Cities are usually referred to using a feminine pronoun, and I think that's appropriate. Toledo is no exception.
"It's interesting that the most beautiful view of the city, in my opinion, is from the outside looking in."
"There's gotta be a metaphor in there somewhere."
I run through her almost everyday. The side streets are charming and the way the road follows the land and doesn't battle it and the buildings...oh those buildings. But I was raised in an ex-orchard and there was neither pared nor muro holding me in so it's only after I graze that city wall with the tips of my fingernails and trade the cobblestone for the sand and smell that enigmatic sweet-smelling tree and climb upward and upward and soar over that river Tajo and hit those prehistoric rocks and look back upon the way the rising sun hits her cheeks that my breath truly gets drawn out from inside of me.
It's a pity she doesn't know. Sometimes--usually--people don't even know. Women don't even know. And that's a problem.
This past weekend, I watched the film Beasts of the Southern Wild as a sort of happy accident I stumbled upon with my travel companion. It was one of the only films in English being shown at a theatre in Den Haag, the capital of the Netherlands, and our souls were craving the first movie in months we could watch having the advantage of our native tongue.
But I got much, much more out of this movie than a simple English fix.
The main character is Hushpuppy--a little girl living in a forgotten community cut off from the rest of Southern United States by a protective levee. Hushpuppy is all that a woman should be, packaged in a calloused bundle of resistance to a negligent father with questionable motives and the threat of the destruction of her home with a single forceful storm. Her strength is not in the bullets her father aims at the storm clouds. It is not in her stiff jaw. It is not in those tiny biceps her father makes her flex to prove herself. It is not in her loud battle cries of frustrated dominion.
It is in every breath she holds so she can listen attentively to the heartbeat of each creature sitting next to her. It is in the way she looks into the eyes what she is most afraid of and stands her ground but softens her gaze. And listens to his heart beat. And includes him as part of herself. And watches as he bows down and walks away.
It is in gentleness and love and courage that feminity finds her strength. This is the art, the poetry, the beauty of being a woman. And this beauty should not just be from the outside looking in.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Friday, October 19, 2012
la alma de las gitanas
I think I'm a gypsy.
No, really.
Never in my life has a description of a cultural group stirred my insides strangely with it's familiarity so that I just wanted to scream, "Yes--they get it. That's exactly it. That's exactly me."
Robbers, mystics, pests, sinners--words commonly associated with gypsies thanks to the Hunchback of Notre Dame or really any typical street scene in Europe. Here's what you may not realize about gypsies:
1. A gypsy is by definition someone who is not home. There is no Gypsyland. They're Romanian by origin, but when they live in Romania, they're called Romanians. And when a Romanian moves to a different country and dresses in a specific way and lives in community with other Romanians who also live and dress and speak and sing in that manner, he or she is called a gypsy. An anak na layas, if you will.
2. Loyalty is incredibly important in a gypsy community. Foreigners in a strange land must band together against oppression, and infidelity, in any shape or form, is unacceptable and not tolerated. Cervantes in his novella La Gitanilla writes of gypsy loyalty, "Nosotros guardamos inviolablemente la ley de la amistad..." Roughly, "We keep the inviolable law of friendship." If that's not demonstrating an appreciation for the treasure that is relationship, I don't know what is.
3. The greatest value of a gypsy moral system is virginity. For women and men alike.
4. They dance flamenco better than any native Spaniard. Why? Because the flamenco is a dance inspired by pain. I would say that being separated from your homeland for security reasons and having no place to really call your home is reason enough to know pain. And the weight of poverty and oppression wouldn't help, either.
5. Also, the way they sing is remarkable. Filled with expression, vocal skill, and passion. Always accompanied by a furrowed brow, pleading eyes, and an outstretched hand--desperately reaching for something to hold on to.
6. The gypsy will not compromise tradition for anything. They have the ability to resist and preserve through changing times, none of which have been easy. (More poorly-translated Cervantes: "For us, harsh weather is a breeze, snow, our refreshment, the rain, our baths, thunder, our music...") Their culture has barely changed since the middle ages. Gypsies had no regard for honra during the Spanish Middle Ages: that reputation seeking non-value that dictated the lives of hidalgos and lower nobles. They knew where they stood in society, and it did not matter. It is for this reason, perhaps, that they will always be known as beggars, because if one cannot assimilate into the social aspect of a community (which they consistently refuse to do) one simply cannot assimilate into it's economy. Their ability to support themselves is then reduced to clandestine affairs and contraband business. The gypsy would rather starve, depending on either the good nature or carelessness of others. He would rather be at the bottom of a Spanish social ladder in a posture of apparent humility than let go of some part of himself, a culture of which he is almost foolishly proud.
