Languages – andthepea

The confinement diary: counting from zero

Here in Spain, they like to start counting from zero. So we’re currently in Phase Zero of emergence from lockdown, which means that trips to the beach are permitted first and last thing, and visits to the hairdresser are allowed at any time, as long as you wear a mask and agree to have the soles of your shoes sprayed with disinfectant.

After a month and a half of complete lockdown, it’s astonishing to step out of my door and see a conveyor belt of human motion. Masked and bare-faced, Donostiarras are taking up their right to go somewhere that isn’t the bins or grocery store; to cycle, run, and congregate, albeit discreetly.

Since May 2nd, when lockdown was lifted, I’ve been for four swims and counting. The beaches appear different after almost two months’ absence. New rocks have emerged on Zurriola, and green seaweed has grown long and silky over them. The Cantabrian sea in May is cold, but not as bone numbing as it was in March, and I soak it up like a sponge. Then, there’s the night, which is warm, and full of the sound of the waves. I’d not seen the night since March 14th and walking freely in it, makes me feel like a teenager who is just getting to know its possibilities. Even the eleven o’clock curfew that’s currently in place, adds an adolescent appeal.

You could get drunk on the freedom, half-kid yourself that things have gone back to the way they were before. But only half. The boyfriend and I got told off by a policeman each for sitting on the ledge of a stone bridge and leaning against iron railings. The virus travels through metal, didn’t we know? We did, but in that moment we forgot. We’re also not supposed to touch the sand with any part of our bodies other than the soles of our feet. Sitting and lounging on the beach are not yet permitted because there are no conclusive studies about coronavirus transmission through sand.

We’re all aware that a resurgence of the virus is a possibility, and by the end of the weekend, we’ll know how Phase Zero has affected the rate of contagion. My fear of it all being taken away, has led me to organise my days around going out in the morning and evening. Which is a challenge, because whereas at the beginning of lockdown the empty hours mounted, by the end there almost wasn’t a spare moment. I was able to plan and fill whole days without venturing beyond my flat. So this new commitment to going out, is a bit overwhelming, along with the early summer. Boris Johnson’s baby wasn’t the only premature summer fruit, because as of last week, grocery stalls were filled cherries and peaches. These stone fruits, normally associated with the month of June, are my favourites, but I was almost sad to see them so soon. Their early appearance confirms that I’ve missed Spring, the season that ought to most naturally follow a state of hibernation.

Next week, if all goes to plan, Phase One gets underway; clothes stores will open, and groups of up to ten will be able to congregate on terraces. I have to say, I’m not ready for all of that. Not only due to a fear of contagion, but because I’d like to open up my life in a slower, more organic manner. I don’t want to rush to embrace everything that was, but to cherry pick and savour my experiences. I want to retain the license that lockdown gave me to have unproductive time to myself; to not have my inner peace shattered by a sense of social duty and fear of missing out.

This is the latest of a series of posts on my lockdown experience in San Sebastián, Spain. Don’t touch any metal, if you can help it.

The confinement diary: self-isolating by the book

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In her new memoir, Rebecca Solnit compares books to stars, owing to the time-lag between the original idea in the author’s head, and the moment, many years later, when the reader gets hold of it. She explains how readers engage with what the author was passionately immersed in long before, sometimes only because of the time it takes a book to be written, edited, printed, and distributed. When you think about it, the time-lag between writing and distribution, makes the possibility of a reader finding a book relevant, or interesting, a chancy business. Perhaps this is why some people give up on books; they want to consume content with a smaller space-time lag, stories that are more directly relevant to today’s world.

As for me, reading continues to be the ultimate form of relaxation, a break from the news cycle and worry. I don’t mind the time-lag between the authors’ pre-quarantine freedom and my confinement; if anything, I marvel at how scripts from a star-like distance can illuminate present conditions. Since entering quarantine, on March 16th, I’ve read the following:

A Line Made By Walking, Sara Baume (fiction 2016, ordered pre-quarantine)

Actress, Anne Enright (fiction 2020, ordered pre-quarantine)

Recollections of my Non-existence, Rebecca Solnit (memoir 2020, ordered pre-quarantine)

Untamed, Glennon Doyle (memoir/ self-help 2020, ordered in quarantine)

Handiwork, Sara Baume (artistic memoir 2020 preordered pre-quarantine/ published during quarantine)

The Seas, Samantha Hunt (fiction 2004, ordered pre- quarantine)

The Professor and the Siren, Giuseppe di Lampedusa (fiction 1957, ordered in quarantine)

Watching: My Brilliant Friend; The Story of a New Name, Directed by Saverio Costanzo. Based on the books by Elena Ferrante

Certainly, nothing on the list was intended for a quarantined readership; even if four of the books have 2020 publication dates, with Handiwork by Sara Baume coming out as late as March 26th. There’s no denying that words land differently when you’re self-isolated, and only allowed out to buy groceries. For example, the recurring metaphor of the unlocked door, in Glennon Doyle’s self-help memoir about reclaiming female wilderness, was intended as an inspirational call to witness the option of leaving unsatisfactory situations and roaming free; these doors, they’re not even locked, she promises. However, from the position of confinement, when governments and our own consciences are forcing us to lockdown, the unlocked door trope feels nonsensical. I can’t help but think that if Doyle were writing her guide for a quarantined world, her metaphors, and even her thoughts would have been different.

