ibiza – Jaime Alexis Stathis

Love in the Time of Love

Because reading is at the absolute top of my favorite-things-to-do list, I needed to do some rudimentary math to calculate how many books I needed to bring with me for three months on Ibiza. I use the Kindle app on my iPad—so I knew that I’d have infinite books available for airplanes and indoor/night reading—but I needed to know I’d have enough books for beach reading.

My suitcase has four pockets that seem made for books (or dirty laundry), so that was the number I gave myself to work with. It was hard to pass up some of the unread titles already on my shelf—The House of Sand and Fog, Just Kids, Sister Water—but after an absurd amount of toiling I hammered out my summer reading list.

I started with Beautiful Ruins, a story that takes place over fifty years mainly in Italy and Los Angeles, but—like a sneak-attack preview of my future—an area of Idaho not far from Missoula makes a cameo appearance toward the end. Beautiful Ruins is a clever book. It bridges small village life with big-city dreams, and weaves together stories over entire lifetimes. The common thread is love in various forms: lost, reclaimed, misdirected, selfish, silly, self-defeating, desperate, undeserved, etc.

Thinking of love in it’s various forms made me think of this:

There are so many ways to love.

Beautiful Ruins is poignant but really funny too. I marked many pages with stars, hearts, and underlinings, and in the back made a list of page numbers that include images so good I need to share them withy a friend. I always write my name in my books as well as the place and date when I read it. I can usually look at that and be thrust instantly back to the place I was in (both physically and emotionally) when I first read the book. My markings serve the same purpose, and for Beautiful Ruins it will always take me to the time I lived in a rustic pagoda-style hut tucked into a hill previously burned by fire. It also happened to be the place where my book matched my bedding:

Jess Walter wrote about wishes that get upgraded to prayers, and how “Words and emotions are simple currencies. If we inflate them they lose their value, just like money.” He wrote about how foreigners view Americans, “It had such an open quality, was such a clearly American face…He believed he could spot an American anywhere by that quality—that openness, that stubborn belief in possibility…” I marked that line as interesting though it would be another couple of months before I really understood both the truth and gravity of that statement.

I finished Beautiful Ruins, but wasn’t quite ready to let Jess Walter out of my sight, so I read every word on those pages including an interview with the author in the back where he says,

“The story itself was pretty simple, reflecting a question I had asked myself: what might cause a man to go looking for a woman he hasn’t seen in years? I wonder if the truth we know from physics—that an object has the most stored energy right before it acts (think of a drawn bow)—was true of romance too, if potential wasn’t, in some way, love’s most powerful form.”

Holy Crap. This sentence was how I started my summer, and it became the self-fulfilling, bottomless, occasionally painful thesis for my time spent in Europe.

The next book I dug into was Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. I’m not even into thrillers, but this one is psychological and got me thinking about things I didn’t even know I cared to think about. I even cheated one night and read a few pages in bed. By the time I started it I’d made friends I enjoyed taking to and laughing with, so often toted the book to the beach but never even poised my pen over the open pages.

The Secret History is an upfront book. In the very first paragraph we know someone has died and we even know who, then in the second paragraph we’re told it was a murder yet it takes three hundred pages before the act happens, and then almost that many more pages to flush it all out. I also chose to read this very long book with deliberate slowness—I’d read a chapter and then assimilate the pages with a good, long swim—so I wound up carried The Secret History around in my beach bag for so many weeks that it needed several rounds of surgical taping to make it through.

The end of The Secret History was a pisser because I hated to say goodbye to it (even after 558 pages) and because I wasn’t sure what to read next. One of the books I brought with me is a book I’ve wanted to want to read for over a decade, but although I’ve held the book in my hands like it’s a treasure (and it is) I’ve never been able to sink my heart into it the way I’ve hoped.

I think I can officially say the stars may never align for A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and me, though I’ll never say never. Even though it’s core is autobiographical, it’s not quite rooted in reality enough for me. Without any attachment to the pages, I left it behind knowing that finding it on the yoga retreat’s bookshelves would be total score for someone.

I have a male friend I’ve known for a while now. One summer when I was particularly overwhelmed and self-punishing he’d twist my arm into doing fun stuff I swore I didn’t have time for. Sometimes he’d announce we were going to float the river or go out to dinner and I’d say, “I can’t. I have to get my act together.” He’d sigh, look at me, and say, “No you don’t, Jaime, it’s just an act anyway.” One evening right before I moved away, we lounged on twin couches watching something funny on television, and he turned to me and said, “Isn’t unrequited love the best?”

Both Beautiful Ruins and The Secret History feature unrequited love as a character, and a strong character at that. If my summer thesis was about the potential of love, then my closing statement comes from a book that is the unofficial bible of unrequited love, Love in the Time of Cholera, AKA as the last beach-read that I started (and enjoyed) but didn’t finish. The truth is that I enjoyed the book, but barely got into it, ending at the spot where Fermina’s husband dies and she’s about to give it a go with a man who’s waited fifty years for her. But I got this, and this I needed:

“Think of love as a state of grace; not the means to anything but the alpha and omega, an end in itself.”

Maybe love isn’t about anything beyond the moment we are in it? What if….

There’s no actual cholera in the book that I know of, but it’s a punchy metaphor for lovesickness, which shares a lot of the same symptoms. There’s even an adjective—choleric—that refers to a disposition that’s at its worst is irritable and bad-tempered, but at it’s best is ambitious, passionate, and strong-willed. Choleric people like to get a job done and they like to do it ASAP. They’re good at planning but are also impulsive and restless. The element associated with this element is fire. Folks, I think I might be choleric.

I don’t think I’m choleric ALL of the time, but it’s one of my default settings in love for sure. In my last blog post I wrote about how grateful I was when a man I started seeing at the end of the summer called me out on some bullshit behavior. We’d had our first disagreement and I acted like the word choleric was invented for me. The worst part about it was that I’d let a little thing become a bigger thing, and all day the poor guy tried to help me let it go, but I was having an absurdly hard time doing that.

Anyway.

Finally he called a spade a spade, and made it clear he knew what I was up to: I was behaving badly because I loved him and I wasn’t quite sure what to do about it. I hadn’t felt that way about anyone in a long time, and even as I was falling in love I future-tripped about all of the (quite realistic) roadblocks that stood in between a summer fling (flirty and trendy) and something with staying power (boots for inclement weather).

I left Ibiza for Rome, but I found the middle ground between Forever 21 and L.L. Bean, and arranged to spend ten days with Mario in Barcelona before I returned to New York. I knew there’d be a lot of joy in that time together, but I also knew that it would be emotionally with the reality that we had no idea when we might see each other again. I wasn’t exactly sure how choleric I would be…..

At some point I’d had a delusion of recharging my visa and spending ninety days in the USA before going back to Barcelona to live happily ever after, but a different love-related reality hit me the closer I got to it: there was no way in hell I was going to voluntarily spend any more time without Lucky. The summer had a unique set of family circumstances, but that was over and Lucky and I need to be together. He is hands down the number one person who’s taught me about the kind of love that’s as far from unrequited as it gets—the unconditional kind of love.

