiotics and is feeling a lot better. I helped Saba find a cute Pension by Las Teresas today. Omar and Saba have stayed here for the last two nights. They will be in Sevilla for seven more days. Today, after my practice in the studio, I took Saba to look for boots near Calle Sierpes. There are a few streets between Plaza de Pan and Calle Sierpes that are filled with shoe stores. Saba bought herself a pair of soft black leather boots with small but elegant heels. She put them on in the shoe store and never took them off! On the way home, we took a different route and discovered a new Flamenco clothes store on Calle Franco. I was looking for a blouse still, to go with the flowered skirt I bought at Menke’s about a month or two ago. I ended up buying a black skirt with red embroidered flowers on it. It fit perfectly, including the length, which is totally unusual for me in Spain. I found out that this store sells to a lot of Japanese and so they make things that fit people my size! Saba bought two skirts and a small mantoncita. The yellow and brown lunares skirt that matches the mantoncita makes her look like something from an old Flamenco postcard.

When we arrived home I tried on my skirt from Menkes again too and it, as I feared, is now too long because I have lost weight since I bought it! I might just sell it when I get home. It is beautiful but now it is too big! I never did find a matching blouse for it, but here they always recommend wearing a body suit and a mantoncita.

Sunday, November 23, 2003

I wrote with pen and paper, scrawled notes from fingers used to typing the thoughts as they flowed. I wrote on the bus and in the hotel. I miss my Palm Pilot.

But first, I will catch up and then will put down what I wrote in the bus. We went to Morón on Saturday, after spending the morning in Triana with Paquito, Pilar and Solea. Saturday morning Freddie had a guitar class with Paco. When they finished, Paco drove us to Triana where we met Pilar and Solea and bought a small painting of La Piriñaca, an old woman Gypsy singer from Triana, long dead. After that, we ate at a beautiful old tapas bar in Triana, Las Golandrinas (the swallows), which is beneath a former apartment of Paquito’s. I believe I might have eaten at that bar in 1999, but this time I have the name and address: Bar - Las Golondrinas Tel: 954-331-626, Antillano Campos, 26, Triana, Sevilla. I think if I checked my old Spain notes, I would find it written from our first trip here together. Las Golandrinas has beautiful, old Spanish tiles, “azulejos”, on the walls. The wooden chairs and tables are hand painted with bright colors in designs that are “muy” Sevillana. They remind me a little of Mexico and I am well aware, seeing that connection, that Spain conquered Mexico. I wish we had had the camera with us. The house specialty at Las Golandrinas is “champiñones”, grilled mushrooms with a delicious thick white sauce flavoring the middle. But they don’t serve coffee.

After our outing in Triana, we returned home briefly, to get our little suitcase and to walk past the Jardines Murillo park to El Prado San Sebastion station to catch the bus to Morón.

But now, to go back further … we have been spending a lot of time with Paco and Pilar. Last Wednesday was Pilar’s thirty-eighth birthday and we celebrated that day with her parents, brother and sister-in-law and Omar and Sabar at Paco and Pilar’s house. Pilar received three beaded purses, all the rage here, and one beautiful one was from us. We also gave her a beige hand embroidered mantoncita because she wears beige a lot.

Last Thursday after I practiced, Paco and Pilar picked us up and we went to Triana. Omar, who was feeling a little better then, came with us. Saba, who was again feeling a little under the weather, was sleeping. The night before, at Pilar’s birthday party, Freddie had arranged with Pilar’s father, Andres Dominguez the guitar maker, to work in his shop with him. So the boys went to the shop and Pilar and I went shopping. She needed to exchange a coat her parents had given her that was too big. She was also returning the large beaded bag that her mother had given her. I ended up buying a cheap three quarter length black acrylic coat/jacket with fake fur at the collar like the white coat Pilar was returning. It zips up and is very warm. It is like Freddie’s black coat that he got at the flea market, only mine has fur, and it too only cost twenty-five Euros. Then Pilar showed me her favorite jewelry store, owned by a friend of hers, and I, who didn’t need more, bought some beautiful earrings.

After that, I changed shoes and we walked across the bridge and all the way to Corte Ingles because Pilar wanted to exchange something she had bought for Solea. But she had left her wallet in the car and so didn’t have the receipt with her. But we had a wonderful time window shopping and talking. That is the farthest I have walked this year. I took it slowly and my ankle was OK.

When we returned to Triana the boys were having coffee and/or beer in a little café. Andres had finished work and had gone home. Omar called Saba, who was not in, and then we left for home.

Friday I took Saba to see Juana’s one o’clock class and then I returned later to practice at two thirty. Rubina joined me and the two of us together accomplished a lot. We worked on steps and contras and had a lot of fun. It felt great. I am skipping my practice this weekend because of Morón and also because my leg is cramping again. I need to stretch more as well as to rest it.

Rubina is returning home on the tenth too (like we are), but on British Air. Freddie had a Toshi appointment on Friday and then Omar and Saba came over and cooked dinner. Omar was still very sick.

Saturday morning Omar and Saba took off early for Morón. They were going to meet us at the Gran Hotel Morón, where we had all made reservations.

I wrote by hand, with pen and paper on the bus on Saturday: “On the bus to Morón, Freddie, me and Luisito. Luisito will perform at La Peña los Gallos tonight in Morón. It is pouring rain outside, and although before seven PM, the night is black. I am so tired I just want to sleep.

Luisito decided to take the bus with us, as he wanted to arrive earlier than Juan del Gastor and Lucy, his ride there and back. In this rain we were glad to be going by bus instead of by car.

Manuela Carrasco’s strikingly beautiful daughter, Zamara, is sitting behind Luisito and Freddie. She looks just like her mother Manuela, one of my very favorite dancers. Her long, dark hair is pulled back and her dark face is glamorously made-up. Zamara will sing tonight at the Peña. She is sitting next to her light haired, chubby little girl friend, Rosario Amador, who will also sing tonight. They are both listening (with two sets of earphones attached to one minidisk player) to something obviously Flamenco. They are studying cante, perhaps what one of them will sing tonight. Freddie does palmas quietly for a while with Luisito. Then Luisito sings softly. They are sitting together, across from me. Zamara snaps her fingers, lost in a world inside the minidisk, known only to her and her friend. Now she is doing palmas and singing softly. Freddie chats with Luisito.”