The thing is, I think I have a lot of gypsy in me. I like taking a train to Grindelwald, Switzerland and wandering uphill for an entire day, panting and seeing spots and not quite sure where I'm going, and waking up to things like this:
and this...
and especially this...
No, really.
Never in my life has a description of a cultural group stirred my insides strangely with it's familiarity so that I just wanted to scream, "Yes--they get it. That's exactly it. That's exactly me."
 |
| Florencia: a gypsy woman on the steps of the Cathedral of Salamanca |
Robbers, mystics, pests, sinners--words commonly associated with gypsies thanks to the Hunchback of Notre Dame or really any typical street scene in Europe. Here's what you may not realize about gypsies:
1. A gypsy is by definition someone who is not home. There is no Gypsyland. They're Romanian by origin, but when they live in Romania, they're called Romanians. And when a Romanian moves to a different country and dresses in a specific way and lives in community with other Romanians who also live and dress and speak and sing in that manner, he or she is called a gypsy. An anak na layas, if you will.
2. Loyalty is incredibly important in a gypsy community. Foreigners in a strange land must band together against oppression, and infidelity, in any shape or form, is unacceptable and not tolerated. Cervantes in his novella La Gitanilla writes of gypsy loyalty, "Nosotros guardamos inviolablemente la ley de la amistad..." Roughly, "We keep the inviolable law of friendship." If that's not demonstrating an appreciation for the treasure that is relationship, I don't know what is.
3. The greatest value of a gypsy moral system is virginity. For women and men alike.
4. They dance flamenco better than any native Spaniard. Why? Because the flamenco is a dance inspired by pain. I would say that being separated from your homeland for security reasons and having no place to really call your home is reason enough to know pain. And the weight of poverty and oppression wouldn't help, either.
5. Also, the way they sing is remarkable. Filled with expression, vocal skill, and passion. Always accompanied by a furrowed brow, pleading eyes, and an outstretched hand--desperately reaching for something to hold on to.
6. The gypsy will not compromise tradition for anything. They have the ability to resist and preserve through changing times, none of which have been easy. (More poorly-translated Cervantes: "For us, harsh weather is a breeze, snow, our refreshment, the rain, our baths, thunder, our music...") Their culture has barely changed since the middle ages. Gypsies had no regard for honra during the Spanish Middle Ages: that reputation seeking non-value that dictated the lives of hidalgos and lower nobles. They knew where they stood in society, and it did not matter. It is for this reason, perhaps, that they will always be known as beggars, because if one cannot assimilate into the social aspect of a community (which they consistently refuse to do) one simply cannot assimilate into it's economy. Their ability to support themselves is then reduced to clandestine affairs and contraband business. The gypsy would rather starve, depending on either the good nature or carelessness of others. He would rather be at the bottom of a Spanish social ladder in a posture of apparent humility than let go of some part of himself, a culture of which he is almost foolishly proud.
The thing is, I think I have a lot of gypsy in me. I like taking a train to Grindelwald, Switzerland and wandering uphill for an entire day, panting and seeing spots and not quite sure where I'm going, and waking up to things like this:
which I may have done last weekend; bonjour, Switzerland
I have the hardest time staying in one place for a long period of time. I've been compared to a shark, moving out of necessity to breathe and live, and that metaphor has repeatedly resounded as true throughout these past few months. But here's something else I may share with the gypsies: pride. Do I wander more to learn about the strange, or do I want the strange to learn more about me? I've been told, by different people at different times, that I am the same Denise in every situation. That I come off as confident and sure of myself. That it takes me a long time to let others affect me. And, although they may or may not have been meant as compliments, I've taken these comments to be times in which others have helped me to realize a fundamental flaw in myself. How principled can I be before I'm just close-minded? How confident can I be before I'm just stubborn? It is because pride that the gypsy meets the economic downfall. It is because of pride that I constantly fall down.
I have got to allow things like this:
 |
| "These mountains are..." "Hand-carved" "Exactly." |
 |
| "contemplaría más atadeceres" |
 |
| I'm not talking about the mountains or even the lake |
...not just stun me, impress me, or make me smile, but change me. Because I too am hand-carved, and I'm being whittled away at every day.
Consider this my furrowed brow, pleading eyes, and outstretched hand.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
A Greater Poverty
I've always loved family dinners. It's hard to not, except maybe when you're an angsty high school kid for whom family dinners may only mean an impediment to getting ready for self-concious social gatherings. That may have been me, once upon a time. But these days--today--a family dinner with my borrowed family discussing governent spending and my little brother's tears and hair color and even Southern Boy, once or twice--was exactly what I needed to help me digest the past the two weeks.