Somehow I was able to get my old job back, find friends who’ll take me in, and cobble together a plan for a road trip that involves visiting family and friends en route to Missoula. When I mapped all of my stops together it turns out that the shape of my trip is a slightly crooked smile, turned up and curled a little on the Northwest side. It even kinda sorta looks like a smirk, or the mirror image of a question mark depending on how you see it.

I’m beyond thrilled to be taking my old man on what is bound to be his last major road trip. A cross-country trip is enough for most people, but I’m basically doing everything BUT the part of the drive that’s a direct shot between NYC and Missoula.

Lucky has been traveling with me since day 1, and it’s really no big deal for him. Plus, we thoroughly enjoy each other’s company. But, at 12 ½ , is Lucky too old for a big trip? I suppose that’s possible, but he’s going to have a comfy area in the backseat and plenty of time to do what old dogs do best: sleep. If it doesn’t agree with him I’ll figure something out, take a more direct route, slow the pace, whatever he needs. In the meantime I know a few things to be true.

This is a dog who loves to travel:

When he’s tired he can cozy up:

He can get some space from his mama if he needs it:

He knows that there will always be something that makes it worth the trip:

In some rapid time-elapsed version of my current life I’d have an ending to the story I’m entrenched in. The passage of time would be apparent when the reel zips forward to Mario and I living in a sunbeam-filled cottage on a tree-lined street near a town that’s charming but still has a bit of grit. There will be a garden and one or both of us writing books. Soup simmering, tea brewing, even from a photo you can tell the place smells out of this world.

The aesthetic would be a mix of old and new with beautiful colors and textiles, heavy on the house plants. In the final frame one of us would turn to the camera with the surprise being a baby with the gentle eyes of a Labrador. These images will come as the credits roll, but there will be no more dialogue. Townes Van Zant singing “If I Needed You” will play, and people who cry during romantic comedies will cry.

But the thing is, I’m not one of those people who cries at the end of sappy love stories when everything goes right. I can barely sit through a Rom-Com unless I have the flu or five loads of laundry to fold. I’m just too realistic for those story lines, so when I find myself in a live version of one I hardly trust it and feel miscast in a role not appropriate for my range. But we all know that life’s best adventures begin outside our comfort zones.

As if it wasn’t bad enough leaving, I had one of those hideous, terrible, good-for-nothing departure times so my airport taxi picked me up at 5:00am. When we (still) weren’t sleeping at two in the morning Mario decided to hard boil some eggs for my snack bag that also included two cheese sandwiches, granola bars, breadsticks and a plum. He wrapped most of it in aluminum foil, and I overlooked the environmental impact of this to focus instead on the fact that he wrapped my sustenance in something so resistant to corrosion.

When I arrived home I was pretty battered, but I had more than a few things to look forward to and some surprises too. One of the surprises was a package from a friend I made at surf camp a few years ago. It was great timing, because in addition to being a nice treat, it was also a reminder that with a little effort we can stay in touch with the friends we meet traveling. I knew Tracy was sending me something because she asked for my address, but I wasn’t prepared to be so touched by it.

Tracy had sent me a mint-condition, vintage copy of The Mentor from 1919 that she came across while rummaging around in an antique store in Minnesota. “It made me think of you,” she said, and signed her note, “Blessings.” The Mentor is an obscure, defunct periodical, but an interesting one. Its purpose was to present information in an accessible way so that people might “learn one thing every day,” which is also inscribed on the cover.

The issue that Tracy sent was about fiction writing with a focus on women authors. It profiles a few writers and then gives some great writing advice that’s just as relevant today as it was ninety-five years ago, but the best advice is the very last thing printed on those pages:

Make The Spare Moment Count.

I’m starting to believe it’s the spare moments that matter most, the time that feels half-borrowed, half-stolen, like the cash you find in the pocket of a winter coat. It’s the time that suspends and contracts without warning, time that’s separate from limitations. It’s everything that exists beyond the outer limits of possibility.

Loving the World All Over Again

It came to my attention after my last blog post that my friends really believe in love, and they believe in the possibility of love for me even more than I do for myself. It’s not that I don’t believe in love or haven’t kept my eyes open for it, but I’ve gotten used to being content by myself, for myself, with myself.

Some of the friends who gave me public and private shout outs are deeply in love themselves, and others are on the blade side of searching. Some know this love thing firsthand and want me to have something similar, and others, like me, are on the serrated edge of (still) believing (still….) in the possibility of a thing that feels more like herding cats than cuddling on the sofa with one.

These friends said “Happy for you!” and “Cheers , Mario and Jaime!” They said “perfection,” “Thanks for the inspiration,” and “Worth the long wait.” One sent an essay about a deep love that didn’t last forever, and I appreciated that too because it’s good to prepare for everything.

I’m trying to be realistic here, but I’m also not trying to blow it or coerce something innocent into failure.

I’m struggling to simply stay present.

“Worth the long wait” confused me. Did she mean worth the long wait for the blog post, for love to arrive, or for me to finally soften to allow some love into my life? It’s hard to say, but likely it was some of each. Friends congratulated me on something hot-off-the-press brand new, something it was technically premature for me to share— but I couldn’t help myself. What I was experiencing felt so solid and secure—yet simple—that I couldn’t help but say, “I’m choosing love. I’m making a statement about what I want.”

I’ve been busy being independent, capable, and strong. I’ve been busy making plans for myself outside of a relationship because inside my last two relationships I lost my direction. In the wake of my last heartbreak I made a conscious decision to not allow the dissolution of self to happen again, but I’d also made that decision in the previous breakup so I wasn’t confident in my sketchy track record.

The line between protection and building impenetrable walls is as fine as lines come.

It’s not to say my last two relationships were bad—because in a lot of ways they were so good, and just exactly what I needed at the time—but in both I focused on the needs of my partners and neglected my own. As one of my friends said, in the midst of both, “You’re acting like someone you wouldn’t tolerate.” I love when friends are so spot on, and when they are astute enough to assess a situation and know when and how to deliver the truth not so it stings but so it guides away from inertia, the goddess of thwarted progress.

It’s natural to lose yourself in something you love. I’ve seen my friends lose themselves not only in romantic relationships, but also in their children, their work, their remodeling projects. We become unrecognizable to each other and sometimes even to ourselves. When the mirrors show up it can be hard to look so we look away, sometimes we even say “I don’t know what you’re talking about” and sometimes we say “I don’t know who you are,” but what we mean is, “Where did I go?”

I went to a palm reader once in a shopping center next to the spa I worked at. I drove to work that morning in San Francisco rush-hour traffic with a gut feeling that my first appointment wouldn’t show, and I said that if she didn’t I’d go next door and have my palm read.

I had a lot of questions about my current relationship which was filled to the brim with love, but complicated by the fact that my partner’s life contained a myriad of moving parts and I always had one foot out the door. The reader asked me to close my eyes and picture myself with my boyfriend.

We were standing in the Marin Headlands with the Golden Gate bridge as the backdrop. It was one of those days with weather so perfect you want to cry, and I nearly was crying in that photo in my mind—a replica of one we took in real life—because I knew as well as he did that what was captured with the lens wasn’t actually real. Or was it?

