May 2, 1999

We arrived in Sevilla last Wednesday (April 28) and took a taxi directly to the Carboneria, a famous old night club owned by Paco Lira, a wonderful Flamenco aficionado who is a great supporter of Flamenco artists. Luis Agujeta (our friend) sings here almost nightly and lives here when in Sevilla (like now). (Freddie has known both Paco and Luis for fifteen years. Luis spent almost a month at our house last fall). And now we are the guests, an interesting change of roles which we are also enjoying. We are near the Murillo Gardens and the Barrio Santa Cruz on Calle Levies, a narrow street about 6 inches wider than a car. The streets here are cobblestone and brick and wind past tall, ancient houses with red and pink geraniums blooming on the balconies, as if for centuries. There are courtyards intricately tiled around fountains and flowers that we can see beyond the wrought irons gates as we pass by. Although many apartments are being remodeled, the buildings feel ancient and the feeling of Sevilla is much the same as Freddie and I remember it from the 80s. There are many outdoor cafes where we eat tapas and drink strong, dark coffee during the day. We also go to the bars for tapas and drinks, standing hours at the high counters, Spanish style, laughing and talking with our friends. Almost everyone here seems to drink non-stop throughout the day and the night. I dont know how they do it, but the fino and the manzanilla (less strong) are great. Freddie has been drinking Tonica and Cokes.

Paco Lira fixed up a room here at the Carboneria for us. We can stay until we find an apartment, which he is looking for for us. He has been a gracious host. Our room here is like an attic room, on the third floor of this former blacksmith shop. Our rooms blue and white tile floor and three small spiral steps leading to a roof top porch give it a more open dimension. Another door in our room leads to a tiny balcony and the two windows and white walls make it very light and airy. The two single mattresses on the two single beds are brand new. The room is so newly fixed up (Paco wants Luis to stay here after we find our apartment) that when it rained Wednesday the room was full of leaks, with 4 plastic buckets trying to catch the water. Of course our things got wet, but the bed stayed dry. The next day they fixed the roof again and it hasnt leaked since! We have hung a rope from two white painted iron rings fastened to the wall and now we have a place for our clothes. There is a small wooden shelf and a narrow wooden night stand for more of our things. Five wicker chairs complete the furnishings. In the corner of the room are some huge wooden picture frames and some paintings stacked haphazardly against the wall. We plugged an extension cord in downstairs for the one light in the room, a bare light bulb that Freddie found downstairs. We think they forgot about electricity when they fixed up the room! The purple and white carnations that Paco gave us when we arrived are still looking fresh in the vase on the cement shelf by the head of our bed.

We walk down the steep narrow stairs to the bathroom (no toilet seat, a striped curtain for the door). On this floor Luis has a small room (also with a curtained door), although he and Rubina Valenzuela, our old friend and Luis’ girlfriend, have been staying in Luis’ newly acquired furgoneta” (pronounced furmineta; it means a camper). Paco himself has a kind of apartment here too, no doors, but a bedroom and also a sitting room with a round table and a large, old armoire. He is in his early 70s but looks like 60, except for a condition in his legs which Rubina, who works in a medical clinic, thinks looks like gangrene. I have been treating it with oils (which help) but we are trying to convince him to go to a regular doctor for a correct diagnosis. It feels serious. He says it is circulation. It may be, but Paco is on his feet all day and is famous for his fast paced walk (an understatement). We all walked back from the church with him on Saturday (after the baptism of his granddaughter) and could hardly keep up! He certainly gets enough exercise but we are told he is somewhat of a work-aholic and probably doesnt rest or sleep enough. He has nine grown children and is passionately estranged from his ex wife, but not her relatives.

Pacos brother-in-law, the singer Juan Camas, also has a room here, on this second floor, with walls made of cardboard! These two floors are closed off from the rest of the Carboneria by a heavy trap door, lifted and shut by heavy weights to counterbalance it. Going down through this door are steep stairs which lead to one of the two bars at the Carboneria. The Carboneria used to be a blacksmith shop at one time but now as a music club is a known landmark for both tourists and Sevillianos alike. It has a dark, old, huge entrance foyer type room with carved rosewood, the original part of the forge. There are many photographs and paintings of great Flamenco artists on the walls and it feels like a living Flamenco museum. Another room here is part of a garden patio (covered) with another bar and a stage for dancing and singing and of course guitar. This room leads to the outdoor patio which is filled with plants in pots as well as with tables and chairs. We can practice on the stage during the day and take dance classes as well. Concha Vargas, a warm hearted and intense gypsy bailora, teaches here and I have already taken one private class from her, starting to learn a Siguiriya. I will take five more classes before she leaves for Japan for a month.

Freddie will take his first guitar class from Carlos Heredia, Luis special guitar player, on Monday.

The weather here has been cold and rainy, not what we expected. But we are so glad to be here and have been having phenomenal luck here. We are in the flow and it feels like the world here has opened to us almost magically, unfolding more and more in many unexpected ways. The music is wonderful and the people we have met wonderful too. We are already having those unforgettable experiences.

We ran into Carla and Miguel Ochoa (used to be Carla Waldo, from the Renaissance faire). Carla lived at my house on Amesti (Corralitos) for a while in the late 70s and has known Freddie for about thirty years. Carla, still long haired and slender, is a dancer and Miguel, also long haired but not slender, a guitarist. They have been coming to Spain regularly during the eighteen years they have been married. They have given us valuable tips about being in Sevilla already as well as being great people to hang out with. Yesterday we attended the baptism of Pacos granddaughter. Afterwards there was a great fiesta and Luis sang beautifully. At midnight he turned forty nine years old. May 2 is his birthday. Before he sang, we were entertained by a group of young gypsies. One of the young women in that group had also just been baptized that day in preparation for her upcoming marriage. She and her friends danced, sang, and played guitar in celebration. Concha joined them and we videotaped and ate. Then Luis sang while Carlos Heredia played and the music was legendary. How lucky we are to be in the middle of such great Flamenco. Freddie and I are starting to get over jet lag, but have not been to bed before three or four AM. yet.

Outside, the birds are chirping the music for Sunday. All else is quiet. We went out to eat this morning (actually afternoon) between the raindrops at an outdoor cafe owned by a friend of Pacos, May (pronounced “My”). May, probably in her forties, with piercing blue eyes and a beautiful, friendly, round face, sat with us and practiced her English. Paco and his friend Manolo were with us and Pacos son Pisco and his wife, Tony, joined us. Manolo, a small, sprightly man in his late seventies, (we found out later he is only sixty three) speaks slowly and clearly so we can understand him pretty well. He has spent much time in Morocco and spent one late evening around Pacos round table talking about Morocco with Freddie. Manolo knows a lot about history and architecture and is helping to educate us. Freddie says, The Flamenco bug bit big and is spreading fast. I think it bit a long long time ago. Freddie and I love being here together and our pace as well as our likes and dislikes seem to match perfectly.

May 5, 1999

Its almost one week since we have arrived and our Spanish is improving rapidly. Freddie is taking private guitar lessons from Carlos Heredia, Luiss gypsy guitar player. He has a great smile and is a talented maestro as well as incredible and skilled guitar player. Freddie is learning Carloss techniques, cleaning and polishing, as well as some beautiful and difficult falsetas. I have taken three private lessons with Concha Vargas and have learned the first letra of a Siguiriyas. We have videoed our classes and go during siesta or at night arriba, to our high up attic room. Here in this ancient building, on the cool blue and white square tiled floor, we plug the video camera into the laptop computer and watch our lessons on the laptop screen. Its so hard to fit practice time into our day. Right now Freddie opened the window and we can hear Luis singing down below, on the garden stage. Do we drop everything and run down? Now Freddie says he thinks its not Luis, and I agree as I listen and so we decide to stay here a while longer. Freddies practicing is sounding so beautiful. Then he stops and the singing down below builds to a crescendo of driving tangos. Its two in the morning, (Wednesday AM) and the Carboneria is still packed. I try to get to bed early but still it gets to be four or four thirty AM. We often stay up late talking with Paco around the round table of Pacos apartment, and sometimes are joined by Manolo or other of Pacos many friends. I put oils on Pacos legs which are still improving, amazing even me at their power. We looked at another apartment today, but Paco has said to wait because he has a good lead on one. Paco knows everyone. He is a leftist, bohemian friend and supporter of artists, which means musicians, singers and dancers. He must have a lot of money because the Carboneria does so well, but Paco lives simply and humbly is his quarters on the second floor. In the mornings he gets up between ten and twelve and walks down the narrow winding old street to Mays restaurant, Alta Mira, on Calle (street) Santa Maria la Blanca and sits outdoors at one of the round white tables under the umbrella and drinks tea and reads the leftist Diario newspaper. Then, when not helping us with things, he heads back to the Carboneria to begin his day, which is a work day. The Carboneria is open seven days a week. So, we appreciate the time Paco has taken from his day to help us. Yesterday he walked with us to another two phone stores and now we have a mobile phone, a Movistar. The connector for the phone jack, so we can e-mail, has been ordered and will take two weeks to arrive. Then we will be able to access our e-mail on a regular basis. But, at least now we can be called at 34 (code for Spain) 616-005-837. Remember that Spain is 9 hours ahead of California so please dont call us before noon, Spain time!

This Friday we plan to go to the Feria de Jerez for the weekend in the furgoneta (camper) with Luis and Rubina. Then after that we will all drive up to Madrid so Rubina can talk to Flamenco Vivo who wants to distribute the CD she produced in America of Luis singing. We would also visit David Jones, a guitarist whom Freddie has known since 1958, and Clara Mora, David’s dancer partner, who have contacted us via e-mail. David has lived in Madrid for about thirty years and is known there as David Serva. Last night we visited Carla and Miguel Ochoa who are staying in a delightful room at Evelina Krones house. Evelina was a good friend of Anzonini del Puerto. (Anzonini was a wonderful warm hearted gypsy cantaor (singer) with whom I studied dance quite a while ago in both Berkeley and in Moron, Spain and who is long dead). Evelina died very recently of lung cancer. Evelina, originally from Germany, was a legend both in Spain and among the Flamenco aficionados in the United States (and probably other countries too). She knew (I think) every great gypsy Flamenco artist and was a gracious host to Flamenco visitors in Spain. In 1980 she took Marc (my former husband) and me all over Andalucia and introduced me to my singing idol, La Fernanda, in the pueblo (town) of Utrera. So now Evelinas long time partner Roberto owns the house but the feel of Evelina is everywhere. The books in the shelves reflect her tastes, the plants in the courtyard. The big old house feels like a place Hemingway would have lived. It is definitely the place of an ageless Bohemian artist. For some reason it reminds me of a much smaller modern day Alhambra, perhaps because of the way the house is laid out. This is also where Roberto and Alicia Zamora will stay when they come to Spain this May.

May 6, 1999

Time keeps passing. Last night Luis sang so beautifully and Carlos played so well. It is truly Flamenco heaven. I have one more class with Concha before she leaves to teach in Japan for a month. I have learned the Salida and a Letra of Siguiriyas. I will have to learn the escobilla when she returns. The Feria of Jerez does not start until next week so we will be in Sevilla a while longer, which is fine with me. We are still here at the Carboneria and that is fine with Paco. We have another light in the room and now only need a table or desk and somewhere to put the rest of our clothes. Well probably get all settled and then find the apartment. But, Freddie and I both are enjoying being here, right in the middle of everything. The rain still drizzles, but the weather is turning hot. Rubina and I bought Rocio dresses yesterday (in Triana) which are now being altered for us. This is basically a shorter kind of Flamenco dress which I can live in while camping in the dusty, dirty, partying conditions of Rocio, a festive pilgrimage honoring the Virgin of Rocio to the town of Rocio. (I read about it many years ago in Michners Iberia).

We still havent had time to see Luis ranch in the campo (country). Rubina says it is very rustic; running water just barely. But it is supposed to be very quiet and Luis likes to escape there from the city. Freddie and I are still enjoying the city, being in this fascinating and ancient town. And we are both learning so much and still improving our Spanish. As the stores were closing (around 8:30 PM) Luis, Rubina, Freddie and I walked through the little winding streets to the shoe store district looking for Rocio boots. There were also lots of stores selling wedding clothes and Freddie and I are looking and getting some ideas. It is so exciting to look and to think of planning our wedding. I never did this one before! In some ways I feel like I am in my 20s instead of my middle 50s. But I guess at this age I appreciate it more. We both feel so lucky and were still having so much FUN.

PS. The evening after the day we got the phone we went with Carla and Miguel to a little shopping center that had a machine in it to print cards for three dollars and we printed 300 cards with our new Spanish mobile phone number and our names on it. It is so much fun to give out our cards with our phone number from here on them!

May 13, 1999

This week we have been running around looking for a harp for Freddie to play this Friday in a concert in the town of Rota with Luis, Rubina (who will dance), and Carlos. The show will take place at the Viejo Agujeta Pena, a Flamenco club named in honor of Luis late father, a very well respected Flamenco cantaor (singer). Last Saturday we drove to Luiss home in the campo (country) which is near Chipiona and near Rota, close to the sea. We drove the two hours down with Jose Luis, a Flamenco aficionado, and Paco, and Julien, a handsome, dark haired, twenty five year old singer of Bulgarian gypsy music who is a friend of Pacos. He and a French classical guitar player, Francois, have been staying here at the Carboneria on some of the single beds and sleeping pads on Pacos floor (below us). Julien will leave on Friday for Switzerland and then go to France for six months. We arrived, after getting a little lost and having to call Luis with our movil (cell) phone, at Luiss ranch from which we can see the ocean in the distance. Luis father, El Viejo Agujeta, had bought the land long ago. Luis house is on a small parcel next to other parcels where his brothers also have houses. Luis took us all out to lunch at a little funky cafe a stones throw away and we ate venao (deer) which was delicious. Then Jose Luis took Paco and Julien back to Sevilla and Freddie and I stayed in the campo.

Luis has built this very rural house by hand and it is still under construction and is very basic. The entry has two huge old green wooden doors which lead to a wide rectangular room where Rubina has hung a line to dry clothes. Swallows fly through the crack in the top of the door and have built a nest inside this room. The mother circles around to distract us from her babies. The room feels like it is outside and is light and airy and not air tight. The next door leads inside the house to the living room. Its main furnishing is a large table which was a desk that Luis and Rubina found recently in the trash! People throw out really good stuff here. To the left, as you enter, is a room with a single bed and a concrete floor and a broken mirror. To the right is Luis bedroom. It has a nice double bed which Luis and Rubina kindly let us stay in. Rubina had washed the sheets by hand so we would have a nice, clean place to sleep. This room also has a dresser and another single bed on which Rubina keeps her large, open suitcase. (She is returning to Santa Cruz, California, where she lives, in June). Beyond the living room is a small kitchen with cold running water. To the right is the bathroom. Its tub is concrete with one Spanish tile giving a hint of what it might be in the future. It has a hand held shower and has both hot and cold running water heated by a propane flash heater. The floor too is concrete and unfinished. The toilet has a seat because of Rubinas insistence, but it still has to be flushed with a bucket. Next to the toilet is a chair which holds toilet paper, towels, and other things I cant remember. The light is turned on and off by connecting and disconnecting some wires that only Luis can do.

May 14, 1999

Back to the harp chase. Luis had located a harp for us in Rota but it turned out to be in bad shape and not fixable. Since then we have spent almost all our time searching for a harp for Freddie to play in the concert tonight. We ended up staying in the campo that first time for more days than we planned, which only briefly interrupted our constant search. After many music stores and meetings with people we have nothing. A woman wanted to rent us a harp for $400 (her lowest price!) but we did not think it was worth it to spend that kind of money for Freddie to play in the show. Of course he is disappointed. One music store located harps in Madrid but the two harps offered to us for sale were $4 - 5,000 which is way more than they cost in the States so we said no. Paco offered to pay for half! He is such a nice man. But we didnt think it was worth it. I thought, since Spain is fairly close to Ireland, that harps would be more available. I sure was wrong!

May 21, 1999

Its hard to find time to write. The days pass and we are getting so relaxed that it is hard to get things done. We still get up at eleven or twelve and take our coffee at Alta Mira with Paco, but now we keep yogurt in the refrigerator on Pacos level, which is by the bathroom and the beginning of our stairs. We drink our green powder with the liquid vitamins we brought from home and eat a banana, if we still have them, with our yogurt. We are also still eating the Jamon (ham) Serrano that Freddie won at the Feria de Jerez. We have borrowed Luis wooden contraption designed specifically for cutting these hams that hang from the ceiling in so many of the little bars here. Our ham sits on the shaky square wooden table we procured from downstairs. Right now our table is filled with things that have no other place: a jar of olives, a plastic bottle of water, a notebook and pen, maps of Sevilla and Spain, and a nearly used up bottle of red wine that Rubina and Freddie went in on halves to serve our company here when Jose Luis and his girlfriend Nacha visited our cuarto for the first time. Freddie is not drinking alcohol but loves the cerveza (beer) sin (without alcohol). The table, in the center of our room, collects all our stuff: Freddies brush and pipe, video mini cassettes of his guitar lessons, a bottle of lighter fluid, the case to the movil (pronounced mowvee) phone, cigarettes (yes, Freddie has started smoking again, like almost all the adults in Spain), an ashtray, a knife, an empty small size old fashioned coke bottle, a bottle of our green nutritional powder, a roll of paper towels, and papers I had printed from the computer at home detailing Andalucian festivales and giving their months. The big brown wardrobe Paco let us bring up from below to use is on the far end of the room. Yesterday Paco had a grape tree in a large tin can brought up to our tiny balcony. Yesterday and today his workers installed a drip watering system with a timer to water the plants on the balcony and on the porch up here. I see that slowly Paco is transforming this place just as we like to do at home. Paco has said we can stay here our whole time, so today we bought a piece of foam to put over our two single mattresses which will be delivered tomorrow. We also bought a larger bottom sheet that should stay tucked. Paco said that we could use the phone line from his fax machine in his office to put an e-mail telephone outlet for us here in the room. The phone company has to be called to bring the line up to this room. It will be great to check our e-mail from home. Only, Paco hasnt asked the person to call yet and it could take weeks! Now I have to ask his son Sergio to take me to the office next door so I have a phone line to e-mail from. He unlocks the front door to the building, next the door to the actual office, and then the door to the room with the fax machine in it. Then he waits very impatiently while I get my e-mail. The few times I have had to go to the web to put up my web page his impatience at the long time spent has made me not want to ask him to help me again, but I have to check my mail. He doesnt do anything overtly, but I can feel it too well! And I hate using up his time. But soon, ojala, we will have a phone jack input in our room. We are listening to the Flamenco down below in the patio room right now as I write. The weather, after raining and turning cold unexpectedly for a few days, has warmed again and our windows are open to the night.

May 22, 1999

We are listening to Flamenco from down below again, but this time it is from a CD. It is Saturday and there is a political meeting/luncheon down below. The Spanish Green party and the Spanish leftist party have merged, at least for this event and its particular cause, but I think they meant in general. My Spanish comprehension still has holes in it and I have to struggle to make sense of more complicated conversation. But Freddies and my comprehension has been improving and we help each other. It is hot again today, but the garden patio outside is shaded by Pacos many plants and the greenery brings shade and coolness. Upstairs we have the fan on and the windows covered with sheets to block the suns intensity. We foraged on the second floor today and have come up with a small desk for the computer and a lamp and a narrow wicker stand with four shelves. We have stacked vitamins, water, wine, paper towels and napkins, our one plate, two forks and several borrowed glasses. The rickety square table in the middle of our room has more space this way and appears less crowded. The video camera now stands on its tripod to the left of the desk, ready to be plugged easily into the computer. To its left is the former computer table, now holding the digital camera, the electric toothbrush, the jazz drive, the recharger for our movil phone, earphones and batteries, and the remote control to the video camera. A plastic trash bag hangs from one side. We have three tooled, scrolled straight leather backed chairs and four low wicker chairs to sit on. The large foam pad we ordered to cover our two single mattresses now won’t be delivered until Monday. We discovered last night that the reason Freddie has been so uncomfortable is because his beds mattress is really the box spring mattress that should be below a regular mattress! We cant wait for the foam pad that will make sleeping much more comfortable. Our large bottom sheet that stays tucked has now replaced the other sheet we had been using that never stayed on the bed because it was too small. Bit by bit we are creating our new environment.

Weve been to the campo again and to the Feria de Jerez. Here at the Carboneria we ran into a friend from music camp, Leslie, who does Irish dancing and loves rhythm. We hung out together and she went with us to Luis house and to the Feria. The Friday night before the Feria, Luis, Rubina, and Carlos Heredia did the show at Luis fathers Pena. That was the show where Freddie was supposed to play harp but we were never able to get the harp. We ended up videoing the show instead. Rubina danced well and the gypsies loved her and her Alegrias. Of course Carlos and Luis were a hit too. That Sunday we dropped Leslie, who was nearing the end of her trip, off at the train station in Puerta de Santa Maria, the pueblo (town) where Anzonini was from. It felt for us like a kind of pilgrimage to visit there, a silent honoring of that kind hearted gypsy singer and dance teacher whom Freddie and I both knew and loved so much. At the Feria we ran into Roberta and Charlie from Santa Cruz. They are living near Malaga in the country and plan to be in Spain for two years.

When we returned to the Carboneria Nacha, Jose Luis girlfriend, gave Rubina and me small gifts with a nice card. I received a Moroccan necklace and a nice hair clip and Rubina a beaded necklace with large orange/brown colored stones (amber?) and a hair decoration. The necklace matches Rubinas hair color and looks great on her. Nachas dark hair, often pulled back, frames her thin, correctly made up, pretty face. She usually wears nylons, closed shoes, and knee length straight skirts, often with a matching jacket. She is probably in her forties but heavy smoking makes everyone look older here. Jose Luis too is dark haired, but his huge belly contrasts greatly with Nachas overly slender figure. They speak no English so we have been pushed to communicate in Spanish! Jose Luis, as I might have said, is a Flamenco aficionado and knows almost everyone, including Chris Carnes (a guitarist friend from the States who lived in Spain in the sixties and studied with Diego del Gastor in Moron), which means that Jose Luis has been around for a while. We went with them and Rubina and Luis to the beginning of Rocio. Freddie and I got up at seven AM to join Nacha, her sister Lola, and her friend Aurelia for the Mass in Plaza Salvador where the Virgin leaves the church and is carried to Rocio and then back. Freddie became uncomfortable with the religious aspects had to leave the church in the middle of the mass. I remained and videoed parts of the Misa Flamenca in the church. We have a CD at home of Misa Flamenca which is much better than what we heard in the church. But the experience was fun and the church filled with men and women in their Rocio trajes (costumes). I wore my purple and orange Rocio dress too, but with sandals because I still havent found the right Rocio boots. From the church the covered Rocio wagons pulled by horses and some by tractors leave in procession for the road to Rocio. People stop often and rest along the way, drinking, eating, dancing, playing music and singing. We drove to such a stop and joined them for a while. It was fun and dusty. We never got it together to drive with the Rociero procession the whole time and to camp along the way with them. One of the crossings is very sandy and you need a jeep, tractor, or horses in order to cross without getting stuck. We will take a bus to Rocio later in the week and join in the celebration there. We have been told there is too much traffic to drive there. Jose Luis will probably come with us. Rubina and Luis are in the campo again but plan to return today. Tomorrow, Sunday, they take the Ave (pronounced avay), the express train, to Madrid to sell the CDs and for Luis and Rubina to perform at a Pena there.

After Rocio we are thinking of going to the Feria of Granada where Viva is living. We have been here over three weeks and I wonder where all our time has gone. Freddie has been practicing a lot every day but I have a hard time finding time to practice my footwork on a good floor (not tile). I go over my Siguiriyas constantly in my head and in my sandals but not much in my dance shoes.