Freddie and I took a taxi from the bus stop to our hotel and Luisito walked to the Peña. Omar and Saba had never arrived. We wondered if they had gone on to Granada, a former plan of theirs. The Gran Hotel of Morón is like an elegant palace just outside of town. Everything is very beautiful, with guilded antique chairs, wooden tables with curved legs, Oriental rugs, mirrors, paintings, and a sense of tranquility.

When we were ready to go out, they called a taxi for us and the driver was a Flamenco aficionado. He had known Anzonini and Diego. We arrived early at the Peña in order to set up the video camera and the tripod. Luisito had asked us to videotape and he had arranged the permission with the performers and the Peña.

The Peña members were warm and welcoming to us. The walls were covered with photos of great Flamenco artists who had performed there. They told us later that they had archives of three times as much as they could put on the walls! The first half of the show was an old man, Paco Comacho, who sang accompanied by a young guitarist. He was good and his last song, a Toná, brought tears to my eyes, although the older man behind me told me that Paco didn’t sing it as well as usual. Then the man behind me, sitting next to his quiet but smiling, short haired wife, started to tell me about the past, about forty years ago when the Americans flocked to Morón to study with Diego del Gastor. I told him that many of those people were our friends. He talked about Anzonini del Puerto, also an old friend of ours, now, like Diego, long dead. He started to identify the photos on the walls. There were a number of Anzonini from when he was younger than when we knew him. Then the second half of the show started.

Rosario sang first. Rosario, Zamara, and Luisito were all accompanied by Dani (Daniel) de Morón, a young up-and-coming guitarist. Dani is already well known and well respected here and I think many people came to hear him. Rosario, who had seemed so quiet in the bus, sang with a strong voice and had great stage presence and did a little dancing between cante lines. We enjoyed her. Then Zamara sang and danced a little too. She was strong, but I couldn’t help comparing her to her famous mother! The girls are about twenty or twenty-two, according to Luisito. Then came Luisito’s turn. He was the featured performer. The girls did palmas for him, as he did for them. The audience loved him and his old Lebrija style. In the finale the girls danced and sang again.

At the intermission Saba walked in. They almost hadn’t let her in until she said she knew us. I hadn’t realized that this Peña is a more closed community than some. Saba and Omar had arrived in Morón that afternoon, as planned, but Omar had a fever. Instead of taking a taxi to the hotel, they found the Hostel (pension) Morón and stayed there instead. The man who helped them find the hostel knew Agustin Rios, a guitarist/singer nephew of Diego’s (from Morón) who has lived in California for many years. He is a good friend of Freddie’s and Omar knows him too (so do I). So Omar connected with Morón. After caring for Omar all day and getting his fever down, Saba walked to the Peña and joined us for the second half of the show. She loved it. She had been wanting to see good Flamenco since she arrived.

After the show the man behind me and I decided that with these young people carrying on the tradition, Flamenco will continue to live!

One of the people in the audience was an older short-haired blond woman wearing long, pink rhinestone earrings and a sequined and beaded pantsuit. Her vacant looking husband kept her supplied with hard alcohol while he drank juice. Then she came up to us and started singing. Her voice was strong and she knew many many songs, including one Rubina sings. She sang to me, she sang to Saba and to Freddie and then to Juan del Gastor. Saba and I were entranced. Freddie videotaped her. Later, Luisito told me that Salvadora, the woman, is eighty years old. I wouldn’t have guessed that. I thought she was in her seventies! Salvadora told me that she could have been a great artist but that instead she had married and had children and become a housewife.

We saw Pepe de Morón there with his girlfriend whom I had met last year at La Carboneria when Freddie was still in the hospital. She has an American father and speaks perfect English. They would love to come back to California. Pepe (Pepito) was the other dancer who came to California with Farruquito and Juana Amaya this last year. He also came to California with Miguel Funi the year before. So he has visited our house twice now.

As we left, after we had called the cab, we watched a fiesta start to happen in a large building next door without a door. Pepito invited and encouraged us to stay but we were both feeling tired and it was cold and rainy outside. I was fighting getting sick and so was Freddie but we didn’t know it then. Freddie even left his new baston in the Peña. I called from the hotel that night and arranged to pick it up the next day. Luisito told us Sunday that the fiesta had later moved inside the Peña and had lasted until five AM.

The next morning Freddie was sick again. He doesn’t have a strong enough immune system yet to hang out with sick people, so he succumbed to the sickness again. He is sleeping now as I write. I feel a little sick too, but am still trying to fight it.

This morning, when we went by the Peña for the baston they told us that a man had taken it home, but not to worry, that it was not lost. They told us the man’s last name and approximately where he lived. The taxi driver, the same aficionado who had driven us both ways last night, helped us look for the house. We asked people and by pure luck we finally found the house. The man’s daughter answered the door and Freddie heard the man grumpily telling his daughter where it was. Freddie thinks the man wanted to keep it. But Freddie got it back, thanks to the taxi driver’s help. If you are ever in Morón and need a taxi, call this taxi company: Pepe’s car rental and taxi twenty-four hour service: 95-485-06-65 or 95-485-17-37 or cell phone: 608-33-92-57 or 699-19-75-22. He charged us three Euros less than the first taxi we took from the bus when we arrived (and the distance was the same). And he was very nice and very Flamenco. As I wrote before, he knew Anzonini and Agustin and, of course, Diego del Gastor too.

We waited for the bus at a delightful bar in front of the bus stop, (calle Fray Diego Cadiz N. 149) where the waiter, Lorenzo Sanchez, knew Agustin too. Lorenzo is from a Flamenco family and told us he loves it when foreigners come who also love Flamenco fanatically! We also talked to an American ex-service man there who had married a Spanish woman and stayed on in Morón.

And I forgot to mention how we discovered more ways American tax money is being squandered by the military. Staying at this luxury hotel in Morón, the Gran Hotel Morón, for more than three months already were a number of American service men who looked like they did nothing but drink alcohol and chat with the hotel staff all day. A number of officers will stay there too when the remodeling begins at the base (in Morón) soon. But right now, these “regular” service men are put up in a luxury hotel. They begin to drink before noon and seem to have nothing to do. We American citizens are paying for it! Why?