I had that picture in my head, as the palm reader held my exposed, naked palm and asked me to just focus on it and see what happened. It didn’t take long before the photo pixilated and I began to dissolve from the top down. First my brain, then my eyes, mouth, throat and heart, fairly slowly at first, then quicker as the momentum of my disappearing built speed. In the end I went as quickly as a stepped upon sand castle.

We think it’s the wave we need to look out for when in reality it’s the loss of balance and a misplaced foot.

In those things in which we lose ourselves it’s just as possible to find ourselves though the process can be a bit longer. Losing oneself and finding oneself aren’t the same, though one often leads to the other.

If a person finds herself, if she really sees and owns and embraces her flaws then she allows herself to be found as well. Without the seeing, owning and embracing trying to find love (I’m stealing these words from my soul sister Emily Walter) is “like trying to find cashmere at Target. Sure, it says cashmere, but doesn’t feel like cashmere.”

We’re not looking for short-strand love, people. We’re look for top-notch, authentic, real-deal love. We’re looking for the cashmere–the love–that comes from the belly, from the gut, from the place that doesn’t lie.

In the past couple of years that I’ve been mostly single a few friends (and also a few strangers) have pointed out that I’m a decent package and it shocks them that I’m “alone.” I finally came up with a way to answer this question that often feels like an inquisition: I’ve figured out what questions to ask. I know what will break a relationship for me, and I know what I require in a partner. I’ve also retired from trying to fix people and I’ve turned in my badge on being a mommy to any man full-grown enough to require a razor in his dopp kitt. I’ll add that if he doesn’t have a dopp kit we probably have another set of problems, but I add that last bit only because I like to end most of my spiels with a touch of humor, and because so much seriousness is said in jest.

As the final curtains dropped on those last two relationships, one thing was irrefutably clear: We didn’t want the same things. When we each pictured a life together we pictured different things, leading to the conclusion that there was, in fact, no “together.”

I sought therapy in both cases, wondering where I’d gone wrong, why I repeated the same mistakes and how I might achieve a different result in the future. Both therapists came up with a similar assessment: I need to choose. Being chosen is great, but it might behoove me to do some choosing.

I need to feel like I’m choosing not only the partner but also the partnership, and not dodging my own wants and needs to make room for someone else’s. Not only does that behavior not make a healthy relationship, but it’s also an unwieldy tool for distraction. When our focus is on others then we can avoid focusing on ourselves. Ouch. It’s my legacy to love like this, but it’s something I strive to change.

But here’s the rub: why is it so damn hard to break a pattern?

Ellen Glasgow was a complicated woman, but also a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist who wrote mostly fiction though one autobiographical work was published posthumously. I was introduced to Ellen Glasgow a few years ago when I discovered this quote and since then I’ve worn it on my heart like a tattoo:

So I’ve taken a break, a big, two-year break to offer myself a return to myself. In that time I’ve moved a lot. I’ve always changed houses a lot, but this time I was in actual motion (not some static excuse for progression) and in two years I’ve had addresses in four states along with several other temporary posts including a couple outside the United States. I even moved into the house with my mother and grandmother to rise to an occasion I didn’t know I was capable of but which I capably and courageously handled when faced with the inevitable.

I’ve paid close attention to what feels right and what feels like struggle; I’ve paid extra close attention to where those things overlap. I’ve sat with all of it—the joy, the discomfort, the unease, the hope—to see what my future might look like both alone and in a partnership. I came to few conclusions except, as has been the case for most of my life, I was pretty much up for anything.

I experimented with a few men, but kept enough distance so that I could bow out gracefully from what was wrong as opposed to my former pattern of blazing ahead with blinders on. I also revisited a few old relationships to see how those felt right or wrong, and what it was in them that I craved and what simply wouldn’t work. In the end it was a feeling, more than a concrete thing to put a finger on.

It’s not, in the end, about if a man is tall, handsome, or rich. It’s not about what he does for work or if he gets along with his mother. It’s not about all the stuff that I thought maybe it was about. It goes beyond the superficial to the core: how do I feel with this person? Do I feel safe, secure and like myself, or do I fashion myself and cherry-pick my beliefs to fit someone else’s ideal?

I met a woman on Ibiza about a month ago who’s been married by way of arrangement for twenty-five years. She told me that her husband is a nice guy, but she wouldn’t call it love. She travels alone and sleeps alone, but they’ve parented together and there’s no way around the fact that they will stay married. She observed me and my independence, telling me that I don’t need a man, that I’m clearly taking care of myself, and that if she were me…..

Then I met a couple—last week in Rome—who met in college and who got engaged three weeks after graduation. I asked if Mindie knew that Cory was going to ask her to marry him, and Cory said, “She told me to do it! A diamond dealer friend brought stones to graduation and then she picked out her setting!”

They were in Italy celebrating twenty years of marriage, and in all those years they’ve only spent a few nights away from each other. Other than the fact that they’re American and we started talking because of problems in Italy with Verizon, our cellular provider from home, we didn’t have a lot in common, at least not on paper, but the time they hopped in a taxi Mindie Coopersmith Jacobs and I were frantically waving goodbye like old friends.

Later that night she messaged me about how good it was to meet me and how much fun lunch was because of me, I was asking if I could write about them in a blog post, and then she was inviting me to their home in New Jersey whenever I find myself passing through. These are good people. They’re honest, they like to laugh, and the genuinely care about other people. On the surface we might live our lives very differently, but at the core I believe we share a lot of the same values.

Mindi and her husband Cory are practicing Jews, and although I was first Greek Orthodox and then Catholic I approach religion more like a buffet (but not like a potluck). I take a little from here and a little from there, but I don’t actually bring much to the table. Maybe the lasagna isn’t supposed to sit on a plate so close to the borscht, but I’m not afraid to mix and match. My gut is lined with iron.

The Jacobs had a guide plan their trip for them down to train tickets and tours, and on my second day in Rome I still hadn’t picked up a map and hadn’t booked a ticket to anywhere either within Italy or out of it. He works and she takes care of the three kids. They have a house in the suburbs and a house at the shore. They spent three years planning their anniversary trip. They’ve traveled mostly to all-inclusive resorts and even when abroad they prefer to eat American food.

Mindie and Cory would never take a risk with street food or stay abroad in a non-chain hotel. I look for where the locals eat and rent rooms—sight unseen— in strangers’ homes. He wore a money belt; I’ll drink the tap water.

They had as many questions about my life as I did about theirs, but my big question was “What’s the secret to your love?”

It’s not that I want their life—I could have had it, and actually had one step in that door when I was a bride a month after my 24^th birthday—but I wanted to understand that kind of love, the kind where a woman can’t imagine why other women take girls’ trips and the only argument they had in ten days traveling together was when he couldn’t get the picture she wanted in front of Pisa where it looks like she’s propping up the leaning tower. He eventually got the shot she wanted, and the “fight” became a good story.

Cory wished Mindie wouldn’t wear so many dresses while they were traveling, because he didn’t want to feel obliged to wear collared shirts while on his holiday from his lawyer job, but it wasn’t an actual problem between them: it was something to laugh about.