When Concha returns from Japan I will have to be more disciplined.

May 26, 1999

I journeyed (a shamanic journey) yesterday because another person has requested Shamanic healing work. How word gets around. I think Paco tells people about me.

In yesterdays journey I also asked for help practicing and today I found the space and time and practiced downstairs on the stage in the Carbonerias garden room for almost three hours. I feel much better. Freddie spent half an hour with me at first and then he had a two hour lesson with Carlos. Afterward he practiced some more with me. My practice was good and the Siguiriyas is coming along.

Two days ago we went pedal boating on the Guadalquivir river at dusk with Roberto and Alicia Zamora. It was wonderful and beautiful and we took more photos. Hopefully we will upload them into the computer and onto the internet. The digital camera takes phenomenal photos. Roberto and Alicia and Carla and Miguel all leave sometime next week. We have had fun with them. We all went to an incredible to-die-for show last night and it was free! Carla discovered a little blurb a few weeks ago in a Spanish newspaper and she tracked it down. It was put on by a bank and had very little publicity and started at eight PM which is very very early for Spain. People are just getting off work at seven or eight PM. (Of course they get from two to five PM off for siesta when everything but the Corte Ingles department store closes here). The small theater wasnt even quite full but would have been way too small if the word had gotten out. We arrived half an hour early and got great seats and saw the Jerez style company of Antonio la Pipa. Antonio is a perfect dancer. His aunt, Juana la Pipa was one of the singers. His grandmother was Tia (aunt) Juana la Pipa, one of the great singers in the Flamenco hall of fame. I wish we had recorded it. The troupe seems to be made up of his relatives. Flamenco is sure to live on with young talent like that. We think he is about 26 years old. He is certainly one of the greats already. They headed out the next day for a big show in Madrid which I am sure cost a lot of money and was probably sold out. This is what we have come to Spain for. This was Flamenco at its best and we feel so lucky to have seen it. The audience was great and every performer was wonderful. Afterwards we walked to the Bar Eslava, near Calle Feria in the Macarena, for tapas and then walked back across town to the Carboneria. We visited for a while in our room and then heard that Carlos was playing solo in the smaller room directly beneath us, so we went downstairs for that. He was on and was finishing when we arrived. When we told him we had come downstairs specifically to hear him he got out his guitar again and played more, beautifully, until a mediocre singer covered in large, gaudy gold jewelry, started to sing and broke the ambiance. Luis and Rubina were still in the Campo so of course Luis wasn’t singing that night at the Carboneria.

Yesterday afternoon Paco put in our phone line so Freddie and I returned to our room and checked our e-mail. What a treat. Again, we didnt get to sleep until four AM, but we are still trying to get to sleep earlier. There is so much to do here. In the morning yesterday we bought a rolling shopping cartera like the old ladies use and went to the big market by the bridge. It is in a gigantic stone warehouse and is filled with stalls selling meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, and a few household items. It reminds Freddie of Mexico. We bought our supplies of cheese, yogurt, water and bananas. In one stall I bought the cheese, yogurt and water and the man there didnt have change and neither did I. So he took my mil pesetas (about seven dollars) and said he would collect the rest another time! I love it. People are so nice here. And this market is definitely for the locals. We bought a foam pad in another store (on the way to the mercado) and now our backs feel a lot better. People in the stores remember us and say hello when we meet them on the street or in other stores. The man from the leather store where I bought my green leather belt came to tell me, when he saw me in another store, that my belt was ready! Its nice not being just another tourist. There is an herbal health store here where Paco shops, right up Santa Maria La Blanca. Freddie bought some ginseng cigarettes which are much easier on his lungs than tobacco. We bought some stevia (plant sugar substitute) there for Paco after he tracked it down. Slowly we are creating our life here. We have to think about what is important and then prioritize it. Freddie is great about practicing and is still improving rapidly. I want to be as disciplined as he is and today I started. He says it is harder when I dont have a teacher and I know he is right. A lot of the teachers seem to be away right now. In June Concha will be back and so will Juana Amaya who people say is good too.

May 27, 1999

I practiced again today. It felt good. Last night we drove with Nacha and Jose Luis to see the candelas, the campfires of the people in the hermandades (brotherhoods) returning from Rocio. It is three days going, three days there, and three days returning, as Nachas friend Pepi says, to the real world. When we arrived at this designated finca (ranch), late because we had gotten lost, everything was put away and cleaned up at the table in front of Pepis “carreta” (covered wagon/camper pulled by a gigantic tractor). When we found her at one of the other wagons camped in the large circle on the dusty, flat field, she immediately went into her wagon and started to bring out drinks and dishes of food: gambas (shrimp), jamon serrano (pata negra ham, a special cut of black haired pig leg that is cured and cut into very thin slices when served), several types of sausage, queso manchega (wonderful hard, cheese), carne (pork meat), olives, bread, cookies, beer (with and without alcohol), water, whiskey, and Casera (a sweet fizzy drink for mixing with red wine). And she kept her good humor. Pepi is about my height (under five feet), dark haired and olive complexioned, smiley and full of energy. She is thirty one with a fourteen year old beautiful daughter and a handsome husband. She and her husband Antonio fixed up their carreta together and she sewed all the Rocio costumes that fill her closet inside the carreta. We met her when we went to Rocio with Jose Luis on Sunday where she also fed us and showed us around. She is the cleaning lady at the clinic where Nacha works as a nurse but Nacha assures me they are equals. Pepi was entranced with our digital camera and took several pictures, bringing us around to the three campfires blazing in the center of the clearing. People sat around and warmed themselves, as there in the country the air was a little cooler than in Sevilla. In one circle people were playing and singing Sevillanas and two little boys sang. They both had good voices and serious demeanors. Here is the shaping of young talent. Unfortunately, we had been led to believe we would just be away for ten minutes or so and it turned into five hours! So we got to bed late again and got up a little later than we intended, to go to the Thursday Rastro (flea market) at the Alameda. We did get there and bought two plates to eat off of and some beautiful enlargements of some prints of Sevilla from 1900 which the man selling them had taken from a fabulous old book he wouldn’t sell!

Then we went to Evelina’s house near Calle (street) Feria and the Rastro to visit Alicia and Roberto. Miguel was there playing guitar with Juan del Gastor a nephew of the famous Diego del Gastor of Moron who taught so many of the guitarists we know. Lucy del Gastor (his English wife) was practicing dance in the studio off of the shady courtyard. Carla was at a dance class with La Tona. Carla and Miguel leave Monday. Roberto and Alicia leave Wednesday. After a nice visit, Freddie and I left early for lunch because we had not had breakfast and I wanted to get back to the Carboneria to use the stage to practice on before the people who practice at six arrived. Things happen late here. We arrived back a little before four so I practiced for an hour and a half.

I am starting to make choices. If we had waited to go to lunch with everyone I would have missed my practice time. We will meet them tonight for a flamenco show at the Duque theater. Carlos Robles, the dancer who came to America with Luis and who stayed at our house, will be meeting us here after Freddie’s class with Carlos Heredia and we will go to the show together. Freddie’s class started tonight at nine because that way Carlos doesn’t have to return to his house way on the outskirts of Sevilla and then come back again. Carlos works tonight at the Carboneria, starting at around eleven. He usually gives Freddie one and a half hour to two hour classes. Tonight they are here in the room having their class while I work at the computer. This seems to work better than the four o’clock classes Freddie has been taking with Carlos. We cleaned up our room before Carlos got here, a good inspiration for our housekeeping. My two Rocio dresses hang from the rope line by the bed. Now I have added the purple manton I bought when Alicia and I went out briefly shopping the other day. We had fun and our room becomes more colorful with this lovely and unusual manton draped over our rope. As I write the guitar sounds beautiful. At this moment Carlos is sitting by the table playing incredible, intricate melodies while Freddie is taping. Freddie is learning this music. Yes, we are in Flamenco heaven and we are so grateful. Yet even with this abundance, at times our heads are so full of the Spanish language that we can’t take anymore, and we forget how to say simple things and just want to speak in English for a while. And then we pass through that stage and can speak and understand Spanish even better than before. I can do very well now when people slow down but when they speak rapidly I miss a lot. But sometimes I understand more than I expect. I am impatient to understand everything. Freddie is too. But we are both improving our Spanish. Freddie is playing guitar right now and Carlos is rapping on the table with his hand, the loud, sharp compas (rhythm) keeping Freddie on course. Carlos stops to show Freddie something. Carlos is an excellent and caring teacher. You can tell that he loves Flamenco and takes it and his teaching very seriously. He has the most wonderful smile as he plays, one of pure pleasure and enjoyment. He is a very real person and of course Freddie and I both like that a lot. One day he brought his wife and nine year old daughter to visit. Carlos and his wife have four children but we have only met this one, twice. During the day Carlos is fixing up his house, painting and adding walls to partition off bedrooms for his family. He says that seven people live there. We are invited to visit as soon as he finishes. Luis and Rubina called last night and today. They are in the campo again after their recent trip to Madrid. We were too busy to go with them this time. We will call them back later tonight. Our room here is still quite comfortable. We turn on the fan and cover the windows with blankets and it stays relatively cool. Carla thinks we should find a place with air conditioning because she says it will be unbearable here in the summer. We hope she is wrong because we would like to stay here where we have started to create our nest.

Everyone we meet wants to come to our wedding. Pepi, Concha, Carlos, Nacha and Jose Luis, and of course Luis Agujeta who actually might get there. Who knows, we may have a big Spanish contingent staying at the house. It is almost ten thirty and I have to stop soon to look for Carlos Robles downstairs. Freddie’s class continues.

May 31, 1999

Tranquila. Spain. That is what I must learn in Spain, it is in the dance, the cante, the music; a held back, leisurely quality that is not lazy at all, but is precise and strong and delicate, controlled to the max, but tranquila.

I journeyed last week to ask for help getting myself to practice, to build its discipline into my day. And now tonight I have discovered that right here in our own sweet room I am dancing and I can continue to dance to Freddie’s practicing. It is what we did together more than twenty five years ago when we met. It is what we did together for years, probably until after we were together and I started seriously working on Flamenco technique and choreography. When I danced and practiced in these last two years I focused more and more on doing it right, doing it in compas (rhythm), spotting on my turns, making clean and controlled sounds with my feet; I focused on my posture and my arms and hands and head and shoulders, my gaze and my directions. And I focused a lot on learning choreographies. I forgot that I could just dance to Freddie’s music as I had for most of the years I have known him. Tonight, for some wonderful reason, as Freddie practiced, I opened the wardrobe Paco has let us put in our room and I set its smoky old mirror that is attached to the inside of one door so that I could see myself, though not in clear detail, while I practiced arms, hands, head, upper body and walking. Yes I was practicing specific things, but in a way that I was able to dance it at the same time, to the feel of Freddie’s repeated scales, embellished with exquisitely beautiful and difficult finger exercises. It felt so good to dance. I realized that I can practice and dance to Freddie’s music up here and just have to practice my footwork and full choreographies on the stage down below us in the garden room of the Carboneria. I love being with Freddie and hearing his music. I love his concentration and his stubbornness in learning this new and difficult guitar technique. He was frustrated in his lesson with Carlos this morning and so his reaction was to practice all day. And now tonight, actually two in the morning, his playing sounds clean and he is mastering the material that so eluded him this morning. His strong and limber fingers struggle in their new patterns and positions, reaching for more, pushing to learn more, growing daily in skill and agility.

And I have been dancing to his music ever since I returned from bar hopping in Triana (sounds worse than it is) with Carla, Miguel, Jill (an American who has lived in Spain for many years and who is the widow of the wonderful gypsy guitarist Pedro Bacan), Lynn (an American who also has lived in Spain many years) and her husband, Spanish lawyer Manolo and their eight year old bi-lingual daughter Julia. Roberto and Alicia, and Juan and Lucy were supposed to meet us but never showed up after their pedal boating excursion on the Guadalquivir river which divides Triana and Sevilla. Freddie and I did that with Roberto and Alicia last week and loved it. The group of us went to three different bars this evening, sampling and sharing the tapas (hors d’oeuvres that people go to tapas bars specifically to eat) in each one. In most of the bars you stand at the counter and drink and eat tapas and the Spanish people all smoke. Trash is usually, but not always, thrown directly on the floor and is periodically swept up. People talk and have a good time, sharing the food which comes with however many forks there are people in the party. Then everyone eats from the same dish. And you get to taste a wide variety of each bar’s specialties. And sometimes these bars have little round outdoor tables and we sit or stand outside to eat and drink, even if it is right in the middle of the sidewalk. Freddie stayed home and practiced the whole time I was away. I had gone across town to Evelina’s in the early evening, when the sun was still bright and warm, to say good bye to Carla and Miguel who leave tomorrow and to buy the tape recorder/CD player that Miguel had brought here from the US to use and then sell and which we want. So from there I carried our new machine from bar to bar down the narrow winding cobblestone streets of Triana with Carla and Miguel’s help. Triana is an interesting place to walk in, one that once was the “wrong” side of the river. I know that Gypsies lived there. Now it is more of a working class neighborhood, except for the street that borders the river where there are restaurants and outdoor tables. We had a nice time but I missed Freddie and I could feel him wondering why I didn’t call when I had said I would. So a little after midnight I said good bye and took a cab back to the Carboneria. Freddie was still practicing and that inspired me to start moving my hands and then my arms to his music and then of course I was dancing. And now I want to put up mirrors on the walls of this room and practice a lot with Freddie in this way. I will dance to his practicing and of course at times he will take time to go with me to the stage and play while I practice so I can tell for sure if I am in or out of compas.

Just before I started dancing tonight, I had turned the computer on to write an e-mail which is still waiting to be finished. But I realized, that as I got a thought I could walk or dance over to the computer and type it in and then return to dancing. It was great. Any thought that popped into my head that I wanted to remember could be written into the computer in hardly any time at all; but only thoughts important enough to interrupt my dancing, if only briefly.

I am so thankful that I have realized that I can dance up here in the room and that I have the time and the space to dance, to focus on my dance the way Freddie is focusing on his guitar. Freddie is such a teacher for me, in so many ways, both in teaching me actual things and in being such a good example. I am thankful too that I am writing again. And I thank the spirits I see in my journeys who have helped and counseled me. They have strongly encouraged me to both dance and write and now I am finally doing both. That spiritual focus has helped to keep me on track. Now that I am dancing again I feel I have even more of “me” back.

I did laundry here for the second time this morning. There is a small washing machine in the bathroom between the sink and the seatless toilet. The bidet is between the toilet and the tub. No one in Spain seems to have dryers but this time of year I hang the laundry on the metal clothes drying rack near the trap door or on the small clothesline at the bottom of the stairway to our room or on the balcony outside our room. In hours our laundry is dry. The domestic streak seems to be sneaking out of me a little bit. I find that I sweep our floor periodically and I am the one who carries our dishes in a blue plastic bucket down the stairs to the bathroom where I wash them in the sink. I still have to remember to buy a sponge. The dish soap I bought the other day works well and the glasses now look clean.

May 31, 1999

I practiced today on the stage again, with Freddie, after our breakfast and a small walk through the Barrio Santa Cruz to the Giralda and back with Paco. The Barrio is always cooler than anywhere else, with narrower streets. Now Freddie is having class with Carlos and afterward we will go with Carlos to a guitar repair shop to get Freddie’s guitar fixed. It fell on the tile floor and cracked again where the he had repaired the break it had received last year at Sweet’s Mill. Paco is lending him a guitar while his is in the shop.

Last Saturday we drove to visit Luis and Rubina with Jose Luis and Paco. After lunch Freddie, Rubina and I practiced on the old wooden door we had procured during our last visit. We lay it down on the dusty ground in front of Luis’ house. My Siguiriyas is coming along and I think I finally have the hard part I have been struggling with. I want to have this part down when Concha starts giving classes again in a few days.

June 3, 1999

Is it being in love? Whatever it is I am thoroughly enjoying it and my physical body has been healthy and strong and seems to be getting stronger. Perhaps the lack of tension and the increase of walking are also helping me. I am sure the second hand cigarette smoke isn’t. But climbing all these stairs constantly should also count for something. I think of the stair masters in the gyms and know that I have my built-in one right here. My dance, my dance is inspired when I hear the beautiful music my lover, the love of my life, is practicing. I try to practice each detail of my dance the way he must practice each detail of each exercise to be clean and controlled. His music drives me to dance, to practice, to move, just like it did when we met and I knew that I had to study Flamenco to dance to his music the right way. Now, as he approaches sixty and I fifty five, after more than twenty six years, I can start to do his music justice.

June 7, 1999

It is Monday night and the Carboneria is less crowded. Already people are leaving Sevilla for the country and the sea shore. It is unusually cold this summer, a blessing for us, because the weather is balmy and pleasant. It was starting to get too hot when this coolness came, with soft wind fanning the heat and the sweat. People say that summer has not yet hit and when it does Sevilla will be like a furnace. We are thinking again about whether we should stay here or find an air conditioned apartment. We find that we spend a lot of money eating out because we have no stove. But then again, we want to see more of Spain so we might just travel to the cooler regions right here in Spain.

Concha is back. I had my first class with her today and started to learn the escobilla for the Siguiriyas. Last Saturday she gave a party to celebrate her return from a month in Japan and her husband Rafael’s release from jail. Rafael is a quiet man, giving an air of refined sensitivity and kindness. His gray hair softens him and he looks like the last person who would spend time in jail. I heard that he had taken a drug rap for someone else but I don’t know anything else about it. He sang a beautiful Siguiriyas at the party. It was a great party with people whose names we had heard before, Curro Fernandez and the Familia Fernandez, Carmen Ledesma, Pepa Vargas. People were friendly and relaxed. Carlos and his family were there and his two year old, Fatima, danced a buleria in her diapers that blew us away. Her little foot stamped right in compas. The adults encouraged her and I saw again that Flamenco will not die if this tradition continues, if the parents continue to take such joy in the passing on of Flamenco to the next generation. Concha and Rafael’s eight year old daughter Carmen also danced and sang. The smiles on her parents’ faces again spoke of passing on the tradition. Both kids were good and had been around good Flamenco all their lives. We have videos of them dancing. I thought it would make a wonderful documentary to video artist parents passing their art on to their children like this, in an informal and relaxed setting. Rubina also sang and danced a little and everyone loved it. Luis’ face was beaming in a huge smile as he watched her. Carmen who cleans at the Carboneria was there and she too sang beautifully, with tears in her eyes, truly meaning the words she was singing. Freddie and I were tired because we had rented a car the day before and had driven with Luis and Rubina to the Feria de San Lucar. At this Feria all the Casetas are open and people are continually dancing Sevillanas. Rubina and I both danced and everyone but Freddie drank wine, beer, and manzanilla. We spent the night at Luis’ house (near Chipiona) which is near Sanlucar and then drove back in the morning and arrived in time to return our car and take a quick shower before going to Concha’s. By the time we arrived at Concha’s the food was almost but not quite gone. Concha makes wonderful gazpacho and luckily there was still a little left. I found out today that their apartment is new. They must have bought it just before Concha left for Japan.

June 8, 1999

The wind continues to fan the heat and Freddie and I continue to practice and to take classes. It doesn’t leave much time for much else. I will be doing a soul retrieval (Shamanic work) for someone who works here, on Thursday, which is Freddie’s birthday. I will have to change the hour of my dance class to do it. The other day, while eating salmorejo (like gazpacho, but thicker and with ham in it) at an outdoor table at Bar Modesto, we talked on our movil phone to Viva in Granada (a young dancer friend from Sweet’s Mill who has been studying dance for her junior year of college at the University of Granada). She too said, after immersing herself in the Spanish life all year, that if you do just one errand in the day you have accomplished something. There is little time for more, but I guess that is the price you pay for slowing down the pace and relaxing. We are still working on going to bed earlier and last night I made it by two AM! When it gets hotter it will be important to be up earlier and to take a siesta during the strongest the heat of the day. So now, all our friends and family, try not to call us after two AM Spanish time just in case we make it to bed early.

Freddie and I both notice that our Spanish is still improving. We can both understand almost everything that Nacha and Jose Luis say to us. Although I must admit that Nacha has learned how to talk more slowly and distinctly to us. When Paco forgets and speaks normally (rapidly) we still miss a lot, but not as much as before.

I have just realized how courageous Freddie is. He is working so hard to change his entire style and technique: the way he holds his hand, the placement and curve of the wrist, the amount of movement and placement of the right hand fingers, the length of his nails. There are so many things to change and during this transition he cannot play what he has learned in the last fifty years. He has played scales over and over, becoming cleaner and cleaner while yearning to play the falsetas he knows so well and to learn the new ones that Carlos can show him. But Carlos keeps pushing the technique first and Freddie now can start to play the old falsetas cleanly. And some of the exercises Carlos has given him are beautiful and haunting. Carlos is a task master with Freddie, not letting him slouch on compas, tone or cleanliness in his playing. Carlos is with Freddie the way Freddie is with me, making me do it more and more cleanly, perfectly, over and over, not letting me slide in the least. And now I see my Freddie and his wonderful determination and I try to encourage him as much as I can. On Thursday June 10 he will be sixty years old. That used to seem so old to me and now of course it doesn’t. Juan Camas, the cantaor brother-in-law of Paco’s who lives in the room with cardboard walls on Paco’s floor, told me that Freddie is young. Juan is eleven years older. He is seventy one, Paco’s age, but he looks to me like eighty. He looks like an old man, much older than Paco and much older than my father who will be eighty in September. Yet, despite his appearance of age, Juan has a girlfriend, for two years now, a young architectural student of twenty seven.

Carlos is teaching Freddie a falseta right now and they just had me listen. Freddie did it right. It is a complicated contra (counter time) tune with a jazzy upbeat sound. Carlos won’t let Freddie get away with anything and he stops him and makes him do it over, and sometimes more slowly. Don’t run. It’s the same thing that Concha tells me. Play it less “brusque” is like dancing it lighter, not pounding the floor. I am learning the escobilla as of yesterday. I learned two more steps of it today. Now remembering what I learned is the challenge, and stringing them together. I have to learn them by heart before my next class tomorrow at seven PM. The choreography Concha is teaching me is a little different from the group class, I discovered. Yesterday I took her group class because they were working on parts of the Siguiriya I had already learned. But they have more footwork because, Concha said, they are younger than we are and can do it. We are older (and I am sure I am a lot older than she is) and so we do less footwork and concentrate on our body and arms. She said this in class and later Delphine, the girl (young woman) from French Montreal, Canada who is here for two years to study Flamenco, came up to me and talked about it. She thought Concha was too blunt but I told her that I was older and didn’t mind it. That’s why I have let my hair go gray. Even so, Delphine had thought I was in my forties, not my middle fifties. I had told Rubina a few days ago that I would put a temporary dye on my hair and that Freddie would do the same, but every time I pass a beauty store I know that I don’t want to do it. I like my gray and I don’t care right now if I look “older”, if I look my age. And I don’t want to spend the time dying my hair, I want to dance. I want to write. I don’t want to take time away from these things to dye my hair. So probably I won’t touch it. It is a big job just to wash my hair here because the hot water tank is so small. I usually try for the afternoon, and then I wash my hair with cold water for both shampoos and then after the conditioner is on I get in the tub and turn on the hot water to wash myself, after soaping without the water on, and then I rinse the conditioner from my hair with the rest of the hot water. That way I have just enough. I hate to think of what I would have to do to put dye on both Freddie’s and my hair too. And then I probably wouldn’t like it. When I tried to explain that I liked my gray hair to Concha, and that Rubina and others wanted me to dye it, Concha started to tell me what color she thought it should be! A little darker than the tinted part I still have. Everyone in Spain, at least all the women, seem to dye their hair, no matter how old they are.

