Them Barcelona Blues

Monday night I arrived back in Berlin after five days in Barcelona.

I did not want to believe the Boy when he said it would be hard to come back. I did not want to accept his vision of Berlin as gray and cold and closed-up tight. "But it is new to me!" I protested. "Hip and unfurling. My writer's muse."

But oh how I yearn today. For sun so warm I bare my arms. For hills, raking the sky. For cacti, clawing slopes sideways. For houses the color of sand, the color of cantaloupe, the color of sighs.

I want palms. I want Vespas. I want the frothing coffee of Hotel Oriente.

Black-iron balconies, laundry draped like jewels. Gaudi: Shattered porcelain. Blazing castles. Knuckles punching the sky.

Most of all, though, I miss the sea.

I had no more than thirty minutes on Barcelona's beach. It was Sunday afternoon. I had eaten bad paella with the Boy. Rice neon yellow, gobbed and wet. No flavors unfolding -- just a single saffron slam. One could not peel the skin off the prawns. The clams were gummy. The cuttlefish might have been pre-fab.

Strangely, I did not mind so much. It was sitting at an outdoor table in Barceloneta, the fisherman district, our faces sucking up the sun, that had mattered most. And that we had accomplished.

Afterward, we joined the flow of locals, of tourists, heading south. Old Spanish homes to our left, docked boats to our right, and then suddenly, startlingly: a beach. It flanked the city's foot, this swell of dusty white, as if this were the most ordinary of things.

I turned to the Boy. I need to be alone, I told him. Five minutes.

I found a spot near the tide. The sand was damp. The sun was low in the sky. Spanish peppered the air all around.

The water was a color you cannot find along California's pebbled coast. Nor Montauk's shifting shore. Nor the 79th Street Boat Basin, the planks warm beneath your thighs, the wind serrating Hudson's gray. Here it was turquoise, in the way only the Mediterranean can be. Icy azure along the edges. Saturated, seductive, at its core.

I pulled my knees to my chest. I wound my arms tight.

I am a coastal child, caught, these past five months, mid-continent. The longest I've lived without ocean. Ever.

The waves rolled in. The waves rolled out. Gentle waves, and flat. They beat their beat. They hush-hushed upon the shore. It got into me, that rhythm. It always does.

I looked out at the horizon. Water melting into sky. A haze of blue and brown. Everything soft. Endless. Unfazed.

When the Boy joined me, I entwined myself with him. "It's so big," I said. I lay my head on his shoulder. "It makes this moment so small."

He kissed me then. I whispered something in his ear. He whispered something back. His hair was soft and curled. It fell across his cheek. The warmth of him pressed into me.

We did not stay long. It grew colder. And there was a gondola to catch. Up Montjuic. 

But I wish I were still there. Brow touched by sun. Body cupped in sand. The line between us blurred.

Drinking up the sea.

Comments

[emily]

Oh, how I love this. And oh, how it makes me yearn for that gorgeous blue sea of Greece, too. Just last week...

[jess]

hey girl!
nice to hear from you. when do we get a pic of pete?

[Lilan]

The boy is just so darn camera shy... In mere weeks you get to see him in person, though! What could be better? :-)

[Julie]

oh!

beautiful!

(maybe you and pete can move there?)

[Lilan]

He wants to! For a couple months at least. But I sure have to work on my Espagnol before then. :-)