And now on to another subject, Rebecca is in the hospital, the same hospital where Freddie nearly died last year, Virgin del Rocio. Rebecca fainted the other day and Alfonso got scared and brought her to the hospital. They still haven’t figured out why she fainted, but she seems to be very anemic and still has trouble walking. Alfonso and his mother Esperanza have been there with her every time we have called. Concha called her from Switzerland to help give her moral support. Today the hospital phone was busy for an hour so we called her on her cell phone, thinking that perhaps the hospital phone was out of order. But Rebecca was on the other phone with her sister in America. (Alfonso took our call). Rebecca has a lot of support and that is very good. We can’t visit her unless we are well, of course. But we remember when she and Alfonso came numerous times to visit Freddie in the hospital last year, and it moved us very much. We want to return that support. So now Rebecca, still in her twenties (and too young for this), is in the hospital herself. It is scary. Hopefully they will let her out soon. Alfonso stays there every night and won’t leave her side. That too is very touching for us.

Monday, November 24, 2003

I still have a sore throat this morning and an upset stomach. I went to bed with the sore throat and hoped it would be gone by this morning. We are out of the Wellness Formula we take to ward off sickness and have been trying Spanish formulas that mix Echinacea, bee pollen and vitamin C. I don’t want to be sick. Freddie’s pain medication from America arrived Saturday but there were two months worth of Oxycontin and no Percocet (not obtainable in Spain), which he uses for his breakthrough back and foot pain. I think his sickness might be withdrawal from the Percocet, but he says that his mood is too good for withdrawal and that he is just sick. Both of us have stomach upset too. It is pouring rain outside.

This morning Freddie says he only has a cough left, with phlegm in his chest. I feel hot and tired and have this sore throat and stomach upset.

Monday, November 24, 2003 Evening

I took a group class from Juana Amaya tonight at six. She said it would be slower, but I thought it moved pretty quickly! I rested all day because I felt sick but Freddie and I went together and he played guitar for the class. I am glad I went, and I signed up for the week. She worked on Solea and Bulería and her ten-year old daughter was in the class too. Juana is a very nice person and I like the things she showed us. But my mind had to really focus to keep up with all the material she gave us in that first class! And most of the class members were really good, including Seiko, one of Torombo’s best students. She is the one with the lightening fast feet!

Rubina just came over and I put oils on her aching back. The horrible knots in her muscles went away and she felt better. Then I took a pre-arranged client call from America. My clients can’t wait forever! I have had to write letters from here for two different clients, but I do it because it is important for me to be there for my clients. I haven’t really dropped off the face of California! I was just gone an extra month!

Tuesday, November 25, 2003

Yesterday Rebecca said that the doctors think her anemia may have been caused by a rare allergy to fava beans. (They are still not sure). Her “alta”, the projected date of her release from the hospital, is Thursday and she feels much better already. When we spoke to her, Alfonso had just brought her computer and a VCR to the hospital so now she won’t be bored. Freddie tells Rebecca a joke a day to keep the doctor away.

Today I received a lovely e-mail note from a client’s lawyer thanking me for my “gracious and prompt assistance.” That made me feel good.

But, I hurt myself in Juana’s class today! This time it is my Achilles tendon on the same foot. Toshi came this evening and worked on both Freddie and me. He showed me where the swelling is in my tendon. He said I have to rest it or it could take months to heal! I left class today crying because I knew I had done something to my ankle again. I stopped doing the footwork immediately but of course it was too late. I came home and put my foot in a bucket of ice that Freddie prepared. It probably all helped.

Wednesday, November 26, 2003

I have a full-blown cold today and have not done much except rest and clean. Our landlady is coming over to show our living room and kitchen to a possible tenant today. So Freddie and I have done some long needed cleaning to make it presentable! Anticipating today, I stuffed a large rubber tray under the sink in the kitchen last night and unknowingly moved the plastic pipe under the sink just enough to cause a leak. We just found out now, right when the landlady is coming, what caused all the water on the kitchen floor! But Freddie fixed it and cleaned it up. The house sure does look beautiful.

I have canceled my dance practice for at least a few days and I am not sure if I will even go to Juana’s six o’clock class tonight and just do arms and body. I am not allowed to do footwork again, at least until my tendon stops hurting. And Concha will be back Sunday. (I had wanted to take some more classes with her but now I probably won’t be able to!).

Thursday, November 27, 2003 Night

I can’t believe I am so sick. I have been sleeping almost all day. I did go out this morning to the pharmacy and I bought some antibiotics because we are coughing green phlegm. Last night Rubina bought me some pills to dry up my cold. She said her pharmacist had given them to her when she had a cold and that they worked very well. The directions said to take one a day with breakfast, so I waited until this morning and then Freddie and I took them today. I developed a reaction and thought maybe I was going to have a heart attack. I put some heart oils on and felt a little better. But at 5:30 this afternoon when the pharmacy opened after siesta, Freddie and I hobbled together, holding on to each other, slowly down the five minutes of narrow, beautiful streets of Barrio Santa Cruz to the Alta Mira Plaza. The pharmacist looked up the ingredients in her computer and some of the side effects were speeded up heart and arrhythmia. The pharmacist took my blood pressure, which was fine, but my pulse rate was high. But knowing I wasn’t going to die from that made me feel a lot better, so we began to hobble home. I remembered that I hadn’t paid her for the blood pressure test and I went back and she just motioned me away. She is always so nice to me. She has done special favors for me before. I am so glad I began to use this pharmacy. A few years ago I was using a pharmacy where the people were never friendly. Then one day I decided to try this one, thinking that it might be a little more expensive because of the location. But it was not more expensive, it was more convenient, and the people who work here are lovely. This was the woman who gave me the pearl necklace one year.

On the way home Freddie and I were admiring the red roses, which have just started to bloom in the square of “our” Plaza de Santa Cruz. Juana Amaya and her daughter were walking through the plaza on their way to dance class. Juana could see that I was sick. Even if I hadn’t hurt my ankle, this cold has knocked me out. The antibiotics are six-day and they should start working soon. Freddie was sweating a lot a little while ago after he ate a pear. He still hasn’t touched the chicken soup I brought to him. It is on a stool next to the bed. I am sweating now since I ate my soup. And my stomach hurts. It is boring to be sick. I don’t feel like doing anything. I’ll just go back to sleep. I took one of Freddie’s pain pills last night and it knocked me out for the night and I could sleep without my leg waking me up. I felt much better when I woke up and then I took that cold pill and started feeling worse again. Now it has finally worn off and my nose is running again! Freddie has stopped coughing.

