Sunday 9 March 2014

A Funny Thing Happened in Sevilla, Day Five

I felt tired of Sevilla. I wanted to be someplace else. First I blamed Sevilla itself, the energy of which, to pick up the narration from yesterday, had by late afternoon escalated to the point of torture by crowd, noise and, most painfully, drunken singing of traditional songs from the bar next door. Occasionally, when the harmonies struck right, the song would lift toward its timeless glory but, to my ears, the singers were too full of not the song but themselves.
Next I blamed myself for thinking I could sit back in my room or would want to in the first place. Now I was ready to blame the real villain: a nagging sore leg--not the surgically tweaked right knee but the whole calf to knee region--that had curtailed my roaming. Saturday night in Sevilla with fiesta season approaching--or is it always like this?--was proving to be a lousy time to stay in my room, resting the leg. In the end I caught a taxi to the cinema--Monument Men, in Spanish--and walked home after midnight.
I wasn't the only one heading home then, and I saw a few cafes stacking their chairs. But just as many more were jammed to the windows, with line-ups to get in, a night that just would not slow down.The café next to my pension was dark, thank goodness--a rubble of butts and napkins near the door.
Today the real villain of this story has become obvious, and it won't surprise any of you writers who happen to read this. Today has been what I would call a normal day in my euro trip: a couple of eat/drink sessions, a walk and some reading, a couple of useful writing sessions . . . and yes, that was the problem with yesterday more than anything else: anything I started to write, even from promising beginnings, proved not just empty but hollow in a hurry. I should no better than to blame my fatigue on anything else, especially this sweet, lively city, which I'm enjoying right now in one of its indoor gems, the  Bodega Salazar.
Tomorrow: off to Cadiz where, I just read, Lorca disembarked from his New York voyage.

2 comments:

Brenda Schmidt said...

What a time you're having! Mind that leg!

Gerald Hill said...

Thanks. It seems to come and go. Bloody nuisance.