June 9, 1999

I found out today that Concha is only forty three! I guess that people here in Spain, and I know in many other countries too, look older than we do, although Concha does not look old to me. If I dyed my hair and appeared even younger, would people expect me to dance as a younger person too? Despite my looks, my body is still fifty four, almost fifty five years old. It is in good shape but it was in better shape when I was forty three! Today I learned the rest of the escobilla. Class at seven PM is harder because I am tired and we couldn’t find time to eat first. A package arrived but we had to go to the post office to pick it up and that was our eating window. Time sure flies here. Last night we fell asleep early as we watched the video of my yesterday’s dance class. But we awoke at two PM to actually go to bed and our room was filled with smoke. We looked all over and opened the windows. The smell of something burning was definitely in our room and not outside but we couldn’t find anything burning. Finally I told Freddie I was going to the bathroom and we could look more when I got back. I was so tired I just wanted to go back to sleep. I went downstairs to the bathroom which is below our room and I discovered that someone had put a cigarette in the plastic trash bag that hangs in front of the toilet for toilet paper. (In Spain you don’t flush the toilet paper, you put it in a bag instead, because much of the plumbing is old and can’t handle much paper). Anyway, the plastic had melted and the contents of the trash bag were burning on the tile floor. I got a bucket and poured water on it and stopped the burning. Then Freddie and I got dressed and went downstairs to tell Paco. He started to follow us up and got sidetracked and we were too tired to wait. As we started to go back up the stairs Freddie told Sergio, one of Paco’s sons who works at the Carboneria. He immediately came up with us and then said it was probably his fault! I know he comes upstairs to use this bathroom. He cleaned up the mess. It still smells of fire and someone has placed a fan on top of the washing machine. We were able to get the smoke smell out of our room by turning on our two fans and opening the windows. We went back to sleep and managed to wake up at ten AM and get out of here by eleven, which is early for us. We went to a new place for breakfast that we had discovered the other night. It is in a little plaza beyond Plaza Alfalfa. We ate outside and watched the Spanish morning. There were few tourists, if any, in this part of town. Spain does start later than the US and this was still fairly early in the morning. The stores open at ten AM.

After breakfast we looked in a few jewelry shops keeping an eye out for wedding rings and then went down Calle Cuna to Menkes, a very well known maker of Flamenco shoes. I bought a practice skirt there but they had no shoes with the right heel in my size. I will order some, but I have to come back at ten AM before my feet swell so the shoes will fit right. Concha recommends buying my shoes at Menkes. She thinks they are better than the Corrales that I have but she said to keep the same heel, the Cuban heel, which is low and easy on the body.

She loved my new skirt today. I have no class tomorrow because Concha is performing in Madrid. It will give me time to cement into my brain what I have learned so far of the escobilla. After this there is one more letra and another escobilla and then an ending. Then I will be concentrating on bulerias. I had thought to also try other teachers but I think I will get more out of this experience by just concentrating on learning this Siguiriyas and gypsy, fiesta style bulerias. I like Concha’s gutsy, funky, “down home” style of bulerias.

Freddie and I are both thinking that we don’t want to leave. We love it here in Spain and will plan return trips on a regular basis. I think I want to learn it all this trip and I know I can’t. At last we are learning to navigate our way (walking) in Sevilla. This week we have taken some exploratory walks and are starting to learn the layout of this part of the city. It is fun to know where we are going and how to get there quickly and not get lost. It takes about five minutes of a fast walk to get to the Giralda, the major cathedral in Sevilla. When we were first here we went to meet Carla and Miguel there and got lost. It took us half an hour! But we had a nice walk and they were late. They arrived shortly after we did so at least the timing was perfect, it was Spanish.

June 11, 1999

Freddie turned sixty yesterday. In the morning we went to Menkes and ordered my shoes and then we ate breakfast, starved, at the little restaurant near there, Bar Europa, which we discovered the other day. While we were still in Menkes, a small shop filled with shoes, dance skirts, leotards, and other dance related items, Rubina and Luis called and said they were on their way to Sevilla and wanted the telegram which we had read to them over the telephone the day before. It was about a driving citation that Luis had to take care of. I had a soul retrieval scheduled at two and told them that I couldn’t be disturbed during that time period. They arrived earlier and decided that they too wanted soul retrievals and would take care of the citation the next day.

I set up our room for the soul retrieval, laying two blankets on the floor and covering them with a sheet. I placed a pillow at the head. I burned rosemary instead of sage, for purification. I had a piece of fresh rosemary in a plastic bottle of water and a white feather I had found the day before. I placed a new candle in a green bowl that Leslie had bought for us at the rastro (flea market). I had my medicine bag around my waist and my tape recorder with earphones so I could hear the drum. Fortunately I had brought my traveling rattle with me to Spain. The client, a gypsy employee here, had brought me some dried rosemary. Many gypsy women here, dressed in long, colorful skirts, walk around selling rosemary on a donation basis for good luck and Luis always buys it from them. I don’t even know the word for sage in Spanish, but in my journeys I have been told that I can use romera (rosemary) as I use sage, for purification. I was a little nervous about doing this work in Spanish and without my usual shamanic tools, but the soul retrieval went very well. My client’s face was totally changed by the end of it. And the next day (today) she reported that she had slept very well at night for the first time in a long time. She was still smiling too, which was good, because she has a long term depression which even medication hasn’t been helping. Who would have thought that I would be doing soul retrievals in Spain? Certainly not me. I came to study dance. I ended up doing one for Luis that day too, but postponed Rubina’s to the next day so we could continue to celebrate Freddie’s birthday. And I also wanted to practice a little to prepare for my next class. In the evening before the sunset, around eight PM, the four of us (Luis and Rubina and Freddie and I) walked to the Triana bridge to go pedal boating. On the way, just before we reached the Giralda, we ate ice cream which in Spain is much better than at home. By the time we reached the river Luis had decided that he really didn’t want to go pedal boating so he and Rubina waited on the shore and Freddie and I pedaled for almost an hour. It was fun, relaxing, and tiring. There is something about being on the river just before sunset, floating in the warm wind as the day starts to cool, that is totally enchanting. We pedaled first west into the setting sun, with Triana on our left and Sevilla on our right. Then we turned east and when we passed the dock where Rubina and Luis were sitting we called them with our mvil to see if they had changed their minds and wanted to come with us. They turned around and saw us and waved. A little later they walked along the river bank as we pedaled up the river, but we were faster than they were. Afterwards we ended up walking all the way back home again and Freddie and I discovered parts of Sevilla we hadn’t yet explored, including the arched gate in the old wall of Sevilla. There are only two left of the sixteen gates that were in Sevilla long ago. This one originally divided Sevilla from Triana. I had arranged a surprise party for Freddie’s birthday at 10:30 that evening at the Carboneria with Nacha. She was bringing the cake. It is hard to keep a secret from Freddie because I tell him everything, but I did keep this secret. We were a little early as we passed the Giralda so I suggested that we stop at a nearby bar we knew for a quick tapa. We ordered coquinas (tiny little delicious clams) and of course they took longer than I counted on. Then I had to rush to pay the bill and hustle us out of there. Only Freddie didn’t know why we were rushing but I told him we needed to change clothes to go out and eat. Then I told him I had to hurry because I had to go to the bathroom. Rushing is not very Spanish and I am even surprised that there is a word for it in the Spanish vocabulary. We were about ten or fifteen minutes late but Freddie was really surprised. Nacha had bought two candles in the shape of five and added five more small ones to make sixty. I carried the cake and Carlos lit the candles when we were almost to the patio where Freddie was sitting with Paco, Luis, Rubina, Jose Luis, Alfredo, Sergio and others. I sang happy birthday in English, with people singing the words they knew. Carlos brought Freddie a tiny guitar as a present. The cake was delicious and Freddie’s sixtieth was celebrated in style. After we ate cake we got to listen to Luis and Carlos perform. Then we ate some food at the Carboneria because I hadn’t arranged the day to get us fed before the surprise party. By the time we were done eating we got to hear Luis and Carlos perform a second before we staggered upstairs to bed. It was after two AM so we are getting tired earlier and getting up a little earlier too.

I remember years ago, for his fortieth birthday I gave Freddie a huge party at my house on Amesti Road. It was before the adjacent lot was sold and the houses built so the land stretched to the next street, filled only with plum trees and weeds. There were no neighbors to disturb in those days and the party lasted until dawn. We roasted a goat over a spit outside and Steve and Alice Peterson made paella, also outside. There was a small platform for a stage that Freddie had built next to the chicken coop (converted into a simple house) where he was living at the time with Jenny and her daughter Jesamy. The flamenco went on all night, on the stage, around the campfire, and later in our house. I have given Freddie other parties too, before we were together. Last night’s party, the first since we have become a couple, was smaller, but it was in Spain! My birthday gift to Freddie this year will be a new guitar, made in Spain, when we find the right one.

June 12, 1999

I started to learn the second letra of my Siguiriyas today. People are impressed with our dedication to practicing and learning here and are being very supportive. A lot of people see me practice because there is no privacy on the stage here and I have learned how to block everyone out and just to concentrate. Paco says I have first choice of practice times here and I can start earlier than I thought I could. I had been afraid of disturbing him if I started too early. Of course, I can’t practice in the evening because the Carboneria is open then. Concha usually starts to teach here around five o’clock so I have to get all my practicing on the stage done before then. Freddie and I are getting a reputation of being “practicers”. Yes, it is what we are here to do. Concha wants Luis to sing the Siguiriya for me and Luis wants to do it. I can’t believe all the support I am getting here. I love it and it makes me want to do even better. Rubina says she thinks I am going to get very good. I hope she is right. The other day I had only been practicing half an hour and Concha and Rubina walked in and I got distracted —I blew the new escobilla that I was practicing with Freddie and was disappointed and upset because I didn’t know that Concha was going to teach a private class. I had had to wait for space on the stage to get my time to practice and I really needed at least another half hour to prepare myself for my next class. I couldn’t help crying, I was so frustrated. But, everyone said not to worry and Rubina told me that everyone had been impressed with what I had been doing. And I could only see my mistakes. That was when Paco said that I had the priority of practice times.

I haven’t written of this yet, but it seems to be for sure. Luis has been hired to sing in the Grand Canyon while the French high-wire expert Philippe Petit crosses the canyon on his high wire. This “performance” is being aided by the Navajo Indians and will be televised world wide. Although the contract won’t be here until next week, Philippe was here last week and definitely confirmed, after he heard Luis sing, that he wanted him. Luis will fly to Arizona on August 31 and the performance will take place either September 5 or 6. Luis wants Freddie and me to go with him. Rubina, who leaves for the US on Monday morning, will fly with us from San Francisco. Afterwards Luis will be able to stay with us because he will have an open ticket for his return to Spain. He plans to do some “fragua” work for us, which means working with a forge to make wrought iron railings for us. We have been walking around Sevilla looking at railings with him, talking about what we all like and what we don’t like. He would like to stay in the US at least until after our wedding. So we are planning to leave Sevilla early, with Luis, to witness this spectacular event at the Grand Canyon although we have not yet changed our flight reservations. I think that neither Freddie nor I will be ready to leave. We have so much to learn here. And then, we want to see a few sights too! But learning is certainly taking a priority. Concha will work with me on styling once I have mastered the choreography. And then we will move on to buleras. I know that Freddie and I will just have to come back to Spain to study more. I don’t know if we will return in September or wait until next year. We will see. Will our beautiful home in California keep us from returning to Spain immediately after my father’s birthday? We can’t know that right now. But I have time off from my psychotherapy practice until January of 2000 so we could go again if we wanted. Of course Luis will be at our house in California. Will we feel done with Spain? Spain grows on us more and more, especially as it is becoming easier and easier to speak Spanish and our brains no longer feel so overloaded. We even discovered recycling bins near here the other day. It used to kill me to toss all our plastic bottles in the garbage. Now we can take them to a plastic recycling bin. I love it. Yes, Spain grows on us and we wonder how we can leave it. Of course if you live here you want to travel to other places, like Luis does.

Concha too would like to visit the US, both to teach and to attend our wedding. I am hoping that Rubina and I can get someone to arrange classes for her. I will be too busy with our wedding to even attempt it. The most I could do would be to arrange a week or two of classes in my dance studio. Concha is willing to come next June or July, whenever we want. The wedding of course is June 10, so we will be sure to arrange that she arrives in time for that. If she is here in July she may want to come to Sweet’s Mill although she won’t be able to make money there. She is a wonderful teacher and her Spanish is very easy to understand. Her style is very gypsy (which she is), from Lebrija, which I like. But she knows how to teach Madrid style dance too and this is what she gives the “young ones”. We will see what happens. She will either give Rubina promotional materials tomorrow before Rubina leaves for Madrid or she will fax them to her soon. Fax in Spanish is pronounced “Fa”.

June 14, 1999

I have finished learning the second letra of the Siguiriya and will start to learn the second escobilla. It is a beautiful choreography. Today I got two hours of practice in and it showed. We changed the time of my class to five PM which is better. Now Freddie and I have time to eat before he takes his class with Carlos at nine thirty.

June 16, 1999

As to the subject of age, I wrote about it the other day. But to reflect more on it, I had these thoughts today in response to an e-mail I received.

I was recently asked in Santa Cruz if I were the mother of a beautiful Flamenco dancer who had just danced on the stage. At first I was taken aback but as I thought about it, I could have been her mother. I was old enough. I don’t think I am aware often of how I look, except mainly when I dress myself.

I also have an article on my web site about Sweet’s Mill, Dance of Mortality, about passing on the art of dance to the younger generation and becoming the elder generation. The only thing I really don’t like about aging is the deteriorating and often aching body. The rest just keeps on getting better. And I do like my gray hair!

June 17, 1999

Unfortunately, today, Thursday, while pedal boating on the Guadalquivir river with Lainey and Ken (my sister and my brother-in-law who are visiting us for three days) our wonderful mvil phone fell into the river. Freddie grabbed it out of the water immediately; the writing on the screen went blank but the green “on” light was still blinking. A little later Freddie took out the battery and when he put it back in the green light was off and we haven’t been able to get the phone back on since. It beeps in the charger and the light comes on but nothing appears on the screen and the green “on” light does not come on. So for right now we are out of the instant communication of a telephone. Lainey (known to her friends as Elaine) and Ken arrived today and will leave on Sunday so we might not find out whether the phone is fixable until Monday. But luckily, the e-mail is still working. (Calling the Carboneria and leaving us a message is still an option, but difficult unless you speak Spanish.) But hopefully, no one will need to call us before we have it fixed.

June 21, 1999

This day of the Solstice is so hot that it is hard to move. The fan blows the hot air around and around without cooling anything, and almost everywhere it is like being in a oven. Inside the air conditioned Alta Mira we sit at the bar for coffee with ice in it and cold gazpacho. The air conditioning in Sevilla is not cold like in the US, but is cooler than outside and quite pleasant. Paco now sits inside for breakfast and we have finally followed his example! It is lovely inside, away from the furnace of summer.

We had to replace our beloved drowned phone today and I do not like the new and cheaper one as much, but at least we have a phone again. And we were able to keep the same number because the card in the other phone was not damaged and in these Alcatel GSM phones the cards (“tarjetas”) are interchangeable. And the phone repair store had air conditioning so at least this errand was bearable. At first I was a snob about air conditioning, not wanting to get used to a “false” cooler temperature and not be able to get used to the heat, but now that the heat of summer has started I am appreciating air conditioning in a new way. After fifteen minutes inside an air conditioned restaurant, we felt renewed when we again walked out into the heat.

This morning (Monday) and Sunday morning too I set the clock alarm and got up early to practice, before the worst part of the heat. Yesterday Lainey and Ken saw the end of my practice around 11:30 AM. Freddie and I were hot and tired and I made some mistakes, but I danced the Siguiriyas through what I have learned so far, almost to the end of the second escobilla. They loved it and Ken said that he had tears in his eyes. They both loved Freddie’s and my interaction which I think by now we often take for granted. They were able to see that artistic and emotional connection between us that is so much a part of our relationship. It was so nice to have that kind of acknowledgment from my family! Freddie and I both enjoyed Lainey and Ken’s visit. I took a break from practicing for two days and classes for four days and went sight seeing in Sevilla with them instead. We saw the Giralda and the Alcazar, Casa Pilota, and the museums in the Parque Maria Luisa. I skipped the Belles Artes museum because I had seen it once already and I had to take a nap. Ken has almost unlimited energy and each day he went running in the morning, exploring almost every part of Sevilla. With his map in hand, he became our guide. It was fun to be a tourist in Sevilla for a while and I enjoyed my time wandering through the beautiful Alcazar gardens with Lainey and visiting with both Lainey and Ken. But now again, I am the dance student. After not having dance classes since Wednesday, I am happy to be back to it again, heat and all. It was so hot at five PM today that Concha decided to change my class to seven o’clock and to stop her group classes, which have become smaller since the heat of summer and the vacations began. I am almost done with the second escobilla, progressing a little bit more with each class. Practicing in the morning is my solution to learning in this heat. I just have to make time to take a siesta, which I wasn’t able to do today. The other day, at the Alta Mira, we ran into a nineteen year old Flamenco guitarist from Santa Cruz, Ilan, and his seventeen year old girlfriend and dance student, Gabrielle who have come to Spain to study. They came up to our room last night and we did a little Flamenco. It was fun. Luis stopped in for a little while until he had to change clothes to perform. That night Freddie made a break through and his playing was clean and beautiful. Luis had a big smile on his face as he watched Freddie play. Freddie was able to play his old falsetas finally with his new technique. This evening at Freddie’s class Carlos kept commenting on how well Freddie was playing and how well Freddie kept his hands in the right position and his fingers from too much movement. He kept saying (in Spanish), “Marianna, look at this, look at Freddie. He’s doing it all right! It’s perfect.” All Freddie’s work is finally paying off. It is exciting and I am very proud of him. We are both so lucky to be able to take these classes so consistently. We appreciate our luck and are working hard to take advantage of it. And so our saga continues, class by class, day by day.

June 23, 1999

Outside our window, on the neighbor’s roof, the clean sheets hanging on the clothesline gently flap up and down, billowing like sails, blown by the welcome breeze, dancing continually as the soft air lifts and drops its breath. The breeze cools the heat and it is bearable to exist here today. We are becoming gazpacho experts, tasting gazpacho at nearly every restaurant we try. One day, a day with no breeze, that was all we ate. The next day we added fish in the evening and even that seemed too heavy and my stomach was bloated. But the third day we were hungry. Today we tried eating earlier but we weren’t really hungry and the salty salty food of another new restaurant again bloated my stomach. I tried to sleep this afternoon but only rested and now it is nearly time for class and I am hot and tired. Despite all this, I have nearly finished the Siguiriyas and have managed to learn each new part before my next class.

June 27, 1999

So much has happened that I don’t find time to write about. I finished learning the Siguiriyas Friday and will start the arduous work of polishing, of working on style on Monday. Concha says to get ready to sweat, that now the real work begins and we will both be sweating. It is a little scary, like jumping into cold water, but it is what I want and what I need next. If I can get it, it will be dramatic and my dancing will really change. I practiced Saturday for an hour and a half and today, Sunday, for two hours. I now have the arms I learned Friday that go with the end steps I learned on Thursday. I keep going over the whole choreography so I won’t forget it. I still have to think about what comes next in this ten minute dance and sometimes I still forget for the moment and leave out sections. But sometimes I get the whole thing right. Today Freddie and I ironed out some difficult parts that I wasn’t fitting to the music, that were slightly out of comps. I practiced late as I have had a touch of a stomach flu and didn’t feel up to it. When I started it was quiet. Sergio was outside in the patio watering and no one else was around. After an hour Freddie came down to play for me. As we finished, a few people (customers) had already straggled in and some were up by the stage watching us. I find I can just blank them out now instead of getting nervous. It is a lovely and quiet time to practice. Tomorrow I will still get up early (I have the clock set for nine thirty) and practice before my class, which is now at one. Then I will try to get a second practice in in the evening before the Carboneria fills up. When Paco had suggested that I practice in the evenings too if I wanted I had said that I didn’t want to still be practicing when people showed up but he said that would be fine, that it would be good for them to see me. So I did and I like it. The “door man”, Jose Luis, who watches the front door for Paco, always comes in now and says Ol with big smiles. He introduced me to his wife recently as a “good dancer”. It’s nice to feel the support here at the Carboneria. The people who work here are like a family, and of course some are actual family of Paco’s. Saturday, before I practiced, Paco asked me if I were going to practice that day, because I hadn’t gotten up early to practice as usual that morning. That was because, the night before, we had gone to Utrera for the Potaje Gitano, a six hour Flamenco show with primarily Cante (singing) which happens every year. This was the forty third year. It didn’t start until eleven PM so of course we didn’t get to sleep until six AM. the next morning. I hadn’t even planned to practice that day because my stomach hurt but after Paco’s question I thought about it and decided to do it that evening. I felt much better afterward and I had a good practice both Saturday and Sunday. The people here at the Carboneria keep tabs on my practicing. They are very aware of when I skip a day.

I don’t think I wrote that I have been setting the clock to nine forty five in the morning and getting up, drinking our green drink, and then going downstairs to practice. I usually start about a quarter to eleven or eleven but I keep trying for earlier. Paco has said that it is OK for me to practice that early. At first he said that he couldn’t hear in that room (from his bed) but after I started he said that he could hear me. But then he told me that it didn’t bother him. Don’t worry. He only dislikes hearing strange voices and things like that when he’s sleeping. He is like me, (Freddie says, “like us”) he likes to hear Flamenco while he is sleeping. I asked him again if my early practice time was bothering him and he assured me that it wasn’t. I finish by twelve, when it is time for Tula’s lesson with Concha. Then Freddie and I dash out to the Alta Mira and eat a quick breakfast, usually gazpacho, fresh orange juice and coffee, and then we hustle back to the Carboneria to get ready for my one o’clock class with Concha. She has built her schedule around my class so I will try to add extra practice times in the evenings when she used to teach her group classes. It’s much less hot in the mornings and evenings and everyone has more energy. However, it has been cooler lately. When we went to Utrera for the Potaje Gitano we froze. We had brought light jackets and I had worn thin, long pants, thinking that would be enough, but we were cold and so were most of the audience. We took a taxi there and back, splitting it with Ilan and Gabrielle, the young teen age couple from Santa Cruz who are here to study Flamenco. It made it very easy. The sound system was bad and the show was not great. Freddie had been to an incredible Potaje in eighty five so he was very very disappointed in this one. But I had always wanted to go so I was happy that I finally got to go, even though the Utrera Flamenco hey day seems to be over. It was still fun. They gave us wooden spoons to eat our potaje with which of course we have saved as souvenirs. They traditionally serve free potaje, wine, and bread. Potaje is an Andalucian bean soup that is very Gitano (Gypsy). During the intermission the waiters came around to the long white paper covered tables lined with people sitting in chairs on both sides. The waiters carried the large pots of potaje to each person and served it into the plastic dishes waiting on the table to be filled. Concha’s pregnant niece, Esperanza Fernandez, was one of the featured singers. Her father, Curro Fernandez and Pepa de Benito (also related to Concha) sang in Carmen Ledesma’s group which performed last. Carmen Ledesma was the only dancer. She too is a close friend of Concha’s. We met all of these people at Concha’s return-from-Japan party. Only her sister, Pepa Vargas (Curro’s wife, Esperanza’s mother) did not sing in Utrera. I don’t know why. Concha said the next day that she had already heard that the show wasn’t very good and that many of the artists had said they didn’t perform well. Word goes quickly. Paco had heard too, perhaps from Concha. But I still had fun. I have a tape at home from an old Potaje that is great. “Voy pa’ Utrera,” (I’m going to Utrera) is part of a Flamenco letra (part of a Flamenco song). And the famous sisters, Fernanda and Bernarda the gypsy singers from Utrera, have made me feel a warmth towards Utrera because I love their singing. Utrera has taken on a mythical aspect for me. So I am glad I went there this time.