I called Pili to see how they were doing, because Paco had canceled a lesson with Freddie the other day because he had a sore throat. Pili had taken him to the doctor today and he will start his antibiotics tomorrow. She offered to take us too, and if Freddie isn’t better tomorrow, I may take her up on that. I hate to impose because she is already busy enough with a young daughter. But on the other hand, here is help offered. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

We talked to Rebecca today who was getting out of the hospital right after we spoke. She sounds a lot better today. She said that here in Spain there seems to be more sickness than in the US. Now she will invest in health insurance, which is about fifty Euros a month here.

It seems to me that the world is sicker in general than it used to be, or is that because we have better communication so we know that more. This is the most I’ve been up today and I think I will go back to bed! But at least I had enough energy to write! How are we going to get packed to leave?

Friday, November 28, 2003

Another day closer to leaving time. I don’t think I will take any other dance classes. It seems like all I can do is to just prepare to leave. Once we get boxes for the things we are going to send, I know I will feel better. Thanksgiving came and left and Freddie and I both slept through it. I can’t believe I have been so sick, although today I feel a little more alive. I took my second antibiotic today with my last egg. I need to go out today to buy eggs and more green tea. It is boring to be sick because I don’t feel up to doing anything fun. Freddie took a Zanax about midnight last night so he could continue to sleep and they always knock him out for at least a day and a half. So he is still sleeping, although earlier he said he felt better. I want my playmate! Earlier I really wanted my mother. I was disappointed because she won’t even come to me in a dream. (She died in 1997). But I think when I am sick, I want that image of someone taking care of me and in reality there is no one, especially when Freddie and I are both sick together!

Friday, November 28, 2003 Evening

We slept most of the day again. Only I went out to the MAS for eggs and green tea in the morning and again this evening for more yogurt, bananas, oranges and toilet paper. Then I went to the pharmacy for more tape for my foot; we are low on this wonderful tape that supports my weak ligament. It felt good to get out, although I had to push myself to leave the apartment. The cool, fresh air seemed to revive me a little and I gained energy from the people around me. But before I got home, I felt tired and dizzy again, both times. And when I returned home, each time, I was amazed at the hot, stale atmosphere of our apartment.

But tonight, after sleeping almost all day, Freddie is better. He scheduled a lesson with Paquito tomorrow and he is playing his guitar now, instead of just sleeping. Freddie made us both orange juice by peeling the oranges and then crushing them with the hand mixer we use to make gazpacho. One orange made a glass of juice, pulp and all; it was delicious. Yesterday it took me five oranges to make two glasses, squeezing them the old way, in the flimsy green plastic hand squeezer that Christina Hansen gave to us when Freddie was sick here two or three years ago! Now we are finally getting creative. Next year we might even buy an electric juicer.

Freddie has lost ten pounds since he last weighed himself in pounds. We have a scale here, in kilos and just today I got around to looking for a converter on the web. The forty-six kilos I weigh is one hundred one point two pounds. I have lost about ten pounds too, (or a little more) but most of that has been intentional. I just didn’t realize, until today, how much I’d lost in pounds! It feels good. Right now, because of being sick, I don’t have much of an apatite, a first for me. I am usually always hungry. But with this sickness, I seem to have lost interest in food (or maybe it is due to the antibiotics). But I think I will feel better tomorrow. It is nice to see Freddie back in healthy mode. We washed the sheets today and he hung them out on the roof. We help each other. And I just love listening to him practice again.

Saturday, November 29, 2003

We are waiting for Paquito to pick us up for the flea market. He was supposed to come to give Freddie a lesson, and then last night Freddie and I realized that we only have two more Saturdays left, so we called this morning to re-arrange the day. But they had to take Pili’s mother somewhere this morning so things began to get delayed when we added Pili and Solea into the equation. I took another one of Freddie’s Oxycontin’s to sleep last night and I am still dizzy this morning. They are just too strong for me! They seem to last a day and a half! So maybe it is good that we are going to the flea market (rastro) a little late. Hopefully it won’t get too late to go! I really don’t want to leave too much last minute shopping until next Saturday. We still need to get the boxes to mail things and we still need to get our energy!

We are winding down, emotionally, and this time we are really preparing ourselves to leave Spain! Maybe it is because we are sick and that is more boring. Freddie is practicing now but I don’t have any energy to dance or even to think about dancing. I may be able to stumble around the flea market if that still happens today!

We went to the flea market and didn’t find what we were looking for and we both got exhausted. But we enjoyed seeing Paco, Pilar and Solea. Paco is still fighting a sore throat, but he is also taking antibiotics so he probably won’t get really sick. He and Pilar spoke to us about getting Spanish health insurance while we are here next year. We will do that and Pilar will help us. Freddie was too tired for his lesson today so he will have it tomorrow. When we got home he took a short rest to prepare for his Toshi massage tonight.

Toshi came at eight fifteen tonight and he worked on Freddie’s cramping hands and it helped a lot. Toshi is the nicest man. We both love him and so does everyone we know who knows him. He always has a compassionate and calm presence about him. He bows when he comes in and he bows when leaving, even after shaking Freddie’s hand and giving me the Spanish double kisses. I think his Japanese culture won’t let him leave without also bowing. Before he left, we were telling him about Freddie’s new way of making orange juice and that peaked his curiosity. So Toshi stayed for a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice. Then Freddie made us both orange juice too. While Freddie was making the orange juice, Toshi was slighting tapping his feet in Flamenco rhythms, like I do. Think how incredible it is to have a Flamenco masseuse. He is used to working on dancers and guitarists and, being a dancer himself, he really understands the body.

We had planned to see Paquito tomorrow, at least for a lesson for Freddie, but we had forgotten about the flower tribute to La Niña de los Peines in the Alameda this Sunday. Toshi reminded us. It starts around one PM at the Alameda, the side closest to the Teatro de Alameda and the Barqueta Bridge. Afterwards El Sordera will be singing at the Torres Macarena Peña!!! Perhaps we’ll go with Paco and Pilar and Solea. We’ll tell them tomorrow. Toshi’s wife, Francesca-Diana, had written us an e-mail earlier about this, but it was up on my computer desktop with a bunch of other things I might need to remember. And so I forgot. So I was glad that Toshi had reminded us again.

