July 15, 1999, Thursday

I feel discouraged and exhausted. The heat is so debilitating and my technique isn’t good enough. This polishing is much harder than learning steps. If I worked hard before I could learn the steps in a day, but learning to do the steps well seems almost impossible. I am at the end of the second escobilla and it just seems to be getting harder. I know I am better than I was when I started, but I feel impatient with myself. Am I at the end of my rope? Freddie feels this way a lot lately, full of material that he can’t quite yet master. And now I am feeling this way. I have a headache and I didn’t sleep well last night. I have not been getting enough sleep because I can’t seem to get to bed early enough and I have to get up early to practice before my class in the morning at twelve. I would practice now at seven PM, but it is still too hot and I plan to wait until eight. That means that we don’t have time to eat before Freddie’s lesson at nine thirty. Tonight Luis will come and sing for Freddie’s lesson so that Freddie can learn how to accompany him. When I didn’t practice at night I had more time, but now I have to practice twice a day or I can’t even half master this material. And even twice a day feels like too little. I want to leave and go to the sea shore but I want to finish this Siguiriyas more and I want my buleras, so I will stay. I have two more weeks until Concha goes to Chipiona. No one has called the Pea there to see if we can use it and if we can’t, we will have to pick up Concha and take her to Luis’ house and then back which will add an extra hour or hour and a half onto the day. Already I don’t have time for anything. How am I going to do it in August? And Concha wants me to pick up a second hand mirror, which makes sense. But when am I going to do this? Concha doesn’t know that we will need wood to dance on too, at Luis’ house. His floors are tile. And everything closes during the hottest part of the day and when they open up again I have to practice, so when am I going to get a mirror and find out about wood to dance on? Tuesday instead of practicing in the morning I went to Menkes to get the second fitting for my new dance shoes. They will be ready a week from Friday. Then Tuesday evening, instead of practicing, I had an appointment (which Concha made for me) to meet one of the costume makers, to look at her ideas for a wedding dress. I am still unsure of what I want or whom I want to make it. Salao, the major costume maker here, is out of town. Concha has tried to call a number of times and only gets an answering machine. Will I even get a wedding dress here? Will we find rings here? We are too busy learning and practicing to do anything else. Freddie says that the important thing is that we are getting married, not what we wear. He is right, but still I want to wear something special and beautiful for this wedding celebration. Freddie hasn’t found a traje (wedding suit) either. He hasn’t looked much either. It’s been too hot and besides we’re almost always practicing. That is really what we are here for, but it is grueling. Johnny and Celeste Chesko, our good friends, caretakers and neighbors, sent us a turquoise and purple plastic water bottle with a battery operated fan on it which we received also on Tuesday. Freddie has already used up the batteries today but it did help cool him. Freddie’s blood pressure is up in this heat. As he pointed out, many people here have high blood pressure, including Luis, Carlos, and Juan Camas. But that doesn’t mean that Freddie’s should stay high. I don’t want anything to happen to him. It is stressful to do this learning in this intense manner, but I know that we’ll be glad when we return. Next time we’ll remember not to come in the middle of summer. Maybe we’ll come again some September for two months. I need to keep remembering that we are both assimilating a lot of material and that in itself is stressful. I might be able to force myself to do our dishes now before I practice. Maybe I’ll make more of our green drink and some power meal. I don’t know if I’m hungry but the thought of food makes me sick. I can’t decide what I want to eat and I’ve missed the hours for the “mercado” which carries the zero percent yogurt. I am also struggling with my weight here. It was finally down before we went to Morocco but I gained some of it back in Tangiers because the food was so good. And I thought I was staying away from fattening foods. This is one of the things I don’t like about aging, about being in my middle fifties I gain weight so easily now. I guess I didn’t realize how lucky I was the rest of my life. I used to be able to eat anything and not gain weight. I try to eat non fat here but it is difficult. Many of the Spanish women in their forties and older are very fat. I look thin next to them, but in America I would look a little heavy, mainly my stomach and thighs. I would think that with all this dancing that I would be thinner. And maybe the dancing is saving me from gaining more weight. I guess I do have to remember that, as my mother would have said, I am no “spring chicken”. I have to remember that I am almost fifty five and I am pushing my body as if I were twenty five. I am glad that I did not wait until sixty! (like Freddie, Freddie says.) But he’s not dancing, only trying to have fingers as agile as a twenty year old. But we both have the wisdom of age and the knowledge of what we want to accomplish and what is important in our lives.