The day before, Thursday, we had gone with Paco, Luis and Concha to a Flamenco presentation nearby in the Barrio Santa Cruz at the French Flamenco Association. They are bringing many artists to France soon for a big festival and the guests at this event were the who’s who of Sevilla Flamencos. Freddie canceled his lesson with Carlos because both he and Carlos were going. I, having had a one o’clock lesson, had the rest of the day off so I washed my hair after my dance class and then painted my nails for the first time here. Then I put on make up, also for the first time here, and wore my black sleeveless silk dress that I bought for Elun and Donna’s wedding. My hair was down and everyone did a double take when I came down to the patio. It was fun to dress up.

Afterwards we had planned to go with Luis and Paco to look at some guitars that were supposed to be great and cheap. However, towards the end of the presentation Concha asked me if I wanted to go with her to the Macarena Pea (neighborhood Flamenco club on the other side of Sevilla) to hear her sister, Pepa, sing to present her family’s (Familia Fernandez’) new CD. We decided that we would meet everyone later at the guitar shop. So Concha and I took a taxi to the Pea and arrived shortly after Pepa had finished singing. We sat on wooden folding chairs in rows with Concha’s family and her good friend, Aurora Vargas (not related), a very well known Flamenco singer. Concha’s non dancing/singing sister, Carmen, whom I had met at Paco’s granddaughter’s Baptismo party was there. So were both Pepa’s, Curro Fernandez, and some other family members as well. We nibbled caricoles (snails) and had fino (very dry sherry) and then red wine mixed with Casera, a sweet, carbonated drink. Then Curro spoke and played about half of their new CD. I had already heard it because he had given one to Paco at Concha’s party which Freddie and I had later borrowed it from Paco. Afterward hearing the CD at the Pea,, we waited on our hard wooden chairs, Concha and Aurora talking to each other so quickly that I hardly understood anything. There were hopes that more music would happen but it didn’t really get going, at least not when we were there. Some of the people who had been at the earlier function had come to this one too, including Concha’s family, Jill (Pedro Bacan’s American widow) and Lucy del Gastor. I talked with Jill (in English) for a while. She filled me in on what was happening. When we left Concha asked me how I liked hanging around the gypsies and I said that I wished I could understand Spanish better, which was the truth. But it was still fun. We took a taxi to where we thought the guitar store was and then looked at the tiny writing on the card again, with my glasses on, and discovered that we had to walk a few more blocks to the actual store. Concha walked slowly in her high heels. We went down an almost deserted street in what looked like an industrial part of town. We found the address and rang the bell and someone called down. Everyone had been there and left. It was two o’clock in the morning. So Concha and I took another cab back to the Carboneria where we finally joined everyone, including her husband Rafael, who was working behind the bar. Luis had just finished singing and Freddie had videotaped him and Carlos. The guitars they had gone to see earlier hadn’t been good and they hadn’t stayed long. But the street that was so deserted when we came had been filled with people several hours earlier. It was interesting to see the same people perform in Utrera at the Potaje whom I had just been sitting and talking with in an audience the night before.

June 28, 1999

I received an e-mail the other day for Rubina and she received the same e-mail also at Johnny and Celeste’s e-mail address. The great Canyon Walk with Philippe Petit has been postponed for a year due to scheduling problems between the national and international television broadcasters. Luckily we were waiting to change our tickets until Luis actually signed the contract and had his tickets in hand. So now we are back to plan one, returning as scheduled on September 15, in time to celebrate my father’s eightieth birthday on the eighteenth. We don’t know now how Luis will get to the US but we are sure that he will. He is hoping for other work there as he still plans to do some iron work for us and wants to attend our wedding. He also would like to spend some time in the US and to visit his sister, Angelita, who lives in San Diego. He is planning on staying with us when he comes. That will be nice. In the morning when he wakes up here, we hear him singing softly from behind his closed curtain. He hears me go down the stairs to the bathroom. “Ba bum ba bum …. “ a little part of a tune comes out of him as a yawn might come out of someone else. I like to see his music oozing out of him, not just there in performance but in life as well. Concha also has dance oozing out of her and dances at almost every chance she gets. I used to be like that but now I just practice and practice. Concha commented the other day about my loving Flamenco. Of course that is something I take for granted. Of course I love Flamenco. That’s why I am here. I just wish I felt like I knew enough to get up and dance at a party here in Spain. But I am timid and am here to learn. So I get my dancing in when I practice. We started to work on the styling today. And Concha was right, I sweated. I practiced an hour and a half this morning and then an hour later took my hour class. Tonight I practiced for another hour, much of it with Freddie. I am trying to not only work on the steps, but to get the full dance so well in my memory that I don’t have to pay attention to what comes next, but to how I am dancing it. I seem to be mixing up the two escobillas right now. It is frustrating to have it and then lose it again. But I will get through that also.

Freddie too is pushing himself. Carlos makes him stop and play it over whenever it sounds “dirty”. We both get frustrated but we keep on going. I finally realized how much of his time Freddie is giving me. He plays for my practice, but not all of it now, and he also plays for my classes. All this takes time away from his personal practice time. As I swept the floor today and hung up our clothes I realized that although I do it because I can’t stand the dirt and mess, that it is also a fair division of labor. I can clean and do the dishes, which I have been doing, when Freddie is practicing. I can only dance so much, and then there is no place to practice and my body can’t dance as long as Freddie’s fingers can play anyway. And Freddie gives me hours each day that he could use to practice what he is learning from Carlos. So I clean our room smiling because I am giving back to Freddie as well as to myself. I am appreciating him and his wonderful good nature. We talked the other day about his finding more practice time and now I am understanding what he has been figuring out and telling me. We are such a good team, we work together so well. And we talk out any potential problems and come up with solutions quite easily. Our chemistry is just very compatible in so many ways.

Carlos just distracted me by playing an incredibly beautiful and complicated piece he is teaching Freddie. It has a new arpeggio in it and of course it is very difficult to play.

June 29, 1999

Sweet Panther (Pantera Dulce) that’s what she calls herself, that’s how she dances. She has the force and strength and the stillness and grace and raw emotion of Panther. Concha Vargas is a very shamanic person in her way of being. The more I spend time in class with her the more I like her. She is giving and fun and fiery and totally supportive both with positive and encouraging feedback and with helping me to form my dance, such as showing me how to access the dynamic side of me. She is warm and kind and full of energy. Contraction here, she says, and I remember from my childhood modern dance and I hunch a little too much. But I see it now in the video and I can correct it. She really worked up a sweat in me today and my left knee (the old injured one on which I used to wear a knee brace when I practiced my dance), that healing left knee, is now hurting again. I have put on the oils and taken anti-inflamatories and I might have to dig the old knee brace out of the suitcase until my knee stops hurting. My poor body. But, my feet don’t ache so much any more and the small blister under my toe has receded and my two corns on top of my two fourth toes aren’t too bad with the corn cushions I use. Now my knee and leg ache. There is always something hurting or stiff at this age (or with this dance). But the dance is improving. Today we worked on making the first part of the Siguiriyas both strong, sweet, and dynamic. Now I just have to get it.

June 30, 1999

I dug out the old knee brace last night and pushed myself to practice for an hour in the sweltering evening heat. We ended up getting to bed after three AM again but we got up at nine thirty and I got an hour and a half of practice in today before Tula’s twelve o’clock class with Concha. Freddie played for my last half hour and I was drenched in sweat by the time we finished. Then we ran out for a little breakfast and I had my class with Concha at one. I used the knee brace but now my leg and knee are still hurting. I took my shoes to the shoe repair man to have the rubber on the bottom replaced because I was starting to slip on the stage, and my knee hurt walking there. Both my thighs are stiff as well. So I called Concha this evening and canceled my Thursday class because I couldn’t practice this evening or tomorrow morning. I have to have my first shoe fitting (for the shoes I am having made at Menkes) in the morning before my feet swell. After that we plan to go to police department to get our visa’s extended. You are only allowed to stay three months in Spain now unless you get special permission or leave the country. David Jones says you can just go to Morocco. I have also heard that you have to return to your country of origin. Hopefully we will have to do neither.

Yes I am pushing myself. Concha had warned me that this is where the work starts and she is right. Make the body tense, more tense. Contract. Now open and stretch higher. Get that crease in your waist, this angle. It’s hard to translate the words into English. But I push my body to its limits to change the style. I think Concha is a phenomenal teacher.

Freddie and I were just talking about Luis’s Andalucian English. For example, people in America won’t understand that a “fa” is a fax. He leaves off the ends of his English words as he does with his Spanish words and then he mixes his sentences with both English and Spanish. Sometimes when I can’t understand a word it turns out to be an English word with an Andalucian accent stuck in a Spanish sentence. Only other Spaniards or Rubina, Freddie and I and a few other people (probably Flamencos) will understand Luis’s English! And the reverse goes for some of our Spanish. In Utrera at the Potaje I asked someone across the table, “Quin es?” (asking who a certain singer who was performing was) and it took them moments of thinking to finally translate what I had said to “Quin ay (or ) (as in the letter a)?” Technically I was correct but when I said it the way it was written people couldn’t understand. My accent had to be somewhat correct too. Now Freddie’s accent is good and just this week his Spanish ability took a big leap and he is really speaking Spanish. His tenses are better and his syntax is getting very Spanish. I guess because he is a musician he has a good ear and can pick up accents as well as falsetas. He also picks up how people say things, such as putting the you after the verb instead of in front of it like English does. “Que pasa tu?” he says.

July 1, 1999

We got up early and went to the police station which is not air conditioned. We waited in line for nearly three hours only to find out that we had filled out unnecessary forms, that we needed two copies of our complete passports, two photos, a bank statement (which we had), and international health insurance (which we didn’t have)! But we did find out that we could go to Morocco instead and get our passports stamped again, so we could stay another three months if we wanted to (and could). So one of these weekends in July, before the 28th we will take the ferry to Morocco. It will be more fun than waiting in line after we spend a bunch of money for unnecessary services. It was 46 degrees centigrade today, probably hotter than the 21st. I don’t know the exact translation, but I do know that it was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Both my legs and knees ached from standing in line and it was hard to walk. We stumbled back to the Carboneria around two thirty and Paco, Maribel (a young Spanish dance student of Concha’s, pronounced Mari-bay), and Luis were sitting at a table outside on the patio while Concha was teaching another private class. (Concha seems to have no trouble filling all her days with private classes and I can see why. She is a phenomenal teacher). Luis mentioned going to the beach and Maribel had a car. Paco couldn’t get away but we could. Freddie canceled his class with Carlos and within half an hour we were driving to the beach in Chipiona, about an hour and a half away. Actually it was after five PM when we finally arrived. It was much cooler there and the water felt great. It was the first time I had been in the ocean here, the Atlantic. The waves are not too strong and the beach is shallow for quite a ways out. There were some large, sharp rocks but we made it in twice without injuring ourselves. How quickly I forgot how hot Sevilla was until we arrived back about midnight and it was still sticky hot. Freddie and I took a shower and I started to do laundry. Yes things get going late here. Now it is one thirty AM and we are still too hot. Yesterday, on a whim, I had asked Luis about the possibility of Concha giving me classes, if she wanted to work, at his house in the campo when Concha spends August in Chipiona (which is very near Luis’s house). He said that he didn’t want other people at his house, only Freddie and me, Paco, and a few assorted other friends. And there is really no place for a dance class. So I stopped thinking of that idea. Sometimes I forget that Luis is a very private person. He routinely turns off his telephone during the day and never checks his messages. He prefers the country to any city and periodically must return to the country to recharge himself, to get his head back together. Then today, to my surprise, on the way to the beach, he said that he had talked to Concha and that she was willing to give me lessons at the Pea in Chipiona when she is there in August if they are agreeable! What a wonderful surprise. Then Freddie and I could spend time at Luis’s house in the campo away from the August heat of Sevilla and I could have more classes from Concha. It sure was hot here today, and muggy. The sky looked all overcast instead of blue. Freddie thinks air conditioning would help. He’s probably very right!

Hopefully my legs will be better by tomorrow as I plan to continue my practicing tomorrow morning and my class at one. For sure I will wear the knee brace and try not to pli so much. I think it is my knotted thigh muscle that is pulling the ligament around my knee. I got carried away in my last class with Concha. I love the styling that she is showing me. About our web pages, I now have help. Margaret Campo, a friend of Gloria and Jim PeQueen, has taken over doing our web site. All I have to do is to send her the updates and load the photos (which I haven’t done yet) and she will do the rest. She has already redone some of our pages and created other new ones with the more recent writing that load much more quickly than the ones I did. She has placed thumbnails of the photos with the text which are linked to the larger photos. This speeds up the loading time considerably. Now, with Margaret doing a lot of this work, I will have more time to dance and to write while we are here.

July 3, 1999

It is so hot here we can hardly stand it. We didn’t see the degrees yesterday but people from here were sure it was 50 C. Today there is not as much humidity and it is a little better. But it is still very hot. Last night we were drenched in sweat as we slept with the fan on us. Our foam mattress was soaked with our sweat. And now for the last two days I have lost my voice. People here think it is drinking cold water and sleeping with the fan on, but the water is never cold up here, and even the water from the refrigerator is just barely less than warm. My scratchy throat actually started the evening we returned from the beach and may have been caused by the significant change in degrees we experienced. Freddie and I think we have a little bug of sickness. My bowels have not been right for almost two weeks. Is it the heat? This is when we feel our age. But I did manage to practice for an hour and a half this morning and I think I have a hard step relatively mastered, with the proper body and arms, that Concha worked with me on on Friday. She taught a private today, Saturday, at two PM, for an hour and a half. I don’t know how she does it. She has such energy. I don’t have another class until Monday so I can just practice once a day and still have time. It is just too hot in the evenings to practice right now. Even this morning I was drenched in sweat. Last night, after a light dinner, I just slept and didn’t go downstairs once. I think it is because I am fighting this sickness. It is my first sickness here, so that is pretty good.

July 4, 1999, Sunday

It is so hot. Freddie and I are both sick but I think we are now on the mend. I did practice for an hour today in the heat and it felt good. My leg and knee are getting much better. Then Juan Camas and Ana invited us to eat when their food was ready. I was hot and sweaty and my voice was still hoarse. People say I should sing with my voice like this, but I can’t hit very many notes! Juan Camas gave me a lecture about slowing down which I didn’t want to hear. Everyone has advice for us for getting well. I do appreciate their concern. A little while later, I ate the food that Juan and Ana had prepared, some rice with calamari and fish that was delicious and felt very healthy. Freddie wasn’t hungry yet but will eat some later. I have been asking people about gazpacho, since we have become gazpacho fanatics. Juan del Gastor was here today practicing his guitar and when he came to the patio where we were sitting in the shade of the trees, there was a food discussion going on between Juan Camas, Ana, Luis, Freddie and me which Juan del Gastor joined. I asked Juan del Gastor about gazpacho and he told me his recipe. A little later I started to write it down, because I had decided to compile a list of everyone’s gazpacho recipes. They all seem to differ, so I asked Juan again as I was writing and Luis jumped in with his version. Voices were raised, Spanish style, and Juan almost left. My voice was too hoarse to explain but Freddie managed to stop this escalation of differing opinions. However, Juan’s explanation this time was much shorter. He and Concha have both said that you have to see it being made to understand how to make it. People get very riled up about their gazpacho recipes and each one has a different twist. We did learn that the type of olive oil used is of extreme importance. Both Juans said that the olive oil from the first pressing from Moron (Juan del Gastor’s “pueblo”, home town), which can only be bought in the factories, is the best. It is still green. I forgot to ask what kind of olives are best! Apparently Moron has a reputation for producing magnificent olive oil as well as being the place where Diego del Gastor, the legendary guitar player, (Juan’s uncle) lived. Luis says that we can buy good oil in the US because he and Freddie found some there in Santa Cruz, so that it is not necessary to bring any back. Bring back saffron instead. Juan Camas says that the Italian olive oil that we buy in the States is originally from Spain and then is sent to Italy to be processed. Spaniards are very passionate about a lot of things.

Last night, after quietly uploading more photos for Margaret to put on our web site, we went to Modesto’s at about eleven PM for a late dinner. There were people eating out everywhere and we were lucky to find a small table outside. I felt like I could hardly move. On our way back we passed by the Alta Mira and saw Paco, May, Nacha, Jose Luis, and a naturopath doctor friend of Paco’s eating a small dinner at one of the outside tables. Paco said that Luis had sung just before they left and that he had sung beautifully because the people were quiet. When it is noisy, of course, the musicians have a hard time. When we arrived back at the Carboneria Concha was there, as she had said she would be, looking beautiful and fresh. She said she would bring us some gazpacho for sure on Monday. She makes great gazpacho. Soon Luis sang again and he did sing beautifully. Afterwards, I was still so tired I could hardly move so we said good bye and headed upstairs. Concha said not to set my clock to practice early and that I didn’t need to practice on Sunday, only to rest so I could get better. I took her advice about not setting the clock and Freddie and I both slept nine and a half hours.

It was late and hot when we awoke. Luis called from downstairs and he and Freddie decided to go to the Alameda “rastro” flea market which happens on Sundays and Thursdays. I felt too sick to go so I stayed here and practiced. Afterwards, Juan Camas and Ana said that they had been to the rastro for two hours in the heat and had not seen Luis and Freddie. When Freddie and Luis came back a short time later they said that they had arrived too late and that everyone had been packing up. But they didn’t seem to mind. They had a nice time getting out, and before heading for the Alameda had had gazpacho and coffee at the Alta Mira with Paco. After their Alameda adventure, they had gone to the bar across the street where Carlos Robles usually hangs out every day, but he was not there today. Carlos Robles is the dancer who came to the US with Luis last fall. He and Luis both spent several weeks at our home in Paradiso (Soquel “de la Frontera”, California).

July 6, 1999, Tuesday

I am so tired I do not know how I will continue, but I will. At least the weather has cooled off a little. Concha is giving me so much styling that I have to practice twice a day to get it all. I am now half way though the second letra of the Siguiriya and I am looking much better. But it is so hard. I am always bathed in sweat and my thighs and knees ache from the deep plis and holding the tension of the dance. This morning I tried having my class at twelve, instead of one so I wouldn’t have to run out and eat and rush right back. I practiced first, as usual, from quarter to eleven until twelve and was dripping wet and my thighs were already aching and weak when Concha showed up for my class. Because I had practiced last night and this morning I had learned what she had showed me yesterday so she gave me a lot more. She pushed me hard, encouraging me to dance with force and strength, which I did although I was exhausted. At the end of my class she asked me if I would like to perform at the Carboneria in September before I leave. It would be the three of us, Freddie playing, Concha singing, and me dancing. She asked Paco after she asked me and he said yes. She said we would invite friends and that I would learn to block out everybody but her and Freddie. It will be a good experience. It is interesting that I can’t push myself any more because I will perform this dance. I am already pushing myself as much as I can. It is a good feeling to know that there is nothing I can change in what I am already doing. The performance will be a culmination of what I have learned. I will not gear up to it because I am already gearing up to my maximum right now! I can’t even worry about it. An interesting predicament. Luis might be in France when this happens. He is waiting for a contract and a man from Madrid who will come this week. They want him and Carlos in France for August and September. They also want Luis in Japan, I think also in September, or perhaps a little later. He will work into the contract a ticket to the US. He is thinking that he will come to the US from France, and that if they want him in Japan they will have to give him a round trip ticket from US to Japan and back to the US. That way we will have him in California!

Miguel Alcala, the artist from France who draws Flamenco singers, guitarists and dancers just sent Luis a book of his drawings with a drawing of Luis in it. (Miguel was here for about a week producing a CD with Pepa Vargas singing. He also produced the four CD’s made with Pedro Bacan before he died. Concha danced on two of the cuts). Luis seems to be more and more in demand. And I can see why. He is a powerful and sincere singer. We go to Tangiers, Morocco on Friday so we can get our passports stamped and return to Spain. That way the time we are here will conform to Spain’s rules. It is hard here to even get a bus schedule but we have the times that the bus leaves now. The next question is whether we can just go to Tarifa and take the hydrofoil or do we go to Ajeciras and take the slower ferry. The hydrofoil option will depend on how rough the ocean is that day. Jose Luis says that now a lot of Arabs are going to France for summer vacation so the ferry will be very crowded. (Freddie says it is David Jones who said that. And I read in a guide book that the Arabs come from France and other countries in Europe where they work. They go home to Morocco for the summer vacations. I guess we’ll learn more when we go). We tried calling a travel agency today but the line was always busy. Arrangements seem so difficult and time consuming here. I was lucky that Jose Luis helped me call and I didn’t have to hope that the person on the other end of the telephone would talk slowly enough for me to understand. Yesterday I called about flying but the times we wanted were already booked up and it was very expensive and not that much faster. We are hoping this trip will be restful and that we can get in some beach time in a climate that is a little cooler than Sevilla.

We plan to return on Monday and resume our lessons on Tuesday. I am hoping to finish the Siguiriyas soon so I can start on Buleras and learn some of that from Concha before we have to return home. Our time here feels so limited. It is! Concha talked again of wanting to come to California for our wedding and to be the Madrina. That would be fun. She also gave me the names of two costume makers whom we can interview about making my wedding dress. Concha is thinking of designs! She called one seamstress today and set up an appointment for me on Tuesday afternoon. That woman makes costumes for Aurora Vargas and Esperanza Fernandez. The other costume maker hasn’t answered the telephone and may be on vacation. Concha will try again tonight for me. She said that if I tried and got an answer to have her call Concha. I really appreciate that. Concha talked again of how important the understanding and communication is between teacher and student and how much she enjoys teaching me. I feel so lucky. Of course, I totally enjoy her too. Despite my aches and pains, my knee seems to be healing. I am still using the knee brace and of course the oils which help immensely. I am also taking anti-inflamatories. But with the amount I am stressing my knees and legs I am feel that I am healing phenomenally.

July 8, 1999, Thursday

We leave for Tangiers, Morocco tomorrow morning and will be off-line (no e-mail) until Tuesday evening. It is hot hot hot again today and we are glad to be getting out of Sevilla. We even sweat in the air conditioned restaurants. It will be good also to take a rest from our lessons. My thighs need a rest.

We have been putting towels on the bed at night, over the sheet, and they absorb our sweat and it feels much better. We are both almost completely well. I am up to the second escobilla in the polishing of the Siguiriyas. It is starting to look good. I have been working on my posture more and it is starting to show.

I have also been missing my mother, Virginia, lately. Perhaps it started when we went to the ocean, her favorite place in the world, any ocean where she could swim. I have been wearing her diamond wedding band since shortly before we left for Spain and when I emerged from the sea the other day the tiny diamonds encircling my finger seemed to shine more, as if acknowledging my mother’s passion. Although I had the ring fixed and the settings redone after her husband, Jack’s, death, the diamonds (or their settings) are still a little rough and the stones on the inside of my hand have made marks on my thighs where I do the step where I hit my legs in comps in the Siguiriyas. I remember dancing for my mother before she died. I think she would have liked the Siguiriyas. When I look down at my subtly sparkling finger I think of her and I miss her. I keep wanting to tell her all my news.

I also think of my step mother, Elena, who died a year and a half before my mother. I have been wearing an old watch of hers which also has tiny diamonds in it. I never had diamonds before and I have always wanted them. Now I have them and in their reflection of the light I am reminded of the mothers who have passed on.

July 12, Tangiers, Morocco

It’s just past seven AM and we are preparing to leave this magical city. The noises in the harbor below us have begun. I see small boats rowing on the flat water and the bigger boats are just starting their motors. The relaxed hustle and bustle of this fabled port town is starting up again. As I watch, more and more boats join the movement. People walk along the dock to the one row of sail boats moored in the harbor. To the far left is the ferry we will take later this morning back to Algeciras, Spain. To our right front is the Medina, that ancient, mythical neighborhood inside the walled old city. Our hotel, the elegant one hundred and twenty year old Victorian Hotel Continental, is perched on the side of a hill on the edge of the Medina next to the harbor. As I write, I am sitting now on the verandah that opens from our room to this wonderful view. Here I feel like I am in another century; I am certainly in another world.