I like to laugh in relationships, but I’m also a boat rocker and have a genetically inherited skill for making a problem where there isn’t one. It’s as if I’m egging on my partner(s) to agree or disagree, and in the cartoon version of that image I’m wearing pads and a helmet, dancing on my toes, fingers beckoning my opponent forward while he juggles balls from every sport but the one we’re playing.

Love is not a contact sport.

When I’m sifting through the legions of photos I take I often stop at this one, that I took in Barcelona my first time there.

Back in May I spent nine days in Barcelona, divided between the beginning and end of my trip and two other time I passed through en route to somewhere else. I was a bit of a homing pigeon for the city where my feet touched European soil for the first time. I thought maybe it was just Europe, but although I love the other places I’ve visited, Barcelona was the one and only place where I felt, without a doubt, “I could need to must live here.”

After a night flying over the ocean and not sleeping I felt awake and alive upon arrival in Barcelona. I got disoriented a couple times in the first few hours, but never completely lost. I quickly got my bearings and a metro card and I hit that ground running. I loved:

the architecture

the aesthetic

the street art

the markets

the philosophy

the dogs (and the tea)

the city beach

the people

the little bodegas that remind me on NYC, AKA home base

the old women who remind me of Mimi

the humor

the (not so) secret messages that seem to be everywhere

But that was then, and there’s a present moment to deal with and a sweet man I’m going to see in a few days in Barcelona. I spent seven weeks working at a yoga retreat on the north coast of Ibiza, then ten nights in the south—in the historical center—before leaving the island. I met Mario on the street about an hour after I arrived in town, and although he was working at night we spent ten of the eleven days I was there together. The only day I skipped was number two, when I asked myself, “Am I really going to spend every day with this guy? For what?”

I had to shift my thinking and urge myself to realign the question. The answer was a resounding yes. In those days of brilliant sunshine where I (mostly) followed my heart with the trust of a child I kept thinking of this passage from Marianne Williamson:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

I focused on the lines: “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?”

I altered it a bit to fit my circumstances: Who am I to believe in this love? Who am I not to?

Mario and I think each other is something special, though I’m aware this could be just a “summer camp thing,” and taken to a new location the connection might not hold. Mario believes that “everything is possible” so he isn’t afraid—not even after five days—to talk about what a future might look like together. He talks about a simple, cozy home filled with beautiful things. He said we’ll cook together. When he said he wants to have a biblioteca (library) in the house my heart nearly exploded.

Mario says we should have two Labradors (he prefers black) so that when we have a disagreement we each have a dog to hold. He loves my expressive face and is naturally skilled at reading it, so after he said that about us disagreeing he squeezed my hand and said, “We will disagree sometimes. It’s normal. It’s okay.”

I don’t know if it was a premonition or a dare, but that afternoon we had our first stupid fight. It was actually a series of fights that had an eye of the storm, and then a sucker punch that had me wondering exactly how much of a self-sabotaging animal I really am.

In the eye of the storm Mario had a revelation. “I know why you’re acting like this,” he said, “You love me.” I just crumbled and sobbed because of course he was right. I was trying to ruin the love between us because I wasn’t sure what to do with it, or if I am ready or if I have the stamina for it.

I cried and then he cried and then I cried more. We spoke slowly and used our words carefully. In the midst of it I took this picture so I would always remember what it felt like to be cracked open and still feel safe.

In order to make room for this relationship I was going to have to let go of a few things. We made a plan to make a little ritual the next day so I could do just that. Mario took me to a place at the top of Dalt Vila, built in the sixth century and the oldest city in the Balearic Islands, which has views of the whole bay and walls around it that protected it from the Greeks and Romans.

Mario told me to get a padlock, and I had a small one so I brought that. When he saw it he worried that it might not be big enough to go around the iron post in the wall, and when we got to the spot we saw that not only he was correct, but also that the shank of mine was just big enough to go around his, already in place on the wall. He left me alone on the wall to think about what I really need to get rid of in this life, and I put all of those thoughts into the lock, clamped it to Mario’s and tossed the keys into the sea.

Perhaps I’m supposed to keep it a secret, but I’m not much for secrets these days. I said, “I don’t need to do everything alone. Being independent doesn’t have to mean being alone. Being in a partnership doesn’t have to mean given up freedom.”

Back in May, Emily and I took nine days in Portugal together to celebrate both of our birthdays but mostly it was to celebrate us. We fell in love with the Portuguese light, wine, seafood, and wind. It was a restorative, amazing time where we worked through the past and paved the way to the future. You could say our future might be paved a bit like the Portuguese streets—rough but with love—but Em and I are simply not afraid. If something seems scary we just downshift and grind through it, never thinking to shift into reverse, or worse: risk stalling.

I’ve already posted this photo in a blog about that birthday trip and it might be cheesy as hell to say this, but it’s true: the road can be both rough and full of love simultaneously.

Yes: rough and full of love at the same time. These things do not have to be mutually exclusive, and YES, I feel like I might finally have woken the fuck up from some fog where I was confused as hell about what romantic love is and isn’t. I’ve gotten friend-love down pat, but the romantic love: man that’s a squirrely little bastard.

Anyway. Emily and I are born four days apart. My birthday was toward the beginning of the trip and Emily’s was toward the end. We had full days, and I think only once or twice did we stay awake past midnight. The night of Em’s birthday eve we stumbled on a tiny pub with fun, live music. It was the kind of music you want to sing along to, and sing, smile and seat-dance we did.

We didn’t want to be wiped out for her birthday and our journey to Sagres—the place formerly known as the end of the earth— so we walked back to our apartment just after midnight and snuggled into our twin-sized beds in the upstairs bedroom. I fell asleep quickly and had a dream that I told Emily to “take my hand.” In real-time my arm was flung out of the bed and she took my hand.

I awoke startled—it’s always a shocker when the dream world intersects with the real world—and I heard Emily’s voice whispering to me, “Soph, I’m scared. Someone is trying to break in.”

My first thought was to say “that’s impossible,” but what I did was listen. Emily and I held hands in the dark and I didn’t hear anything, but then I heard what scared her: bang, bang, bang.

It was the sound of a body flinging itself against a heavy wooden door that was set in concrete. I thought about the door to the roof deck and didn’t hear noise up there, but downstairs there was definitely a door ruckus going on. It happened again and my skin prickled.

Our apartment had no cell or internet service. We had no phone to SOS the front desk. What the hell were we going to do? We’d both traveled alone extensively long before cell service, but it was 2014 and other than continue to hold hands I really didn’t know what we’d do besides turn over our passports, American Express cards, and iphones.

It turns out we really just needed to keep holding hands.

Every hair on my body stood up as Em squeezed my hand tighter. I heard voices. I heard laughing. I heard the noise again. I knew she was really scared, and I knew that it was my turn to be the brave one. After what felt like forever I figured it out.

“It’s okay, Soph,” I told her softly, “That’s not the sound of a door opening. It’s the sound of a door closing.”

I realized that the people in the apartment next to ours must have been going in and out of their front door, and their door, like ours, was probably heavy and difficult to jam into the ancient doorframe. Like ours, it seemed to requirer a few solid hip checks before it latched closed. The banging noise we heard was the sound of our neighbors getting their door closed, not the sound of someone breaking ours down.