I just practiced and I felt so spastic. I practiced my contras without moving my other foot and it felt right but I had no way of telling whether it was or not and that felt frustrating too. But I know that it is good that I practiced and I probably didn’t make myself worse. This stuff is just hard and I am being very critical of myself. I wish I could believe in myself more. If I could learn that here in Spain I would have accomplished a lot. I am still amazed when people like my dancing, when they like what I am doing here. Why is it so hard to accept being good? Even writing “good” is hard. Am I good or am I just fooling myself? And what is good? I will never be as good as I want to be. Good is relative, but to what? People in this culture, at least the Spanish gypsy culture, do believe in themselves and will tell you how good they are or how wonderful their choreography is, their singing, their guitar playing. All I see in my dance is what I have not yet accomplished, what I don’t do well. I am still surprised when people like it. I haven’t looked at my first video tape yet, but I should, to see how far I’ve come. But I don’t want to take the time right now to look back. I know that I have learned a lot, both in choreography and in styling. Sometimes I forget that I have only had less than two months of classes here because Concha was away in May and I only had six classes before she left. And it is my styling that I want so much to get right and that is what is so very difficult. Right now Freddie is having a lesson with Carlos and Luis is here singing so Freddie can learn how to accompany him correctly. How fortunate we are. I was about to write “lucky” but people here object to that word when we use it, I think perhaps because luck is associated with gambling. Fortunate is what I mean, fortunate to have the opportunity to work and study with such great artists. I know that we have to put in the work and dedication and so that part is not luck but obsession. And I feel fortunate to have Luis singing right here in our room. I also look forward to the time when I can work out more with Freddie again. Now he has so much to practice on his own that I practice on my own too. That is good for the body styling. I need to work on a lot of this part by myself, over and over again. But I need to polish to the music as well and I miss working out with him more. But this too shall pass and Freddie’s guitar playing is already better and much more clean than before.

Sometimes it feels as if we have almost no time left here although we have two more months. It’s like aging. Usually until sometime in the forties people look at their lives in terms of how much they have lived, how long they have lived. Around the forties things change and people start to look at time left to live. It is like this here in Spain for us too. We have been here just over a two and a half months, a little more than half way through our stay, and already we are looking at time left to be here. I am hoping I get to learn enough buleras in my time left and I am feeling the pressure of our limited stay. I know that also at some point I will want to see a few other cities as we have planned to do in August. That will take time away from learning and practicing. I will also want to do a little shopping, at least for gifts. That too will take time. We had also wanted to return to Morocco in August but I don’t think we will make it this time. We’re just too busy, but Freddie doesn’t think so. He wants to eat more lamb brains (which he ate fried in tomato sauce in Morocco). Juan Camas says they are very good for you, very nourishing.

July 16, 1999

Today in class I was dripping sweat, even more than usual. I did well and surprised myself and Freddie and Concha by getting that contra step I couldn’t get yesterday. After class I commented to Concha about how weak my body felt and she said, “You’re not twenty! I feel the same way!” So I guess I expect my body to be immortal and I know that it isn’t. I think I am feeling weaker because I am pushing my body more and more, as I learn how the steps should be done. And, I am not twenty. But I can do it. Concha is figuring out more details of our performance in September. She wants Luis to practice singing with us next week and we will start working away from the mirror and in the direction of the audience. Can I do it? Will I be good enough? The same old thoughts keep coming. I will just be as good as I can be, as I am at the moment. And it will certainly be better than I was in May, when I started here.

