We are Soooo Home

 Ah, we are safely back in our tidy little hideaway in the Nations Nashville. Heavy sigh. Deep breath. Lungs full of gratitude for both the gift of travel and the treasure of home.

I don't know if I believe in jet lag. 

It's 5:42 Central Daylight Saving Time. What are we saving? The daylight doesn't care. 

We have been on terra firma in Nashville for around 32 hours and I'm up feeling pretty durned good at right around my usual time to arise. I did my ~40 yoga breaths quietly in bed, stretched, spent some time reflecting on whatever I reflected upon, and quietly arose, slipped on my royal blue cotton tee sleepshirt, and padded into my studio to lay down a poem. I suppose our nearly three weeks in Spain has enriched my connection with words and with whatever it is inside me that shapes my use of them.

Don't get me wrong, I'm usually pretty connected, but...

If I have learned 

anything

it is this:

Every living being 

with whom I have shared love

in any way

has remained,

is with me now 

in my memory,

in my heart, in my...

what is that? My soul?

Those whom I have hated

are nothing,

are gone,

are wisps,

are past

wrong turns,

wrong items

on my life's 

long

list.

If I have learned 

anything

it is this.

Ahem. Well. There's that. This little ditty came to me while I contemplated the old dog who had slowly arisen and made his way to the bedroom rug from his time asleep safely between my love and me. I then (and autonomically) moved closer to her beneath the sheets and she cupped her hand into mine again without willing the touch, just fingers to fingers drawn together like soft flesh and bone magnets. I continued breathing and laid awash with love, just breathing and loving, giving and receiving  precisely like inhaling and exhaling, like love. The word "living" is the only correction I made to it, considering, as I should, of course, that old dog, and other loves not "human".

And yes, I will use as many commas as I would like. They are necessary to indicate the meter. In case you've forgotten, my poetry (and much of my prose) must be read aloud to really work. It's a fault, a limitation, I know.

^^^^^^^^^@@@@@@@@^^^^^^^^^

Stay tuned. I'm thinking the next few posts will summarize our fantastical nearly three weeks in España.

"san sebastian", 2023, pencil on sketch paper, completed after a photo taken from Hotel Londes

And later, in Barcelona, at the Picasso Museum...

 there's this:

from https://uploads3.wikiart.org/images/pablo-picasso/las-meninas-velazquez-1957-4.jpg

There is a room full of paintings by the artist formerly known as P. Ruiz-Picasso that document his absolute obsession with Velazquez's Las Meninas, and later paintings continued to suggest that that did not abate. After my earlier fixation with the Velázquez painting at the Prado, I was charmed and fascinated by the master's consuming one, and perhaps a little smugly justified. Here, the subject and one of scores of interpretations/variations. Did that room demonstrate that the notoriously egotistical master was humbled? Maybe. I feel that perhaps he felt the balances in the paintings were iconic, sort of the Golden Mean, but not.

A story by our guide, Marta Rioge. Some time ago, two of her clients were told that they were to see the Picasso Museum here in Barcelona that day on their walking tour, as we had been. We were all for it, but that couple said, "Oh no, we don't want to see that. We don't like Picasso." It seems that a friend of theirs, an architect, had shown the painter an unearthed clay object that he was immensely proud of having discovered, whereupon Picasso dipped his fingers in paint and dragged them across the clay treasure, remarking, "There. That is now very valuable." Great story, I think. Another that Marta shared is that Picasso famously once remarked that "If I grew up to be a soldier, I would be a general. If I grew to be a clergyman, I would be the Pope. I grew up to be Picasso."

Side by side Las Meninias, the original by Velasquez, and Pablo Picasso's "copy", untitled by the painter, as were all his paintings (from https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f2/21/e9/f221e90671a5245412616446f2debdb2.jpg)

Puerta Barroca en el Día Internacional de los Museos

Our stellar guide for yesterday's exploration of Madrid--which included a perfect visit to the Prado National Art museum--created with his husband and installed with a team of 10 this amazingly beautiful "Baroque Door" piece. How fun that Pablo shared it with us before we entered the incredible repository of Spanish art and then proceeded to blow American minds with his historical knowledge and expertise around the history of the museum and the artists whose masterpieces inhabit it. Watch this awesome celebration of his own work:

Our 2+ hour long tour focused on the works of Goya, El Greco, Velazquez, and Reubens and I'll never look at any pictures of those paintings the same again thanks to Pablo. Here is one of our favorites, the "metapainting" "Las Meninas", by Velazquez. It's experimental nature was a hard fought win by the artist, whose main assignments were primarily traditional (though masterful) portraits for the King. Lee Ann had to come back for me after they proceeded on and I remained standing there, glued to its magic:

By Diego Velázquez - The Prado in Google Earth: Home - 7th level of zoom, JPEG compression quality: Photoshop 8., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22600614

As an aside, our stellar Madrid hotel, the Palacio de los Duques, is a renovated castle which is Velazques themed. That little girl's face is at almost every turn in the beautiful building!  I will probably never perceive a frozen Margarita the same.