October 6, 2000

Carlos’ baby’s baptism is this Saturday and it should be fun. It will be outside because his house is way too small for his many friends and family. He will build a fire to cook meat and a fire to warm us. He asked Freddie and me to save all of Saturday for him.

Carlos is working hard in the guitar classes with Freddie on the details of changing Freddie’s technique, figuring out why things aren’t working and then correcting them. Freddie is doing incredibly well. And, the night before last Freddie went with Carlos, David Serva (Jones), Arturo, and Grant to look for a new guitar, to continue the guitar quest started last year when I wanted to give Freddie a new guitar for his sixtieth birthday. Last year he couldn’t find a guitar he like better than the ones he already had. But this year his luck changed, and Freddie found an incredible Conde Hermanos guitar with a deep rich almost velvety sound. It is absolutely beautiful. Carlos has a Conde Hermano too. It is made by the nephews of the famous Esteso guitar maker. Esteso is dead but, like the Farrucos, his reputation and legacy live on in the younger generation. Hermanos Conde is considered to be the successor of Esteso. Freddie’s guitar was made this year, in 2000. It is the first new guitar Freddie has ever owned, and he certainly deserves it! The guitar face is spruce and the back and sides are rosewood. It has an ebony fingerboard and a mahogany neck and a rosewood bridge. This guitar is magic and very beautiful, both in looks and in sound. This is the guitar we were looking for last year and is the belated present for Freddie’s sixtieth birthday.

October 10, 2000

The party took place in the street outside their house in Tres Mil, the gypsy housing project near the edge of Sevilla. This street, which I wrote about last year, does not have cars, but it does have a lot of foot traffic and kids (mostly) on motorcycles “motos” zooming through occasionally. Carlos had an improvised barbecue going and enough food for an army, many cuts of pork, jamon serrano and other choice Spanish cold cuts, olives, manchega cheese, and specialty dishes I couldn’t even identify. They had many kinds of hard liquor and wine and coca cola and even cerveza sin (near beer) for Freddie. There were tables and chairs outside and people sang, danced, played guitars and did palmas. The night stayed warm and the generations of family and friends stayed late. Some of our American friends were there too, Roberto and Alicia Zamora, David Gutierrez and Joanna, David Serva (Jones) and Clara Mora, Trina, who, using her Fulbright grant, had just finished making a movie about Luis’ life, and another woman, her friend from New York who is also living in Sevilla. Jill, Pedro Bacan’s widow, came too. I think of her as both American and Spanish because she has lived in Spain since the sixties. And of course, Concha and Rafael and their children Curro and Carmen were also there. Luis was there too. Paco was still too immobilized to be moved from his bed so we missed his presence at the party. Freddie and I stayed later than our other American friends, until two thirty AM, and then Carlos, Pili and their nine year old daughter Sarai (who often comes with Carlos to the Carboneria when Freddie has his lesson) drove us home because Carlos thought it might be too dangerous to try to find a taxi.. We found out later that the others who had left earlier had had to wait twenty minutes to find a taxi, even though I had called for two telephone taxis on our movi phone. Carlos and Pili now have five beautiful daughters, from sixteen years old to two months old !!!! Yesterday Roberto and Alicia left to return to the United States. It has been fun taking Concha’s five o’clock buleras class with Alicia and Joanna and I will miss Alicia’s presence. Yesterday, hours before Alicia left, she took one last class and Concha made sure to give her a lot of material to take with her. Alicia catches on quickly and will probably remember and use most of what Concha gave her.

I have been fighting a cold and have not had a lot of energy, but I am still taking class and dreading the time we will have to leave. I have so much I want to learn.