But, on the other hand, reading Untamed, and my other feminist memoir – Solnit’s – during this time of pause, presents a kind of chrysalis for new ideas to take hold and develop. Interestingly, both books provide a physical example of these chrysalises: it’s young Solnit’s writing annex in an African-American neighbourhood in San Franscisco; it’s the room/womb at the bottom of Doyle’s house, where her sister hid and regrouped after the explosion of her first marriage, and emerged as a woman with a vision. Such places cut off from the ordinary flow of space-time, enable reflection, planning, and practice on a small scale, as far as the limits of the confined world permit, before our horizons expand again, and life with all its distractions rushes in. Solnit and Doyle have inspired me to be moved and act on behalf of causes I care about, something I wasn’t doing enough of before quarantine. Both women write persuasively about how my good, and that of humanity, are at the deepest level, inextricable; and this has never been more apparent than in quarantine, where it’s an almost symmetrical effort to look after my well-being and that of others.

Small, interesting worlds. All the books I’ve loved during quarantine have them. I don’t want the sweeping narrative that boomerangs me from one side of the planet to the other; I want writing that makes me excited about what I can experience now, from my little studio space and sea-view balcony. Sara Baume writes how the birds I want to see, the birds I want to recognise, are the ones that live – or visit, or get lost – in the places where I live. These words are a comforting companion to the obligatory constrained perspective, the forced slowing-down of confinement; they’re an invitation to look again, to begin a breathless search, for what’s near and elusive. There’s so much I’ve missed, by not paying attention; so much to catch up on, if I start.

Baume’s Handiwork, is also pattern for life and objects in a microcosm. She assigns different stations to the house where she and her partner live and make things; where distinct tasks such as gluing, cutting and painting, have their proper place. Though I have a tendency to work in all parts of my studio, I made a quick doodle of the space, and the types of making that could be specific to different areas. Even as a fantasy, it gives me the reassurance of a real plan.

While Baume’s book reads as a map for life in quarantine, others on my pile bring me what I’ve most missed – my beloved sea. These past few weeks of intermittent sun, the sea has been my forbidden fruit – even Zurriola, the wavy, made-for-surfers beach, which is the only one I’m able to see these days, has lately resembled a turquoise lake. The sea is a break from the small places, the sense of making do with restricted possibilities. It’s turned up in Solnit’s memoir, in the second chapter that takes a break from her life and catches a bus all the way to Ocean Beach, where she can see the Pacific and eternity. It’s tempted me in di Lampedusa’s peacock-coloured Sicilian waters, in the Ferrante screen adaptations, where the island of Ischia with its pornographically blue waters is a break from the square confines of the dusty neighbourhood. The signorina must go and rest on Ischia, the signorina is too exhausted, the heroine’s mother mocks. Italy, only the width of France away, and suddenly inaccessible, is another forbidden fruit. I think enviously how that sea, that sand, those swimsuit frolics are real; that they’ve been captured on film, and that beautiful place goes on without me, without any other human visitor.

Closer to my current experience of the water, is Samantha Hunt’s novel, The Seas, where the inhabitants of a Northern American seaside town, have been turned odd by looking out to the ocean. Passages like this – the street was dreaming it was the silver asphalt of fish scales – draw the tide up to my stone balcony, and make me see everything as sea-matter; for example, an escaped cellophane glove dragging across the concrete, becomes a dozy jellyfish. On a metafictional note, I even had a drip from my bathroom ceiling, to match the mermaid heroine’s predisposition to leaks, and only now, has the balance of wet to dry been restored.

The confinement diary: napolitanas and the collective good

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Week 3 of quarantine sees me engaging in such antisocial activities as eating out the filling of a napolitana (pain au chocolat) with a teaspoon, and leaving begind the pastry wreckage.

A plastic tray of napolitanas is not something I’d normally have, my habit with desserts being that I buy a specific sweet that can be eaten in one sitting. But my boyfriend brought them, during the first phase of quarantine, when he was allowed to work from his school and stay here. Now, when everyone has to work from the place where they sleep, this tiny room doesn’t have enough space and internet for the both of us. So he’s gone for now, but the napolitanas are still here, and I didn’t want to waste them completely.

The habit of eating the juicy, chocolatey, custardy filling and leaving the soggy base behind, was one I picked up in my family, where there was almost too much to go around, and I had to find some way of limiting myself. Taking what I wanted, and leaving behind the rest, I was able to have my cake and eat it, and gain the unrealistic idea that I had control over my life. Since buying my own food, and having relationships outside of my family, I’ve mostly given up that princessy habit. But now that I’m alone, and the pastry is dry, the chocolate rich and hazelnutty, there’s nothing stopping my extraction procedure.

Ironically, in this crisis, staying at home with my ravaged napolitanas, makes me a not-bad citizen and a potential life-saver. In the new hierarchy of selfish behaviour, meeting people from beyond your household, is obviously at the top, while scooping out the chocolate from leftover napolitanas is a lot further down.