Love is scary. The feeling of a new door opening to the possibility of new love can be just as disorienting as the feeling when a door closes on a love that once held hope and promise. As Emily and I witnessed, they can even sound the same.

The reason that Sagres was once known as the end of the earth is because although the early navigators knew the earth was round it seemed like Sagres—with its intense wind, dodgy current, and strong tides—might be a decent place to stick a flag in the earth and declare it: THE END.

Even when things feel like the end, they’re just a hair away from a beginning. It can be confusing and disorienting when figuring out if the fear comes from what has passed or what’s to come. A door closing can sound almost exactly like a door opening because—in the blink of an eye—that’s almost exactly what it is.

And when in doubt, eyes open and on the horizon is always a safe bet.

#likeagirl is how we do it

Three weeks ago I drove to Maine, on a whim, to see about a sternwoman position on a lobster boat. It made sense, but it didn’t. I’d fallen in love with Maine last year, but wasn’t sure how to go about living there. I was torn between my desire and the part of me that has a PhD in overthinking, overanalyzing, overquestioning. I wasn’t sure if it made sense, if it was worth pursuing, if Maine and I were even a good fit for each other.

I had a conversation with my mother on the beach that led to my options opening up just moments before I saw the sternwoman position on craigslist. I hadn’t considered commercial fishing an option, because who would want a woman on a lobster boat?

The situation was rife with unknowns—a state of being I gravitate toward—though there was one big question that couldn’t be answered until I was on the boat: could I swing eighty-five pound lobsters traps over the rail? I dug my heavy-duty, rubber boots out of storage, and pointed my car north to go find out.

This wasn’t a one-time thing—not like ringing the bell at a carnival strongman game for a Made in China prize—but something I’d need to sustain all day long, day after day, for several months. I first wondered if I could do it at all—the traps are not only heavy, but also a cumbersome four feet long—and then I wondered if I could do it then would I do it #likeagirl. I’m asking myself now, especially in light of the recent release of this awesome video, why anyone ever decided it was okay to slap a negative spin on doing something #likeagirl.

Not that I think what the boys do is bad or less-than what girls do, but I do some badass shit like a girl and I know some boys who also do some badass, loving, caring shit #likeagirl. Even as I wrote those words I feel silly. Can only girls be caring? Can only boys be strong? Answer: no.

I’m not exactly striving to do things the way boys do because that’s just silly. I am a girl, so everything I do is done #likeagirl whether I want to or not. As the video states, “That is not something that I should be ashamed of.”

Commercial fishing is one of the toughest, dirtiest, most dangerous jobs, and not an industry where women are commonly found. I had abundant support from friends on Facebook and in real-time as I headed up to Maine to do something slightly out of character (I enjoy manicures) and nothing I could even have predicted for myself (I don’t even flyfish). The draw wasn’t the fishing so much as spending a summer on the water, being out there in the elements where the only place to be is in the present. I fell in love with the idea of living on the eastern edge of America and being one of the first in this country to witness the sunrise.

It wasn’t until I was driving home that I saw a few Facebook comments asking questions I’d barely sideswiped in my thinking process because I was so myopic in my desire to go to Maine that I refused to let a few pesky details get in my way. A couple of those details were: why does this guy specifically want a woman on his boat? And if he’s any good why is he hiring via craigslist.

These were good questions, but not ones that would’ve made much of a difference if I’d asked them as I headed north. I was in trouble anyway, because I drove up to Maine with the decked stacked slightly for one reason that trumps all others: I had something to prove. The thing was, I didn’t seem to know exactly what I was proving.

The expectation I had for myself was physical—could I swing eighty-five pound lobster traps over the rail?—and as it turned out: I could. But my physical ability wasn’t my biggest problem, and it was actually the last thing I should have been worried about. What I needed to worry about more, and what I’d completely forgotten to consider, was pretty much every other thing about lobstering that had nothing to do with me.

The Lobsterman (TL) wasn’t terrible, but he managed to throw a few red flags into the mix before I’d even arrived. He was all business before my departure, but started flirting when I was slightly farther than halfway. I interpreted the first couple of passes as kindness (e.g., taking me for to dinner when I arrived), and didn’t acknowledge them as sleazy for one reason that’s both simple and complicated: I didn’t want to.

When I was a toddler I started telling my mother “I can’t want to.” She’d ask me to clean my playroom or put my books back on the shelves, and I’d very seriously tell her, “I would if I wanted to, Mommy, but I just can’t want to.” I get it. I totally get it. It can really be hard to do things we don’t want to do especially when they involve that which happens on an internal level. It’s hard to fake feelings. It’s hard to fake want.

For years I only went forward and if I wanted to get out of something I had to go through, which was usually not the most direct route but it was as if the path of my life was lined with spike strips that would puncture my tires if I changed direction. I’ve recently upgraded my gears and now have a reverse position, though at this point it’s reserved only for emergencies.

I spent the majority of the drive to Maine gabbing to girlfriends and sharing the bulk of what TL was texting me {Disclaimer: I read most of them while stopped for coffee, gas and walking Lucky.} I read the messages aloud to my friends, and as the words hit the air I started feeling more like I was going on a blind date and less like I was going to see about a job.

I got an uneasy feeling when TL asked me if he should shower and shave before dinner. I didn’t know how to respond, but after some deliberation I just told him the truth, which was that I’d just driven seven hours and had been wearing the same clothes for two days. That’s what I said, but what I was thinking was, “I don’t give a crap what you look like, but I’m starting to think we don’t share this point of view.”

TL’s stock had already plummeted and I had little remaining faith in his understanding of boundaries or social mores when he said, “Maybe we’ll go for a swim in the lake later….” In an effort to diffuse the situation I asked TL if the lake was heated, and he said “It’ll be hot if I’m in there with you.” Ew, right? I mean…beyond ew.

I was on the phone with a good friend who I can say pretty much anything to, but I didn’t tell her this because 1) I didn’t want her to worry, and 2) I didn’t want her to insist I turn around.

I can be a very rational person, but not when I can’t want to, and at that moment I couldn’t want to. I knew that most people would have bailed at that point and gone to have a laugh with one of half a dozen friends within spitting distance. But I didn’t want to turn around; I really wanted to find out if I could swing eighty-five pounds over the rail. My determination was absurd.

After some consideration I wrote back to TL, and told him to, “Keep it classy.” He apologized, but it felt obligatory more than it felt sincere.

I’ll be honest: when I arrived it felt like meeting someone for a date, but I made it extremely clear that I wasn’t there for that. I considered leaving a few times that first night, but wanted to locate the fine line between bailing prematurely and staying too long at the fair.

I stuck around long enough to learn that TL has lost his lobstering license twice, which (for him) included jail time and several years probation before he could put a boat back in the water. I learned that his legal troubles were a result of molesting gear and though that seems to be an activity that many (if not most) lobsterman take part in, TL seemed to be the one pushing limits, the one taking the retaliation too far.

TL bragged about the Harbor Master having it out for him and that he loves a foggy day because “they can’t see you and you can’t see them.” I wasn’t impressed. I told him he reminded me a lot of guys I dated in my twenties and thirties and that I wasn’t interested in working for someone whose emotionally fractured self is permanently stuck at twenty-seven. TL told me he needed someone like me to keep him in line, and I told him that’s what they all say, but I’m seeking full retirement from playing mommy to grown men.