Yesterday, as I wore my new green velvet jalaba through the maze of the Medina, the people smiled at me and many commented on my beautiful jalaba. I loved wearing it and I am glad that the people here liked that I would adopt their dress. The loose fitting, hooded garment was not too hot, as I had feared, but let the breezes in and it felt cool and comfortable, graceful and flowing as I walked the narrow cobble stone streets, streets that people have walked throughout history, for many, many years. Freddie and I have been fortunate enough to learn some important customs here and it has made our stay in Tangiers a total delight. Tangiers is a city of arches and intricate design; birds in palm trees; spices and leather; beautiful colors.

On the Ferry

Last Friday we took a plush ferry from Algeciras to Tangiers (much more plush than the ferry on which we are currently returning.) At the port in Tangiers we were greeted by the proverbial taxi hustlers. We had read that a taxi only costs a dollar in Tangiers so when they said ten and later seven dollars we said, “No,” that we would walk. But finally we took one for two dollars because it is true that the taxis have to pay an extra tariff when going to and from the harbor.

Fortunately for us, we had packed extremely lightly for this trip. I carried a tiny fanny pack purse and a small day pack. Freddie carried my large purple shoulder bag back-saver purse and a bottle of water and two bananas. We were quite contained and self sufficient and could have easily walked to our hotel or anywhere else. Family members who have traveled with me in the past would be amazed! And Freddie and I both love the freedom that our light load gave us.

We spent our first night, Friday, at the Almohad, a fancy hotel that overlooked the beach and had a view of Spain on a clear day. Carlos Heredia (Freddie’s guitar teacher) had stayed here for two weeks when he came on tour with Farruco. The hotel was beautiful and geared to getting money from its visitors. The hotel staff shooed away the would-be guide who had hopped into our taxi when we left the port. The hotel then offered their guide who was official and fairly expensive which we also declined. Our room had a small ugly balcony which faced the ocean. The light above the toilet was out when we arrived and another by the bed blew and flipped the circuits, but that was much later that evening. Morocco is two hours earlier than Spain so even though we had left Sevilla early that morning and traveled all day, we still had time that evening to start to explore Tangiers. First we took showers and then decided to look up Marc Silber’s old friend, Majid, who lives in the old city. Both the would-be guide and the hotel staff assured us that because it was Friday, the Moslem Sabbath (like Sunday in the Christian world), that nothing would be open. They all wanted us to wait until Saturday to do anything. But we said that we just wanted to walk and asked the hotel staff where rue de Chretiens was and were directed there, totally incorrectly as we later found out.

We walked and walked down a busy street with many open stores, asking directions along the way, discovering that the address we wanted was in the old city but being told again that things there would definitely be closed there!

Finally we turned toward the old city and walked up the hill towards the major square from which there are many streets leading to the Medina and the Kasbah. We entered different streets and asked our way, finding many people not knowing the street and others directing us to no avail. The streets were mobbed with Moroccans walking and shopping. All the stores were open and were doing a lively business. We saw no tourists. As we made our way, searching continually for rue de Chretiens, we experienced the Moroccan hustle. Everyone wanted to show us everything but what we wanted. Finally we started speaking in a combination of “G” language and gibberish and it worked. We even spoke gibberish to the hustlers and then they stayed away, not knowing what language to speak to us. We heard someone say, “gitanos”. But we couldn’t find rue de Chretiens and it was dark so we decided to head back, acknowledging the fact that maybe we did need a guide after all so we could find Majid. We started back down the hill and Freddie got a cramp in his leg so we went back to the square where I was able to massage it out. As we again headed “home” we asked in one more store and were directed again to the old city and told to go to Cafe Central and to ask again. So we decided to go for it and walked much deeper into the Medina than before. We finally found Cafe Central and asked again for rue de Chretiens and Majid. “Majid”, a young man said, “come this way.” We told him that we were friends of a good friend of Majid’s (which I am sure helped us to actually get there). We went through a small, dark L shaped alley to another street and there was a nice shop with “Boutique Majid” in big letters on the front. We found out later that many of the old French street names had been changed to Arabic names and his street, the former rue de Chretiens, is now called Zankat el Mouahidine.

The shop was open and Majid was there. He had just returned that day from a two week buying and site seeing trip in the Sahara desert in Morocco. He does a lively business of selling beautiful, fine quality Moroccan antiques at his store to customers all over the world. He has been written up in Leisure World, Moroccan Interiors, and some other magazines whose names I don’t remember. He has known Marc Silber for over thirty years, even coming to the US for Christmas dinner with Marc and his family. When Marc met Majid in Tangiers in the early sixties, they had both been “hippies”, Marc with long, long hair and Majid with big, wide, curly Jimmy Hendrix style hair. Now Majid has short hair and is starting to bald. He has been married to his third wife, a Dane, for eighteen years and has six children, two grown ones from two previous wives, and the rest with his current wife. She and the younger children were in Denmark visiting her family. That evening we had mint tea and coffee in Majid’s shop as we talked. Before we left, he invited us for lunch the next day. When he learned that we were staying at the Almohad, Majid recommended that we move to the Continental Hotel in the Medina because it was much cheaper and nicer than the Almohad and it was in the Medina, in the middle of everything. He sent us there with a guide to see if we liked it. Seeing Hotel Continental was like stepping into another century or into a page of a romantic novel. After we had looked at a room and made arrangements with Absalam, the owner, Majid’s guide walked us down the hill to the beach and stopped a taxi for us. It did only cost us one dollar to get back to the Almohad. And we discovered that this way was much faster and more direct than the way the hotel staff had directed us earlier that evening.

Once in our room again, we heard wonderful Arabic music from across the street and so we ran down and had a snack in a little outdoor restaurant on the beach, called Sheharazad, where the band was playing. It was so loud that we had to stuff pieces of a paper napkin in our ears. But the music was good.

When we again returned to our room, exhausted and ready to fall asleep, all the lights in our bedroom blew out and the night clerk didn’t want to fix it. We insisted, as we were paying one hundred dollars a night (a lot for Morocco). Freddie had to yell at him but it did get fixed, finally. And we got to bed a lot later than we had wanted! The next morning we awoke to find that we had missed breakfast. I was feeling more and more upset and frustrated with the service and the attitude at the hotel. I had not slept well the night before so I didn’t have much patience with the continued inconvenience and poor service. Freddie, on the other hand, was enjoying the luxury and comparing it to his other two trips to Morocco where the bathrooms were just holes in the floor and the living conditions squalid. He was reluctant to move from this insulated beach front upscale hotel to the elegant but much older and perhaps less comfortable and luxurious Hotel Continental. I didn’t know what to do but was increasingly uncomfortable with the Almohad. I called the Continental to see if we were able to have the better room that might have become available and Absalam, the owner, said yes, he had been able to reserve it for us. Freddie and I agreed that if we didn’t like the Hotel Continental we would return to the Almohad and spend our last night there. So we had a plan and we took our bags and walked along the beach and then up the hill to the old city and to the Hotel Continental.

Our room there opened to a balcony that overlooked the harbor and the Medina. The small staff was gracious and friendly. The continental breakfast was served any time and was included in our thirty five dollar a night price. We had a comfortable double bed and the toilet flushed more easily than at the Almohad. Our small room was furnished simply but nicely. Small oriental rugs covered the wooden floor. Two small cabinets with lamps and drawers were on either side of the bed and a small folding writing desk was in one corner. Two chairs and a small round table were opposite the bed. Another chair and table were on the balcony. The bathroom didn’t have soap but I had brought some with me. The shower hanger was broken but they graciously fixed it the next day and we loved the hotel.

After checking in we called Majid who immediately sent some one over to guide us back to his store. After more coffee and tea we went with Majid to his home where a fabulous lunch was delivered from a nearby restaurant. We talked and relaxed, exchanged stories, and got to know each other. Later we went back to the shop and after carefully looking at everything Freddie and I made some purchases that Majid will mail to California for us. Now we will have a few beautiful things from Morocco to remind us of this magical trip. Majid will be getting e-mail Monday or Tuesday and then we will give him Marc’s e-mail address and of course will stay in touch with him ourselves. He is a genuine heart person and we are so glad to have met him. It was dark by the time we had finished in the store. I had seen women wearing simple and elegant jalabas and I wanted one for myself. The night before I had found a store selling just the kind I wanted. I asked Majid what the price should be and then Freddie and I left and walked back to that store on rue Libertad, just outside the Medina. But the store did not have any small enough for me and because they would be closed the next day, Sunday, they wouldn’t have the time to alter one for me. I had not seen that exact style in any of the other stores and that was the exact style that I wanted. So I gave up the idea of getting my jalaba. Freddie and I ate dinner that night at the little restaurant, Restaurant Andaluz, where Majid had ordered our lunch. The place looked like a hole in the wall and the food was exquisite. From there we returned to our hotel, in the heart of Tangiers. We both slept wonderfully that night. The next morning, after our continental breakfast, we walked back through the Medina to meet Majid for coffee and tea. On the way there we looked at the beautiful embroidered Berber slippers for sale in the shops here, but we did not find the right ones to buy. When we arrived at Majid’s I asked him about the slippers and told him that I hadn’t been able to get my jalaba.

Majid immediately took me a few doors down to a store that sold embroidered slippers and I chose the styles we wanted and then the store owner brought us many pairs to try on in the comfort of Majid’s store. Then Majid left and returned shortly with a man with a tape measure who measured me and returned again with just the green velvet jalaba I had wanted. He had to take it back once to shorten it. And then I had it! Freddie found two pairs of the perfect (plain) men’s slippers and I found some beautiful embroidered women’s slippers. We will wear these inside our shoe-less house in Soquel. We also bought some Moroccan leather glasses cases because we both use glasses to read up close now. Majid will include these purchases in the three packages he will be mailing to the US for us. I am amazed. We got everything we asked for and with no hassle. Saturday at lunch Majid explained the Moroccan system to us. First he told us that when someone tries to hustle us, to stop and look that person in the eyes, acknowledging him as a person, and say “no thank you,” or “I beg your pardon,” or whatever we want to say to him, and not to move until the other person moves first. It works like magic. But, you have to stop and wait for them to move first or it won’t work because they will chase you. Ignoring them never works, nor does walking faster. But, he said, the Medina is very small and is divided into territories. Now that we are associated with him, at least in his territory, they won’t bother us. And they did know and we felt very safe and cared for in the streets of the Medina. Word spreads very quickly and people watch and know everything that goes on there.

On Sunday afternoon when Freddie and I walked to the Kasbah we were out of Majid’s territory but all we had to do was to stop and communicate with anyone who tried to hustle us, looking them straight in the eyes, and we were respected and left alone. All of Sunday I wore my new jalaba and the women smiled at me and the men were respectful. Wherever we walked now we walked un-bothered, hassle free. In this way we felt that we had been given “the keys to the city”.

Our trip has indeed been magical, with doors opening up so easily and naturally that we merely had to walk through, from one wonderful adventure to the next. Again, I thank the spirits whom I had asked to guide us and to help us. This trip has been incredible and Freddie and I both would like to return to Morocco for more time.

When I was seventeen, in 1962, I was traveling in Europe. My older and wiser friend who was nineteen, Penny Gorshoff, traveled with me after we met in the Soviet Union, through Czechoslovakia and Vienna to Barcelona. When we had met we discovered that we were both reading Lawrence Durell’s Alexandria Quartet on this trip. Penny and I had wanted to go to Tangiers but the ferry in those days only left two times a week and we heard that we had just missed it. That meant that we wouldn’t have time to wait for the next ferry, go, and return in time to catch our return flights home to the US. So instead we went to Ibiza and swam and drank wine in the hot Spanish sun by a road named Figaretas. Tangiers remained a dream. So now, in 1999, I have finally made it to Tangiers and the dream has become the very welcome reality.

July 15, 1999, Thursday

I feel discouraged and exhausted. The heat is so debilitating and my technique isn’t good enough. This polishing is much harder than learning steps. If I worked hard before I could learn the steps in a day, but learning to do the steps well seems almost impossible. I am at the end of the second escobilla and it just seems to be getting harder. I know I am better than I was when I started, but I feel impatient with myself. Am I at the end of my rope? Freddie feels this way a lot lately, full of material that he can’t quite yet master. And now I am feeling this way. I have a headache and I didn’t sleep well last night. I have not been getting enough sleep because I can’t seem to get to bed early enough and I have to get up early to practice before my class in the morning at twelve. I would practice now at seven PM, but it is still too hot and I plan to wait until eight. That means that we don’t have time to eat before Freddie’s lesson at nine thirty. Tonight Luis will come and sing for Freddie’s lesson so that Freddie can learn how to accompany him. When I didn’t practice at night I had more time, but now I have to practice twice a day or I can’t even half master this material. And even twice a day feels like too little. I want to leave and go to the sea shore but I want to finish this Siguiriyas more and I want my buleras, so I will stay. I have two more weeks until Concha goes to Chipiona. No one has called the Pea there to see if we can use it and if we can’t, we will have to pick up Concha and take her to Luis’ house and then back which will add an extra hour or hour and a half onto the day. Already I don’t have time for anything. How am I going to do it in August? And Concha wants me to pick up a second hand mirror, which makes sense. But when am I going to do this? Concha doesn’t know that we will need wood to dance on too, at Luis’ house. His floors are tile. And everything closes during the hottest part of the day and when they open up again I have to practice, so when am I going to get a mirror and find out about wood to dance on? Tuesday instead of practicing in the morning I went to Menkes to get the second fitting for my new dance shoes. They will be ready a week from Friday. Then Tuesday evening, instead of practicing, I had an appointment (which Concha made for me) to meet one of the costume makers, to look at her ideas for a wedding dress. I am still unsure of what I want or whom I want to make it. Salao, the major costume maker here, is out of town. Concha has tried to call a number of times and only gets an answering machine. Will I even get a wedding dress here? Will we find rings here? We are too busy learning and practicing to do anything else. Freddie says that the important thing is that we are getting married, not what we wear. He is right, but still I want to wear something special and beautiful for this wedding celebration. Freddie hasn’t found a traje (wedding suit) either. He hasn’t looked much either. It’s been too hot and besides we’re almost always practicing. That is really what we are here for, but it is grueling. Johnny and Celeste Chesko, our good friends, caretakers and neighbors, sent us a turquoise and purple plastic water bottle with a battery operated fan on it which we received also on Tuesday. Freddie has already used up the batteries today but it did help cool him. Freddie’s blood pressure is up in this heat. As he pointed out, many people here have high blood pressure, including Luis, Carlos, and Juan Camas. But that doesn’t mean that Freddie’s should stay high. I don’t want anything to happen to him. It is stressful to do this learning in this intense manner, but I know that we’ll be glad when we return. Next time we’ll remember not to come in the middle of summer. Maybe we’ll come again some September for two months. I need to keep remembering that we are both assimilating a lot of material and that in itself is stressful. I might be able to force myself to do our dishes now before I practice. Maybe I’ll make more of our green drink and some power meal. I don’t know if I’m hungry but the thought of food makes me sick. I can’t decide what I want to eat and I’ve missed the hours for the “mercado” which carries the zero percent yogurt. I am also struggling with my weight here. It was finally down before we went to Morocco but I gained some of it back in Tangiers because the food was so good. And I thought I was staying away from fattening foods. This is one of the things I don’t like about aging, about being in my middle fifties I gain weight so easily now. I guess I didn’t realize how lucky I was the rest of my life. I used to be able to eat anything and not gain weight. I try to eat non fat here but it is difficult. Many of the Spanish women in their forties and older are very fat. I look thin next to them, but in America I would look a little heavy, mainly my stomach and thighs. I would think that with all this dancing that I would be thinner. And maybe the dancing is saving me from gaining more weight. I guess I do have to remember that, as my mother would have said, I am no “spring chicken”. I have to remember that I am almost fifty five and I am pushing my body as if I were twenty five. I am glad that I did not wait until sixty! (like Freddie, Freddie says.) But he’s not dancing, only trying to have fingers as agile as a twenty year old. But we both have the wisdom of age and the knowledge of what we want to accomplish and what is important in our lives.

I just practiced and I felt so spastic. I practiced my contras without moving my other foot and it felt right but I had no way of telling whether it was or not and that felt frustrating too. But I know that it is good that I practiced and I probably didn’t make myself worse. This stuff is just hard and I am being very critical of myself. I wish I could believe in myself more. If I could learn that here in Spain I would have accomplished a lot. I am still amazed when people like my dancing, when they like what I am doing here. Why is it so hard to accept being good? Even writing “good” is hard. Am I good or am I just fooling myself? And what is good? I will never be as good as I want to be. Good is relative, but to what? People in this culture, at least the Spanish gypsy culture, do believe in themselves and will tell you how good they are or how wonderful their choreography is, their singing, their guitar playing. All I see in my dance is what I have not yet accomplished, what I don’t do well. I am still surprised when people like it. I haven’t looked at my first video tape yet, but I should, to see how far I’ve come. But I don’t want to take the time right now to look back. I know that I have learned a lot, both in choreography and in styling. Sometimes I forget that I have only had less than two months of classes here because Concha was away in May and I only had six classes before she left. And it is my styling that I want so much to get right and that is what is so very difficult. Right now Freddie is having a lesson with Carlos and Luis is here singing so Freddie can learn how to accompany him correctly. How fortunate we are. I was about to write “lucky” but people here object to that word when we use it, I think perhaps because luck is associated with gambling. Fortunate is what I mean, fortunate to have the opportunity to work and study with such great artists. I know that we have to put in the work and dedication and so that part is not luck but obsession. And I feel fortunate to have Luis singing right here in our room. I also look forward to the time when I can work out more with Freddie again. Now he has so much to practice on his own that I practice on my own too. That is good for the body styling. I need to work on a lot of this part by myself, over and over again. But I need to polish to the music as well and I miss working out with him more. But this too shall pass and Freddie’s guitar playing is already better and much more clean than before.

Sometimes it feels as if we have almost no time left here although we have two more months. It’s like aging. Usually until sometime in the forties people look at their lives in terms of how much they have lived, how long they have lived. Around the forties things change and people start to look at time left to live. It is like this here in Spain for us too. We have been here just over a two and a half months, a little more than half way through our stay, and already we are looking at time left to be here. I am hoping I get to learn enough buleras in my time left and I am feeling the pressure of our limited stay. I know that also at some point I will want to see a few other cities as we have planned to do in August. That will take time away from learning and practicing. I will also want to do a little shopping, at least for gifts. That too will take time. We had also wanted to return to Morocco in August but I don’t think we will make it this time. We’re just too busy, but Freddie doesn’t think so. He wants to eat more lamb brains (which he ate fried in tomato sauce in Morocco). Juan Camas says they are very good for you, very nourishing.

July 16, 1999

Today in class I was dripping sweat, even more than usual. I did well and surprised myself and Freddie and Concha by getting that contra step I couldn’t get yesterday. After class I commented to Concha about how weak my body felt and she said, “You’re not twenty! I feel the same way!” So I guess I expect my body to be immortal and I know that it isn’t. I think I am feeling weaker because I am pushing my body more and more, as I learn how the steps should be done. And, I am not twenty. But I can do it. Concha is figuring out more details of our performance in September. She wants Luis to practice singing with us next week and we will start working away from the mirror and in the direction of the audience. Can I do it? Will I be good enough? The same old thoughts keep coming. I will just be as good as I can be, as I am at the moment. And it will certainly be better than I was in May, when I started here.

Yesterday as we were walking outside two people told us that they had seen us on TV. Then that evening a waiter at Modesto’s told us he had seen us on TV too. The day before a Cuban group, Los Jubilados, was playing at the Carboneria in a special performance during the day, just toward the end of my lesson. They were being televised here at the Carboneria in conjunction with a show that several Cuban groups are doing with Flamenco groups, a Cuban and Flamenco fusion, here in Sevilla in the next few days. Hot and sweaty at the end of my class, I sat down with Freddie to listen to their wonderful music. Concha had earlier shooed away the photographers and television cameras from our lesson. I had been working so hard in class that I hadn’t been paying attention to what was going on in the patio. But as we later sat watching the music, one wonderful singer, a delightful old man, kept singing to me and smiling. I found out later that he had been watching my class and he had loved my dancing. Several of the Cubans came up to me later to comment on my dancing. What a nice surprise. Concha got inspired during the music and got up and danced there in the patio. She reminds me of me, of the way I used to be, always inspired to dance. The next day there was a wonderful photo of her dancing to the Cubans, in the ABC newspaper. Apparently, that same day, the television had also videoed Freddie and me watching the show because people said they saw us on the twelve noon TV. So, we made the Spanish TV, even if it was just as an audience at a private show.

July 18, 1999, Sunday

Today we went to Carlos’ house to celebrate the birthdays of his two youngest daughters. Sarai turned eight and Fti (Ftima) turned two. (We have a photo on our web page of Ftima dancing buleras in her diapers at Concha’s party.) Carlos and his wife Pili live in a Gitano (gypsy) barrio (neighborhood) that Paco says has three thousand gypsies. The apartment buildings look like project housing but Carlos has bought his apartment and has remodeled a lot of the inside of it, adding walls and mirrored doors. In one room he now has a recording studio.

Outside there is a large walkway that faces a little cafe and a shabby mall of small stores, closed on Sunday. Families as well as the little cafe place chairs and tables outside and the children run around and play on the pavement. Occasionally motor scooters pass through so it is not as safe as it seems. But, there is a nice sense of community. The guests at party were mainly relatives except for Freddie and me, Paco, Luis, Concha and Rafael and their two youngest children, Curro and Carmen. During the party many people moved outside to sit and talk. One man, a brother-in-law, borrowed Carlos’ guitar and started to play and then he handed it to a boy who was learning and who also played some. Sarai and her cousin danced. Her cousin, a little girl about Sarai’s age, also sang and Pili got me to dance a little bit of buleras. Later the little cousin asked me if I would dance again while she sang, which I did. I wish I had already learned a buleras from Concha because I felt awkward. But Freddie said I looked OK and Carlos’ mother, the classic picture of an older Gitana woman (dressed in black, hair pulled back in a bun, dark skin and an eagle beaked nose), told me, as I was leaving, that I danced very well. That was nice. But what struck me at that party was the way the adults encourage the children so positively to dance, sing, and play guitar. A little deaf boy danced too and he was so happy. The adults actively prod the children to sing more, to dance more and the interaction is beautiful. We didn’t bring the camera so there will be no pictures of this one.

Later that evening, at the Carboneria, I asked Concha when and how she had started to dance. She learned her dance in the academy, from Pepe Rios, Agustine Rios’ brother who passed away a number of years ago. They are nephews of Diego del Gastor of Moron and cousins of Juan del Gastor. Concha started to study dance at eleven or twelve when she had gone to the academy with her sister who was studying there. Pepe told her how to place a hand in a certain position and when she did he said to her mother that she should study dance and so she did.

After the party Concha brought her two children, Carmen who is eight and likes to sing and dance, and Curro, a handsome boy of twelve, back to the Carboneria. Rafael had already left the party earlier because he had to be at work here. Concha and I and the kids sat at a table and talked and then Concha started to teach me some more words of Siguiriyas letras and so we started to sing them. That was fun. Tomorrow I will write them down. I have learned one letra already but I want more. She will teach me three more and a salida.

