A nun with Calvin Klein sunglasses listening to her iPod.
An elegantly dressed woman pushing a baby carriage and smoking.
A withered old man hobbling along slowly with a pipe hanging out of his mouth.
A young lady dressed in a hundred shades of pink with a rainbow turtle backpack and braids.
A blur of a bohemian skirt and rail-thin, deeply-tanned woman with a frizzy mop of hair.
A foreigner with a map and arched eyebrows and a look of desperation.
A very large man in a tight yellow t-shirt and green pants with a purple shopping bag.
Some guy on a skateboard annoying them all.
A woman with half a buzz-cut, half-shoulder-length hair.
Two teenager girls with curly black hair carrying books..
A balding business man with a cell phone in his mouth.
An ancient woman with white hair, bright blue sweater and light beige skirt.
An unusually tall young man sporting plaid and a pony tail.
A husband, surely, shuffling slowly behind his patient wife.
A mother holding the hand of her child in his crisp school uniform.
A hunchback woman conquering the sidewalk with her cane.
A couple walking hand in hand looking absolutely not in love.
A man J-walking, the sound of honking.
A young woman in a tube top dancing her way in front of two old ladies walking arm-in arm.
A 23-year-old American sitting in an old green sofa spying on them all and feeling slightly lost.
But hey, I love Madrid if only for the people-watching.
From the window of a cafe, I'm letting the city come to me as I sip on a tea I ordered in Spanish (woo I'm learning!) after 4 weeks of wandering around the city slightly aimlessly with 3 more to go.
I feel very strange.
This was the "difficult" part I mentioned in the last post.
This was the "difficult" part I mentioned in the last post.
I have found several students to whom I tutor English to make a little money, I have made several friends with whom I speak English or Spanglish, but I have not quite found my groove in this city which I find more alive and with an energy more tangible than anywhere I've ever been.
I'm happy here, but something feels off.
Maybe it's because I am sort of floating around here. I came to Madrid with no real plans, except to pick up some Spanish and tutor some English if possible. I didn't have the money for classes or other traveling as I had hoped. The goal in coming here was to simply discover a new city and breathe a few more deep breaths before coming home for a moment and then heading off to grad school.
It's normal. I've felt like this before, with each study abroad and most recently my time in France working. It creeps up on you, this slightly melancholic, slightly nostalgic feeling. Sometimes it's homesickness, sometimes it's not. Sometimes it has to do with loneliness, other times it doesn't. Right now I don't feel lonely, but quite alone.
It reminds me of this beautiful poem performed to a song I discovered through a friend while abroad, which I think I will end with.
I wish I could write like her.
Basically,
It's alright to be alone.
It's normal. I've felt like this before, with each study abroad and most recently my time in France working. It creeps up on you, this slightly melancholic, slightly nostalgic feeling. Sometimes it's homesickness, sometimes it's not. Sometimes it has to do with loneliness, other times it doesn't. Right now I don't feel lonely, but quite alone.
It reminds me of this beautiful poem performed to a song I discovered through a friend while abroad, which I think I will end with.
I wish I could write like her.
Basically,
It's alright to be alone.
Here are the lyrics as well, but please listen to it if you have a few minutes.
love,
Katie
--
HOW TO BE ALONE by Tanya Davis
If you are at first lonely, be patient. If you've not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren't okay with it, then just wait. You'll find it's fine to be alone once you're embracing it.
We could start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library. Where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books. You're not supposed to talk much anyway so it's safe there.
There's also the gym. If you're shy you could hang out with yourself in mirrors, you could put headphones in.
And there's public transportation, because we all gotta go places.
And there's prayer and meditation. No one will think less if you're hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.
Start simple. Things you may have previously based on your avoid being alone principals.
The lunch counter. Where you will be surrounded by chow-downers. Employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town and so they -- like you -- will be alone.
Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.
When you are comfortable with eat lunch and run, take yourself out for dinner. A restaurant with linen and silverware. You're no less intriguing a person when you're eating solo dessert to cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.
Go to the movies. Where it is dark and soothing. Alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community. And then, take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you. Stand on the outside of the floor till the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one's watching...because, they're probably not. And, if they are, assume it is with best of human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats is, after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you're sweating, and beads of perspiration remind you of life's best things, down your back like a brook of blessings.
Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you.
Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, there're always statues to talk to and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence if only for a minute and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might've never happened had you not been there by yourself
Society is afraid of alonedom, like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them. but lonely is a freedom that breaths easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.
You could stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther for the endless quest for company. But no one's in your head and by the time you translate your thoughts, some essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept.
Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high school's groaning were tokens for holding the lonely at bay. Cuz if you're happy in your head than solitude is blessed and alone is okay.
It's okay if no one believes like you.
All experience is unique, no one has the same synapses, can't think like you, for this be releived, keeps things interesting lifes magic things in reach.
And it doesn't mean you're not connected, that community's not present,
just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it.
take silence and respect it.
if you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it.
if your family doesn't get you, or religious sect is not meant for you, don't obsess about it.
you could be in an instant surrounded if you needed it
If your heart is bleeding make the best of it
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.