Seeing myself as part of a species, and not as an individual, is new for me. I was raised as an individual, and even now, my parents seem more bothered about my comfort than whether I might catch the darn virus, or be a good citizen. It’s the first time in my life that my needs and desires are truly inimical to the collective good; to my own good, because like everyone else, I have a body susceptible to the virus. Since my last post, a friend contracted a painful case of Coronavirus, which left her struggling for oxygen, and another friend, a midwife, has had her ward turned upside-down. Now that I’m able to put faces to those battling the disease, it seems ten times closer and more frightening. And my part in preventing it is the quietest one – to stay away, to stay at home. Still, there’s things to be learned here, another phase of growing up to do.

This is my third post about being quarantined in Spain. Wishing that everyone who wants a napolitana can get their hands on one, to eat in the manner of their choosing.

Una yogini en Donosti

Una tarde lluviosa encontré mi amiga, Carla en un bar en la Plaza de la Constitución. En todas partes la gente estaba bebiendo y fumado, pero nosotras estuvimos allí para algo mas raro, hablar de yoga. Carla es una instructora de yoga de la Ciudad de México. Hice su formación en San Cristóbal de las Casas en Octubre 2018 y se mudo a Donosti en Enero 2019. Yo conocí Carla a Pintxopote en Abril, y pienso que es una de las personas las mas encantadoras y inspiradoras en la ciudad.

¿Carla, como descubriste yoga?

Mi mamá era yogini. Y empecé mi practica copiar sus posturas que me parecieron muy naturales. También me enseño sobre el descanso y la alimentación. Me encantó!

Después de la universidad viví un tiempo difícil y probe muchas terapias distintas. Con el psychoanalysis que es una terapia de palabra, me perdí en mis historias, pero con yoga que es un reconocimiento del cuerpo y mente, encontré un espacio para dejar que el ser se manifieste.

¿Y en tu opinión que somos?

En el nivel esencial, somos todos parte de lo divino. Nuestro cuerpo es un templo y tenemos que respetar este espacio para actualizar lo divino en nosotros mismos.

Donosti tiene una cultura muy fuerte de gastronomía y esta llena de bares. Mucha gente trasnocha y se despierta tarde, algunas veces con resaca. ¿Te parece que sea un buen lugar para practicar un estilo de vida yoga?

Si quisieras alcanzar a una iluminación completa tendrías que vivir fuera de la ciudad y seguir una rutina diaria muy estricta. Yo no querría vivir una vida muy ascética, y eliminar cosas. Soy yogini y otras cosas también en el mismo tiempo, y pienso que Donosti es un buen lugar para practicar yoga, porque tienes la naturaleza en la ciudad. Una parte muy importante de yoga es la respiración, y aquí puedes respirar el aire poco contaminado. También hay muchos productos frescos en Donosti, ye por eso, es posible alimentarte bien.

Cuéntame de la primera vez que estuviste en Donosti.

Hace 8 años que visité Donosti con algunas amigas de México. Me enamoré con la ciudad, con su belleza perfecta. Unas amigas se aburrieron y quisieron ir a Pamplona. Y yo pensé que si estas personas no pudieran ver la belleza de ese sitio, tendría que encontrar nuevo circulo!

Cuéntame un poco sobre tu trabajo aquí en Donosti.

Estoy trabajando en dos ciudades muy distintas en la costa Vasca. La primera es Irun, una ciudad árida cerca de la frontera. Irun hay una población muy diversa con muchos inmigrantes. Allí la gente, a veces, no puede ir a yoga por que les faltan recursos económicos.

Sin embargo, Donosti es una ciudad llena de abundancia. Enseño en el Centro Sherab en la calle Aguirre Miramon. Es un estudio muy cálido y tranquilo y muchos estudiantes se apuntan a las clases.

paintingsplash — A Carla le gusta pintar en su tiempo libre

Me dijiste antes que no viajabas ligero. ¿Que llevaste contigo cuando te mudaste a Donosti?

Me llevo mis libros de filosofía y historia del arte, y también, una memoria con fotos de mi vida en México. Es importante para mi de conocer que puedo volver a la Carla de antes, si lo quiero. Hasta ahora, no le he usado, pero me da tranquilidad que puedo hacer lo.

¿Que planes tienes para el futuro?

En un mes me voy a Bélgica con mi novio, que estudiara un Masters. Allí intento enseñar clases, pero también encontraré otro trabajo para tener mas recursos económicos y vivir bien.

Esta entrada forma parte de una serie sobre mi primer año en San Sebastián. Es mi primera entrada en castellano, por favor disculpe los errores y el Spanglish! Existe también en inglés!

A yogini in San Sebastián

I meet my friend Carla on a rainy Thursday evening in a cafe on Plaza de la Constitución, the closest thing to European-style square in San Sebastián. Though we both have colds we keep our plastic macs on and sit in the sheltered terrace with everyone else. People around us are drinking and smoking and at 9:15, the night is so young it could be a foetus. On Friday the sun will rise late, as it does in this part of the world and those with hangovers even later.

