I am sitting in front of the TV, late morning towards noon, swathed in a duvet watching the European markets. One billion euros has been invested through or for a famous car company in Dubai. I haven’t figured who invested in whom yet. But, the famous car company hasn’t done all that well with its shiny new deluxe model. Is this good? Is this bad? Depends on how much money you have to throw around, I guess. Only time will tell.

Today, they tell me that, in Germany, unemployment figures are the worst since the war. I have begun to worry about DongDong whose intelligence often matches his name in English. His parents spent tons of their life savings to send him to study and work in this Germany. I think of him in his job cleaning up table scraps in a restaurant …a job that no one wants …speaking a language he studied for ten years that sounds like anything but German. Freezing Germany. Perhaps he should come back to work in China where I hear, this morning, that they will corner the auto market in ten years.

The dollar is okay, mas o menos, today, but still way down and the Dow Jones is a little less than it was a week or so ago. Commercials tell me that I should live out my dreams in Greece. Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. Hard to tell. I have rewarded my return from western Spain with scrambled eggs, toast with Honey of a Thousand Flowers and cafe con leche. I feel that I am deserving of my small breakfast pleasures …the market news …a quiet breakfast bundled in a blanket.

I left  late yesterday after a sad, last breakfast in a cafe bar with Juan, Isabel, and the two little spoons, Ignacio and Esteban. The people running the cafe bar are from Juan’s village in the Extremadura. We ate our mollenete toasted with slices of jamon, the mollenete spread with tomate frito and drenched in olive oil. Juan and Isabel visited with the owners, and I had a last feast of the eyes, the hams hanging from the ceiling, Extremadura sausages, the wooden bar, the small tables with low stools for chairs, the bright yellow …Spanish sunshine painted on the walls. I bought the local cheeses and wines to take to back as gifts, and I was on my way with tears in my eyes. Isabel gave me practical advice with kisses on both cheeks, “Don’t cry.” Juan hugged me with that look of his so full of village wisdom, Spanish sunshine …dark shadows.

I set off in the pouring rain and promptly got lost in Jerez. I backtracked along the road construction and soon I was traveling down narrow A-382 in the downpour. The fields have given way to a delicate green. Just last week, the fields had glowed umber in the cold sunshine of winter’s Spain. Yesterday was the Day of Andalucia, a holiday, and I had to follow a long line of traffic, but I was in no hurry, preferring to see the countryside …rolling fields that billowed like sails with old cortijos on their rises …imagined how it might be to look out of a kitchen window at all of that emptiness of field and sky. I passed groves of walnut trees, mountains, lentisco coming alive to green in the rain. The fields gave way to olive trees and mountains as far as the eye could see and, before I knew it, a little regrettably, I was already in the mountains before Granada. I could not imagine why there was no traffic. I whizzed through and quickly discovered the reason on the other side of the mountains …snow …lots of snow… 

I had possessions …a nasty cold …and a shiny, new blue, teenie-tiny car no bigger than a postage stamp. Traveling up the mountain, I downshifted as much as possible, but felt as if I should open the door and use my left leg like a scooter to keep the car going. It would be a long afternoon. I slowed to a snail’s pace. The snow drifted from the devil’s strip and only one lane was open. Sometimes I followed the snow plow. Sometimes I followed the Guardia Civil for miles. Sometimes I saw horrible accidents …a car completely overturned in a ditch …a truck that jack knifed in the wind. After I saw those, I started to sing silly kindergarten songs, “Oh, the horse stood around with his foot on the ground.” “Mother Gooney Bird had seven chicks, seven chicks had Mother Gooney Bird.”

Calmed, I allowed myself to enter the portal of the blinding white world. Umber rocks peeked through the white blanket resembling ancient Moorish, bearded men frozen in time like Lot’s wife as they had tried to flee Granada and had turned around for just one last look at paradise. The howling wind sang their bitter song of flight …lost courts of oranges and myrtles growing beside gentle fountains and flowing waters. The trees stood guard as if, over the long years, they honor this sight mourning with tears of snow. I wished for boots and a warm coat …a walk in the mountains …needles of cold in my toes and fingers …snowflakes on my tongue …a fire. 

I stopped at a secret honey place in the Sierra Nevada Mountains instead. I parked the car and walked through the slop of slush into the shop. No one was there. Who would be crazy enough to stop there in this weather? The proprietor was sleeping in her huge 4-wheel drive vehicle …now finally rich from selling honey and pottery at exorbitant prices. I saw no honey, but she said she had it. We hiked around to the side of the shop. With my impractical shoes I stepped into her deep footprints and had a look. She rooted around for some minutes and …there it was …Honey of a Thousand Flowers. She was a little insulted when I asked if sugar had been added …something Isabel and Juan had always warned me to ask when buying honey in Spain. A sharp, “No,” was her response, “Pura.” But, suddenly helpful, she gave me a weather report …snow all the way to Puerto Lumbreras and rain towards Almeria. In an hour I would be out of the snow. 

I passed into the rain of Almeria Province. The branches of the pink almond blossoms wept out onto the road heavy with rain dripping the scent of almonds into the muddy, flowing ditches …finally, I was in the desert and then by the side of the wild sea. It was late. I found a shop still open by the sea and bought a half loaf of fresh bread …and then, I felt like I was a “queen in the parlor, eating bread and honey.” Do you ever wonder about the miracle of honey? The current neurotic prognostication about honey is that its inflammatory nature is poisonous to what we have begun to think should be our eternal bodies. Probably true if you eat a teacupful. But, what don’t we know about honey? Honey is a sensual mystery …the fields of flowers, sunshine, the tiny bees, the thick brew of earthy colors that the bees in their labor deposit in the dark community of the hive, the layers of aroma differing in each clear or smoky jar …try to imagine a forest, a meadow, a mountain of a thousand fragrant flowers …

lavender rosemary chamomile calendula
dutchman’sbreeches woodviolets purpleclover
daisies peonies trillium wildroses iris pansies
petunias narcissus jackinthepulpet valerian
daylilies geraniums alyssum bergamot
orangeblossom magnolia moonflowers lobelia
nasturtiums oenothera thyme speedwell mint
starofbethlehem hierbaluisa yarrow nard sage 

The trip through the snowy mountains of frozen Moorish faces and along the sea that did a raucous dance of waves ruffling wildly as if it was a gypsy’s flamenco dress, is already a memory. This evening the weather is still cruel. I hear castanets in the wind howling out of the sea as the electricity goes off and on. I have not ventured far today and, now late, the dreary day has faded. Perhaps I should light a candle in the darkness that has become absolute in the absence of the comforts of evening light made by man …but, my mysterious gift from the snowy Sierra Nevadas is an elixir in a simple cup of poleo menta tea sipped in the dark with a slice of lemon I picked from a tree. The steam rises. I breathe in …a thousand flowers under my skin. I breathe out …breath of a thousand flowers …the enchantment of an afternoon as the light begins to leave, a sleepy wandering …one eye open …one eye closed, dreaming of the bees.