Magnificent Madrid

Well, after about seven days of horrendous communication difficulties, combined with fear of some parasitic disease punishing me for my brilliant time in Morocco, I finally succeeded in getting my ticket changed,. I had to pay for it (using air miles, of course) because they just didn't buy my staying here until the end of October because I was sick. They were willing to go to the end of September, but the last flight home is the end of October. Quite frankly I am not at this point sure why I bought the extra time, but I did, and now I am in Madrid.

Granada was the last place I surfaced, and posted to my blog. Granada's sweetness and combination of Muslim and Christian cultures suited me to a "t". O spent a luscious week there, visiting L'Alhanbra every day, and finishing with a visit to the summer home of Garcia Lorca. I read his "Letters on Duende" (the demon of inspiration which separates the great artist from the mediocre) on the bus as I came to Madrid.

Once I arrived here, I sunk into a funk. The energy here is dense, intense, filled with money and power and grandiosity. Everything is overstated and excessively ornate, almost self consciously comparing itself to Paris, London, New York. It took some getting used to after the simple beauty of Granada, which is a city of only 250,000. Madrid is more like 3 or 4 million. I hid out from the complications of learning yet another Metro system and finding out what I absolutely had to see, in a tiny hotel room in the centre of the city.

Never a moments silence; after the liquid subterranean lush green beauty of Granada; it took me a couple of days to adjust to the more rapid rythyms of Madrid and get the hang of it. But once I had taken the tourist bus to get an overview, I got off in front of El Prado, and went to the only Museum in Madrid open on Monday, La Rena Sofia where I saw a wonderful Picasso exhibit centred around the 25th anniversary of the return of Guernica from MOMA to Madrid. A stunning collection of all the firing squads, faceless on the right, aiming at the heroic victims of whatever war it was, The second of May against Napoleon merged with the German attack on Guernica, it really was powerful.combined with works from El Prado that inspired Picasso, Manet, Velasquez, Goya, all the firiface-to -ace with Guernica, the most powerful anti-war statement of the twentieth century.

I think I actually began to understand the exaggeration and extreme distortion of the lines Picasso uses in Guernica. It is like a silent scream, jagged in its intensity. But one last symbol of hope, a flower clutched in the hand of the dead soldier, disappeared after the second world war in his later works. I bought a book by one of his many wives and mistresses, Francoise Gilot, and found it interesting to read what was going on in his life during that ten year period and her understanding of the man who, in many ways reminds me of the tyrant that is my uncle.

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I have visited El Prado, of course, and the Royal Palace, etc. But the piece de resistance was last night. I got dressed to the nines in my long black dress, and took myself out on a date to the Teatro Royal where, from a front row seat in the second balcony I saw the most gorgeous Russian version of Le Corsair with the Kirov ballet! What a treat! It felt like I was a little girl again being taken to see the ballet with mom. I found myself sitting in the same seat that she occupied for nearly thirty years at Massey Hall. She left an unconsious legacy for which I am deeply grateful.

I will never forget her dressing in her black dress with the lace insert and her Sealskin fur coat, smelling of perfume, her red lipstick and black hair upswept as she came in to kiss us good night before she and dad went off to the theatre or the symphony, where she brought home autographs for me of famous musicians or actors. Dad had friends from the mysterious past in vaudeville who sometimes came to visit. He shared memories of seeing Pavlova dance, or dining with the entire Sadler´s Wells ballet company in New York.

Then there were the special nights when we were dressed in satin and allowed to come along into that glamourous world. I especially recall when we were allowed to go into the lighting booth at the Roual Alexander Theatre and survey the stage through lighting gels, courtesy of the manager of the theatre, also a personal friend of dad's or go back stage and visit with the Prima ballerinas, Moria Shearer, with her brilliant red hair being cut by Robert Helpman and dropping in shanks onto the white floor.

And then those terribly British, terribly gay men, and elegant women would appear at our house for supper! One moment I was in a movie theatre watching them on the screen in The Red Shoes or Tales of Hoffman, and the next the stars of the movie were discussing the scarcity of meat in London after the war, and dad was agreeing to send them meat or driving them to Niagara Falls.