David and Clara finally found an apartment on Calle Aire which is a few blocks away from us and they moved in on Sunday. It has unlimited hot water and they have invited us to take showers there! What a treat. Now to find the time to take advantage of their offer!!!! Sunday I taught Lola, the woman with whom both Barbara Evans and Martina stayed, how to shamanic journey and we traded for Spanish classes. Freddie took two hours with her last night and it was very good. I will take a two hour Spanish class with her this Friday. Up on our larger verandah today, outside our room, sitting on the old scrolled wrought iron chairs on the blue and white square tiles, I take in the early evening breeze in the stillness of my sitting. The brick church with its bell is pleasantly familiar as is the white wall with the statue of Saint Anthony in its alcove. To my right, on our verandah by the neighbor’s old white wall, is a bathtub/planter with green plants trailing out of it. There are large tin cans next to it with more plants in them; two of the cans are bright blue. Mariano, the young gypsy who has been working for Paco for many years, comes up to water the plants every few days. I guess the drip system is not working correctly. Today he takes down a bucket of trash. He is cleaning the roof and painting it to protect this room against leaks when it rains. It leaked a year ago in the spring when we were last here, and we are told that it leaked again last winter. Maybe this time Mariano’s work will do the trick. As I look at the plants, including a small palm and some sort of tree, I see the stacks of tile in the corner and the unfinished projects of a creative mind. Will Paco ever get up to this porch again to see them? He must be directing Mariano’s work. Since Paco’s fall there has been a feeling of pathos here, as if an acknowledgment of his mortality. Now I wonder how many years, if any, we will be able to continue coming here, to the Carboneria, as guests of Paco. His unfinished projects grow in spite of his fall. His vision is here in this room, as it is in all of la Carboneria. And Paco, still bedridden, watches the television in his dark wooden room, still entertaining the multitude of visitors who love him and wish him well. Beautiful pieces of art and furniture, knick knaks and statues, vases and paintings adorn the room or sit on the shelf hung from the beam above the foot of his bed. In our room there are still stacks of ornately carved, wooden and guilded old frames and paintings stored indefinitely in the far corner. It is obvious that Paco collected many beautiful things in his lifetime. Will he collect more? Is this what age does? Paco’s mind is still alert and he loves to listen to and to watch the news. He is still involved in the world. Am I just being morbid? This whole trip seems to make me think about age and mortality; the human cycle we are in. My mind tries to make sense of the human condition. We are born, we live, and we age and die. Why is that so hard to accept? Humans for years having been searching for immortality. Perhaps that too is part of the human condition.

October 12, 2000

October 13, 2000 Friday

And then at the beginning of class, before I realized that I was too sick to take it, Concha gave me and a Japanese dancer who looks old a special buleras she had created specially for us older women. The whole class wanted to learn it so she taught the combination to everyone. It is put together with steps we have already learned in the class and is actually very nice. But I felt mortified at having to have a special buleras for old people. It is not what the “old people” do in the videos which is what I had asked for. But I didn’t want anything too easy, although with good styling it isn’t really easy. I think I didn’t want to be told that I shouldn’t do some of the other steps because they don’t look good on old people. I brag about my age but then get insulted when people treat me as old. I still don’t feel old. It’s just that my body won’t move as fast as a young person’s. At least my stamina is still there, better than many people much younger. But an almost fifty six year old body doesn’t have the strength of a twenty six year old body, no matter how strong I am now. I am still conflicted by this natural human process of aging that I can’t control anyway. So why be conflicted? I need to just accept it. Fifteen or twenty years ago I could power through a cold on sudafed and hardly feel it. Now I can’t, although I tried. Why is it so hard to accept that my body is doing exactly what it was designed to do and that it is on the deteriorating part of the cycle. It has served me well and it still does. And I don’t want it ever to stop. Ah immortality. What a theme for humanity. At least I know I am not alone with this dilemma. I always wanted to accept aging gracefully but perhaps I never defined “gracefully”. I remember my mother telling me that once she looked in the mirror and thought, “Who is this old lady?” How do I accept my age and not be limited by the acceptance? Obviously I am not too old to dance and to work on my dancing. Being old doesn’t mean I have to just stop. It just means that there are certain steps that really do look better on a sixteen year old like Graciela than on me at almost fifty six. These young people with their full lives ahead of them stir up the nostalgia in me. And maybe it is being in class with so many young people that brings up the awareness of my own age and my mortality. Last night Freddie spent lots of time with David Serva (Jones) again. Luis sang most of the night after I went back up. But I was too tired and sick to stay down anyway. When I see Freddie and David together I realize that they are both older men now. David walks with this beautiful cane because he broke his pelvis as well as his wrist in the bicycle accident. When he and Freddie talk about the past, it is about a past long before many of the people here were even born. They must be old. Their hair is white, they are missing teeth. And yet they continue to be two little bad boys still hanging out together, still able to hang out together as they age. But there will come a time when age will change it. How much time do they have left? They had better use what they have now. And then if they have years and years left that is great. And if they don’t, at least they will have had what they are doing now. Accepting the aging process means making choices based on that acceptance. There is less and less future to think about and more and more now to live.

October 15, 2000 Sunday