Monday, December 1, 2003

We didn’t go anywhere Sunday. We slept. We have been in bed, sleeping for days. I am so tired of it. I went to the MAS today to get oranges, yogurt and garbage bags. It was my major outing. It actually felt good to be outside and to breathe the fresh air. It felt good to walk. But inside the MAS, waiting in line to pay, I felt like I was going to throw up (but I didn’t).

Pili is going to bring us to her naturopath doctor today at four. If that doesn’t help, we will go see Dr. Boloños, whom we saw in 2000 when Freddie was sick. In 2000 he was referred by Paco Lira. That time he even came to our “house” (our room upstairs at La Carboneria). This time he was referred by Delia and Francesca-Diana, who have known him since he started his practice. You can go to his “consulta” between four and six and there is usually no wait because he doesn’t have many patients now. He also works in the mornings as an opthamaloglist in a clinic. In his “consulta” he primarily sees his old patients and visitors that Delia refers to him. Delia says that he maintains his small practice as favor to his patients, many of whom, like Delia, have been with him for years.

Concha and Curro Fernandez arrived from Switzerland last night at eight. They leave again in a few days for France. Paquito will be going with them. I tried to call Concha today but her phone wasn’t working. She knows that we stayed because her sisters have told her.

If we get well enough, we will be ready to come home this time, unless feeling well will renew our enthusiasm for being here. Francesca-Diana says that many people here get sick in the fall or winter and remain sick until the spring. We don’t want to be like them. Is there more sickness here? Saba and Omar just wrote us that everyone in California has the flu too. I wonder where we can buy facemasks for the plane?

Tuesday, December 2, 2003

Last night Pili took us to her Naturopata and Homeopata doctor, Paco Luque. His flier says he is not a doctor and that his work should not be a substitute for a doctor. But we met a woman in his office who has been seeing him for twenty years! His patients swear by him. Little Solea runs up to him and hugs and kisses him. He gave us each an injection (I have no idea of what) and we have a syrup to take every 1/2 hour, and sub-lingual drops to take every hour and some herbs to make tea from and drink three times a day after meals. -A lot of stuff, and expensive for Spain. But, but by the time we arrived home we were already feeling better. This morning I had enough energy to wash my hair. Freddie felt worse again and slept until noon, but I started giving him the drops and teaspoons of liquid as soon as I could and by the afternoon he felt much better. Rubina came by and we all went to eat lentils and salad at Casa Diego. I had not been there in more than a month! They thought we had already left and returned. That is the most we have done for days, except for last Saturday, which tired us out. Now we are waiting for Pili to pick us up to go for our next (and last) injection. The doctor said we should be better in three days. I am amazed that it is working and working so fast. Naturopaths in the US don’t seem to get such quick results. I have no idea what we are taking, I was too sick to ask or to be concerned. Now I am thinking of it because I am feeling so much better. We still need to get our boxes and then mail them and then I will feel even better.

Francisco “Paco” Luque Castillo, Naturopata - Homeopata.

Teléf. 954-57-50-31,

Maria Josefa de Segovia, 56

Esquina Avda. El Greco, 46 (junto a Talleres FRANLUQ), 41007, Sevilla.

Referred by Pilar Dominguez, wife of Paquito Fernandez 12/03

Paco is again giving a guitar class to Freddie. They are going over scales. Pilar has taken Solea over to her godmother’s, Juana Amaya, who lives nearby. Solea is excited about playing with Juana’s ten-year old daughter, Nazare, who already has a computer. I am still too tired to go, having just come back from the doctor’s again. He gave us more shots and some more liquid to drink. We are to come back one more time, tomorrow for more shots unless we already feel totally well. Paco explains one of his exercises to Freddie, “Como congrejo”, like a crab. He is great about explaining exactly what Freddie must do and how to do it. Then Freddie’s guitar playing gets cleaner and easier. Paco is a wonderful teacher. As I have written before, Paco is both knowledgeable and caring. He just taught Freddie an exercise for individuating the fingers. He knows a lot about the mechanics of guitar playing. And he does it with joy and heart. He says, “It is important to look for the sound.”

Paco is trying to think of how to give guitar classes over the internet. If any of you already know how this can be done, please let us know. Then Paco can begin to collect the equipment. He returns to Japan in May and may be able to buy some of what he needs there. It is an interesting concept and may be the next best thing to going to Spain. It would certainly be more individualized than learning by videotape, which was an idea I had for him. But I think personalized learning would be the key. He would also have to figure out how to get paid. Does Paypal work internationally? Is Paypal good or is it better to use credit cards? These are all questions that have to be answered. But I think his idea would be great. Although, the very best and most enjoyable thing would be being here in Sevilla in person, face to face. But in the absence of being in Spain, computer/video live lessons sound like a fabulous idea.

The music is beautiful and soothing as I write. It floats around me.

I read today’s writing out loud to Paco and Pilar, translating simultaneously as I read it. They were amazed and impressed. It is hard for people to understand what I write if they have not read or listened to it. Even though I tell them what I am doing, hearing it made it real. They said, “Yes, this is exactly what happened!” I would love to translate all of this into Spanish.

Friday, December 5, 2003

It looks like Paco Fernández Vargas may come to California with Concha Vargas this May. Carlos Heredia was supposed to come but he has just backed out.

Sunday, December 7, 2003

Paco Fernández is definitely coming to California (instead of Carlos Heredia) with Concha Vargas on May 23, 2004. We are ecstatic and want to urge all the guitarists to take classes with him. As I have written so often, he is a great guitarist and a great teacher, a unique combination.

Also, he has a DVD for sale, which we will be selling for $30 each (NTSC format). It is a four generation video, showing grandfather, parents, Paco and siblings, and Paco’s daughter. It starts off with Paquito’s parents, Curro Fernandez and Pepa Vargas (Familia Fernández) showing old family photos from their personal album. Then the second cut features Paco playing guitar and singing a song he wrote for his daughter Soleá, when she was born. His wife, Pilar, is sitting on a chair holding Soleá. The third cut features Paco’s brother, José Fernández dancing por Bulería. The fourth cut features Paco’s grandfather, Curro’s father, Abuelo Juan José singing Soleá de Alcalá. The fifth cut features Paco’s sister, the famous singer Esperanza Fernández singing a Bulería to her son. The sixth cut is a Bulerías Fin de Fiesta with the entire Familia Fernández. The last cut is an interview (in Spanish) with Curro and Paco Fernández.