Carla and I have come to discuss a topic that seems a million miles from where we are: yoga. Carla is a yoga-instructor from Mexico City and one of the most fascinating and insightful people I have met in San Sebastián. As she sips her tinto de verano, a mix of red wine and soda water, she tells me that she doesn’t see this party-loving seaside town as an unlikely place for yoga. First of all, she’s not of the school of yoga that prescribes a restrictive lifestyle and has accepted that while some yogis get up to meditate at 4:30 am, here in Spain it is fine to begin her morning routine of tea, yoga and breakfast at the more civilised hour of 8:30 am. Moreover, the key element of yoga is respiration and here, in San Sebastián, she can breathe in clean air and enjoy the experience of nature in the city.

carla room — Carla recharges by spending ample amounts of time in her room.

The first time Carla visited San Sebastián was eight years ago, on a European tour with some friends from home. She said that she was enraptured by the city’s perfect beauty and even had the sensation that she was on tierra santa, or holy land. When some of her friends got bored and wanted to move on to flashy bull-fighting hub, Pamplona, she seriously considered changing her social circle; if they couldn’t appreciate the beauty of this place, what on earth could she have in common with them? Being someone who is anxious every time I leave San Sebastián, just in case something happens to prevent me from coming back, I can relate to Carla’s extreme sense of connection with the place. And we’re not the only two people, who without having a drop of Basque blood, feel this way; it’s like the city bewitches certain travellers and makes them want to stay.

Carla got the chance for a longer spell in San Sebastián in January, when she secured a teaching placement in two studios along the Cantabrian coast. One studio is in Irun, an arid town on the border with France, which has a strong immigrant population. There, the space is modern and clean-looking and though the classes are adequately attended, the locals’ main obstacle in coming to yoga, is economic. In San Sebastián, on the other hand, she teaches at the Centro Sherab, a cosy, richly coloured space, complete with Buddhas and wallhangings. The room strikes her as oddly wintry for Donosti’s beachy climate, but she says it feels very secure and protected from the noise of the city.

Carla came to yoga very young, as a little girl in Mexico City, who followed in her yogini mother’s footsteps. Doing the poses felt natural to her and yoga became a staple that she could rely on, when later in life, she hit upon troubled times. Whereas she found that talking therapies such as psychoanalysis caused her to regurgitate the same stories, a yoga practice, which Carla sees as the ultimate union of body and mind, held space for her true being to manifest.

And what is our true being? I ask her.

We are all part of the divine and our body is a temple that acts as host, she replies.

Having felt the benefits of yoga for herself, Carla decided to become an instructor. In October 2018, she trained in San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, where she gained a more complete understanding of yoga and met masters whose teaching guided her when she set up in San Sebastián three months later. In addition to her acquired wisdom, Carla brought several prized possessions with her, including an album of memories. In its pages, are photographs of her family and of Carla when she was small. She tells me that it’s important to her to have the possibility of connecting both with people from her life in Mexico and ‘la Carla de antes’ (old Carla). However, nearly six months into her stay, Carla has not felt the need to open the memoria. Perhaps that’s because she feels so grounded here.

When I took a class with Carla, I found the practice a nourishing slow-flow vinyasa ( a style of yoga that involves the rhythmic transition between poses). Holding the poses for longer than I was used to, was both physically and mentally challenging, but I left the class transformed – both energised and more relaxed. As a friend, I know Carla as a warm and open person and while this comes across in her teaching, as she adjusts students’ alignment and practices the poses alongside them, you also sense that there is a part of her that is sealed off from the class and in communication with the divine. She tells me that it’s important to have boundaries with students, so that the relationship between her and them does not become an overly egotistical or even sexually charged one. She is there to guide students to access the divinity within them, rather than be a pinnacle for their desires.

Sadly, Carla won’t be in Donosti for long. Her next stop will be Belgium, where she’ll accompany her longterm boyfriend who is doing a Master’s there. Carla intends to learn French and teach some classes, but she’ll also take up other work to ensure she has enough to live well on. She says that it’s important for her to have recursos (resources) as well as her dream job.

Carla loves to paint in her spare time. Since moving to Donosti, she’s been experimenting with new colour combinations.

This post forms part of a series about my first year in San Sebastián. I fancied a change from writing about myself the whole time 😛 Feel free to like, comment or share! Click here for the Spanish version of this post and here for a wildcard I picked out at random.

Yankee productivity and the Spanish lifestyle

Catholics have more parties and are better at them. You realise that Luther, Calvin, Henry VIII and other architects of the Reformation, have a lot to answer for in demoting the Saints and depriving Protestant nations of occasion cakes in bakery windows, four-day fiestas and novelty styles of getting tipsy in the evening. Then there are the Spanish national holidays – which are days of protest for conscientious Basque separatists and a break for everyone else; the regional city ferias which are full-on singing, dancing costumed parades. And to crown it, impromptu days of disruption – protests, marches, strikes, the procession of floats, banners and loudspeakers through blockaded streets. Even on a regular day, the light’s stretching out to nine thirty already, the evening won’t begin until eleven and finish before two, if not five. Chicos, I’ve been told that I live in the most reserved part of Spain…

And in all of this, I’m trying to work freelance as a writer and complete a book project. I have to find peace, focus and enough hours, when the current seems to be going another way. My writing, an eccentric, solitary buoy, when my surroundings are screaming at me to be in the moment, to conform. Thou shalt flamenco in the fish aisles at Gastropote on Thursday and fiesta on a Friday night, because your housemates are going to make it impossible for you not to. And even if you had the idea of taking your laptop out to the furthermost rock, it’s a flimsy intention in the face of this new tribal part that’s grown in you, calling you to do what everyone else is.