I felt tested. I felt like the universe was playing a damn good joke on me. I felt like I was talking to someone who wasn’t hearing me and i knew that regardless of my desire to live in Maine, playing sternwoman for a goofball wasn’t my ticket.

There’s a lot more to lobstering that being about to swing some weight, stomach the smell of bait, and stay upright in rough water. A lot more. There’s a downright turf war going on out there, and the pirates are playing dirty. I told TL I wasn’t going to break the law, I wasn’t going to mess with anyone’s traps, and if he pulled that shit with me on the boat I’d hand in my oilskins as soon as we hit land.

He thought I was messing, playing hard to get, but I told him I wasn’t going to Maine to keep a grown man in line, and I certainly wasn’t going there for drama.

Despite it all, TL took a quick liking to me, and said that if I stayed a year my percentage of the catch would go up 30%. I told him I really had no interest in lobstering past the summer, but he didn’t hear me and said we could get an engine for his bigger boat and take it down to Puerto Rico for the winter. I told him there was no “we,” and that I was getting really tired of the fact that he hadn’t heard me when I’d told him very clearly, over and over, “There will be no romance between us.”

It had the makings of a solid rom-com, which might have been fine except that 1) I’ve never been a fan of comedies with plots that are either predictable, preposterous, or the odd combination of both, and 2) I decided a few weeks prior that romantic comedies aren’t a genre my life should aim to mimic at this point.

I’m old enough to know that romance isn’t really as light and goofy as those movies depict it, and I think that naivete in a storyline is best reserved for millenials. But the truth is that rom-com has never really been for me. I’ve always preferred a saga or an epic. I like a healthy dose of mystery, satire, and suspense with my romance. Rom-com is just so predictable, but even as I stood on the edges of my own I couldn’t see where it was headed until suddenly i was desperate to get off that boat.

It happened in a way that should be familiar to me by now—fast and innocent—but I missed the familiar cues. I could say my brain was muddy from a month following my heart around Europe’s Iberian peninsula, but that’s not true; I was simply moving too fast to have any perspective on what I was actually doing.

What exactly was I doing?

When author Ray Bradbury died last month I spent a bunch of time reading obits and essays about him and his impressive (eight million copies in 35 languages!) writing career that spanned seventy years. Despite the fact that I prefer reality over science fiction or fantasy, I appreciated Bradbury’s commitment to craft and willingness to push mainstream literary boundaries.

Right before I left for Maine I read something that couldn’t have been more carefully cherry-picked for my circumstances:

“I’m a Zen Buddhist if I would describe myself. I don’t think about what I do. I do it. That’s Buddhism. I jump off the cliff and build my wings on the way down.”

Yep, that’s me; I’m always ready to build my wings on the way down.

I didn’t fail—or fall—when I went to Maine, but I had a hard time digesting the experience. I proved to myself that I was physically able to handle the work, but after gathering additional information I did something major: I made a well-informed adult decision to not do the thing I’d just a few days earlier wanted more than anything. In short: I turned myself around.

I wasn’t afraid to use my brand-new reverse gear, and I didn’t equate backing out with failing. I was disappointed that I (still) had to go so deep to get the answers I could see clearly from the edge looking in, but we’re all works in progress.

The aftermath was the hard part. I had to dig deeper and ask: What (the heck) is it I want to do?

New York is one of the hardest places to get a massage license, and transferring my license from Montana would be a cumbersome process that might not even work. And it would take time. I thought about getting a job-job, and spent countless hours scouring ads until I had an aha! moment and remembered that there was a good reason I abandoned desk jobs well over a decade ago.

I found out that MOFGA (The Maine Organic Farmers and Growers Association) has apprenticeships and then I found out that it wasn’t too late to apply. I got excited again. I spent a day on my application, a day researching farms, and another day contacting farms. I read about the County of Waldo that is mostly agrarian and that has towns named Liberty, Unity and Freedom. An adjacent county has towns named Friendship and Hope. It just seemed so welcoming. The farms up there have equally incredible names: New Leaf, Old Crow. Fail Better. Laughing Stock. New Beat, Black Kettle, Good Karma, Rebel Hill.

Apprenticing on a farm started to seem far better than lobstering because I’d have more flexibility. I’d told myself that if the lobstering opportunity was good enough I’d sacrifice spending the summer with Lucky (because he and his grandmother have grown so close), but it clearly wasn’t. I decided only to consider farms that allow dogs. I felt like I was getting closer.

I patiently waited for the farms to get back to me, but the news wasn’t great. One farmer wrote to tell me that he actually lost the lease for his farm and was gypsy farming this summer. Another said they couldn’t take any more dogs. Another said I sounded great but they’re in a rebuilding stage and only looking for people with construction experience.

Although I really enjoy all that New York has to offer, and know it’s one of the top places on the planet for diversity and stimulation, it wears me down especially when I don’t feel like I have a purpose here. If I had to pick one or the other, it’s nature I crave far more than culture, though if you stuck me in the boonies for too long I have no doubt I’d be singing a different tune. I suppose, like a lot of people, I’m shooting for balance.

I left the city last weekend for Connecticut, where I spent forty-eight hours with an old friend literally talking nonstop. We talked about hopes, dreams, disappointments, and frustrations but never stopped laughing our asses off. A seagull pooped on me at the beach while I was there, a sign (if you’re a believer) that good things are on the way. It wasn’t like I’ve had the worst luck, but life has been one brick wall after another since I flew back from Barcelona a month ago. It was if the air deflated from my sails upon repatriation. When asked about my trip, my standard response became, “I’d have stayed if it wasn’t for Lucky.”

While waiting on the platform for the train back to Grand Central, I checked in with Facebook and saw that one of the women who worked at the yoga retreat I attended on Ibiza was looking for a ticket to Burning Man. I immediate wrote to ask if her volunteer position (work in exchange for room, board and some yoga) was available, and she said she thought they were covered but I should email. I emailed and found out that not only was the retreat needing for a volunteer for a few weeks, but they also need a chef for the majority of the season.

A few email exchanges later, The folks at Ibiza Yoga invited me to join them at Benirras Beach for the summer and early fall. First I got really excited about this new, unexpected adventure, and then I choked up over leaving Lucky. I begged him to give me an answer, and I realized that in a lot of ways he’s been telling me it’s okay to go.

Lucky has his grandmother wrapped around his finger. They got along perfectly for the month I was gone, and in our everyday lives around here he actually spends more time with her than he does with me. “Grandma’s bed” has become his absolute favorite spot in the house. She lets him up on the pillows, and she lets him hog more than his fair share of the space. She never stays out late, and gets up at the same time every morning. She’s incredibly reliable, which is what an old dog needs.

I was twenty-eight when I fell in love with Lucky after he picked me out at a party. We’ve been on many amazing adventures together, both close to and far from home, and when things have gone south he’s always been there while I picked up the pieces. My dog has been one of the most patient, reliable people I’ve ever known.