Concha also told me that her plans to go to Chipiona have changed because the place they were going to stay in suddenly became unavailable due to some family politics (not hers). So they are going to Huelva to the beach instead. I said that I still might want to come for some lessons if possible and so Concha is going to ask a friend about a cheap apartment for us there. It would be fun to live by the beach for a little while. Huelva is about a hundred kilometers from Sevilla, which means about an hour and a half by car. Luis will try to get insurance for Paco’s car tomorrow (another on-going saga) and then we will be able to borrow it. The car has just been sitting here since we have been here because it needed to have the ownership transferred before it could get insurance. Jose Luis was supposed to do it and he just came back into town and said that the transference had already happened, which Luis hadn’t known. So Luis and Freddie will try to get insurance tomorrow. Luis knows of a cheap place in Triana. Nothing seems to happen quickly here in Spain.

Luis said today that the worst of the summer heat here in Sevilla has passed. Today there was a nice breeze although it was still hot. But Sevillanos still talk of the great heat. When you greet someone, they say, “Que hay?” (pronounced “k” “i”) which means “what’s happening?” or “how’s it going?” The answer these days is always, “Que calor!”, which is “what heat!” Even today, which was much cooler, people still said, “Que calor, que calor!”, the Sevillano lament in summertime. No one seems to ever have gotten used to it. But for us there is hope, if the heat is decreasing. That means that we have survived. We are still alive! I have very recently lost a lot of the weight I gained in Cuba and when first here in Spain. It seemed to finally drop off suddenly, a day or two ago, (after over a month of watching my diet) and people are just starting to comment on it. Although I have a little more to go, I am happy that it is finally happening. I had gained back some of the weight in Tangiers, but that is off now after a week of paying attention. I remember how horrified I was when we finally got a mirror for our room in late May and I was able to see my thighs. I had thought they would be in good shape because of all our walking and also climbing the stairs, but they were awful, wide and fully of fatty cellulite. And it has taken a long time to lose the weight, longer than I ever remember in my life. But now they look good again, trim and strong with very little cellulite left. And my stomach is not so fat either. That is a good feeling.

This morning I was feeling awful, I am not sure why, and I pushed myself to practice anyway. Freddie had gone out with Luis but I hadn’t felt up to joining them. After my practice, Juan Camas came up to me and asked if I had eaten. I had eaten a little gazpacho and some orange juice at the Alta Mira in the morning, I told him. He invited me to eat with he and Ana and asked me what was wrong. He said my face had a “darkness” (“obscura”) to it, he could see it. He could see into my face, in the forehead between the eyes and see the darkness. I told him he was perceptive and that I didn’t know why I felt sad and grumpy. He told me that he didn’t want me to be sad and to tell him why. Again I said that I didn’t know. Then I went upstairs and took a shower and washed my hair. A short time later Ana called me for the meal. Juan del Gastor and his young friend Luis were there on this quiet Sunday. Paco was out and Freddie and Luis were out and no one was working there. Juan del Gastor commented on this tranquillity, on the patio, outside, under the green trees that Paco has planted, shaded and cooled in the summer heat of the day. Juan del Gastor and Luis declined the offer of food but sat there with us on the bright blue chairs as we ate our meal of rice with garbanzas, garlic, onions, tomatoes, and pimientos. Juan Camas said that he puts “magia” (magic) into his food when he cooks. His cooking is like painting a picture with food. He said that the food would be very nourishing and would make me feel better. Then he sang for half a minute, as if to illustrate his point, or to put the magic in the food, and Ana brought the food to the white metal table and we ate. And lo and behold, I did feel better. I think the magic worked. After the meal I went upstairs and journeyed and then Freddie came back and after a while we got dressed for Carlos’ party and went downstairs to meet Luis and Paco. I stopped thinking about how I felt until tonight, writing this, I realize that now I feel good again. Whatever it was has passed. The darkness, the dark cloud is gone. And I am thankful. Freddie is practicing softly in the warm night to a tape of Luis singing. It is three thirty in the morning and I have to stop writing and go to bed. I will be getting up a nine thirty, as usual on the week days, to practice before my twelve o’clock class with Concha. And so the week begins again. Back to practicing twice a day and having a class every day. I hope my body will hold out. My knees are still a little sore. But we will go out on one excursion, to the Feria of Triana, which happens Tuesday. Freddie will take fewer classes with Carlos this week so he will have more time to practice his lessons and to go out a little, like to the Feria of Triana. Good night.

July 30, 1999

I have so many thoughts floating through my mind. I have begun a period of introspection. My friend Randi, a psychotherapist, wrote to me after receiving my last update that she thought my “mood swings” were a result of needing to go inward. While I think they are a result of working too hard for too long, I also agree with Randi that there was a need for introspection. Coincidentally, and perhaps focused by Randi’s e-mail, just about that time I found myself looking inward. I asked myself, how much should I, or do I want to, push myself. Is this what I want? What do I want out of my Spain experience? My father reminded me that I was on holiday too. Am I? Sure, in a way, a working holiday.

I am concerned because my knees are hurting and because of this I am welcoming Concha’s vacation at the beach, at Isla Cristina. I want the pace to slow and to see a little of Spain and to go shopping. On the other hand, I will miss Concha and my lessons. There was one class this week, I think it was Monday, when Concha seemed in a bad mood. I had brought up the fact that I didn’t know if people in California could pay enough for her price to come and teach there. I had figured it out over the weekend and I asked her a second time how much she would want and I had been right. After class I felt disgruntled for the first time with the class and the interaction. Freddie felt it too. As we talked about it later I realized and said that maybe Concha was reacting to the fact that she was leaving and that before separating sometimes people find ways to get angry at each other to make the leaving easier. We were all realizing that Freddie and I wouldn’t realistically be able to get down to Isla Cristina for classes. Apartments there are scarce and expensive this time of year. Then, as I was telling Freddie these thoughts I realized that I too was feeling sad that Concha was leaving and probably those feelings and this impending separation were a large part of my own “disgruntlement”. Concha and I have a very intimate and intense relationship. We have been working together five and sometimes six days a week since her return in June and of course the six classes before she left in May. It seems like longer than just two months. I have learned and polished a beautiful ten minute Siguiriyas and now have a week of an exciting fiesta style buleras. I am still honing the Siguiriyas both with Concha’s cleaning up my footwork and accents and with my critical monitoring of my class videos. I have been watching them and trying to correct all the styling flaws I can find. I am not done yet (will I ever be?) but I am making progress. It is fun. But I didn’t want Concha to go. I wanted more lessons. I haven’t finished the buleras yet and didn’t want to go for a whole month without class, especially with this show at the Carboneria she has been gearing me up for. But I accepted my disappointment and sadness after acknowledging it in words to Freddie.

Tuesday, the next day, Concha came to class with a solution to our “separation anxiety”. She will come back (two hours each way by bus) from the beach every week end to teach me. I will take two classes on Saturday and two classes on Sunday and then she will return to the beach. This way she will also get to see Rafael more, as he still has to work most of the month. It works perfectly for both of us. Freddie and I can travel during the week and return to check e-mail and to take class on the weekends. I will have to find a way to practice but I am sure I will come up with some way to learn the material.

To back track with some explanation, I will first start with Concha and Isla Cristina. The day Luis was supposed to get insurance for Paco’s car he suddenly left for his house in Rota and spent some time in the mountains and then back in Rota trying to register his furgoneta. So, the possibility of using Paco’s car once again seemed far away. Then Concha invited us to go to Huelva with her where she had planned to take her family camping for the month of August. The original plan called for Jose Luis to drive one car and for Maribel to drive the other and for Paco, Nacha and Concha’s husband Rafael to come. But Jose Luis couldn’t do it and Nacha had a cold so Concha, Paco, Freddie and I rode the hour and a half to Isla Cristina in the province of Huelva with Maribel, in her car. Maribel had just been spending time there the week before because her family owns an apartment there. So she knew the way.

We went to the camp ground, a large, manicured, camping resort a two minute walk from the beach. It surprised Freddie and me to discover during the course of the day that this resort was owned by Paco’s close friend Saturnino, whom we had met a number of times in Sevilla, including at Concha’s party. That’s why Paco went with us. Concha had thought that Freddie and I would look for a cheap apartment there. But it turned out that there were no camping sites available for August for her so Concha had to find an apartment for herself.

But first we all went to the beach and Freddie and I swam again in the Atlantic ocean and then picked up shells. Paco and Saturnino walked along the sand, their pants rolled up to keep out of the salty sea water. Maribel went to look for her cousin on the beach and later walked along the edge of the water talking and picking up shells with us. Then we sat at a round table at a little drink stand on the beach which we figured out was also owned by Saturnino and his wife Lourdes. Lourdes sat with us and we got to know her a little. The campground is only five years old and was built on a rather desolate piece of land separated by a road and a small dun from the beach. Saturnino and Lourdes have planted oleanders and grass and a variety of flowers around the office and the two cafeterias which they also built. Now their business is thriving. Saturnino has recovered from prostate cancer Lourdes told me that day. When we first met Saturnino, we talked about health and supplements and he was very knowledgeable but I didn’t have any idea of the health issues he had been dealing with. Freddie bought a wonderful lung and chest cleansing syrup on his recommendation. But that is all we knew about him. We didn’t even know that he spoke excellent English. After our drinks and conversation we came back from the beach and changed our clothes in the office where Saturnino, Lourdes, and their son live. Then Maribel took us first to a rental agency and then to her grandmother’s apartment so Concha could get an idea of what she could get. Paco stayed and visited with Saturnino and Lourdes. Freddie and I hopped out of the car on a whim in the little town of Isla Cristina and bought a blue and white painted tile soap dish for the bathroom sink at the Carboneria. From the town of Isla Cristina we all returned to the “camping” and ate for the second time in the cafeteria there. Then, all of us hot and tired and relaxed, piled into Maribel’s car again. Maribel drove us the long hour and a half home to Sevilla.

Concha did not learn until the next day that she indeed did get the apartment she wanted. She will share the high expense with her sister Pepa, who will be staying with her. Freddie and I are so happy that we don’t have to go there for my lessons because we probably wouldn’t have made it and it would have been a real and boring and time consuming schlep by bus if we had made it. And then we would have had the expense of renting an apartment, renting the Pea both for lessons and practice, and we wouldn’t have had the time to explore a few places here that we want to visit. So Concha’s solution was a wonderful gift to me, really to us. I now look forward to the learning I will do in August, our last full month here. And so this week we are making progress with a beautiful, rhythmical buleras. It’s got umph. But I have to work hard at it, harder than I had thought. It was discouraging, especially Monday when I was upset about the idea of Concha leaving. In fact, I can’t remember exactly when, I felt very discouraged about my being able to dance. I wondered if I were really too old to do this. I thought about giving it up but knew that I loved Flamenco too much to really give it up. And that’s why I dance. Then I started to make progress again and I got happy with my dance. Sometimes I have breakthroughs and I am getting increasingly happier with how I am doing in my videos. I love watching them and seeing what I need to correct and then getting to check the next day to see if I have corrected the problem. When I haven’t I will know soon and so have the opportunity to fix it again before I take in another bad habit. I love this tool and am glad that I am finally using it to the best of my ability. It’s kind of like painting a painting and changing the parts that I don’t like to what I do like. I am much more concerned with my upper body and arms than Concha is. She is focused more on my footwork and the accuracy and the accents. She says my upper body and arms are fine, but I know they can be better. We are both paying attention to how the Siguiriyas looks done toward the public, away from the mirrors. I usually do the Siguiriyas once at the end of our buleras class and then she tells me what to work on. Sometimes someone will come up while I am dancing it and I will look up, lose my concentration and make a mistake. It always amazes me because I know the dance. But obviously I don’t know it as well as I need to. By the end of class my thighs still ache. I am trying to stretch out more both before and after dancing and it is helping a lot. Although it helps me a lot, I often forget to think about warming up when I dance up here in our room to Freddie’s practicing, working on steps, body, and arms in our cloudy armoire mirror. It here where I often think I have made breakthroughs. I am starting to ask myself what am I saying with this move, with these arms, hand, footwork, step, head. It’s an interesting stage and I have just entered it in a new way. I am looking at each move in each dance, but especially in the Siguiriyas. I have discovered new ways to bring my arms down using information giving to me years ago. I have put intention into many of my steps. I am just at the beginning, trying to make this an automatic part of my dance. I have finally entered the place where I can think about these things. I just had to spend the time, watching and studying and then wondering and going inward to project outward. So maybe this is the way I will deal with introspection, put it into my dance. It is time for my dance to go inward for its substance. I am discovering simple things that I knew all along but had forgotten to do. A door is opening but I am not sure to what.

I have finally met Salao, the famous costume maker of the Flamenco stars. He is a lovely man with a very small, long haired white dog name Panchito. He is making my wedding dress out of a white satiny crepe covered with white lace. It will have organdy ruffles and a small train and will be beautiful. I will also have a black Siguiriyas dress made which Concha now wants me to wear in our show. I will have my third fitting Monday morning before we go to Granada if we really go.

That is our plan, but we are both having breakthroughs right now. Freddie’s playing just took a big leap. Ever since I was able to tape Carlos’ hands for Freddie he has learned his lessons much faster than before. This incredible tool is as useful for Freddie’s guitar as it is for my dance. He can evaluate himself too as he hears his guitar or listens to how he learns from Carlos. And now that his nails are even shorter, he has learned many of Carlos’ techniques so his playing is clear and crisp and full of arpeggios. It is heavenly. He has emerged from the chaos and the despair of never getting to realize that he is getting it and that he is now playing well. And he has also learned some extremely beautiful new falsetas and some new modern stuff as well.

July 31, 1999

Last Wednesday, the day Luis finally returned, he, Freddie, and I took a taxi to the shop of Sevilla’s top guitar maker, Francisco Barba. Freddie’s guitar was finally ready. Shortly after arriving here Freddie’s guitar had dropped on the tile floor and broken where it had been recently repaired after being badly damaged at Sweet’s Mill last summer. Barba expertly repaired the break and then French polished the entire guitar. The old banged up, well used look is past. The sound is still beautiful and now the guitar looks cared for and valued. It has taken its “category”, as Concha would say. Freddie’s playing has started to greatly improve every day. He is on a roll. He is mastering the difficult but beautiful scales that Carlos has given him to strengthen specific techniques and now his playing is clean and agile. Finally Freddie is learning more music, more falsetas, from Carlos which he now has the ability, because of this technique, to play. He is learning quickly, like a hungry sponge. He has also learned how to learn well from Carlos and this too has speeded his progress. And so have all the fifty years he has been playing Flamenco made this rate of progress possible. And I am now feeling better about my dancing too. Last week I was so discouraged that I seriously wondered if I were too old to do this. But when I thought about not dancing I couldn’t imagine it. I knew that I loved Flamenco and that I would always dance to the music I loved. I dance because I dance. But I am also buying costumes. This evening Rafael told me that he wanted to sing at my performance in September. Luis has mentioned it too. Everyone seems to be excited by it and that amazes me. Today, after my last class until next Saturday, I mentioned to Luis that I would take a short break from dancing because my knees were hurting and Concha is on vacation. He said, “Well you dance three or four hours a day…” and I thought, “not that much”. But when I thought about it I realized that he was actually right! I dance for an hour to an hour and a half in the morning and then, until now, took my class with Concha for an hour. Then at seven or eight I practice for another hour or two on the stage. And sometimes later at night I practice in the room, dancing to Freddie’s practicing, working on everything but footwork or anything that would disturb Paco who sleeps below us. I had never added up the hours but now I see that the minimum is three hours a day. Sometimes I never took a break even on the weekends. But now I have to, before I damage my body. I don’t want to but I also know that other times I have taken a short break from practicing I have emerged better than when I stopped. This always surprises me although it has happened on a regular basis and I know its true.

The last week or two have seemed to be filled with strong emotions, perhaps a crying to look inward. My three pairs shoes from Menkes came, the ones I had made from a drawing of my feet, with two fittings. None of the shoes fit. They were too big. I burst into tears after I tried to dance in each pair. I couldn’t. Freddie held me and comforted me. The next day I showed Concha and she called Menkes and told them I was taking them back and I wanted new ones. These were already too big and would stretch even more and be like “boats” as they broke in. She told them I was leaving on September 5 so they would get them to me in time. They told me they would be ready September 4. They do cut it close. I made them reverse the charges of the final payment I had made for the shoes the day before. I had just been to Menke’s that morning to take in my skirt, the skirt I planned to wear for the performance before I met Salao and commissioned my black dress. The fishing line that is put in the ruffles to make them stick out has broken and is coming out. This is the second time it has happened with this skirt. Possibly they did not fix it right the first time. It might not be anything I am doing. It was supposed to be back today but they didn’t call me. I will have to call on Monday morning before I go back to Salao’s for another fitting at eleven. Hopefully it will be there. The seamstress is going on vacation in August.

We’re planning on going to Granada on Monday as well but we still have to check a train schedule and call friends there. A young guitarist from New Mexico whom we met in Sevilla, Josh, is thinking of meeting us there. He is currently in Mlaga and has been in Almeira hanging out with some wonderful Flamenco people there. An excellent guitarist, Tomatito’s cousin, has taken him under his wing and he is in the middle of everything. We will visit there during the Festival that will happen in August. So Monday will be quite a filled day and I don’t know yet if we’ll really get away. Freddie wants to go but is also having trouble pulling himself away from his lessons with Carlos right now. We keep thinking of our time left here in Spain, a month and a half.

But to return to the way I have been feeling … The intense self questioning, despair, tears, and extreme sensitivity have given birth to something new, a kind of happiness and acceptance. And I feel a growing excitement, a buzzing in my body. And I feel happiness. As Freddie and I were downstairs in the small room listening to Luis and Carlos tonight for the second time, I felt so happy to just be there. Luis sang beautifully and Carlos accompanied him especially well tonight. He was exquisite. And as I sat on the narrow wooden bench leaning against Freddie, half in his arms, right in front of the small stage where Luis and Carlos were performing, the awareness of my happiness surged around me and I felt so much gratitude for it. I am treasuring each moment. And I want to put all that into my dance too.

Today Paco took us to the Ibarra palace. We had told Paco that my brother-in-law, Ken, after visiting us here, wanted to buy a high end building in Sevilla. Ken had fallen in love with Sevilla on this visit. So today Paco arranged a meeting for us with Andrs Burzaco Malo who speaks Spanish and also perfect English.

Andrs is currently living in an incredible house/palace on Santa Maria La Blanca just up from Fernando III, past the bank, before the church and the bookstore. It has been owned by the Ibarra family (one of the most old, rich, and prestigious families of Sevilla) for over two hundred years. The eight Ibarra brothers just inherited it from their parents and want to sell it because all eight families can’t live there at one time. It has original hand painted tile from the 16th and 18th centuries, old Moorish work like the Alcazar, incredible doors and roofs, stained glass, you name it, etc. It is like a very tasty museum.

The law will not let you tear out any of the old tile, which is good, because it is exquisite and irreplaceable. The house is in good shape and huge, with three stories and a garage, a small chapel, a central courtyard with a tiled fountain and an outdoor patio with orange trees, night blooming jasmine, etc.. Andrs has some professional photos scanned into his computer and he will e-mail those to Elaine and Ken. Freddie also took photos today with the digital camera and I have already loaded them into the computer. Of course the price is high, but what this house contains cannot even be duplicated. The house was used by the Junta of Andalucia for two years and they put in air conditioning, heat (other than the fireplaces) and more bathrooms. It was also an embassy for a while. Andrs, (from Mexico) is a friend of the Ibarra family and has lived in the house for a year. He is acting as the broker and is in the process of putting together an import/export business which includes trying to export the wonderful Spanish Jamon Serrano (Pata Negra, the best quality). I would love to buy it but I of course I don’t have that kind of money. It would be an incredible place to live in Sevilla, cool in the summer, warm in the winter, and exquisitely beautiful and very big. It is breath takingly beautiful and rivals the Alcazar (minus the gardens) and puts the Hotel Casa Juderia to shame. Two parts, on either side, have been sold (in the past) and turned into high end apartments. This part of the house cannot be further divided and shouldn’t be because it is so spectacular. Unfortunately, when I later received an e-mail answer from Ken, I learned that this is not the kind of place he can use. He needs an income producing place, not a palace. I guess I am the one who needs a palace in Sevilla but on the other hand, I am also content with our attic room at the Carboneria. I have been working on spending less money here as I worry a little about our finances. But Friday after my class I took myself shopping, while Freddie was practicing, in quest of some new shoes like Concha’s. She came to class the other day with some incredible black Italian sandals, a band over the big toe and a band over the arch. Square crystal jewels lined the top of each band. She gave me directions to the store which is in an actual shopping mall called Los Arcos, where the shoes were on sale. I found the store and they had one pair, in a blue purple, left in my size so I bought them although I had wanted the black. But the purple too are very beautiful and go with a lot of my clothes. Then I wandered around the shops and bought a French velvet wrap around mini skirt and a black tee shirt and a thin black long sleeved, v-necked shirt, all on sale and very cheap, all but one under a mil pesetas (which is under about seven or six dollars, depending on the exchange rate). I have been wearing the skirt and black tee shirt ever since and they look elegant and sexy together. When I put the new silver wedge heeled Italian sparkly sandals with this outfit I feel great. The jewels are blue purple, clear silver, and a faint gold. I re-painted my toe nails and when I look down at my feet I see beautiful sparkles. I love my new shoes and clothes more and more every day. I was getting so sick of the clothes I brought with me to Spain and now I have some “Spanish” clothes, or should I more accurately say, European.

August 1, 1999, Sunday

When I made my shamanic journey today, as I climbed up the Giralda to the upper world, Anzonini was waiting for me. Anzonini has been meeting me here since I’ve been in Spain and have been using the Giralda to enter the upper world when I journey. This time Anzonini was with another man, thin and wiry, whom I was told was a “medico”. As my intention for this journey I had asked for help with my knees and this medico had come to help me. He told me that he was a wizard, a magician/doctor in the 16th century and the date 1598 came up. I am not sure if that was when he was born or when he died. I noticed then that he wore a tall pointed hat. He suggested that I use the essential oil that I brought for jet lag and that I had been directed to use earlier on Paco’s legs, rosewood. I don’t know a lot about rosewood, but when I finished the journey I immediately found where I had stored and forgotten about it, and I quickly put some on my knees and felt a soothing and burning sensation and the knees felt better. Hours later, after we had walked to the Alta Mira and then back to the Carboneria to find it all locked up, my knees began to hurt again. Luis, Freddie and I started to walk to a store that sold fried chicken but my knees were hurting so I went back and sat on a stone bench in the square by the Carboneria and waited for the workers to get there with a key. The Carboneria opens at eight and it was already seven thirty so I figured that someone would arrive shortly to set up. Soon Freddie and Luis returned because the fried chicken store was closed and we sat and waited until Jose Luis, the door man, arrived at eight with the key. Two other workers waited with us because not everyone has a key. I practiced a step sitting down to Freddie’s palmas and that didn’t hurt my knees. When we finally got in I again put rosewood oil on my knees and they immediately felt better. I am assuming also that they are hurting more because I am not sleeping enough. I have been getting five and a half to six and a half hours of sleep and functioning, even without coffee. But I am now out of my power meal which I feel helps to sustain me and I am waiting for more to arrive soon. I think my knees also hurt because I am dancing so much harder and there is concrete under the flimsy and breaking stage. Concha wants loud and very strong accents in my steps and my foot work sounds a lot better now but I don’t know if my knees can take it! It is frustrating not to dance. Today I watched the video of my buleras and I wanted to get up and practice it but I am holding myself back because I don’t want to injure myself. I walked through it twice though.

Luis said that he is ready to practice singing to my Siguiriyas now. I want to be dancing! He is preparing himself to go to California and his sister in San Diego is helping to set up some contracts for him. He wants Paco Lira to come too. Paco really wants to see Chris Carnes and we have been trying to find the phone number of where he is now staying with his brother so Paco can talk to him. It would be great to have Paco has a guest at our home. And so August, our last full month here, begins.