Control over one’s life, one’s time, is one of the great Anglo-American myths. Work hard, set goals and you’ll get there. And in Britain and America, at least, society conspires to help you: work and play are scheduled and everyone seems to be aiming towards something that is not yet here. It feels okay to not go out on Friday, because you’re working and know that others, behind their walls are doing the same. Having been nurtured in this future-orientated environment, I’m comfortable, if not happy in it. Making lists, crossing items off, aiming and reaching the goal or not. Feeling devastated when I miss and when I achieve, it’s straight onto the next.

Control is really fear in disguise. If I do this and this and this, then that scary thing won’t happen, this brilliant thing just might. Here in Spain, the feeling of less control, is double-edged. It can make me panic that I’ll never get anything done, due to the lack of uninterrupted time or cultural know-how. There are also the added responsibilities I’ve taken on, to feel at home here – like learning grammatical Spanish, dancing on my heels and to a beat, rather than on my toes and in my head. All these ‘extracurriculars’ are less about achievement than presence. The art of showing up and being in my body, is something I’ve never mastered, mainly because I’ve been busy hiding behind work and ideas. Here, in the land of the ever-present, I’ve learned that ideas don’t count for anything, if they don’t have a bearing on this moment – or – the time it takes to cook and serve up a meal.

But knowing I have less control of how the days will turn out, how people will react, in a weird way, takes the pressure off. I’m seeing all the elements, besides me, that lead to an outcome and am learning to let myself off the hook. I can relax, aim from a loving place, through encouragement, rather than criticism. And celebrate every ten thousand words written, every passage edited to today’s idea of perfection. I set goals for the week, rather than the day. A week is long and the quiet spaces appear naturally, where you didn’t expect them.

Because to impose an Anglo-American style of control on life here, defeats the point of being here. Because in every single one of these diversions, are things to I have to learn – how not just to think and write, but to connect and be material.

Czech books, London display, Spanish mood

This is one in a series of posts on my first seven months in San Sebastián. If you’ve not read it, have a look at my previous post: Bootcamp with a balcony. Thanks to everyone for all the support I’ve received so far and if you liked this post, feel free to like, share or comment.

Mind the (Ferrante) gap

It was Ferrante’s rusted safety pin that did it – the one that could give you tetanus if it pierced your skin while you played with it. The death-dealing prick at the beginning of My Brilliant Friend, is a Sleeping Beauty curse and the same one my grandmother feared. When Elena Greco, Ferrante’s narrator, says that she grew up in a time when children died, lost eyes and limbs – not to mention teeth – it’s a familiar story, even if it’s mine by inheritance, rather than by firsthand experience. Elena’s poor, tight-knit community in Postwar Naples, is one where you live in intimacy and suspicion of your neighbours – they might do you a favour, but they can also ruin you. We grew up with the duty to make it difficult for others before they made it difficult for us, Ferrante writes. No-one in my extended Greek Cypriot family spoke these exact words, but I heard enough iterations of this sentiment to know that it was true.

My cousin, who I saw on a recent trip to London, testifies that Ferrante’s world of fearful convictions existed for our mothers and grandmothers. They’d witnessed not only the fragility of the human body in its poor, undernourished state, but colonial oppression and war. Even when life around them changed, they’d not quite felt the horrors pass, or maybe they saw them take on different forms. As we grew up, the rusted safety pin became a heroin needle, that we’d somehow be tricked into using. (Our grandmother could never believe us capable of direct misdemeanour) These days, my cousin laughs at their fears, though she wishes that they’d allowed her to discover life for herself, rather than telling her what to expect of the world.

My grandmother’s world, her ways, come back to me in flashes. Reading Ferrante, who was my work assignment and constant companion the two weeks I was in London, felt like haunting my ancestors’ minds. Though I grew up with the tall buildings and city grit, the hum of the tubes, I can’t help but feel that Ferrante’s Naples taps into a more essential part of my past. Elena’s feelings about the island of Ischia, could be mine on the Cyprus of my grandmothers: The island faded, lost itself in some secret corner of my head. As the years pass and I grow more distant from my now late grandmothers’ memory, I worry that I have lost their stories; but all it takes to refind them is the trigger of another, complementary narrative.

I’m far from the only person to stumble upon their own story in books. I recently read a New Yorker interview with young Irish writer, Sally Rooney, who says I feel extraordinarily connected to (Henry James‘) novels, like my whole life is there. And I still have so many of them left to read! Makes me feel very lucky. Rooney’s comment, in its allusion to novels, both read and unread, references the past and telescopes into the future. I wonder what she means by finding a whole life in the complex, psychologically acute American writer. Does she mean the actual incidents of her life, or rather, her mental and emotional experiences? Does she expect to find more and more of herself in the James novels she is yet to read? And would it matter what order she’d read them in – if The Portrait of a Lady, a young woman’s story, was left for her to discover at 52 and she’d managed to get to The Ambassadors, a more mature novel, at 17?

For me, Ferrante seems to document a whole life before I existed. The time before their birth is an important concept to Ferrante’s heroines Lila and Elena. The before is an invisible mystery and yet underpins the structures and expectations of their neighbourhood. Lila and Elena’s own tale fills the gaps in my before, helping me to understand and perhaps imagine, things about my family that were never articulated. I am living out my cousin’s wish, discovering and creating impressions, instead of reading obediently.