Twelve years ago I gave little (to no) thought to what our life might be like when I was forty and Luck had white whiskers and paws. Over the years I’ve declined so many things (overnight river trips, National Park visits, travel abroad, biking) because I prioritized Lucky over anything else. That level of attachment might not have been the healthiest, but it’s how we lived. I never could have imagined I’d have the opportunity to travel like this while Lucky is still alive. But here’s the thing: I’m not the only one who loves him.

I’ll go so far as to say that I think my mother and Lucky need each other right now, and what they definitely don’t need is me moping around the house wondering what to do with myself. Even though I pursued the opportunity to go back to Spain, I hesitated when I reached the threshold. I worried my leaving was selfish, wrong or irresponsible.

I wondered if my wings would open on the way down.

When I told my mother she immediately encouraged me to go without any hesitation. She assured me that Lucky wasn’t any inconvenience for her, which was my biggest concern, and she said, “I want to see you happy, and you’re not happy here.”

In less than two weeks I’ll be off to live and work on Ibiza’s piney north shore that smells better than any place I’ve ever smelled before. I’m looking forward to all of the people I’m going to meet, and to doing simple, important work so that others can have a lovely yoga retreat.

I felt connected to Benirras Beach as soon as I arrived, and about 90 seconds after I arrived I announced to one of the owners that he was going to have a hard time getting rid of me. It’s an absolute dream that I have this opportunity to return as a volunteer and that I’ll have lots of free time to swim in the clear bay, run among the fruit trees, inhale the pines, read, write, and revise whatever isn’t working.

I took this picture the day I left, and hashtagged it #lastday #benirrasbeach #fornow

It’s as if I knew I’d be back, and I suppose I did. Don’t we always know?

The 40 Train’s Leaving the Station

At the beginning of April my friend Robert came to New York for a very quick trip. He asked me weeks in advance if I could meet him for breakfast before his friend arrived and they embarked on a spree of three Broadway shows in 24 hours. I didn’t hesitate to say “Yes, of course, I’ll crawl there if I have to.”

One of my favorite things about living in NYC is that I get to see so many people. Not only do a lot of my old and new friends live there, but scads of people pass through. Because I love Robert like a brother, I planned my week around having two precious hours eating overpriced eggs in midtown and talking as if no one was around. Our booth was an oasis.

After Robert and I said goodbye and made umpteen tentative plans to see each other soon, I headed off to do a few errands. I sold some coins and a ring in a creepy diamond district office, and then headed off on a hunt to find a simple nylon band for my grandfather’s Timex. The diamond district guys offered to sell me an embossed faux-crocodile for a good price, but I had my heart set on nylon. My Poppy wouldn’t have worn nylon, but it’s what I wanted.

The watch doesn’t even keep good time. It’s a wind-up, and requires winding more than once a day. It’s unreliable and high maintenance. At first I wondered about my sanity, wearing a watch that doesn’t keep time, but I like the multi-day reminder of him, though I don’t need a watch for that.

My father gave me a classy watch for my college graduation, but it’s not waterproof or practical for every day wear. I wear it when I need a confidence boost, like for an interview, because of the inscription on the inside, “Jaime, Keep on Believing. Love, Dad.” The poignancy of his words keeps increasing as time marches on, and as keeping faith becomes more important, crucial even to surviving.

Finding a nylon watch band proved to be a major project, even in NYC, but finally I remembered the old-timey shop in Grand Central and knew they would have loads of striped, preppy bands and hopefully a few solids, but I couldn’t remember where the shop was. I knew it was in one of the passages, but which one?

I got sweaty. Frustrated. Impatient. I used Google to get the shop’s name and called, but reached a recording to call a different number that I couldn’t remember every after three redials. Eventually I had to go to a bank’s deposit station and ballpoint the number on my hand, which felt like a throwback to a different era. I found out that the hole-in-the-wall shop (literally it is a hole in a wall) was located between tracks 38 and 39, so I hunted down that area of the terminal. I was not going home without an eight-dollar watch band.

On my way there I walked by the entrance to tracks 39 and 40. I peered down the ramp and saw that there was one train, the 40 train, and it was leaving the station. The passengers had boarded and I reached the platform in just enough time to catch this picture before the train pulled away.

I haven’t had a particularly tough time with turning 40, but then again I planned a few months ago to spend the entire month of May in Spain and Portugal, so there wasn’t a whole lot to be lamenting. Except a few things. There are always (kind of) a few things. Life is not a work of art, but good god the world sure is.

I finally finished writing a book (an accomplishment I thought at times I’d never see) but I don’t have an agent or a publisher. Yet. I keep telling myself that the key word is yet. A week at a yoga retreat taught me a lot about so many things, but one that we kept repeating is that things are just as they’re supposed to be. Patience. Stick with the uncomfortable moments, the pain, the delayed reward. Sit with it.

I had such a good time in Barcelona that I didn’t want to leave, but Ibiza welcomed me like a big hug. After about an hour alone at the pool, I met four British guys who after chatting with me for a short bit invited me to dinner with them. Nazed, Abi, Gully and Azeem are all first generation Brits with roots in India and Africa, and I think all of them speak five languages. Some of their fathers were friends back home, and these boys have all been friends since they were small.

I hesitated only for a moment about going to dinner with them. My gut said it was okay, and I knew with a few euros in my pocket I could get myself home. But why? Why would they want me to join their boys’ weekend away? It didn’t feel right to question their motives, which as it turns out are as pure as pure gets.

The boys are Muslim and I discovered at dinner that they don’t drink, which reassured me because I knew that although they might get hopped up on sugary, fizzy drinks, they wouldn’t have alcohol muddling their decision making. I felt safe. They’re all about my age, and we thought we should check out the famous Ibiza “club scene” though we were early in the season (it kicks off in June) and early to the club at 10:30. Geezers.

We ended up having tea and dessert back near the hotel where I snapped this picture of them that I coined their “boy band picture.” They’re well-dressed and refined, and unlike the majority of American men they don’t throw on a hoodie or fleece when it gets cold; they wear cardigans. Their boy band name was easy to come up with: THE CARDIGANS.

I spent the next day with The Cardigans poolside, laughing and joking like old friends. These are good men. They are patient, kind, and generous. They share. We had several round of food, beverages, ice cream and chocolate and I don’t think anything hit the table that we didn’t all offer each other a taste of.

I’m already pretty blessed in the faith department, but these are the kind of men you meet who restore faith. Faith can be easily lost or misplaced, but with time it always returns. My twelve days in Spain were extraordinary for faith boosting. The kindness of the Catalayunos (a population that doesn’t accept outsiders easily) blew me away. The kindness of a group of married men who simply thought I was funny and clever, shocked and surprised me in a way I hope I never fully recover from.

It was hard to leave The Cardigans, and I stayed several hours past my intended departure time because I could and because one of my favorite things about getting older is the ease with which I identify what I want. I enjoyed the south side of Ibiza because of the company of my new brothers, but the hectic club-scene isn’t my thing; I was ready to head over to Benirras, and I told the guys I’d let them know what it was like and if anything interesting was going on.