Yesterday as we were walking outside two people told us that they had seen us on TV. Then that evening a waiter at Modesto’s told us he had seen us on TV too. The day before a Cuban group, Los Jubilados, was playing at the Carboneria in a special performance during the day, just toward the end of my lesson. They were being televised here at the Carboneria in conjunction with a show that several Cuban groups are doing with Flamenco groups, a Cuban and Flamenco fusion, here in Sevilla in the next few days. Hot and sweaty at the end of my class, I sat down with Freddie to listen to their wonderful music. Concha had earlier shooed away the photographers and television cameras from our lesson. I had been working so hard in class that I hadn’t been paying attention to what was going on in the patio. But as we later sat watching the music, one wonderful singer, a delightful old man, kept singing to me and smiling. I found out later that he had been watching my class and he had loved my dancing. Several of the Cubans came up to me later to comment on my dancing. What a nice surprise. Concha got inspired during the music and got up and danced there in the patio. She reminds me of me, of the way I used to be, always inspired to dance. The next day there was a wonderful photo of her dancing to the Cubans, in the ABC newspaper. Apparently, that same day, the television had also videoed Freddie and me watching the show because people said they saw us on the twelve noon TV. So, we made the Spanish TV, even if it was just as an audience at a private show.


July 18, 1999, Sunday

Today we went to Carlos’ house to celebrate the birthdays of his two youngest daughters. Sarai turned eight and Fti (Ftima) turned two. (We have a photo on our web page of Ftima dancing buleras in her diapers at Concha’s party.) Carlos and his wife Pili live in a Gitano (gypsy) barrio (neighborhood) that Paco says has three thousand gypsies. The apartment buildings look like project housing but Carlos has bought his apartment and has remodeled a lot of the inside of it, adding walls and mirrored doors. In one room he now has a recording studio.

Outside there is a large walkway that faces a little cafe and a shabby mall of small stores, closed on Sunday. Families as well as the little cafe place chairs and tables outside and the children run around and play on the pavement. Occasionally motor scooters pass through so it is not as safe as it seems. But, there is a nice sense of community. The guests at party were mainly relatives except for Freddie and me, Paco, Luis, Concha and Rafael and their two youngest children, Curro and Carmen. During the party many people moved outside to sit and talk. One man, a brother-in-law, borrowed Carlos’ guitar and started to play and then he handed it to a boy who was learning and who also played some. Sarai and her cousin danced. Her cousin, a little girl about Sarai’s age, also sang and Pili got me to dance a little bit of buleras. Later the little cousin asked me if I would dance again while she sang, which I did. I wish I had already learned a buleras from Concha because I felt awkward. But Freddie said I looked OK and Carlos’ mother, the classic picture of an older Gitana woman (dressed in black, hair pulled back in a bun, dark skin and an eagle beaked nose), told me, as I was leaving, that I danced very well. That was nice. But what struck me at that party was the way the adults encourage the children so positively to dance, sing, and play guitar. A little deaf boy danced too and he was so happy. The adults actively prod the children to sing more, to dance more and the interaction is beautiful. We didn’t bring the camera so there will be no pictures of this one.

Later that evening, at the Carboneria, I asked Concha when and how she had started to dance. She learned her dance in the academy, from Pepe Rios, Agustine Rios’ brother who passed away a number of years ago. They are nephews of Diego del Gastor of Moron and cousins of Juan del Gastor. Concha started to study dance at eleven or twelve when she had gone to the academy with her sister who was studying there. Pepe told her how to place a hand in a certain position and when she did he said to her mother that she should study dance and so she did.

After the party Concha brought her two children, Carmen who is eight and likes to sing and dance, and Curro, a handsome boy of twelve, back to the Carboneria. Rafael had already left the party earlier because he had to be at work here. Concha and I and the kids sat at a table and talked and then Concha started to teach me some more words of Siguiriyas letras and so we started to sing them. That was fun. Tomorrow I will write them down. I have learned one letra already but I want more. She will teach me three more and a salida.