This post takes a break from my regular San Sebastián-themed posts, but it reflects my experience of boarding tubes and trains and planes and buses in the past two weeks, always accompanied by ‘My Brilliant Friend.’ To experience the Elena Ferrante phenomenon for yourself, get your hands on the Neapolitan novels, or look out for the recent TV adaptation of the novel, by Italian director, Saverio Constanzo.

5 myths about moving

I’ve been living in Donosti for 5 months now and it feels like time to reflect on the difference between what I thought the experience would be and what it actually is. Prior to moving, my ideas were guided by a number of myths about swapping one culture for another. Some of these myths were travel clichés – gross generalisations that I’d normally think I was too smart to fall for, while others were simply assumptions I’d made because I didn’t know any better. Here are just 5 of them:

tinies .jpg — Snow White and her unsuspecting dwarf. Consent isn’t an issue when it comes to dressing your little brother for Carnaval.

Myth No. 1: New place, new me. You’re lying if you’ve moved and say that you haven’t bought into the myth of a new start. Chances are, if home felt like a place of boundless opportunity and contentment, there would have been no need to leave in the first place. But while I think it’s great to plan a better life in your new location, don’t assume that the act of moving in itself will automatically remove old problems and make you immune to whatever was so trying at home. Even though your troubles didn’t buy the Ryanair ticket to Biarritz for September 15th; by October 15th, you’ll be certain that they baeged onto the flight with you.

For about a month, I was under the illusion that I’d become this bold, carefree creature, who worked from cafes, swum in the sea and was constantly meeting new people. Then one by one, traits that had plagued me in the old country started resurfacing: shyness, commitment-phobia and worst of all, anxiety. From these demons, in the end, there was no escape; only a decision to be made: did I want to be challenged at home in a frantic metropolis or here, at the beach? Luckily, for me, that was an easy one.

Back in the old country I used to think that maraschino cherries were tacky….

Myth No. 2: My previous life will vanish from sight – When I went home in December for two weeks, a funny thing happened – I slid into the routines of my old life so seamlessly, that the one I’d been making in the past three months seemed unreal. I picked up right where I left off with friends and family and was worried that I’d feel at a loss when I returned to San Sebastián in January. However, one Vueling flight later, I slotted back into the life of three months, feeling neither homesick, nor sad.

You see, the London I experienced in December wasn’t representative of the city I left in mid-September. It was Christmas and friends who had moved out of town and scattered around all parts of the world, came back to visit; which all meant that I went home to a place that exists fleetingly. Although the London of 2015-16-17 is no longer around, my connections to people from those years are solid. Skype, Instagram and WhatsApp mean that messages can fly back and forth as often as they did in London. These past weeks, especially, when I’ve been convalescing from a broken ankle and unable to socialise as much, I’ve felt that I’ve been living a double life, with one foot planted here and the other in the world of not-here connections. People who’ve lived abroad for longer than me, say that this type of duality is normal, especially in the first few months.

Myth No. 3: I can get away with a basic command of the language. Yes, you can. Get away with a hundred words of Spanish and ten of Basque. Hopefully, you’ll have enough vocabulary to buy bread and talk about the weather. You may even meet some English-speaking locals or British expats (don’t you know that the modern rendition of Rule Britannia is that Britons never never never shall be immigrants?) and form an Anglophone friendship group.

Even with the best intentions you could slip into this culturally evasive state, because learning a new language takes time, investment and energy. I’ve found that just three hours of what is meant to be a fun night out in Spanish, can tax my brain as much as six hours of a dry academic conference in English. Misunderstandings are rife, I don’t understand half the jokes and if I lose focus for even two seconds, I’ve about as much chance of catching up with the conversation as I do with a mustang at a gallop. While I’ve improved through day-to-day interactions and the patience and generosity of friends, I’m coming to accept that if I’m not to sound like a foreigner forever, I need to boost my formal grounding in Spanish and this means one thing – committing to language lessons!

Do they make her *disfraz* (costume) in my size?

Myth No. 4: I have to say yes to every invitation. If you’re a freelancer/digital nomad like me and you arrive in a city without knowing many people, you’ll be on the look out for language exchanges and hobby-based Meet Ups. Overall this is a good move, because whatever the pretext, you can guarantee that these are places where people want to meet each other. In my convalescence, swimming, yoga and Pintxo-pote were all out, but if I wanted to, I could still go to a language exchange for every day of the week. There are the general Spanish-English exchanges; a French group and of course, my small but select bilingual ‘book-club’.

And yet, because language exchanges can be as chaotic and exhausting as they are social, I’ve learned to apply the advice I once read in a guidebook for Istanbul : you have to be in a good mood for the Grand Bazaar; be prepared to haggle, laugh and in general, make conversation. Just as you have to be pretty relaxed to tell a Turkish spice-seller that you don’t want to buy a bag of cumin with your saffron for the nineteenth time, you have to be feeling sprightly and patient enough to be able to answer the same questions about yourself, every time you meet a new person at a language exchange. Rather than commit to things routinely out of some false sense of obligation, I’d rather do less and give more.