Benirras is special. It’s the only beach on Ibiza that doesn’t have a hotel. The yoga retreat is at a couple of villas and pagodas scattered about the hillside. Down on the beach there are a few restaurants including an elegant one, a pizzeria, a juice bar and two places for paella and typical Spanish food. They recently opened a spa, juice bar, and two small boutiques. Lounge chairs and umbrellas can be rented, and that’s it. It’s perfect in its minimalism. It happens to have everything I need.

I wasn’t sure it was enough to warrant The Cardigans coming over, but then I found out that the next night (Sunday) is the night of drumming in Benirras, which started as a protest against the first Iraq war and hasn’t stopped. I emailed Gully about it, and he wrote back, “We will come. We are missing you.” I melted. He also asked if they should wear beach gear or evening wear and I said it was kind of a hippie thing and it would be chilly so they should bring their cardigans.

I told a few of the yoga girls I’d met that my friends were coming over and that at least half of them would be wearing pressed button downs. They laughed and didn’t quite believe me. They also didn’t buy that The Cardigans intentions were pure with nothing ulterior, but you only need to be around them for a few minutes to see that The Cardigans are no-joke awesome.

They are direct, which I find relaxing because it’s exhausting to try to figure out what another person wants and/or if they’re the type who even knows how to express needs and wants. They’re also dead-pan funny with spot-on delivery. In short: The Cardigans are a delight.

The drumming intensifies as the sun goes down, and the crew of us took an “Ellen-style” selfie with the addition of Lucy, who lived across the hall from me in the villa and who must be the sweetest girl in all of London, if not the world.

I think everyone feels a touch of hesitation when they’re going into a group where they’ll be living, eating, and practicing yoga with a bunch of strangers from around the world, and then an enormous relief when it’s discovered they’re not all loons. I can honestly say that I enjoyed every single person on my Ibiza Yoga retreat. I got closer to some than to others, which is only natural; we were far too big a pack to roam everywhere together.

I spent most of my time with Lucy, Lisa (Ireland) and Sarah (Chicago, but had just finished a semester abroad in Barcelona) as well as Maija (the teacher) and Leonie from Holland. I blew out my first birthday candle with Lucy and Lisa (a full week early), and then another one a couple days later at the truly awesome Bambuddha Grove (google it) with the whole group. And it’s not even my birthday yet.

I’m telling 40 loud and clear that i’m not afraid of it. I might even be taunting 40 a little bit, “Oh yeah? What you got? I can almost do a handstand by myself…”

Maija, Leonia and I went to the hippie market one afternoon and we each bought a few things they we were individually drawn to, but we also bought friendship bracelets, friendship rings, and friendship shawls. We drank friendship beers and then friendship aperol spritzes. We drew the line at friendship caricatures and friendship piercings.

Lucy gave me a bracelet from the shop in Benirras for my birthday, and I’ve layered it on with the others and have a wrist full of metal, which symbolizes the raw self and the capacity to be transformed into a higher, incorruptible self. Yes,please.

Sure, I’m tanned and happy with a bunch of things wrapped around my arms so I look exactly like someone who just came from a yoga retreat on Ibiza. I do not care. I’m nearly 40. It’s time to stop caring for real. Why not look like exactly what we are?

A lot of people don’t tell you how terrific and liberating it is to turn 40. Maybe they don’t want to brag? I don’t know. I can let you know tomorrow. Maybe there’s a hesitance to admitting they’re happy to be aging gracefully without all the silly worries and imagined problems of the twenties and thirties bogging a person down. That stuff is heavy, weighty, and cumbersome.

It’s kind of like the opposite of how nobody tells you how hard it is to be married and to parent, because if they did nobody would do it. We don’t warn each other about the tough stuff, but act all blasé about the good stuff? C’mon, folks, let’s get it together. I’m on the edge of 40 and I’ve never felt happier. True story.

I wasn’t completely sad to be leaving Barcelona because I had Ibiza to look forward to, and I couldn’t be completely crushed leaving Ibiza because I was headed to meet my Soph (will explain in a different post) in Lisbon where I’m turning 40 with one of my dearest friends whose birthday follows mine by 4 days. It’s not just a birthDAY for each of us, it’s a birthWEEK.

Our 40 train is leaving the station. Together.

Mano a Mano

My last day in Barcelona was just too beautiful to go inside, so I went to the Park Guell for my cultural attraction del dia. The park was designed by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi, Barcelona’s famous architect and it’s as much a park as it is a display of creative architecture.

People told me it was too far to walk there from my hotel, but I hoofed it up the hill early for the opening of the gate. I powered around the park, and got to the top where some ladies had their dogs running around off leash and nobody cared. Dogs are everywhere here, and often walk the city streets without leashes. It’s lovely, and says a lot to me about a place, the way they treat their animals.

I was about to leave the top of the hill, when an older man took my hand and took me through some trees. It sounds scarier than it was. He just wanted to point out a few landmarks. Tibidabo Mountain, across the city with both a church and an amusement park, was lit by the morning sun, and I actually gasped when I saw it, then laughed when he said Tibidabo.

Mano a Mano we went to the other side for a bird’s eye view of Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, which I’ll visit when I come back here at the end of the month. All I really know about it now is that the church has been under construction for over one hundred years.

Antonio and I held hands and he walked me all around the park. He only tried to get fresh a couple of times, but listened when I said, “No, Antonio. Dame el mano.”

I took a bunch of pictures (that are stuck on my camera until i get home), but below is an iPhone shot of Antonio.

Catalan is the official language of Barcelona, and though everyone also learns Spanish in school most Catalayunos are loyal to their region, their language, and their customs that the Spanish have tried to brutalize out of them. I’ve learned a lot about the history, but also what is going on right now politically (the Catalayunos don’t currently have a political vote) and how this region differentiates from the rest of the country.

Many people seem to speak a mix of Spanish and Catalan, even if it’s just inserting Catalan words or expressions into a Spanish sentence. Sometimes one sentence is Catalan, then the next Spanish. My Spanish is limited anyway, but boy does that make my head spin. And no, the two languages are not similar. I’ve had more than a few conversations that were limited because of language barriers, and although it’s frustrating at times, it’s refreshing to just communicate the basics and enjoy some silence. Which is curious coming from someone like me who hardly ever shuts up….

I learned a lot from a sweet woman named Angels, who works for a national music program for children and speaks several languages, including English. We sat together at a small tapas bar when she stepped in to save me from a man who was talking only Catalan to me and wanted to take me salsa dancing. Angels gave me her number and we might meet up again before I go home.

I ate at the same place two night in a row because it’s in my neighborhood, and I liked it so much the first time. It’s just perfect.

The first night I had a cheese plate that the bartender didn’t think I could finish (I did), and the next I was so hungry after a day of walking the park, walking miles along the beach, and having no lunch, so I ordered the local potato dish and an Iberian ham sampler. The only person who had faith I could finish it was Angels, and I didn’t disappoint. YUM.

Now I’m on Ibiza, where I met four British guys my age on holiday. They’re all my age, and although we went to one of Ibiza’s infamous beach parties (we were early, so it was quiet…), we unanimously decided that we’d end our night with tea and dessert at a wee Thai bistro near our hotel.

One of my favorite things about getting older: knowing what you want and doing it.

The 40-train leaves the station next week….