We don’t have room to bring back too many, so please let us know ASAP if you want one. We will be home late December 10.

Monday, December 8, 2003

We are busy getting ready to leave. Of course, I forgot about the perpetual Spanish holidays. Saturday and Monday were holidays and the stores are closed. We have been visiting with people and that too has us behind in our packing. Paco returned from France yesterday, exhausted. We were supposed to see him last night, but he went to sleep instead. He said it was very very cold in France. Concha pulled a muscle in her back so we haven’t seen her either. But we ate lunch with Paco and Pili today around three o’clock in Triana. We went to Casa Manolo and it was filled with people. Pili’s parents ate there too with their two grandchildren, Vicente (five-year old son of Pili’s brother) and Solea. Yesterday Freddie spent time with Pili’s father, Andres Dominguez, who made some minor adjustments to Freddie’s new guitar. Freddie went down again to the shop this morning to pick up the guitar. Although it was a holiday, Andres spent time working at his shop as he also did on Sunday. He enjoys his work and is a true artist, both in guitar construction and repair and also in it decoration. The intricate and ornate inlay designs he puts on his guitars are truly unique as well as beautiful.

Rubina met us here at the house this afternoon and Paco signed the contract for California and Canada. Now it is official. It is not as good as other contracts he is used to getting, for example, when he works with Juana Amaya, but he is glad to be visiting us. So I see that California is lucky to be getting him again.

Saturday we ate lunch at Pili’s parents’ house. Her mother cooked us a Gypsy garbanzo bean stew. It was wonderful. I looked at old photos of Pili. We were surprised at how much Solea looks like Pili did as a child. I always thought that Solea looked more like Paco but now I see that she is the spitting image of her mother when her mother was a child.

Sunday we slept a lot and packed a little and ate dinner at El Cordobes (Bar La Mezquita). We don’t eat there as much as we have in the past, (because we eat home more) but they always treat us wonderfully. We are invited tonight for a late dinner (on the house), but I am not sure if we will make it. It is raining still, for days and days. We took down the wet laundry that was on the line and hung it inside the house and it is finally dry. We can now pack the last tee shirts, jeans, socks, and underpants.

The airlines told us we have a twenty-kilo limit per suitcase, and three of the suitcases already weigh twenty-three kilos. I need to call tomorrow to see if they are strict about that. If so, is it better to have two more overweight or three a little overweight each! We were allowed more weight on the way over. And we have left a lot of things here for next year, like my belly dance costumes (which weigh a lot) and a lot of unused video recording tapes, which also weigh. The CDs we are bringing back don’t weigh that much. And we sent back, by boat, two boxes with some of our extra things and the beautiful tiles we found in the trash. But we did buy a lot of shoes. I guess forty kilos is not that much.

It is raining, raining, raining and Toshi just left.

Sunday, trying to be a little on top of things, I called the airlines to confirm our reservations. The message on the answering machine said that the American Airlines office in Spain would not be open until Tuesday because of the holiday. So I went up on the web to get our seats and to check in and/or confirm our flights. I could only find my reservation up there and I panicked. So I used our phone card and called the 800 number in the USA and was on hold for half an hour. But, when they finally got to me, they did have Freddie’s reservation in the computer and everything is OK. So I got us our seats.

I just had my last Toshi appointment while Freddie had a lesson with Paquito. Now Freddie is having his last Toshi appointment. Tomorrow a lady comes to clean at two o’clock and in the afternoon I need to return our phone to the Telefónica phone store. Today in Triana, walking from the restaurant, we passed a closed store with some pants I wanted, so Pili asked me if I wanted to go there in the morning tomorrow. But by tonight I think the thought overwhelmed her. Soleá is sick and threw up in the restaurant. Pili took her straight to the doctor’s from the restaurant and Paco, Freddie and I took a taxi to the house so Freddie could have his guitar lesson with Paco. If I have energy, I might go to the store tomorrow without her, but probably I won’t. I always get nervous about getting out of here. Once we are in the plane I will feel better. Freddie and I are both over most of our cold but neither of us has any energy and we seem to sleep a lot and not do much.

Delia and Francesca-Diana were going to come over tonight to say goodbye but they had an infestation of ants in the bedroom and Francesca-Diana was stuck cleaning everything because Toshi had to work. Delia might stop over tomorrow during the day to say goodbye. She told me that dancer Jairo Barull’s father had died yesterday. He was supposed to be a great dancer in his time and he taught Jairo and I think Juana Amaya too (he is her cousin). He was Carmen the cleaner at the Carboneria’s ex husband (Jairo is their son). He was from Moron and is related to many artists here.

I told Paco and Pilar tonight when I heard the news and they were shocked. Paco immediately crossed himself. Apparently he had been in the hospital and we know how dangerous that is in Spain. Speaking of hospitals, Rebecca is out and is doing better but she wants to go home to the US for a while and will leave here on Friday. Spanish hospitals are traumatic. Freddie says they diagnosed Rebecca with passing gas, says Freddie. His theory is that she ate beans (fava beans) and had to pass gas. Rebecca told me that they never quite figured out her diagnosis. That seems to be typical for Spanish hospitals.

So Freddie and I are ready to leave Spain, finally. We are tired of rain and sickness. Will California also have rain and sickness? Will we wish we had stayed in Sevilla instead? I feel like I want to sleep and re-start yoga when we return. I know that eventually I will feel like practicing again. I saw a video tape today of one of Freddie’s cajon classes with Torombo and I was dancing on it and I looked good! I was surprised. I want to remember the choreography I learned from Torombo. I know this break from dancing will do me good but it is hard for me to think that I will ever dance as well as the dancing I saw myself do on the tape!

And so we leave Sevilla. We are mostly packed and I want to send one last Chronicle out before we fly. I hate packing.

Wednesday, December 10, 2003 Epilogue

Chicago airport. We have a lay over here for four hours, but our flights have been smooth so far. We are waiting in the AA lounge. Here is what happened since I last wrote, before we left Spain.

