Waxing poetic

After the storm passes the silhouettes of palm trees fade into the misty horizon. The chilly water reflects the hazy sunset as one brave bather steps in and slowly sinks into that glowing vastness. As his head goes underwater he disappears completely. This is the vision of my Spain, here in Águilas.

España. I wanted to write about how living here is more of a sensory experience than I have had in the United States, but I can hardly concentrate on writing as I listen to and watch everything that goes on around me. A little boy bangs against a metal see-saw, a group of young Arab boys play fights, an old couple slowly walks by and two ladies in sweat suits jog by. Cars, bicimotos, children, dogs, teenagers, music, birds, whistles, boats, breeze, cries of joy, cries of excitement, skimpy bathing suits, and waves crashing fill my head.

In America, seeing is believing, but here the nose knows. You decide where to eat lunch and where to buy your bread by the smells of the cafés and bakeries. When the scent of the baguettes or the pollo asado or the paella wafts through the air and makes your stomach growl for a pincho of something tasty, you know you’ve hit the jackpot. Meanwhile, a big, shiny donut covered in chocolate from a scentless pastelería turns out stale and too oily. There are bad smells too: the pipes when they get clogged, the sewage in the streets because of the poor drainage system, the cigarette smoke, the exhaust, and the b.o. But you have to take the bad with the good, and happily the good is plenty: churros y chocolate, espresso, flowers whose names I don’t know, that heavy European perfume that hangs in the elevator after women leave for work in the morning, the laundry that hangs out the window, and the tortilla that our neighbor cooks.

But the most prominent smell is the ocean; it’s always there, faintly, behind all the other smells. It’s so subtle that sometimes you hardly notice it until you take a deep breath. But in the morning that smell fills me up. It reminds me that a long time ago doctors used to send their patients to the ocean because of its healing effects. As I walk along the promenade, the sun rising behind the rocky cliffs ahead, the breeze off the sparkling water is thick and salty and reminds me of fishermen. The sea spray wets the sidewalk when the waves crash against the rocks. Every morning when I pass that rocky spot with the sea spray I take a deep breath and smile.