To a romantic dreamer like me, it all seemed like a movie, and it was my life! What a privileged childhood we had, and how the echoes of it still linger in moments like last night at the Kirov Ballet, which I had never seen.

True to our Fitzgerald7Shugaar roots, I headed downstairs through elegant seventeenth century rooms, past portraits of Kings and Queens and finaly backstage where three other people waited. As soon as I arrived I was told that we could only see Ulanova. Fine with me! We were escorted to her dressing room where the lovely ballerina, (can´t remember her last name in Russian) welcomed me into her dressing room alone! I told her about how Margot was a frequent house guest when I was a little girl and truthfully admitted I had not been so inspired by a ballerina since Fonteyn! How gracious and ethereally lovely she was. Her arms went on forever, flowing like water in a silent fountain. Her bows were deeply humble and included everyone equally. Such naked intimacy behind the mask of such rigid formality. No lie, she was incredible.

Naturally, I got her autograph, but I had left the battery to my camera charging in my tiny little hotel room, so I did not get a picture of us together, her exquisitely made-up face like a mask that only came to life under the intense lights. They got the flowers all wrong. The colours of the set and the costumes were the pinks and torquoises of Matisse, yet they gave her yellow sunflowers!!!

I forgot my camera battery, because at the moment I needed to leave for the theatre, (where I had lined up for an hour and half along with a large group of Intrernational Baccalaureate students and dance students waiting for last minute tickets, a sight you would never see in Canada, I can tell you!) I heard a thunderstorm break out! I got flustered and rushed out of my room, late as usual. LIghtning and a downpour and not a taxi in sight! But a man on the corner was selling umbrellas, so I bought one and headed for the Metro. What a gas to take the Metro to "Opera," dressed to the nines in my long black gown.

Afterwards I took myself out to the theatre restaurant and bought myself a lovely dessert and watched the rich Spaniards and their stolid wives dine out in splendour. The restaurant was incredibly dramatic, with a canopy of stars placed exactly as they were on the night of the opening of the restaurant, and all the waiters in white gloves! Just my style. But still alone, I am afraid.

I have not yet returned to Barcelona where my things are waiting for me to sort out and send home. OK, OK, you were right. I took FAR too much. But it was worth it for last night alone. I will divest myself of even more and set off on El Camino de Compostella (which means Field of Stars.) After Morocco I feel I can handle anything.

I will begin to seriously look into the possiblity of work here soon.

I am deeply connected to my inner dialogue here, as I imagine happens for anyone when you are absent from your own language and from anyone to talk to except yourself. I read and value literature more, and I experience things very intensely.

In some sense, the purpose of my trip is already accomplished. I feel very much at peace, and am enjoying a serenity that has eluded me for years. I am walking my pilgrimage every day, closer and closer to God. I am deeply grateful for the inheritance we did receive from Mom, however small, because it has enabled me to make this trip. But I want to continue living like this. I crave, and I do mean CRAVE a place like Lorca's, where it is simple, beautiful, and quiet, in nature, near water, and light, where I can write.

It is very hot and still in Madrid, but not for much longer. I can feel the change in the air. The thunderstorm last night was the first inkling that there is anything in the world except constant one hundred degree weather and blue skies! I wish that I could just find a place to set up and stay for a few months here! It suits my tempermant, being a summer born child, I think.

I remember you saying once that I should spend the last part of my life as an ex-patriate in an artistic community. You were pretty close to it, because now I am looking for my kindred spirits here.

My time alone has honed my senses and I am ready for companionship of a deeper nature, like that I had for a brief moment with "the professor" in Erfoud. I feel I still have something to say, and am being protected in some sacred way as a messenger of a deep and inspiring peace and joy that I have found in my life. I can honestly say that I have beheld the face of Christ, and that is not something that everyone can say. I feel blessed by and grateful for every moment of my life, no matter how much suffering and illusion I had to see through in order to get here. I feel abundantly blessed and I owe it all to the presence of the Voice of God in my life. I am walking on toward God.