The night we were supposed to eat at El Córdobes at their invitation (Monday night) we were too tired, so I called Antonio and told him that we would come in the next day, our last. And yesterday we did eat a late lunch at El Corbobes Bar La Mesquita. We ordered our broiled chicken with its broiled green peppers and salad. Then Antonio brought us a surprise starter of Manchego cheese and Jamon Serrano. Then he brought out toast with smashed tomato on it and then toast with Salmorejo (a very thick Andalucian tomato Gazpacho) on it. By the time our chicken came, we were almost full, because both of us eat less since we have had the flu! But we did eat a splurge of flan for dessert. Lunch was “on the house”. We took home our leftovers for dinner that night.

That morning Pili had picked me up in the pouring rain and the two of us had gone to look at the store in Triana, but the red striped pants I had coveted from the window the day before were way too big and I didn’t like the feel of the material. I ended up getting a soft, warm sweater for ten Euros and a blouse for nine Euros and a pair of corduroy and Lycra pants with gold beads on them. Then we zipped over to the big Triana market half a block away so Pili could get ingredients to make a soup for Soleá when she came home from school. The market is huge, with open stalls selling meats, chicken, fish, vegetables, eggs, bread and other food. Pili says that it is very fresh, much fresher than the MAS. That big Triana market seems to me much more real “Spanish” in its layout and attitude and funkiness than the MAS, which is more of a regular supermarket. Although in the MAS, when you put your fruit in a bag, you weigh it and press the code and a sticker comes out with the price. Then you stick the sticker onto your sealed bag. I have never seen this in California or any other US state. But the big open Triana market just seems much more Spanish to me and I wish I had more time to explore it. -Maybe next year. Pili wanted me to go with her to pick up Soleá because she was running late and it was still pouring rain outside. But I had to get back to our apartment for the house cleaner, so Pili dropped me off first and then went to pick up Soleá from preschool. Freddie was feeling sick again so he had stayed home and slept. He also cleaned the counters in the kitchen even though we were expecting the house cleaner. He had defrosted and cleaned the freezer the day before.

By two forty-five the house cleaner had not arrived so I called her. She said, “But you told me you were resting and didn’t need the cleaning.” She said she would call Blanca, our landlady, and do it tomorrow. I then called Blanca and found out that Blanca had given her the wrong apartment number. Apparently the Italian opera singer who was to perform in the opera that evening was the inhabitant of the apartment the cleaner had been directed to. So our house was dirtier than I wanted to leave it when we left but it was Blanca’s fault and it will be cleaned. Blanca didn’t seem to care and we got back the part of our deposit that wasn’t used to pay the gas and electricity and the extra week’s rent. Blanca commented that we had never made it to Los Gallos this year. Our sickness had destroyed those plans. Did I mention that Pili had almost grown up at Los Gallos? Her father, Andres Dominguez, had played guitar there for many years during Pili’s childhood. Just like Paquito does now, Andres would go to Madrid or other places to work. Pili would be left alone with her mother, just like Soleá is left with her now. How history loves to repeat itself.

Freddie and I were starving by the afternoon and that is when we finally braved the rain and went to El Cordobes to eat. After we returned from our lunch, I called Pili, who had wanted to leave as early as possible to help me return the phone so she could avoid some of the horrible traffic that is worse in the rain. I unplugged the phone and put it in the box I had conveniently saved, and Pili and Soleá and I went to the phone store near Nervion where Pili had discovered that I could return it instead of having to mail it as Telefónica had told me earlier. It felt good to finish up that business. Then we went to the shopping center Los Arcos and to the Zara store there to get Soleá some clothes. Pili loves Zara and we also went to a Zara near Calle Sierpes the day we walked from Triana. By the time we finished choosing boots, skirts, a blouse and a jacket for Soleá, who was strong-minded as usual and very hard to please, it was almost nine o’clock. But now Soleá would have some nice, new clothes that Pili liked, to wear at her fifth birthday, which would happen in two weeks. I was exhausted and distracted by the need to finish preparing for our trip the next morning.

Paco had called us on my móvil phone wondering where Freddie was, because he had forgotten that we no longer had a phone at the house. He had planned on giving Freddie a guitar lesson and thought Freddie wasn’t in. I began to feel nervous about Freddie being there without a phone and still sick. And I still needed to finish packing. So I told Pilar what I was feeling and that I needed to get home soon. We arrived home between nine-thirty and ten and then I took a shower and washed my hair so I could pack the rest of the shampoo with the things we are storing at Paco and Pili’s house. I hadn’t had time for that all day. Then we sealed up the big cardboard box with the white electric fan we bought when the weather was still hot, the blue rubber mop bucket I soak my foot in, the clothespins, dish soap, shampoo, and the round aqua rubber dishwashing pan. It has other odds and ends in it too. Pili had been afraid our things would get damp where they would be stored, so Freddie and I had unpacked everything the night before and put a lot of it in plastic garbage bags and then repacked it. We had filled the little red shopping cart and the little red carry-on that broke on our way to Spain. And we had the big cardboard box, which was loosely packed, -and two guitars. Freddie has a student guitar from Barba, which he has kept in Spain for several years so we don’t have to travel to Spain with a guitar. Now he also has the Ortega guitar, which he bought from the friend of Luisito’s. (Freddie could only carry one guitar home with him at a time due to the airlines’ carry-on policy.) So he chose his favorite guitar of course, the one he just bought from Andres Dominguez. When Paco and Pilar were ready to leave, we took all this stuff we are storing at their house and we all loaded it into Paco’s car. Pili was crying earlier, when we were in the bedroom organizing things. She is sad that we are leaving!

When they left I had to go to the Internet place to pick up some writing, the roughest draft of the Spain Chronicles X. I had already e-mailed it to someone there to have it printed but I had to wait until after six PM to pick it up. (They had very recently offered that extra service to me so I wouldn’t have to transfer it to a CD saved in RTF format every time I needed it printed. I only got to use it twice, but it saved me a lot of steps and mis-steps.) I can edit the typos that always occur much more easily if I print out a hard copy to read first. Freddie decided to accompany me and it was nice to take a last walk, a paseo, in Sevilla. The rain had changed to a drizzle so it was pleasant and nostalgic. We called Paco Lira from our móvil to say goodbye. Then we called Miguel Funi who also has this cold/flu that is going around. It felt good to tie up these loose ends and to say our goodbyes.

