I had been in Granada for a month. I followed a strict ritual. Set my alarm for 05:45. Force myself to turn the lights on. Straighten up. Rest my feet on the wooden floor. Make my bed. Get dressed. Shorts. Drink one glass of water (at which my empty stomach cringed) // then one shot of coffee. By 07:15, I was already on the road. Arrived at 07:40. Left at 09:10. Got home. Showered. Got dressed. Ate breakfast: a pancake, honey, and juice (yes, with the Oxford comma) // Read // Had coffee (Turkish) // Drank two full glasses of water (just in case I was tempted to see the glass half emtpy). Wore my shoes. Walked the corridor. Checked the mailbox… and walked along Gran Vía, 12 full minutes, until #11 on Buensuceso. I discovered what Granada looked like in the early hours of the morning, when the hues of the rising sun blessed the atmosphere with their warm caress, and the chirping of the birds’ cries ran throug the thin air. I loved that perpetual dedication, that gruesome effort, and the rewarding feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day.
I had given up using maps long ago. Memorised the streets: what lay around every corner and beyond every turn, the restaurants, the bars and the iconic coffee shops; but also, the museums, the bookshops, the libraries. Granada was discreet. It was discreet and unpretentious. Everybody smiled. Everybody was always well dressed—even when doing sports. Everybody was smiling. Everybody was polite. There was an endless charm in the way people there pursued their daily habits, and an elegance in how they managed their tasks. There was magic in how merchants opened their shops and stood behind their counters; how kids lined up on the pavement to hop on the school bus; how the elderly held hands in contentedly while walking down the streets. There was enchantment in the bread coming out of the bakeries’ ovens at dawn, and although I did not eat bread, I made sure to stroll down the same narrow street every morning in an ever yearning for its bewitching smell.
I was good. I was eating well. I felt good. I walked. I read. As I marched, ate, drank, and listened to music. I read as if I would be soon running out of books; in haste, in yearning, with a craving, with appetite, as if the abyss was going to swallow all the written pages in the world the next day. I heard the spring in the last rains of March, pouring onto the roof adjacent to my balcony. Yet here was spring, taking its time as always, as if it enjoyed making me wait, as if it lagged behind on purpose, as if there were still a long way to go before warmth anchored itself in April. I saw the trees blossom, the riverbanks come to life, the sun linger before disappearing, even the bells toll with a joy that winter could have never have known even if it had desired to. And how fiercely I loved waiting the spring, impatiently anticipating the warm taste of a long-locked-away summer. I thought of how my love could have resembled spring.
I had taken comfort in the idea that love could, even for a fleeting moment, read from afar. Maybe it could felt from a distance. People often say they know when they are about to meet their person. That person’s presence becomes too heavy all of a sudden, an omnipresent burden holding onto them, like the tight grip of a furious predator. A wild presence around a turn, around a corner, at a bus stop, in the metro. They could not have been more wrong, I thought back then. As far as trusting my guts was concerned, I always had. I wondered whether my person would, too.
Anyway, I have a story for you. We were having a conversation, my professor and I, about Montréal, and, ironically, I ended never filling the application. She looked at me: “I’m stunned.” I could tell she was disappointed. And I could also tell it wasn’t the right time to fill out any application, let alone to think about anything that didn’t involve finishing my thesis, once and for all. The thought haunted me, like a feeling, an intuition, an instinct, that I should not look back. I should not force things. But the truth was, I was never good at looking back, even when I bitterly desired to do so, even when I brutally desired to be proven wrong. That was who I was. I thought, humans prefer palpable things. Things that can be touched. Things that the hands can feel. Explicit. Concrete. Definite. Tangible. Instead of the true things that only the heart can see. We wait for signs—a hint, a signal, a clue // Just one // That’s how cheap we are. Instead of writing our own story, walking our own less-travelled path, deciding how the river flows. We cling to manifestations that leave no trace. We can’t control falling in love, yet we predict falling out of love. You see, whenever our endeavors require a leap of faith, we fall back. We create excuses, then we create excuses for those excuses, until we run out of justifications for abandoning what we initiated in the first place—which no one forced us into or enticed us to undertake. We are too good at running away. Too sharp at leaving. Yet we constantly demand that others remain present, and deliberately cast them out when they fail. Don’t mind me. I’m thinking out loud because maybe—maybe—I don’t have the luxury of seeing you face to face. Maybe it is because you are a burden I was glad to overcome.
I guess it would still boil down to one thing. Getting on that plane was the best decision I had taken in a long time.
—R.