A Postcard from Lorca's Hills
Settling into Granada for awhile
Before I get into anything, I need to tell you first that if you've tried emailing me back directly by hitting "reply" on the email version of these postcards, I haven't been getting them 😫
I've loved every single text, voice message, direct email, and comment that I've gotten on all of these and am always so excited to reply when I hear back about them. So if you've sent any emails to the indirect "Substack" email that automatically populates when replying, please please forward them to my regular email (izziezuniga27@gmail.com) so I can read them and respond 💟
Ok, back to the usual...
There’s this Emerson quote that goes, “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” Maybe you have also heard it when someone is is trying to gently tell you to relax. To me, it’s the best description of my love for travel. Seeing new places and being away from home for a little while is great, but there’s something about the actual state of being in motion that makes everything feel heightened. The excitement of waking up early to go to the airport or train station is one of the only things that still feels like Christmas to me. Even just hitting "confirm" on a rideshare app and giddily awaiting their arrival so I can look out the window as we pass through scenes of regular life can turn any bad day a good one. All that said, putting away my suitcases this week so I could nest a bit at my mom's new house was SO NEEDED.
My mom recently moved out of Granada, proper, and into one of its little outskirt towns, Otura. The first time I saw her new house was right after our road trip in northern Spain about 3 weeks ago and I was only there for roughly 36 hours before I left for London. Over the last ten days, she and I have had time to settle into new versions of our old routines. It's been eleven years since we last lived together but we still default back to what used to be our usual ways of hanging out, they're just "Spain-ified" now.
Our favorite meal together is still breakfast, we've always loved going out for breakfast more than lunch or dinner. But instead of driving to our favorite diner and ordering breakfast burritos and French toast like we did in New Mexico, now we walk to one of the cafeterías nearby and order “un croissant con queso y jamón York (my mom's) y pan integral con tomate y jamón serrano (mine) y dos cafés con leche. We also still have music playing for most of the day. Only instead of playing 90's country radio or one of her 10 million CDs like we did at our old house, we now sit by her pool and scroll through our Spotify accounts to play her favorite Spanish songs while I add them to my "Spanish" playlist. Then we read and translate the lyrics together so I can learn more phrases and sing along with her. It's grounding in the best way to find the same feeling of home again with my mom in a new house.
My mom's birthday was on Saturday, a super special one since we haven't spent either of our birthdays together in at least ten years since she moved to Spain. This year we took a day trip to Málaga, a super pretty beach town about an hour and a half away by train. We didn't have enough time for a full beach day because she had to get back to her zoo of pets, but I was happy just to see the beach again for a minute— and to go on a train.
Whether it’s her birthday or not, going to Málaga always entails going to my mom’s favorite restaurant, VIPS— an American-style restaurant chain only located in Spain… they have that in common, my mom has always been more Spanish than American too. It’s so funny to see how Europeans do American-style food. The menu looks like what a TGIFridays would have but when your food comes out it has easily-identifiable ingredients and way less fried, so much that I’m almost not sure that it can really be called American.
After VIPS we took a bus tour to see the beautiful neighborhoods by the beach, very Some Like it Hot, and then we went to the Centre Pompidou Málaga Museum where there was a Wassily Kandinksy exhibition on. I'd seen a few Kandinskys here and there at various museums' permanent collections, but I’d never seen a full exhibition dedicated to his work and who he was. Of all the painters I love, I think Kandinky is the most relatable, at least to me and the way I think about art. My mom said something similar about Miró when we went to his museum in Barcelona, something to the effect of, "He seems so normal, like he was just some guy." I think she meant more in how he looks, Miró did seem very normal compared to the eccentricities of Picasso or Dalí, like he could be hanging out at a cafe with everyone else and he'd look so regular you'd never know he was a master artist. Kandinsky had a more specific, erudite look, but his life and artistic process felt very relatable to me. It took him a while to know himself well enough to realize that he was an artist, too. It wasn't until he was already a law professor in his 30s that he saw a Monet exhibit, turned his life completely toward art, went to art school, and never looked back.
Kandinsky also had a spiritual perspective on art that feels very familiar to me. He made a point of it to teach art as an inextricable component of the spirit, supposing that if one’s art will naturally be a reflection of one’s spirit, it then becomes just as important to build spiritual strength and quality of thought as it is to learn technique. Very Form Follows Function. I’ve been thinking about this idea a lot as it pertains to “cancel culture”, something that thankfully seems to be dying down. For a while, there were tons of cultural discussions about what to do with beloved art that came from some… unsavory minds, to put it lightly. While it’s an interesting thing to consider, I don’t think it’s ever been the business of a group of academics or politicians to determine what people should or should not consume. If people want to spiritually drink from a poisoned well, that’s up to them. Some people can filter the good elements from the dangerous better than others and still enjoy it as a well-executed piece, like Harry Potter and JK Rowling for example. But for artists, there should be a clear understanding that whatever they produce is coming from the quality of their own spirit and will be subconsciously consumed in such a way. Kandinsky wrote several essays on this topic, discussing why originality is so important as well as the few circumstances where imitation can be used with artistic merit. He also warns against "art for art's sake" and learning to identify the difference between the ego's urge to say something vs. a spiritual expression of having something to say. Even though he’s addressing painting specifically, I think the same can be said of any artform, especially poetry.
With only six days left on my Eurodyssey, next week I'll be sending my final Postcard from my own apartment to round out the whole experience with my last looks of Spain, at least for now. Ideally I'll be back next summer with a Lorca fellowship of some kind to study and translate poetry here. Until then, you'll catch me in New York like:
I’ll leave you with my mom’s and my favorite Lorca poem that we reference as much as we possibly can, especially when we’re stuck in the Spanish heat and dramatically walking home, AKA “Cordoba” in such cases 🎭.
Rider's Song By Federico García Lorca Cordova, far and lonely. Black pony, full moon, And olives in my pocket: Although I know the roads, I'll never reach Cordova. For the plain, for the wind, Black pony, red moon, And death is watching for me Beside Cordova's towers. Alas! the long, long highway, Alas! my valient pony, Alas, that death is waiting Before I reach Cordova. Cordova, far and lonely. [ORIGINAL SPANISH] Canción de Jinete Córdoba, lejana y sola. Jaca negra, luna grande, y aceitunas en mi alforja. Aunque sepa los caminos yo nunca llegaré a Córdoba. Por el llano, por el viento, jaca negra, luna roja. La muerte me está mirando desde las torres de Córdoba. ¡Ay, qué camino tan largo! ¡Ay, mi jaca valerosa! ¡Ay, que la muerte me espera, antes de llegar a Córdoba! Córdoba, lejana y sola.
With olives in my pocket,
Izzie 🫒
Not a JKR reference 😭 you are hereby canceled