I really couldn’t tell if Belle’s prince came as a transformed Beast, or was just taking a break from his mask to eat…

Myth No. 5: Setbacks are a sign that I should give up and go home. Before I made the decision to come to Donosti, I went through a superstitious phase when I kept asking whatever Great Being is out there to give me a sign. Of course, truly desiring to go and only needing that final confirmation, I spotted every shell, horse and star that I asked for. And now that I’m here, I’ve had some wonderful new adventures and I’ve met people I would have never found back home. However, I’ve also had set-backs and disappointments: those I became close to moving away, sponge mattresses, accidentally offending people, misjudging character, oh and that old chestnut, falling off a horse and breaking my ankle. Do these obstacles mean that I should give up and go home or set my sights on some new promised land? For me, the answer is no – because I’ve learned that fluctuations are part of life, wherever you are. Even without having to ask for a concrete sign, I instinctively know there’s more for me here, that the time to go would be when I stopped seeing the opportunities.

Bottom line, after 5 months in Donosti, I’ve learned that you should only move to a new place if you’re excited about the possibility of making a full life there; a life that will have its share of challenges as well as pleasures.

This is now one of a series of many posts about moving from London to San Sebastián. If you’ve moved recently or are thinking of moving, I’d love to know which parts resonated with you? Also, did I miss anything out?

Pardon my English

My friend Cristina gets a dreamy look in her eyes when she talks about Luke. Luke is the voice of a podcast targeted at language learners, who want to learn RP (Received Pronunciation) English. Cristina thinks that Luke is a better authority on English than me, because the way I sometimes drop my ts makes my accent ‘a little bit Cockney’ and therefore less exemplary. Bristling from this latest brush with Basque directness, I demand to hear Luke, half-hoping that he’ll sound like Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg, so that I’ll be able to oppose him on grounds of all that is moral and hip.

But to my chagrin, the podcast has updated RP for the Richard-Curtis-watching contingent, because Luke sounds like a cross between Hugh Grant in Love Actually (bumbling posh) and Hugh Grant in About A Boy (cool, North London posh), even dropping a few ts himself, every now and then.* Cristina is thrilled with Luke, because she understands him perfectly, even if she does wonder whether his accent exists in the real world. I can’t help teasing her that Luke’s speech is on the slow and deliberate side; that he’s maybe in the seventh month of recovery from a stroke.

About five seconds later, I feel terrible about insulting Luke, when he’s only the innocent aide to my friend’s English learning. But I have a complicated relationship with RP’s clipped tones and long vowels, with how it posits itself as the official accent of Britain and its former colonies, the white light to all other colours of the rainbow. Owing to its longstanding association with royalty and the political classes, RP is instantly authoritative and also, in my opinion, the best accent for fending off criticism or assault. RP was the standard at my academic girls’ school, a place where having one Welsh grandparent – let alone two Greek parents! – was exotic. When I first heard it, I thought RP had an unflattering intonation that could make blithe young girls sound like cross old men. And yet, after seven years in that institution, the inevitable happened and I began to sound, well, posh, as the various accents of my parents and carers got filtered out.

Over the years, while RP remained dominant, I saw that my accent could be like water, reflecting back the nuances of people who spoke differently. My rs would roll when I spoke with Europeans, whereas with Northerners, I could hear my vowels flattening. The voice in my head, though, would switch back to RP, not just in accent, but in its concise, sophisticated diction.

beatlish — Any matching of child and donation box is purely coincidental

Since moving to San Sebastián four months ago, where the main languages are euskera and castellano, my exposure to RP has dropped. I hear English often, but it’s tilted through the Castilian phonetics of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students, the Scouse of the Beatles puppets on the Boardwalk and the mellow drawl of Ashley from Alabama, who is sat with Cristina and me in this discussion of accents. Ashley, who has my favourite kind of US accent, makes ‘twenty’ more like ‘twiiiinny’ and ‘going to’ more like ‘gunna’; she also prefers adjectives to adverbs, to ‘go slow’ instead of ‘going slowly’. When Ashley’s around, enunciation feels awkward and I can’t help drawing out my vowels and dropping a few consonants. Alas, on me, the result is less Dolly Parton than East End Cockney.

Meanwhile, thanks to my injured ankle, I’ve been hibernating with still another type of English, Hiberno – which is etymologically appropriate, because the Latin words for cold weather retirement (hibernation) and Ireland (Hibernia), both derive from hibernus (winter). Now that I’m living in a Catholic, maritime part of Europe, which is undergoing significant social and political change, Hiberno-English novels and podcasts feel more relevant than RP ones and they’re having an effect on how I experience language and speech. Weeks after reading A Goat’s Song by Dermot Healy and Milkman by Northern Irish writer, Anna Burns, I find myself thinking in circumlocutory, rhythmic repetitions, of small things as wee, the man in the shop as your man. Also, after hearing it on several podcasts, shift, an ambiguous term that covers the territory between meeting and mating with someone eligible/ridey, makes me snigger in a way it didn’t a month ago, especially outside of an Irish context. A New-Age American’s obsession with shifting bad habits, unwittingly makes me think back to an Irish podcaster’s dread of shifting an unidentified cousin at their underpopulated town’s disco. In both cases, something undesirable is being shifted, but with a different result.

