Basta, Gracias

Enough is enough

Cadiz, Espana

I reached the point where I just had to say, To hell with it.

Over the course of my life I’ve gone to more protests, signed more petitions, given more money to what, in the end, amounted to alas, lost causes…

I’ve attached my pronouns to email signatures. I’ve obsessed over recycling and my responsibility to the planet. Are the paper receipts from CVS recyclable? What about this flimsy plastic container? It has a triangle with a number in it, but didn’t I read somewhere that our city takes only certain classes of plastic? Will I be responsible for the contamination of an entire truckload at the recycling center?

I’ve sat through more plays about gender and identity than I care to count. Some good, but mostly bad, I have to honestly say. Many were ham-handed and preachy, but I still tried to give them their due.

I have tried to be a good liberal.

But my God, you’re telling me we’re still fighting the same battles we were fighting forty, fifty years ago?

Yes, that’s what I’m saying. And if I’m any judge, if the species is still around in another forty or fifty years, we’ll still be fighting for them.

But now, here I am, finally in one of the few places where I’m always happy—Europe, my happy place!—and now even that’s being ruined by this bloated beached whale of a politician whose every utterance amounts to as much sense as a goose honking. The Gulf of America? He made himself chair of the Kennedy Center? Tell me these ideas don’t sound as if they came from a mind riddled with syphilis. What’s next? Make his horse a senator? Or I know: a Supreme Court justice!

And there’s his billionaire goon sidekick, who at times appears to be so far along the spectrum that if he were hit smack between the eyes with a dart gun loaded with whatever high-powered cocktail the American Association of Veterinarians recommends firing into the ass of anything that you want stopped dead in its tracks, he’d just yank it out and use it to clean his teeth.

Can you say ancient Rome?

Basta, gracias

I’m 3,000 miles away. Right now there’s not one damn thing I can do about it from here.

The other morning while we were sipping coffee at the cafeteria at the Santa Justin train station in Seville waiting for the train to Cadiz, we struck up a conversation with the couple next to us. She was Irish, and I believe he said he was German.

Some people in the United States would have called that a mixed marriage. That’s how bad it is there.

The couple didn’t have a lot of good things to say about the United States. They weren’t being cruel or angry, just honest.

Everyone to a person we’ve talked to about the political situation in the United States, from Americans to Spanish to Canadian to Brits to now these two, haven’t had good things to say. The best they can muster is what the Brit said, who has gone through Brexit: Dark times, he called it.

We talked about the places we’ve been, and like most Europeans who talk to us, they were a bit surprised by Sue and me, how much we’ve traveled, where we’ve traveled, how we travel. Not typical Americans.

Travelers are ambassadors. Remember that.

Her final thought before they got up to get their train was that the reason the United States was going through what it’s going through now (a coup? a hard turn to the right for sure) was because most Americans don’t leave their country.

And it’s true. Most Americans don’t have an inkling of how the rest of the world lives. It’s a recipe for xenophobia, arrogance, and flat out ignorance.

The Spanish countryside, viewed from the train.

I watched the Spanish countryside roll by from the window of the train. All farmland outside the cities. No suburbs or subdivisions. People live in apartments. They use the land to raise food. No wonder everything is so fresh. You see that in France, too. But I wonder what the people and life are like in that little country hamlet? Would they view me with suspicion as if I were a Martian who just landed in their midst? My experience is that they would be just as curious of me as I was of them.

And I wonder where that dirt road leads? Wouldn’t you like to come back, rent a car, and see what’s there?

Entering Cadiz by train

In Cadiz after a ten-minute walk from the train station, we were met by David at our apartment. He manages it for friends when they’re away. This is the way AirBnB used to be. You were met and chatted with a person, who gave you a lot of local knowledge, not a list of web sites that impersonal corporations give you to save time and money. Make the list once, and you never have to do it again. Move on to the next action item to make more money.

And the apartment. Two little rooms on the top floor on a side street. No elevator. A marble staircase winds up and up. Light filters in from the two sets of French doors that lead to little balconies that overlook the narrow street. The rise and fall of voices, the ebb and flow of daily life on the street, a rolling cloud of sound like steam rises, muted by the the time it reaches this height. Two little rooms are all we need. So romantic. There’s a two burner stove. A small fridge. A big comfortable bed. And the luxury of luxuries: A washer. But no dryer. But we don’t have a dryer at home anyway.

The apartment in Cadiz.

The first thing we did was wash all of our clothes. We were so excited. Clean clothes. Life’s little pleasures.

Clean clothes.

Earlier I had a very strong feeling of déjà vu. I told Sue we’ve been here before. What if Sue and I knew each other in a previous life? Is that why we get along so well? We’ve done all this before?

We go down into the streets. We need to buy lunch. And groceries.

Cadiz, Espana

The first day or two of any new city or town is an orientation.

Fun Travel Fact: The term, to orient, comes from the time when it was decreed that east, not north, should be at the top of maps because that’s where the sun rises. You would “Orient”—a word for the Far East—a map by turning it so east was at the top.

Also, the sun doesn’t rise, the earth turns making it look like it’s rising up over the horizon, but of course most of us know that. I’m just writing that to piss off any flat earthers for the outside chance that one of them stumbles on this blog.

The open market was closing for the afternoon, fish mongers were packing fish back up in ice, meat markets sweeping up, and now was the time for the restaurants to make their money. We ate fried tuna and squid from paper cones that actually was surprisingly light and tasty, and a glass of red wine.

There isn’t a lot to do in Cadiz, which is why we came here. There’s a museum, a few churches to poke around in, some ruins, but we came here to wander the streets and sit in the cafes and recharge our brains.

Scenes from Cadiz, Espana

The Oratorio de la Santa Cueva is literally right next door to our apartment on the Calle Rosario. AFC. Another church. Spain is a Catholic country, and I can’t say I'm suffering PTSD from my childhood, but the Catholic dogma and iconography—I mean, lighten it up, will you? I’m starting to turn into that combative teenager I once was, where I’m either rolling my eyes or I want to kick in a stain glass window.

The Oratorio de la Santa Cueva

Still, Santa Cueva served up a nice surprise: A few original Goya’s, including an interesting take on the Last Supper, Middle Eastern-style.

And just up the street, is the Plaza de Mina…

On the Plaza de Mina

…and the Cadiz Museum. I had more fun with the camera than I did trying to figure out what I was looking at. Again, parts of my brain are mush, and if you put a book or a camera in my hands, I’m happy. Especially now everything is digital, you can really play around without worrying about burning film.

Cadiz Museum

Plaza de Espana, Cadiz at night