August 14, 1999

Again so much has happened that I have not been able to write about. Here is a slightly edited quote from Rubina’s e-mail to us around August 7. She was able, with the information I gave her and many repeated phone calls, to finally locate Chris Carnes and to talk to his brother. “Chris is dying. He is very very weak and does not remember a lot of people. He remembers Paco Lira. He said he wished he was able to take him places and show him California. I called and told Luis. His (Chris’) brother does not think he will make by September. His comment was that he may or may not make it by September. They think his depression has set him back a lot and that he may have dementia. … I spoke again to his brother and he gave me the hospital # …. St. Joseph’s Hospital. 707-445-8121 room 1403. Kent the brother is looking for a rest home till Chris dies. ”

I helped Paco Lira call Chris the evening of August 9. We had tried once before but the pay phone in the Carboneria wasn’t working and it took all our money and cut us off from the hospital. The next day the phone wasn’t working at all so Paco had it fixed. That evening we tried again after getting a huge stack of hundred and five hundred peseta coins. I have to go up the stairs to the level the stage is on and hang over the phone in order to dial because the phone is too high for me to reach to put in money or to read the screen which tells me what to do next. So perched on top, I dialed and fed the money in. This time Chris answered the phone in his room. His voice was very faint but I told him that we were calling from Spain and that Paco Lira wanted to speak to him. Then I gave Paco the phone. It was hard to register from Paco’s face what he was feeling. I don’t even know if he could hear Chris but it was a good and important phone call and I believe that an emotional connection was made and that Chris knew to whom he was talking. I spoke to Chris too, afterwards, but I could barely hear his whisper. I told him we loved him and wished him well and he said “Thank You.” After the phone call Paco was very quiet and seemed to want to be alone. Chris, an extremely talented guitar player, had played Flamenco and lived in the Carboneria when it had been in the building before this one. He and Paco were quite close. Here in Spain almost every old time Flamenco knew or knows of Cristobal Carnes, the protg of the famous Diego del Gastor. Chris studied with Diego in Moron in the sixties and was like an adopted son of his. But during the time he lived here in Spain, while having dental work done, Chris experienced major heart problems and since has had a pace maker, artificial heart valves, and numerous open heart surgeries. It always seemed as if Chris had at least nine lives. He certainly had a strong will to live, at least until recently. He used to talk about a thread of light linking him to the future and at that time believed that if he just kept that line hooked into the future, that he would continue to live. One time at Sweet’s Mill we waited anxiously to hear news of Chris’ heart operation, dancing and playing music for him. That time it was another success. I mentioned that in my writings about Sweet’s Mill’s generations, The Dance of Mortality. But this time things are different. Here is another excerpt from an e-mail just received from Marianne and Brian Steeger.

“Ernie and Deb are with Chris in Eureka. They just called and they thought it would be good for Chris to know that his friends are thinking and caring about him. He has turned inward and is not responding well to family and friends. Ernie says it looks like he is fighting mental demons. His heart is doing fine but he has lost the will to live. So … if you could help get the word out for any folks who know and love Chris to send him a note/card letting him know he is loved and not alone. Ernie thought something like this might bring him back or at least touch him on some level. … Here is his address:

Chris Carnes
Room 1403
Saint Joseph’s Hospital
2700 Dolbeer
Eureka, Ca 95501 ”

So our friend Chris is dying and we don’t know if Paco will make it out to California to see him again. Perhaps if all Chris’ friends wrote it would help, or perhaps it is just his time to go. It is hard to write of other things here after a start like that. Death takes such precedence. But death is a part of life and life continues. We went to Granada last week and to Madrid this week and I haven’t yet written of any of it. So here is the beginning of this part of our Spain experience. Granada is not a beautiful city, like Sevilla, but it has the Alhambra which is incredible and feels to me like the heart of Granada. Our friend, Cristina Carmona, has been a guide at the Alhambra for six years and her father, Angel, has been a guide there for over thirty years. Christina and her brother lived in San Francisco for a while (her brother still does) where Freddie met them and brought them to Sweet’s Mill one year where I met them. Both Cristina and her father Angel generously showed us Granada. Cristina gave us a private tour of the Alhambra which of course was wonderful. Thanks to mobile phones, we met up with another friend, Josh, in Granada and he came with us on almost all of our Granada adventures. Josh is a young guitarist from Santa Fe, New Mexico, whom Freddie met at Alta Mira shortly after we arrived in Spain and who knows some of the same people we know. Josh now lives in Los Angeles where he is studying acting. One evening we all went to visit Cristina’s friend Regina in a little white washed town in the mountains. We liked it so much that Angel, Cristina’s father who had come on this visit with his wife of over thirty years, Maribel, asked if we would like him to show us more. He is a born guide. So, the next day he drove us through the mountains to the quiet seaside resort town of Almuecar. We ate in his friend’s wonderful restaurant and then went to the beach and swam in the Mediterranean, which was colder than I thought it should be. Later we strolled around the town and then went back to Granada and arrived about one in the morning. It was a wonderful trip. On our last day, Freddie and I walked around the Albacyn, the old Moorish city of Granada situated across from and below the Alhambra. It reminded us of Tangiers with its narrow, cool streets and old whitewashed buildings. It still has a Moorish flavor and the Alhambra looks beautiful from there too, sitting regally and timelessly on the next hill. Later we met up with Josh and went to Angel and Maribel’s home for a spectacular meal prepared for us by Maribel. In the early evening Angel drove Freddie and me to the bus station and we began the three and a half hour bus ride back to Sevilla. We arrived late Friday night so I couldn’t practice before my twelve o’clock class with Concha the next day. But I certainly had fun in Granada and we hadn’t wanted to leave so soon. We are hoping to return to Granada on this trip.

But before repeat trips, we are trying to go to the places we had wanted to see. This week, after my fitting with Salao on Monday night, we prepared ourselves to go to Madrid early Tuesday morning on the Ave (pronounced Avey), the fast train to Madrid. It took us only two and a half hours in a very comfortable travel mode. We spent a lot of time there visiting with David Jones (whose name in Spain is David Serva) and his companion/partner, dancer Clara Mora. David, an American, has lived in Spain for over thirty years studying and playing guitar professionally. He, like Chris, is another well known and respected American guitarist who came to the little pueblo of Moron in the sixties and studied with Diego del Gastor. Before that, in the early sixties, Freddie and David had played guitar together at the Old Spaghetti Factory in North Beach, San Francisco. They have been good friends ever since (for over thirty years) and by now have many memories to laugh and talk about together.

David had found us a hotel near his home, Hostel Residencia Matute, the same hotel that my former husband Marc and I had stayed in when we came to Spain in 1980.

After we were settled we walked the five minutes to David and Clara’s home. The four double flights of stairs were a little hard on my knees. They live on the fourth floor, but in Spain the first floor is the floor above the ground floor so we would call their level the fifth floor; a long walk to the uninitiated. The small apartment is light and airy with beautiful tiles placed in the walls in key places by David. There are beautiful things hanging on the white walls. David’s nineteen year old musician son Pablo lives with them. Clara, also an American, is currently painting a downstairs room which will soon be her office.

David, his graying hair parted in the middle, brings his guitar to El Horno almost every evening around eight o’clock. El Horno, which means oven, is a thriving dance studio with a little bar/cafe where David spends time playing guitar and visiting with friends. The building was once a bakery and that is why it is called El Horno. The bar/cafe, situated in a patio on the second floor between three of the dance rooms and a gym, is actually called “El Rincon de los Maestros Bar” (the teacher’s corner bar). One evening, as we were walking to David’s, we ran into La Tania coming from El Horno where she had been rehearsing for her upcoming show in September in the United States. I guess it is a small world.

In the mornings Clara comes here, to the Horno, to practice dance for two or three hours with her friends. After class and practicing, many people grab a drink or a snack in this lovely patio. The floors are terra-cotta with white tile squares. Small round white marble tables with beautiful cast iron black stands give the bar a cafe look. Plants in pots are hung from the walls with black iron hangers and more plants in large pots sit on the floor and line the bottom of the tiled walls. As people gather around our table David passes his guitar to the other guitarists. We met an old friend of Freddie’s there, Dwight, who had watched him years ago at the Old Spaghetti Factory and who has lived in Spain now for many years. Before he left for Spain in the sixties, he got addresses and advice from Freddie who had been there for six monthes in 1959 and 1960.

Each of the three nights we spent in Madrid we ate at David and Clara’s house. It was a wonderful time to visit and we loved having some home cooked meals. Freddie and I went to El Prado and spent the day of the eclipse there. We came outside briefly to watch the eclipse through a film negative someone gave us. The art was beautiful, but at this stage of our lives we both have decided that we don’t like most of the subject matter. Christianity is such a brutal religion. There is such glorification of torture and death. And moreover, in most if not all of the time periods represented there, the attitude toward women was awful. I looked at a beautiful painting, but as I looked closer I saw that dogs were biting and eating a naked women at a banquet with the guests watching. Rape too was glorified and there are some incredibly good paintings of this horrible subject. I can understand better why our television these days focuses on violence. Violence has been glorified for years in our western history. My mother loved the Prado so much and she loved art so much. I now feel somehow disloyal with these thoughts. I love art too, but the subject matter is also important to me. I do not want to subject myself to watching much violence, whether it be television, movies, or museums. However I am very glad to have visited El Prado and our trip to Spain would not have felt complete without it. The next day we took the bus to Toledo, a beautiful and fascnating old Moorish city and El Greco’s home, built high on a hill. Freddie was exhausted and slept for hours on a park bench in the large plaza de Zocodover, the souk and ancient site of the horse fairs while I, following my mother’s example, pushed myself to visit the sights. The Alczar was already closed, but I saw the Cathedral which had more of the religious torture subject matter in its beautiful collection of paintings. It was then that I decided that I had had enough of Christianity. Next I went to the two old Jewish synagogues, one of which is only a monument. My son, Elun, always finds the old synagogues when he travels to Europe and he and I visited synagogues in both Florence and Venice, Italy together. So of course I thought of him and bought some postcards for him. Next to the actual old synagogue I found a little store run by a Jewish man from Toledo and his English wife. They had met here thirty years ago, immediately got into a fight about prices, went to dinner that night and six months later were married! Freddie telephoned me while I was at that store. (I had taken the phone while he slept and told him to call me when he woke up.) He called and then came to meet me at the store. Of course we bought some beautiful things, including presents. We are so aware now that we are at the end of our trip. At this point we are focusing on our return home. Time has indeed moved quickly. We wished we had spent the night in Toledo. Maybe next time we will. I didn’t get through all the sights but we had arranged to spend our last night in Madrid and to have dinner again with David and Clara. We also wouldn’t have had time to catch our train the next morning from Madrid if we had spent the night in Toledo. So after a late lunch in a Jewish restaurant, we caught the nine o’clock bus back to Madrid to visit, pack, and prepare for our departure. The next morning as we walked, having packed very lightly again, to the train to leave Madrid we passed a jewelry store. A beautiful emerald and diamond ring was in the window and we quickly walked in and looked at it. It was the first possible wedding ring we had seen in Spain. We had time to quickly photograph it and two others and to get the jeweler’s card and then run to the train station. We haven’t called him yet, but these are certainly possibilities. Concha has a friend, her compadre, who is a jeweler in Chiclana and might be able to make us similar rings for less money. If not, we might run out of time and not be able to get the rings, which would have to be re-made for us and almost everything is closed here in August. But at least we have an idea. So, perhaps we’ll go back to Madrid for a day, or perhaps we’ll run out of time for that too. Back in Sevilla there is so much happening. But with these mini vacations I have had time to rest my knees a little, except for all the walking and climbing stairs which is just a normal part of Spanish life. But the knees and thighs are definitely better than they were.

We picked up my wedding dress from Salao’s this evening and it is very beautiful. The body is a smooth, fitted white satin crepe covered in lace with five organdy ruffles on the lower part. The underskirt is also ruffled. The slim three quarter sleeves are lace ending in small ruffles of organdy. Salao gave me, as a gift, a beautiful white mantoncita to wear with my white lace and organdy dance dress, my wedding dress. We also picked up my elegant black Siguiriyas dress. They are both beautiful and fit perfectly. It is easy to stretch my arms up, nothing is so tight that it pulls. Salao is truly a master and deserves his excellent reputation. And Freddie and I both love my exquisite new dresses.

August 18, 1999 Tuesday

I am finally happy with my dancing. The last two day’s video’s have been good. I am taking class and practicing in my costume, although it’s like a sauna lately on the stage. Concha stayed an extra day and a half this week end and will come back tomorrow to teach some new students. She can’t resist! I took two classes a day on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, which was a holiday celebrating the virgin of Sevilla. Today I took one class before Concha had to leave for the bus back to Isla Cristina. But, I will rest tomorrow and go shopping for some things for our show and return to classes on Thursday. My knee is much much better now but is still a little touchy and it will be good to rest it a little. Our show date was set today. It will happen on September 8 at 10:30 PM because Concha doesn’t want a lot of noise to distract me and it gets noisier later in the evening. But someone just told me that there are a lot more people here in September than there are now so it might be crowded even that early (yes, early) in the evening. People have been coming to watch my classes. When I finish a dance there is now clapping from whomever is around. The classes are fun and rich with Freddie playing guitar and Concha singing. It is inspiring for my dance. The rhythm of Concha’s hand clapping the wooden bench where she sits on the stage is driving. It adds excitement and dynamism. But I am satisfied with myself as well. My dance is starting to look smooth and I don’t cringe when I see it, I like it instead. I never thought that I would get to this stage. I almost feel guilty liking it and saying it, but not quite. I am thoroughly enjoying being so happy with myself, although I’m still having a little trouble believing it. But I can look at the video tape again to see that it is true.

Carmen who cleans here had a birthday yesterday and she and her friends came with Concha for my five o’clock class. They were watching my class as part of the birthday celebration. Everyone loved both my two minute Buleras and my ten minute Siguiriyas. And they both looked very good on the video tape to me too when I watched them later. After a while the class turned into a small fiesta and Carmen sang and her friend Juani sang, and Concha sang some more. Carlos Heredia (Freddie’s teacher) came and played for a little while and Concha’s eight year old daughter Carmen danced and sang as well. The relaxed and festive atmosphere reminded me a little of the classes that Anzonini used to teach in Berkeley in the early eighties. There we would all sit in chairs in a semicircle which on one end had a large round wooden table. It was the dining room of Pat’s house. The old hardwood floors were OK to dance on but mainly we marked the comps with our palmas while one person at a time would get up and do the simple but tricky gypsy marking steps that Anzonini used to teach. We would all drink the wine he ritually offered us and we got loose and relaxed enough to learn this dance in a different way. When someone would get nervous or tight, Anzonini would tell us to “leave your shame at the door”. So I leave my shame at some distant door and I just dance, accepting who I am, how I am, and where I am. What a lesson. Freddie too is having breakthroughs. How convenient that we are synchronized in our artistic development as well. Tonight, here in our room, Freddie figured out how not to support his fingers, something that David Jones also is working on, and tonight Freddie’s fingers flew lightly but with strength through the challenging tremolos and arpeggios that he can now play. I was dancing to his music, working on upper body, arms, hands, and head while Freddie was playing. I also did palmas for him, helping him to figure out a falseta he was learning. He got it really well and quickly. Then I began to write while Freddie kept playing these beautiful sounds. His music is back after his descent into the despair of hell about his playing. He can play again, and even more beautifully than before. I am so glad.

August 22, 1999

At this stage it is harder and harder to find the time to write. I did go shopping and bought a purple mantoncita (little fringed Spanish shawl) to match my only pair of dance shoes, round, purple, filigreed plastic Spanish earrings and a pin for my manton. I bought some purple flowers for my hair and two rhinestone barrettes. I also found a beautiful lace mantilla and a white comb for it to wear for the wedding. And then I found some rhinestone sandal heels to also go with the wedding costume. I now wear my full Siguiriyas costume (Freddie says “get-up”) to practice in and am experimenting with ways to wear my hair. This way I will be used to dancing and working with my new dress. I modeled my white wedding costume for Concha and her daughter Carmen, and for Nacha and May, and then went downstairs to show it to Paco. They all loved it, of course And that leads me to another story.

Last Saturday we all went, in two cars, to Moron for the Gazpacho, another famous Flamenco singing festival. Paco went in a car with Jose Luis, Nacha and Concha, and Freddie, Josh, and I went a little later with Barbara, a German expatriate aficionada who has lived in Sevilla for ten years. After Jose Luis had parked his car, everyone of course got out. Paco was not paying attention and a car full of teenagers, whose motor (and perhaps its lights too) had been turned off, was rolling down the street. It hit Paco and knocked him down. Nacha said that Concha’s face turned white and she started stomping her feet and screaming. Concha said that Nacha’s face also turned white. Paco got up, to everyone’s great relief, but the car had rolled over his foot. The next day they took him to the doctor because his foot was hurting and discovered that he had a fracture. The doctor wrapped his foot and his lower leg. Later, when his doctor friends and daughter Miriam got a hold of the x-rays they discovered that the doctor had wrapped the wrong part of his foot and shouldn’t have wrapped his leg at all, especially with the circulation problems that Paco already has. The fracture was in the big toe which was hurting but had not been previously wrapped. I put oils on him and then a friend from Malaga came and did acupuncture on his foot for two days. Miriam, who runs the food concession at the Carboneria and used to work in an herbal pharmaceutical store, put aloe leaves on him and homeopathic creams. Paco had to stay in bed for days, which was hard on him. Finally the acupuncturist moved him downstairs to the patio for the day for Paco’s emotional health. We gave him our radio/CD player that we had bought from Miguel Ochoa. We all bring Paco food and newspapers. And so that is why I modeled my wedding dress for Paco while he was in bed! He was not allowed to get up at that point. He is getting better and can go downstairs now for short amounts of time, probably longer than he should. But it was a close call and everyone was frightened. Paco is loved by so many people. Concha has said in the past that he is like a father to her. And speaking of weddings, now people have stopped referring to Freddie as my husband. Now they say, smiling, your future husband, your novio. Concha has had her fill of the beach and is staying in Sevilla. Rafael, her husband, went down to the beach today, Sunday, to pack up their things and to pick up the two boys who are still there with Concha’s sister Pepa. Concha taught classes today. I am now taking two classes a day but took a day of rest today so as not to over-do it. My knee is much much better but I don’t want to stress my body. I have ended up not missing much class in August as it has turned out. Concha is busy polishing me for our show. She is excited about it. She told me the other day that if I do it as well as I did it that day, she would be happy. We are practicing running it through without stopping, so I can learn to cover my mistakes, which I am good at anyway. She says I will probably make mistakes because I will be nervous with the public, but that no one should know but us. We also are still spending time polishing some of the moves, especially in the Buleras. It is so nice to be with a teacher who believes in me. She went with me to Salao the other day to get my black dress shortened. I am still losing the weight I gained by mistake and so the fit of the dress is changing and I was stepping on the hem in some steps. Now it is perfect. Concha and I stayed in the little work room with Salao while he sewed my dress, his white dog Panchito perched on the window behind him looking out at the street. Concha has known Salao since she was a little girl. I still could not understand them when they spoke to each other normally, which is quickly, but when each one speaks to me, slowly and clearly, I do well. They were nice and kept me included in the conversation. As I later complained about my lack of comprehension, Concha said that next time I have to chat more with people. I guess I spend a lot of time just dancing. But that is what I am really here for. I just thought my comprehension would be better than it is by now. But it is improving. I am also starting to hang out more with Concha now. Concha and I went looking for dance shoes for me the other day but the Coral shoe store, like Menkes and Gallardo, is closed through the end of August. She had said, even if I get new shoes, that she wants me to do this performance in my old shoes, because I know them and they are broken in. I still need to get some mesh stockings and a girdle, a “fahita”. How weird. Concha says that all the professionals wear small girdles when they dance. So I will do as the Spaniards do. I feel so lucky to be taken under Concha’s wing. Last Friday night we went with Carmen and her friend Juani, and our friend Josh to see Carmen’s sixteen year old son Jairro dance at Los Gallos. The show was great and Jairro has a lot a talent. I had heard that these tablaos, even the good ones like Los Gallos, were just for tourists but the quality of all the dancers we saw was excellent. One of the dancers there was Pastora Galvan, the daughter of Jose Galvan. I had met her in California when I took classes with Jose. She is probably about seventeen or eighteen now and is a marvelous dancer. Jairro has only been dancing there two months and this was the first time that Carmen had gone to see him. She got in free because she was his mother and we thought we would have to pay, but afterwards when we asked about paying we were told that we all were invited guests of Jairro’s and so were there for free, drinks and all. We keep getting these lovely little surprises. Spain has really treated us royally and we are thankful.

Concha told us that Paco told her that we always have a place to stay here at the Carboneria when we come back. Paco hopes that we will return for his homenaje on September 30 but we told him that probably we will not be able to, having just come home two weeks earlier. Concha, as I have said before, really wants to come to our wedding and perhaps bring Paco. If she comes, she said that we would do a show at the wedding. That would be fun. She wants me, after the wedding of course, to do the Siguiriya in my white wedding dress.

I have told her my thoughts about my dancing Siguiriyas. I am no longer sad and Siguiriyas is about the depths of sadness, the dark painful and despairing places in the emotional psyche. But, the end is full of hope and happiness. It is the other side of the sadness and I am there now. But, I have been in the sadness too and come through it and so that is how I can dance it now, having known it and survived it. Concha thinks in similar ways about dance. The spirits told me once in a journey that we would be friends. We are starting to be more friends. Once as she , Freddie, and I were walking in the street, I was dancing, as we both had been earlier at the Carboneria in our chairs and with our hands doing rhythmical patterns on the wooden table. As we walked, Concha said, that I was loca with dance. We agreed. I am so glad to be accepted by her for who I really am. The other day she said that one of the things she loved about me was that I cry when I am mad or frustrated and I smile and get excited when I get it right finally. I am so glad that she likes that part of me instead of feeling embarrassed by it. I have been feeling really seen by her for who I am, and accepted too. She and I are both excited by my dancing. I love it. I absolutely love it. The other day Freddie lost his change purse with a key to our room attached to it. So yesterday he put a new lock on the door. Afterwards, he and I were hungry so we invited Concha and her daughter, the eight year old dancing, singing, live wire Carmen, to come with us and eat at Casa Diego. Later we came up to the room and I showed her pictures of her party on the computer. We also talked about dance and how impressed she was when she first met me at my dedication and consistency. She had known, she said, that she could teach me. She says, and I believe her, that she uses a lot of psychology when she teaches dance. The more I get to know her, the more I love her. In many ways, although our backgrounds are very different, we are similar in our thinking and our love of Flamenco. I saw that about her when I first met her. Now we see that about each other. She has watched some of my class videos both here in the room and also after my classes, and it is helpful to both of us.

Who would have ever thought that someone my age would be doing what I am doing. I am so happy. And Freddie and I have such an easy wonderful time together too. As I have said before, I never thought this much happiness was possible.

August 26, 1999, Thursday

We are busy polishing for the show. We keep going over things and fine tuning them and making them better. Concha doesn’t seem to be worried about some of the things that I see in the video and try to change. However other flaws she is helping me to change, to turn into a strength. She is cleaning my footwork some more, bringing out the accents and the matisse. She has added my head to certain footwork steps. We’re working with everything, feet, head, body, arms, hands, directions, sound. It is a fun but arduous stage we are in.