When we returned home to our apartment, I briefly edited the Chronicles and e-mailed them off. Luckily the phone jack was still working so I could send the e-mail. I had really wanted to send off that last chapter before we left in the morning. Then Freddie and I started to finish our packing. Before we went to sleep, I wanted to have three of the four suitcases already tied with their two brightly colored bands each, locks on each, and nametags on each. Sometimes these items get lost or broken in our travels, so each must be checked before every air trip. I knew the weight of the suitcases would be OK. And now they were filled with CDs we were bringing back to sell. I only got three hours of sleep. Freddie got even less because he stayed up and washed all the dishes and practiced his guitar before he had to loosen the strings for flying! We got up at four in the morning, packed the last few things, and met the taxi driver outside at five thirty sharp. He helped us load our suitcases and Freddie’s new guitar into the taxi and we headed for the airport. The rain had stopped and the early morning was quiet with hardly any traffic. Goodbye Sevilla. That was the taxi driver who had taken us to the post office the week before with Luisito. He loves Flamenco. We had arranged then to have him pick us up for the airport, and everything, luckily, worked like good clockwork. The airport was just opening when we arrived at six AM. Our flights to Madrid and Chicago were smooth and easy.

Friday, December 12, 2003

Now we are home. We ended up spending seven hours in Chicago because our plane left three hours late. We arrived home in Soquel at midnight, after traveling and being up for more than twenty-four hours (Think Spain time five-thirty AM leaving our apartment to nine AM Spain time the next morning arriving at our home in Soquel)! Max (our good friend, renter, neighbor, and house caretaker) picked us up at the San Francisco airport. We had a chance to visit and catch up on things on the way back to Soquel, about an hour and a half drive. But in the Chicago and San Francisco airports I kept forgetting that I had changed countries and I started to speak Spanish to people. It felt weird to hear everyone speaking English!

Today we had our first (since our return) yoga class with Kate Single. We had had a few classes with her before we left and we really like her a lot, so we were looking forward to this, in spite of our exhaustion. It seemed to help both Freddie’s and my jet lag a lot. Afterwards we felt more centered and more relaxed. Everyone, including Kate, is commenting on my weight loss. I weighed myself this morning and I now weigh less than one hundred pounds! I have lost about thirteen pounds but I didn’t think it was that noticeable. I weighed forty-five point six kilos when we left Spain. Then I ate the airplane food so I think I must have gained a little weight! But I am still much thinner than I was. And Freddie says that I don’t look too thin! Ever since we have been back, I have been wearing the long sleeved, olive green Lycra and Viscosa sweater I bought last Tuesday in Spain for ten Euros with Pili. I love it. Here in California after we arrived it was sunny and colder than it was in Spain. But we are expecting rain here any minute; another big storm is coming. It turned out to be sunny in Sevilla the day we left too, we heard from Pili.

Thursday, our first day back, we spent unpacking and trying to remember how to work the phones. That evening, Freddie’s old friend from the Haight Asbury in the sixties, Van and his wife Susan visited us. That was last night. They were our first visitors since our return. We “played show and tell” and we gave them some things we had bought for them in Spain. It was fun. Susan will hem my new corduroy Lycra pants with the gold beads on them. That made me think of Pili and how she had hemmed by Lycra jeans with the gold embroidery on them. Susan loved those pants too. I had forgotten how pretty they were. I think I have lost weight since I last wore them! How strange.

Later that night Freddie and I tried to play Paco’s DVD on our DVD player and we couldn’t get it to play. It may only be playable on a computer! I hope not. We played the video/CD of Concha dancing with the Familia Fernandez that is on the end of Curro Fernandez’ CD and although it was great to see it on the big screen of a television, it only played in black and white! On the computer it is in color. I hope it is only our DVD player that does that. But the CD sounded fabulous on our speakers in the living room. It is even better than we thought and we still highly recommend it.

When we first arrived home, my printer wouldn’t work and I couldn’t connect to the internet to check or to send e-mail. The next afternoon, after unsuccessfully trying to fix it myself, I called a local computer store and arranged to have an expensive technician come to the house on Friday. When I went to bed that night my mind was still humming with ideas on how to fix it myself. Finally I got up and at least plugged the telephone line into the computer and got my e-mail by old-fashioned modem. This morning I called my broadband IDSL service and they got me up on line without my Airport connection. And this afternoon, after our yoga class, the technician finally came. He was frightfully expensive but luckily very good and he fixed my problems and I am back on line and the printer is again working. I can print my writing, print checks, print notes, etc. And I can again get my e-mail easily! It was nice to work with an expert who really does know a lot more than I do. By the time he arrived I was satisfied that I really did need him and that it wasn’t something I could do or wanted to try to do myself. I had tried my best.

Now I can continue unpacking, doing laundry, sorting and throwing away mail, and all the other garbage of returning home. I can also try to rest! But our house is beautiful and we have built a fire in the stove and Freddie is practicing his guitar. We called Pacquito and Pilar yesterday to let them know we made it home and we also e-mailed Francesca-Diana, Toshi and Delia, as requested. We have made some wonderful friends in Spain. It is now raining outside here. We have come from rain to rain.

Sunday, December 14, 2003
PS. Re Paco Fernández’ DVD - Good News

We went to Madeline’s house tonight and Paco Fernández’s DVD played perfectly on her DVD player! It is wonderful on a television size screen. Interestingly enough, though, the video-CD of Concha dancing on the end of Curro Fernández’s audio CD did not play on Madeline’s DVD player. This is the opposite of what happened with our DVD player. We could get the video-CD but not the DVD. Our DVD player is supposed to be multi format and it should have played it. We now think something may be wrong with our machine. Several people wrote to me and questioned the DVD format (a good question and one which shouldn’t even have been an issue on our machine). Paco had told me in Spain that these videos were made in NTSC format specifically for Japanese and US audiences. So I am not sure exactly why the DVD plays on some players and not others. And I am not sure why the video-CD did not play on Madeline’s DVD player (Perhaps because it is a CD and not a DVD). Everything, as I said before, played well on my computer. So if any of you order the DVD and cannot play it on your equipment we will refund your money on receipt of the returned DVD. But hopefully, it is just our DVD player that is not working properly. If it works, we are sure that you will enjoy it. What an incredible family, La Familia Fernández.


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