The brutality of time

Today I left Córdoba, abruptly abandoning the most blissful four months I will ever live. The last few days have been a tropical storm of unabated joy and anxious anticipation of the day we could never imagine coming.

Last Thursday I went to the opening night of Córdoba's renowned week-long festival, Feria.


The sudden midnight illumination of the fairground's Mezquita-inspired facade was magical;


but a rare cold, driving rain stole the night. I can count the number of rainy days I've seen in Andalucía on one hand, but the timing of the weather that night was entirely appropriate for the circumstances. (Maybe there's a reason the Spanish word 'tiempo' means both "time" and "weather.") The low-key night ended somberly, as my friend Matt was to leave Córdoba early the next morning.

Two days later I went on an unforgetable hike through the hills of Córdoba with my friends Mary, Mareva, Amanda and my new Spanish friend Ricardo.


The pinnacle of the day was when Richy and I reached the summit of a prohibitively steep hill which we probably shouldn't have tried to scale.


A few minutes later, we came across an old, 1930's country house that must have been bombed out during the Spanish Civil War.


These days, Nature lives there.


This fantastical experience, too, would soon become that fantastical experience.



After countless hours of hiking the group's patience began to wear thin. We walked back to Richy's house and took a dip in his pool to cleanse our bodies of the dusty, sweaty itch that one inevitably feels after a day of walking through the maleza -- undergrowth -- of the countryside.

(This word maleza is incredibly telling in light of the passage I recently read in Lorca's Bodas de Sangre, in which a farmer talks about his lifelong "battle against the weeds, the thistles, and the rocks that come from who knows where." The interesting thing is that the word belleza -- "beauty" -- comes from bella -- "beautiful." If mal means "bad", shouldn't maleza translate to something like "badness", instead of "undergrowth"?)

It was the second time I had been to Richy's house, in Córdoba's El Brillante ("The Brilliant") neighborhood overlooking the city.


The swim that day was deeply therapeutic, like writing this post has been for me tonight. There is much more to come...