Things changed a little when Salao got mad at me for wearing my costume in class which Concha had asked me to do. I brought it to him wet Tuesday after class and he said that it would not be a new and wonderful costume by the time I returned to Callifornia if I rehearsed in it two hours a day. He said it is made to be used for a ten minute dance no more than once a day. He was aghast that I had had it on and sweated in it for so many hours already. But, I did need to get used to the skirt and to find out that it had been too long for me. The skirt flares much lower than I am used to and is much harder to grab and lift without bending at the waist. Now I am getting the hang of it. So yesterday and today I stayed away from my costume and I am glad. Now we’re back to working on the polishing. When I wore the costume we ran through a lot of class like rehearsals. That was good and useful. Now we are again picking it apart and polishing it more finely. It is also more comfortable in this heat to not dance in long sleeved, long skirted, tight fitting polyester. It has been like a sauna, as I wrote earlier, especially in my new black Siguiriyas costume. Yes, it is much cooler to dance in my old purple tank top and my long black Indian pleated skirt. (My Menkes skirt is locked in Menkes’ until the first of September when they come back from vacation).

Today, finally, it was a bit cooler, with maybe a hint of fall in the air. Tonight as we walked to our favorite little restaurant the air was again balmy with a hint of a breeze, totally comfortable and pleasant. I wore my new rhinestone thongs which I am breaking in. They’re not nearly as comfortable as my two pairs of sandals but they look a lot prettier and I think when they are broken in they should be comfortable, I hope. Freddie tells me that I look more and more beautiful every day and I think it is my happiness beaming out of me. He looks great to me too. His face is relaxed even though he is still practicing almost all the time instead of resting a lot. Playing music is good for his soul as dance is for mine. So is our relationship good for our souls. Being in love is such a wonderful feeling. It colors everything. Freddie is such a supportive person in so many ways. Living all this time in our one room, large though it may be compared to others here, we are able to let each other be and support that in each other. We don’t bicker and we talk about any things that bother us so it never gets big. And we always try to come up with solutions. It’s so easy. It is so easy for us to live together, to be together. And it is so much fun. The Siguiriyas is better because of our interaction both with each other and with Concha. That energy blows life into my dance. Flamenco is nothing with only good technique without the feeling and interaction among the performers. Without the interaction it is hard to concentrate on all aspects, the singing and the guitar and the dance, at once. For me, usually the dancing, if not keyed into the music, takes my attention away from the singing and the guitar. When the show really has interaction then I can see the whole at once and it all makes internal sense. The interaction between the three of us is a strong point in our upcoming performance. It will make anything we do much better.

Yesterday morning after I did the buleras Concha called all the people who were working in or just at the Carboneria up to the stage to watch me and to be my “publico” (public). Luis and others commented on the wonderful comps and the manner in which I danced it. Luis several times in the last few days has commented on how much he likes my buleras. And now we are polishing even more. I actually learned a few more buleras things which are too new to do in our show but which are fun to do and I am getting to learn more buleras which I wanted.

The rings. Concha’s compadre, Agustin, who is a jeweler in Chiclana came up to meet us and to see the photos of the rings we liked in Madrid. He is a nice man and we had a good feeling about him. He was wearing a ring he had made. We will go down to Chiclana, which is near Cadiz, with Concha and probably Rafael in the beginning of September, when businesses open up again. I still can’t believe how almost everything is shut down for two weeks to a month in August. It’s frustrating when you are leaving in the middle of September. But, the rings. We are now thinking about what we really want and Freddie came up with a beautiful design that includes an engagement ring. We are still deciding if he will have an engagement ring too (why be sexist?) or if his engagement ring will be made as part of the wedding band. His design is beautiful and I am wondering if we should mail a copy to Agustin ahead of our visit. I will ask Concha in the morning. Salao is going to show me how to fix and is going to gather and sew my mantilla to the comb for the wedding. I will bring them to him tomorrow. He has the coral mantoncita I ordered on Tuesday that will go with the plastic coral earrings and comb I bought from him when I picked up my exquisite red dress. Now Concha is talking about my changing into it for my buleras but I don’t think that is really practical. We’ll see. Salao orders from a factory and can get things much cheaper, but I don’t get to select from what catches my eye unless he has it or a sample laying around, which he sometimes does. He got mad at me again the other day for buying some mantons on Calle Sierpes. “But those are for tourists” he said with horrified disgust. Concha explained that she had sent me there because she too didn’t know, when we decided that I needed the mantoncita to match my purple shoes, that Salao could get things much cheaper from the factory. Now we know. I will also get a rhinestone (tiara style) wedding crown from him. Freddie and I have very similar taste, luckily and we both love beautiful bejeweled things. I was thinking of other wedding rings in my family and for me it is a case of my taste taking after my grandmother, Frances, my mother’s mother. Her jewelry was exquisite, full of precious gems and pearls and gold. I lost and gave away some of it in the sixties shortly after she died. (Ah, the stupidity and ignorance of youth. I did not know how irreplaceable that jewelry was. But that is another story.) My mother lost the bulk of the best jewelry when she moved from Venice, California to Israel in the early seventies. (And she was in her forties or fifties.) So now I begin to recreate in my own way a collection of beautiful things, including fairy tale jewelry, that Grandma Frances had created in her life. Our wedding rings will be like our home, full of beautiful things. We are like kids in a candy store. At this stage in our lives it is time to give ourselves beautiful things to feast our eyes on and to enjoy, to go with our beautiful love, and the beautiful life we have created together. And so we travel on the trail of the wedding rings, looking for what we want to wear for the rest of our lives, what we want to symbolize the love between us that shines more brilliantly than the gold, diamonds and emeralds and rubies that may adorn us.

September 8, 1999

For my own healing and immense growth I have worked hard on the performance aspect of Flamenco as well as the choreography and the technique. We have the big show tomorrow night here in Sevilla, Spain at La Carboneria. My love Freddie will be playing the guitar and my dance teacher, Concha Vargas, will be singing for me, for all of us. The three of us are totally connected after all this time of intensive work together. Freddie’s guitar teacher, Carlos Heredia, will video the show for us. He did a rehearsal video today and it turned out well. I will wear my new black dress and dance the Siguiriyas, calling in the spirits with my palmas (rhythmical hand clapping) as I rise from my seat and walk to the front of the stage. Then as Concha continues the palmas for me from her seat, I echo the rhythm more with my feet, building the intensity into a rhythmical turn and a dead stop. As I sharply move my foot and my body from angle to diagonal angle without moving from where I am standing, I call in the guitar and it’s music moves me again to another angle, a pose, waiting for the cante (singing) which comes, singing from the depths of gypsy pain, of human suffering. I start to move, my hands again call in the spirits as they pull the energy up from the earth and into my body and through my body and into the sky. In the dance, I feel what Concha sings. At times I fight intensely with my feet, while at other times I am inside myself. The words of the cante also speak about the joy my child’s eyes give me and that starts to release the pain. By the end of the dance I have triumphed and I am excited and happy, like a “bomb exploding” Concha says.

I had to think a lot about doing this sad, heavy dance when I am so happy. But the sadness part I have lived through and understand and now I am at the end of the dance, happy and triumphant and full of hope. And the Siguiriyas is hauntingly beautiful.

Then I do a Buleras, which is a happy, joking kind of dance done a lot at fiestas. I have learned to sing four buleras’ and I now understand the words of almost all of what Concha sings and which pueblo they are from. Freddie plays a short guitar solo to start the Siguiriyas and his guitar is clean and beautiful and very moving.

I just wish I could stay and learn more. We joke about putting Concha, and now Carlos, in our suitcases and taking them home with us. They would both love to visit.

But for now, we leave on the 15th, in time for my father’s 80th birthday. But we do plan to return for a shorter time of this intensive and rewarding work.

September 9, 1999

The show went well and Carlos did a magnificent job of videoing it. The morning of the show Nacha and May sent us a big bouquet of red carnations with a loving note congratulating us on our Debut en la Carboneria and wishing us luck, saying they wished that we would become the most famous couple in the world of Flamenco. After the show, as we were taking our bows, Pili, Carlos’s wife, came up to the stage and presented us with another large and beautiful bouquet of flowers. Our show was packed with people, friends, and friends of friends and we did a good job. The audience loved it. Luis kept commenting how wonderful my buleras was. Salao, the renowned costume maker of the Flamenco elite, came with a friend and commented on how impressed he was that my comps was perfect, that I never once went out of comps, and how hard that was to do in a Siguiriyas. The Siguiriyas rhythm is thought to be the most difficult in Flamenco. Other people were amazed that artists from California could do what we did (because we’re not Spanish!). Freddie played beautifully, as I had expected. Concha sang well and as I danced I listened to both Concha and Freddie and was inspired and supported. At the beginning of the show I dedicated our show to Paco Lira, the amazing owner of the Carboneria and our gracious host and supporter of Flamenco, and also to Concha Vargas, my amazing dance teacher without whose skill and support I would not have been able to achieve this dramatic accomplishment in my dance.

Now we enter the end stage of our trip here and we have to think about packing it up. But we have done what we came to do and it wouldn’t have happened like this without all our consistent hard work and obsession and passion. Of course now we will have to return to Spain for more but we will have an idea of what to expect and how we can again achieve what we want. We have made many wonderful friends here and we feel a part of this warm and supportive community. When my sister and brother-in-law Lainey and Ken were here they commented on how it seemed that we knew everybody. And it does seem like that. So often, no matter where we are in Sevilla, we are walking down the street and see someone we know. It is a great feeling and amazes us too. And these people, these friends, are wonderfully supportive and enthusiastic. We will be sad to leave them. If we win the lottery, “ojal” (god willing), I want to charter a plane to bring everyone to our wedding. But at least we plan to send a video of the wedding back to Spain. So now we have to see what will fit into our suitcases and what we have to mail home. We’ll be deciding what to bring on the plane, what to send through, all the details we have been able to live without for this time period. This stage brings sadness, the transition from one life style back to another. But we know that we have a another beautiful world to enter when we return. Our beautiful house and land are waiting for us, flowers blooming, when we return. Our family and friends in California are also waiting for us and we know that it will feel good to see them and to share more of our experiences with them at home.

And then again, a part of Spain will come to us at home. Paco Lira, our wonderful host at la Carboneria, his best Saturnino who played guitar for La Nia de los Peines with Chris Carnes, and Pepe Romero, a renowned Flamenco piano player will come with our friend Luis Agujeta to visit and to stay at our home at the beginning of October. Their purpose for this trip will be to see Chris Carnes who is very ill, as I have written. That is quite a tribute to Chris, who deserves it. And it will be great for us to have some of our friends from Spain staying at our home. We look forward to returning the hospitality to Paco that he has so graciously given to us here.

September 10, 1999

Here in the Barrio Santa Cruz, Sevilla, Spain where I am currently living, is the ancient Jewish Barrio (neighborhood) and I often think of my ancestors who lived here, as I walk the cool, narrow streets where so many years ago their feet also trod. I also visited the synagogue in Toledo, another center for the Jews who lived here long ago, and there too I paid homage to my ancestors.

September 14, 1999

I have been dancing/performing for the last four nights at the Carboneria. First I started with Carlos, Inma La Carbonera, and Enrique, Carlos nephew. Every night, as arranged, Enrique calls me up to do my Buleras, Marianna, Marianna…. Then Luis asked me to dance with Maribel and Kalina while he sang and Carlos played guitar. He wanted me to dance the Siguiriyas but the stage is way too small for my choreography and I would also want to rehearse it once with him before performing the Siguiriyas to his cante (singing). So I dance the Bulera and it gets better each night. Everyone is very supportive and it is so nice to be asked and wanted to dance. My debut at the Carboneria with Concha and Freddie was Wednesday; I rested Thursday and didn’t feel like dancing at all. Then on Friday I started again. It is so different to dance for a public. And it is great experience. Tonight I finally liked what I did. I did it very well. Last night Freddie videoed but it was a very off night for me, I couldn’t do anything and I blanked out in the middle of both Buleras. But it looked good on tape. Tonight Freddie just videoed the last show, with the short Buleras but it looked really good, as good or better than it felt. Yes, I am happy. And Freddie says, and I agree, that when we go home we will work on really dancing/playing what we have learned so that when we return we will be ready to take in more of this intensive learning.

September 21, 1999

I’m back but not really here yet. Yesterday Rubina and Freddie and I started to practice with Rubina singing and it sounded very very good. She has a show for us next Saturday so we are motivated to get to work again. It is different without Concha but my studio dance floor is so great and tonight Freddie and I had a wonderful time in the studio just with ourselves. I still have a million things to do here to get settled in again. Freddie is taping his lessons that were on my camera right now and then I will start to use it to transfer my tapes. I have already made a master video tape of the show, my debut at the Carboneria and a few Buleras I performed during the next few nights, but I want to add some excellent practices to it. My performance for the show was not as “danced” as my rehearsals. If Rubina has her way, then I will be a lot more used to dancing the Siguiriya for audiences by First Night (our New Years Eve performance). She is helping me polish my style in certain parts. My comps is good, thanks to Concha, and that is a major achievement, especially as it now feels easy and solid. Now to work the dance more.

My life right now feels so full and wonderful and people here are saying that I look two years younger than when I left. I am still ecstatically happy and we are beginning to plan the wedding. I love being treated so lovingly caringly and returning that too.

Freddie and I had a great practice tonight. I finally have gotten back to the facility of movement in my feet and legs that I had before our show and I got there and beyond tonight. I am starting to really dance it and make it come alive. I am thinking very hard about how to structure my life here and what I want. It is interesting and I feel full of hope. Freddie and I went and booked a possible wedding photographer today and talked to Joe of India Joz about catering along with our friends. Paco Lira and Saturnino and Luis are coming on the 11th of October. I am feeling better and better about my dance and I know that soon or even now I will be much better than the tape of the Carboneria show I have been making for people. It feels good.

September 22, 1999

Luis told Rubina that he and Paco and Saturnino would be arriving on the 12th of October. We look forward to the visit. It is so different here and Freddie and I both still miss Spain. But we are dancing and making music in our beautiful dance studio here, under the loft where Rubina lives. Tonight Freddie and I sat outside on the bench on the hill by the tree we planted in memory of my mother at her memorial when we first moved here. We sat on the bench and looked down two wild canyons and to the ocean in the distance. The moon was almost full so we could see quite clearly. The owls were hooting a lot and the night was still soft. Yet in the distance, over Monterey bay we could see the bright flash of the lightening brought by the hurricane Hillary. But we heard no thunder in the stillness of this quiet night. We didn’t see the deer tonight, only the flowerless plants that they had eaten. They seem to be eating more than usual this year, perhaps because of the unseasonably cold summer this year, full of fog, dampness and even rain. September is usually beautiful here, but the sun has hardly shown for more than a day or two since we’ve returned. I reminded Saturnino by e-mail to bring warm clothing, although, the air tonight outside felt comfortable to us wearing long pants and sweatshirts. The night sure was beautiful and the stillness holding it like a bubble in the distant fog, a jewel. And this jewel adorned by the owls long hooting and the distant flashes of lightening, blended with the moonlight. Its hard to describe the sense of quiet and stillness and peace in the night here, overlooking the ocean. Even the backs of the neighbors houses dotting the lower slope below us did not intrude tonight.

Mainly Freddie and I prepare for our wedding. We booked a photographer today and made a deposit. They will do a pre session before the wedding to get to know our tastes and us too. Our photographer, Lloyd Van Zante, seems nice. His wife, whom we haven’t met, will take some black and white and sepia toned photos. If we take photos soon we can use them for our Christmas cards too.

October 14, La Carboneria in California

Paco Lira, owner of La Carboneria, is one of the people in Spain and particularly in Sevilla (Andalucia) who has promoted most effectively all around the world the authentic art of Flamenco (singing, playing guitar, and dancing) in its more traditional, intimate, and Gypsy way, as well as other cultural expressions such as poetry, painting, sculpture, theater, etc. La Carboneria cannot be defined as a typical bar or taverna or any other name which is often given to the typical commercial tourist presentations of Flamenco. The possible confusion between the tourist version and the real feeling of the Flamenco Gypsy musical expressions can be resolved when one sees the shows presented at La Carboneria. La Carboneria is as unique as is Paco himself. That special way of being, of Paco and his already recognized institution, is the reason why Paco is here in California right now for the first time, to visit many of his American friends, including Marianna Gabriel and Freddie Mejia (where he is staying in Soquel), Chris Carnes, Kenny Parker, and Richard Quijote. These friends are a few of the scores of aficionados (Flamenco lovers) who have had the opportunity to know and be helped in their pursuit of the study of live Flamenco, dancing, playing, and singing by Pacos legendary generosity. Many have availed themselves of Pacos warm hearted hospitality in Sevilla and now that Paco is here they have the chance to give back to Paco some of the welcoming hospitality offered them in Sevilla. Paco also plans to connect with Universities here, such as Stanford, who have already shown an interest in and have supported performances of Spanish Gypsy Flamenco artists.

There were many people in Sevilla who wanted to come to California with Paco Lira but finally he arrived on October 11 with Luis Agujeta, a well known Gypsy singer with CDs in Spain and the United States, and Saturnino Jimenez, a friend of Pacos since the sixties and a knowledgeable and accomplish Flamenco guitarist who has had the opportunity to play for the Flamenco greats including la Nia de los Peines, Antonio Mairena, Fernanda and Bernarda de Utrera, Chocolate and others. The Flamenco lovers in California now have the opportunity for the next two weeks to invite these three special people to perform and visit throughout northern California.

How fortunate we are to have Paco, Luis, and Saturnino bringing with them to California a taste of La Carboneria. Welcome.

Scheduled events:

Show, Saturday October 16, 1 PM Palo Alto Arts Center, 1313 Newall (& Embarcadero), Palo Alto

Paid House Fiesta, Sunday October 24, 1 PM Soquel, $30/person includes Potaje; please RSVP

Epilogue

November 19, 1999

Our guests from Spain, Paco, Luis, and Saturnino, have come and gone. It was an intense and full two weeks of Spain coming to us. The Saturday after their arrival Rubina, Freddie and I did a childrens show in Palo Alto with Luis and Saturnino in honor of Paco and satisfying Rubinas obligation as a dance instructor for the city of Palo Alto. I made beautiful and elaborate programs on the computer and finally got to dance the Siguiriyas to Luis singing and Freddies guitar. Saturnino played a solo. On the next two weekends we arranged and hosted two consecutive fiestas. The first was for friends of Pacos. Paco has befriended many of the Flamencos who have visited his famous Flamenco institution, La Carboneria, and so has friends all over the world. Luis sister Angelita, Remedios Flores (a Spanish Flamenco singer and old friend of Freddies), and their friend Marisol Lopez came and stayed in our yurt for a week (Mongolian tent which I use for shamanic work). Nina Menendez (another long tilme friend and Flamenco singer) joined them here for most of that time. Chris Carnes, the inspiration for Pacos visit, had another miraculous recovery due to the intervention (visits, letters, phone calls) of his many friends when he was dying (according to the doctors and his social service case workers), lying in a fetal position, over-medicated, and deeply depressed in the hospital. Chris now was able to drive himself from Eureka via Comptche to Santa Cruz in two days, although he was greatly exhausted when he arrived at Bobbie Markowitzs house where he stayed in Santa Cruz. However he was able to visit a number of times with Paco here at our house. Ironically, Chris father had knee surgery and so Chris had to continue south to San Luis Obisbo later that week to help his mother care for his father. But he did have some good visits with Paco and the rest of us and he appeared much more clear and present than he had been in years. Fortunately he was able to attend the first fiesta before he had to head down south.

The following week-end we organized a paid fiesta for Luis and Saturnino in which they both performed. At the end of the show Luis called me up and asked Freddie to play and again I danced the Siguiriyas to Luis singing, this time in my festive street clothes. It was fun and the fiesta was a success. Paco said later that his favorite part was after the official performance watching and listening to us local Flamencos dancing, singing, and playing music at the party. At seventy three years old Pacos mind is still totally sharp and inquisitive and his photographic memory never misses a thing. I still see him in my mind seated near the open door in my dance studio and later by the fire outside, intently watching the Flamenco partying that went on for hours into the night.

When we weren’t busy organizing events, Freddie and I took them sightseeing. We visited Capitola and Santa Cruz and one evening attended a local Flamenco show. We took Paco and Saturnino to meet my father at his Santa Cruz ocean side home. This visit, which they very much enjoyed, was more important to them than we originally realized, as family is so important in Spain. Concha even mentioned it to us when we talked to her later on the phone. We also drove them to Monterey and went to its wonderful aquarium. We visited Point Lobos, Big Sur, Sausalito, and San Francisco. We wandered through Chinatown, Golden Gate park and the Japanese tea garden. We drove down Lombard street, Mission street and we went to the wharf. We even went to Berkeley and heard Pacos old friend Kenny Parker play guitar at the Albatross. Many of Pacos friends met him there at the Albatross which gave those in the Bay area who would miss the fiestas a chance to visit with Paco. The morning of the day that Paco, Luis and Saturnino left, our friend Basilio flew up from San Diego to see Paco and went to the San Francisco airport with us and then stayed at our home another day. So our time with our guests was full and pleasurable as well as exhausting. However it was our great pleasure and honor to be able to repay the kindness that Paco showed us in Sevilla as well as to host Pacos first vacation!

And now the house is quiet and we have finally finished unpacking. The furniture we bought in Morocco and in Granada arrived just before our Spanish guests and it is now integrated in our living room. The box we mailed from Spain with things we couldn’t fit in our suitcases also arrived and now is finally put away.

In the new silence of just us in our house we are continuing to copy our Spain video tapes and to rest. We see/visit with Concha and Carlos (as well as with our other friends) as we watch those tapes and it feels as if we are with them again. So they, especially our wonderful and patient teachers Concha and Carlos, have stayed very present with us. I went through a week of sleeping ten hours and taking naps during the day, a sign of my utter exhaustion, but now I seem to be recovering, although I am still too tired to begin the practice schedule that was interrupted during the visit.

Freddie, on the other hand, has learned more of the falsetas that Carlos was teaching him in Spain. He practices every day, often with his tapes and he is mastering much of both the technique and the difficult new falsetas he only struggled with in Spain.

Every night we sit on the couch in our theater and watch a video tape or two of the Rito y Geografia de Baile (dance) series, programs about Flamenco dance made a while ago by Spanish TV. We ordered this twelve tape series shortly upon our return to California. One has Concha dancing with Mario Maya in 1980! We actually watched this tape with Paco who was present when many of the interviews on these programs were recorded, some of which actually happened at La Carboneria. Paco knows/knew everyone of course and filled us in on their names and history. Pacos knowledge makes him a living treasure of Flamenco history. It was fun to watch the videos with him in the evenings when we were all to tired to go out. And now alone for a while, Freddie and I are reclaiming our home and finding our lives here again in Soquel.

Two days after our guests left, the ocean, hidden by clouds even on the sunny days during their stay here, finally became clear again in the distance! The plants are growing inches in their last burst before winter (or is it in honor of our home coming?) and the Bowers vine with its white flowers still blooming is now past the top of the arch by our front door. The new roses planted before we left for Spain, which we carefully protected from deer on our return, are now growing higher on their arbors and blooming in yellows, reds, pinks, purples and whites. We have booked most of our wedding venders and have posed for and received copies of our incredible engagement photos. And we have bought/ordered our wedding rings.

We stroll arm in arm or hand in hand around the land looking at plants and sitting by my mothers memorial tree, its small purple flowers greeting our visit. We plan new projects, talk about everything, snuggle together, and listen to and play music. We arrange and rearrange the house, plant plants and are just now starting to call our friends. We are still mostly hibernating and enjoy spending our time together and supporting each others art.

Freddie is encouraging me to return to Sevilla for one month in February to learn my Alegras. He plans to stay here at the house and to work on his music. We have talked to Concha by phone who says she will pick me up at the airport. She and Rafael (her husband who tends bar at La Carboneria) have said that there is a big hole in Sevilla without us. Our friend Susa, a beautiful, long haired Gypsy dancer living in Sevilla for whom I did a soul retrieval while still in Spain, and I have been exchanging long distance shamanic/spiritual work and faxing each other regularly.

Freddie and I have also spoken to Carlos several times and he too misses us.