So maybe the reason last weekend was so hard was because it was coming off of one that was so easy. A trip to Avila and Salamanca, complete with four-star accomodations, statues venerated by holy people, the perfect (albeit, out of place) Irish pub with the perfect, embracing atmosphere to lend to that kind of conversation where you look into the person's eyes sitting across from you and you just know that they really hear you. Tapas bar hopping and learning about the lives of the bartenders. Surprise Lauds, complete with chanting Spaniard priests and incense, before a Mass during which you look around and discover that the majority of the congregation is made up of the reverent faces of your classmates, smiling with realization once the profound and oh-so-applicable message of the priest begins to resound in their amature-Spanish processing centers.
It really was difficult for anything to live up to that weekend. Oktoberfest could have been fun. Would have been fun. Was fun, in a lot of different ways. But it would be dishonest of me to say that I didn't leave the weekend with a bad taste in my mouth. A lot happened--too much for me to make known to the general public--but suffice it to say that at certain points, I couldn't handle the lack of respect for human dignity. The way people ride on their blessings as if they deserve them. How people cry over and over again to value life at it beginning and end but forget a lot about the middle. How people love incompletely and don't realize it until it's too late.
"Not everyone in this world is going to be Renee," my mom said to me, as I desperately sobbed to her for 50 cents a minute in the middle of the Brussels airport (crying is a universal language, I've come to learn; people from all over the world know to leave you a ten foot diameter). She was, of course, referring to my best friend, who loves and loves and simply doesn't know how to stop. And she's right--my mom, I mean, and that shouldn't be a sad thing but rather the most joyful--that I am so blessed to know someone who loves to an almost saccharine point, so that, in comparison, everything else comes across as more tragic than it should. In fact, I know more than one person like that. I know a group of people who will literally sprint with you to the latest Sunday Mass Toledo offers you're too flustered at the fact that you might miss the Eucharistic prayer and there's no way a weekend like the one you just had would end in missing Sunday Mass. I know a cab driver who'll let five college kids smelling as if they've camped and gone to a beer festival and slept in tents for three days get away with not paying the full fare. I know a Mom and a Dad and an Hermanito who don't really speak the same language as you but bring exactly the right amount of comfort that you need by simply having a hot dinner ready when you get home.
I have so many blessings. I need to stop acting as if I deserve them.
So maybe the reason last weekend was so hard was because it was coming off of one that was so easy. A trip to Avila and Salamanca, complete with four-star accomodations, statues venerated by holy people, the perfect (albeit, out of place) Irish pub with the perfect, embracing atmosphere to lend to that kind of conversation where you look into the person's eyes sitting across from you and you just know that they really hear you. Tapas bar hopping and learning about the lives of the bartenders. Surprise Lauds, complete with chanting Spaniard priests and incense, before a Mass during which you look around and discover that the majority of the congregation is made up of the reverent faces of your classmates, smiling with realization once the profound and oh-so-applicable message of the priest begins to resound in their amature-Spanish processing centers.
It really was difficult for anything to live up to that weekend. Oktoberfest could have been fun. Would have been fun. Was fun, in a lot of different ways. But it would be dishonest of me to say that I didn't leave the weekend with a bad taste in my mouth. A lot happened--too much for me to make known to the general public--but suffice it to say that at certain points, I couldn't handle the lack of respect for human dignity. The way people ride on their blessings as if they deserve them. How people cry over and over again to value life at it beginning and end but forget a lot about the middle. How people love incompletely and don't realize it until it's too late.
"Not everyone in this world is going to be Renee," my mom said to me, as I desperately sobbed to her for 50 cents a minute in the middle of the Brussels airport (crying is a universal language, I've come to learn; people from all over the world know to leave you a ten foot diameter). She was, of course, referring to my best friend, who loves and loves and simply doesn't know how to stop. And she's right--my mom, I mean, and that shouldn't be a sad thing but rather the most joyful--that I am so blessed to know someone who loves to an almost saccharine point, so that, in comparison, everything else comes across as more tragic than it should. In fact, I know more than one person like that. I know a group of people who will literally sprint with you to the latest Sunday Mass Toledo offers you're too flustered at the fact that you might miss the Eucharistic prayer and there's no way a weekend like the one you just had would end in missing Sunday Mass. I know a cab driver who'll let five college kids smelling as if they've camped and gone to a beer festival and slept in tents for three days get away with not paying the full fare. I know a Mom and a Dad and an Hermanito who don't really speak the same language as you but bring exactly the right amount of comfort that you need by simply having a hot dinner ready when you get home.
I have so many blessings. I need to stop acting as if I deserve them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)