But have these weeks of Hiberno-hibernation had an effect on the way I pronounce my rs? According to Kevin, an Irish English teacher who I caught bullying an EFL student about his inability to say the plural of scientist, my accent displays rogue symptoms of Irish rhoticity, meaning that I emphasise rather than swallow the letter r, especially at the end of words. Oh no, I’m probably imitating you, I told him, I’ve a tendency to do that. Later, though, when I was reading some work aloud, I couldn’t help hearing my rhoticised rs; but whether they come from the past month’s Irish immersion or from being looked after by a Scottish nanny, as a ten-year-old, I can’t be certain.

In truth, when I’m told I have a Cockney lack of ts and an Irish abundance of rs, I feel a bit funny, as though I’ve lost part of my identity as an educated-sounding British person and the privileges that come with this. I wonder how that waitress at Gerald’s Bar does it, the one who keeps her accent cut-glass, even after four years of being here. It’s an accent she carries into Spanish, one that makes her sound foreign, despite her perfect grammar. Knowing little about her, I imagine that she received her pronunciation for life a long time ago, that the Queen’s way of speaking is deeply rooted in her. My own English, I’ve decided, is less received than receptive, continually opening to new sounds and expressions.

*Listening to these clips of Hugh Grant again, made me realise just how slowly he speaks. I mean, it’s like he’s made for export.

Castaway

Bella was in a mood that day. I’d struggled to lead her all lesson and we shouldn’t have insisted that she canter round the ring that third time at a broken pace, when she wanted to stop and have her lunch. Still new to cantering, I was on her back, drunk on exhilaration, fear and love, so far beyond my comfort zone that I was past caring. When she tossed her head suddenly, I lost my balance and already falling, tried to roll off her, but my foot was so far in the stirrup that it contorted. Bella stood docile while I was being rescued, her big mare eyes full of mock sympathy. She had gotten what she wanted, the lesson was over and she’d soon be munching through a pile of hay.

Un esguince, a sprain, is what everyone at the stables thought I had, when my ankle purpled and swelled. Un esguince, something that could pass in about a week. I held onto the hope in the hospital waiting room as I chatted to a similarly afflicted patient and read the first sixty pages of my fat Irish novel, quite calmly, wondering how much more alcohol Dermot Healy is going to pour down Jack Ferris’ throat and expect me to believe he’s still alive.*

Then, I was taken into a room and seen by Doctor Number One. He said he wanted to feel around my ankle, before looking at the X-ray, so as not to be influenced by sight alone. Doctor Number One was handsome and just so you know how shallow I am, his good looks and charm made me brave and smily. While he couldn’t see any fracture on the X-ray, the swelling was unusual for the hoped-for esguince, so he sought the advice of a traumatologist, aka, Handsome Doctor Number Two.

Handsome Doctor Number Two’s specialisation meant that he could spy out a fracture and a broken ligament in the X-ray, which were invisible to Handsome Doctor Number One. When this diagnosis meant a cast, crutches and an excruciating daily injection in the stomach to prevent blood clotting, I bawled, thinking that Doctor Number Two wasn’t so handsome after all, that I couldn’t speak medical Spanish and that I’d have to be in a cast and crutches for six weeks. I felt utterly helpless in that moment, knowing that I’d have to rely on an unfamiliar medical system and the kindness of friends I’d made in three months, as opposed to a lifetime.

wintertree — Wobbly, one leg on the crutch vantage

I have to admit, I was eased into the transition when my mum came to stay for a few days. When she left and life returned to normal, I felt fragile going back fully into Spanish. It’s like my maternal and linguistic crutches were removed and now I’d have to rely on whatever resources I had gathered in the short time I’d been here. Luckily, I had enough knowledge of the city to know where I could hop to in small, breathless increments and my friends of three months were ready to help me in the form of car-rides, medical translations and company.

I feel that I’m convalescing in Spanish too. Whereas in London, people either mind their own business or try to cheer you up, here is different. Strangers in the street offer assistance and advice, some of it confusing. How, old man, am I meant to avoid planting my foot in front of my crutch and go forward at the same time? Then, there’s the gallantry without harassment – a hobbling woman turns your average tipo (bloke) into a caballero (gentleman). And finally, there’s the pity. Which takes some getting used to. No-one is trying to cheer me up, a bad thing has happened, so I’m meant to feel miserable and a little afraid. Povrecita; It hurts me to see you like this, the grocer next-door says to me, life is hard. No, it’s temporary, I say defensively, it could have been far worse; No need to look at me like that – I’m smiling; I’m fucking Pollyanna.

Truth be told, I fear pity because the open, despondent look that accompanies it feels like the transmission of a curse. It’s like someone recognising that your misfortune is real, which to my emotional mind, makes it feel heavier and less transient than it is. But maybe, as part of my Spanish convalescence, I can learn to see pity differently, as a form of compassion, a common recognition that we’re all human and vulnerable.

*I always compare literary bodies to my own. While I love Jack and can understand that he drinks booze like water to cope, it’s hard to imagine this state in my own body, where the mere smell of wine makes me fall off a bar stool.

This is the fourth of my posts on moving to Donostia/San Sebastián. You can check out my last post about navigating the city’s linguistic scene here. Feel free to like or share.