Nostalgia

The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums

A book of T.S. Eliot's poetry is open on the counter in front of me; this sort of thing really isn't my fault.

As I draw closer and closer to September 1, I find myself struck more and more often by soft waves of nostalgia for Madrid. Not for New York, as I had expected, or at least not yet - I've spent nearly a year missing that city, and my returns there are always laced with the bitersweetness of leaving so much of what I love behind in California anyway. And my longing for Spain doesn't lurk, waiting to ambush me with a sharpness that leaves aches and bruises, the way I missed Paris so hard for so long in high school - and honestly, I still miss Paris that way. My nostalgia for Madrid is still fresh, after all; I can still picture the faces of my host family, can still call the subway map up in my mind and imagine the long, open streets gilded with flowers and edged with long shadows. And I don't know what, exactly, I miss. Just being there, I suppose.

Madrid is not romanticized the way Paris is in my mind - and, even with time, I don't think it will be. Nor is it something I constantly long for, the way I long for New York when I'm in California and for California when I'm in New York. It's an sharp fondness, really - Madrid's like that old friend you like to see occasionally even though you've grown apart, because you had some good times and share some stories that nobody else would understand, and you can laugh about the silliest things because sometimes the world just reminds you of Spain. Madrid is not a best friend, not a first love - like Paris - and not the immediate push-pull reality of two extremes on two coasts. Instead it's faded into something so far away that sometimes the strangest thing reminds me of my life there, and then I frantically gather up the scattered shards of my memories and slide them back in to their places once more. And each time I abandon a few, lost in between the cushions or swept under the rug, until everything, eventually, will just be hazy and blurred. But for now, I think mostly I miss Madrid because I'm afraid of forgetting it. And the soft little nudges of memories are the little mementos that I'm happy to carry around, still - for a while, at least.

It seems...

...she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear...



Tomorrow we go to Ashland to see Merchant of Venice, Hamlet and Throne of Blood, which is the Kurosawa adaptation of The Scottish Play.

How is it August?