Concha also told me that her plans to go to Chipiona have changed because the place they were going to stay in suddenly became unavailable due to some family politics (not hers). So they are going to Huelva to the beach instead. I said that I still might want to come for some lessons if possible and so Concha is going to ask a friend about a cheap apartment for us there. It would be fun to live by the beach for a little while. Huelva is about a hundred kilometers from Sevilla, which means about an hour and a half by car. Luis will try to get insurance for Paco’s car tomorrow (another on-going saga) and then we will be able to borrow it. The car has just been sitting here since we have been here because it needed to have the ownership transferred before it could get insurance. Jose Luis was supposed to do it and he just came back into town and said that the transference had already happened, which Luis hadn’t known. So Luis and Freddie will try to get insurance tomorrow. Luis knows of a cheap place in Triana. Nothing seems to happen quickly here in Spain.

Luis said today that the worst of the summer heat here in Sevilla has passed. Today there was a nice breeze although it was still hot. But Sevillanos still talk of the great heat. When you greet someone, they say, “Que hay?” (pronounced “k” “i”) which means “what’s happening?” or “how’s it going?” The answer these days is always, “Que calor!”, which is “what heat!” Even today, which was much cooler, people still said, “Que calor, que calor!”, the Sevillano lament in summertime. No one seems to ever have gotten used to it. But for us there is hope, if the heat is decreasing. That means that we have survived. We are still alive! I have very recently lost a lot of the weight I gained in Cuba and when first here in Spain. It seemed to finally drop off suddenly, a day or two ago, (after over a month of watching my diet) and people are just starting to comment on it. Although I have a little more to go, I am happy that it is finally happening. I had gained back some of the weight in Tangiers, but that is off now after a week of paying attention. I remember how horrified I was when we finally got a mirror for our room in late May and I was able to see my thighs. I had thought they would be in good shape because of all our walking and also climbing the stairs, but they were awful, wide and fully of fatty cellulite. And it has taken a long time to lose the weight, longer than I ever remember in my life. But now they look good again, trim and strong with very little cellulite left. And my stomach is not so fat either. That is a good feeling.

This morning I was feeling awful, I am not sure why, and I pushed myself to practice anyway. Freddie had gone out with Luis but I hadn’t felt up to joining them. After my practice, Juan Camas came up to me and asked if I had eaten. I had eaten a little gazpacho and some orange juice at the Alta Mira in the morning, I told him. He invited me to eat with he and Ana and asked me what was wrong. He said my face had a “darkness” (“obscura”) to it, he could see it. He could see into my face, in the forehead between the eyes and see the darkness. I told him he was perceptive and that I didn’t know why I felt sad and grumpy. He told me that he didn’t want me to be sad and to tell him why. Again I said that I didn’t know. Then I went upstairs and took a shower and washed my hair. A short time later Ana called me for the meal. Juan del Gastor and his young friend Luis were there on this quiet Sunday. Paco was out and Freddie and Luis were out and no one was working there. Juan del Gastor commented on this tranquillity, on the patio, outside, under the green trees that Paco has planted, shaded and cooled in the summer heat of the day. Juan del Gastor and Luis declined the offer of food but sat there with us on the bright blue chairs as we ate our meal of rice with garbanzas, garlic, onions, tomatoes, and pimientos. Juan Camas said that he puts “magia” (magic) into his food when he cooks. His cooking is like painting a picture with food. He said that the food would be very nourishing and would make me feel better. Then he sang for half a minute, as if to illustrate his point, or to put the magic in the food, and Ana brought the food to the white metal table and we ate. And lo and behold, I did feel better. I think the magic worked. After the meal I went upstairs and journeyed and then Freddie came back and after a while we got dressed for Carlos’ party and went downstairs to meet Luis and Paco. I stopped thinking about how I felt until tonight, writing this, I realize that now I feel good again. Whatever it was has passed. The darkness, the dark cloud is gone. And I am thankful. Freddie is practicing softly in the warm night to a tape of Luis singing. It is three thirty in the morning and I have to stop writing and go to bed. I will be getting up a nine thirty, as usual on the week days, to practice before my twelve o’clock class with Concha. And so the week begins again. Back to practicing twice a day and having a class every day. I hope my body will hold out. My knees are still a little sore. But we will go out on one excursion, to the Feria of Triana, which happens Tuesday. Freddie will take fewer classes with Carlos this week so he will have more time to practice his lessons and to go out a little, like to the Feria of Triana. Good night.