The Convent
In the small courtyard,
Behind the wall
With the locked gate
I watch the lights of the feria
Far below.
Where I long to be,
Guitars,
Handclapping,
Flamenco.
The space of time
Within the night
Pregnant with clarity.

My sensuality
Incarnate witness
To my spirituality,
I want to live,
And live,
Fulfill a litany of desires
Recited in the beating
Of my heart
But, for tonight,
I am cloistered
With the spiritual sister
Who never traveled
Beyond the convent wall.
She rests dark and quiet,
Centuries beneath the ground.
We say rosaries of different lives.
In her cell,
We meditate.
Dreamless,
Sleep.

                                                                                  ~Arcos de la Frontera

 …and now, after many years, I have returned to El Convento in Arcos …another journey with a spiritual sister very much alive. I know almost immediately that all of our travels up and down the narrow country roads of Spain …through green fields and flowering trees …past white villages with dogs sleeping in the sun …has brought us here for these few moments that we have spent in the Spanish sunshine of the morning on the top of this cliff just before we depart.

Semana Santa in Spain …last night we had stood in the cathedral square waiting patiently for the “paseo de los desfiles” …the candlelight procession of the Virgins and Jesuses through the steep, Moorish streets. The band had gathered. The tall wooden doors of the cathedral creaked open. The downpour started.  We walked down the narrow street to the old convent, the rain softly pelting the slippery cobblestones in the dark singing its own soft song of steadfast supremacy over human rites and rituals. Nature had its way. Secretly, I smiled, my thoughts divided between the freshness of Spring rain and the lockstep of the costaleros who had gathered to carry the Virgins and Jesuses through the streets of Arcos where once there surely had been a minaret with a muezzin calling people to prayer.

Children had come through first. They wore robes of white …the purple pointed hoods covering their faces. Angelic mothers carried innocent babes in their arms, their tiny faces covered by the Lilliputian purple hoods. The priests came before the illuminated paso, the wooden platform carrying the Virgin bedecked with Holy Week flowers that would be carried by the costaleros, unseen figures doing a solemn, burdened lockstep. The priests had been imposing round figures in handmade, white lace vestments …purple satin tied about their thick middles. Their eyes glowed fire behind their purple hoods. Silver crucifixes flashed in the candlelight and in the soft glow of Spanish lanterns perched on the corners of the stark streets.

Soon we would all be winding through the narrow, cobbled alleys with their whitewashed walls and small doorsteps as if we had returned to a Holy Week of the Middle Ages, a worn tapestry, a pageant of tiny stitches hanging in the dusty hall of a crumbling castle …and, just then, it had rained, the austere moment giving way to mayhem. Umbrellas popped open and the young penitents transformed themselves into the mischievous children of Arcos …all arms and legs running up the steps of the cathedral before their hoods would be soaked in the downpour. We moved on.

Morning comes with the golden light of Spain peeking through the heavy curtains and the cock’s crow. The wind whistles along the cliff. Bess and I drink our cafe con leche giggling through breakfast, but I know she is thinking her own thoughts as I am thinking mine. The pigeons soar on the wind and roost in the natural spaces of the dramatic yellow cliff that Arcos and the two of us rest upon. Some fields are green with spring wheat, others a rich brown from the new tilling. The mountains we had crossed yesterday are watchful as if they are dark, distant monks inscribing the life of Arcos in an illuminated manuscript hidden in caves and grottoes. The bell tolls in the church tower …so, there has been a death in Arcos this Holy Week, Bess tells me. She creates a John Donne moment in a Hemingway Spain of civil war long past,“Ask not for whom the bell tolls” …our old brains stumbling over the refrain. Is it “for me” or “for thee?” It doesn’t matter. We all know for whom the bell tolls. I listen long to the end of the sound as it fades across the fields.

The moments of the Spanish morning pass …each one sufficient …each one folding into the next one …distinct and yet, the same. It comes to me that I have returned to this place unconsciously to say good-bye to the last eight years of my life. I have come full circle. I had first come to Arcos eight years ago with a heart full of grief and had decided to move on as I sat behind the wall of this convent with the lights of the fair so far below in the new town. It had been difficult to make that decision. It had been daunting to leave those I had loved in that life behind …but I had always had the house to come back to …a house of memories …a garden of moonflowers.

I have wandered since that time …the wander lust a lantern in the dark that lights my narrow path, the roots of me grown deeply within the still forest of myself, but I had returned to the old life over and over like the dog chasing its tail. Now, the few vestiges of my life are scattered about the world …some in a room with scuffed walls behind a padded lock. I carry its key, a mysterious charm. In Arcos, I have finally let the old life go. Yo soy libre. I am free …free of the old life …its joys, its sorrows, its indifferences, its intimacies, its common expectancies. This is my life. My body is my home.

I leave the terrace of the convent room …take a last look at the fields through the rejas of the open wooden doors of the window. I have no tears at parting. Bess and I make our way down the steep streets. It is a lovely walk. Everyone smiles and speaks to us, “Hola,” “Buenos Dias.” We smile and return holas and buenos dias’ back.

The Guadalete River flows along below …emerald as if trees had learned to swim. Bess, always the fisherwoman, points out the fish swimming in the lazy water. We are excited to see the dark figures wiggling around in the fish lives of their awakening Spring. Bess has captured my longing for a new beginning at fishing again …an awakening Spring all my own. I am thankful for her friendship all over again.

In the new town, we search the streets for the lot where we had parked the car. We are “perdida” and have to summon a taxi to drive us around in search of the little, dust-covered blue car. The driver gives us his direct, Spanish view about the lost car, “If you didn’t pay before … then, you will pay later.” I give him my view, “Life is an adventure.” We laugh …he overcharges …and then we are gone down another road, the wind from Arcos whispering, “Hasta luego.”

I did not look back.