My Heart is in Iberia, At Times. My brain is Everywhere Else

    My love will be in the southwest penisula, for a time. Spending time with nature, and our daughter, and her soul. Good things to do, even though her colleagues and some neighbors would not be paid to attempt it. To each, their own. Different strokes.

    Even though she may not read this for years, or ever, I will write it out and have it make some sense to me. And maybe to others. Sometimes I fancy myself a writer, but other times I see myself as writing into the ether, with ephemeral scribblings not going too far...

    They do not garner much attention, or acclaim, or even interest from some that I would hope might have interest. Everything else is interesting to some but not the writings that I sometimes pour my heart into. But then again, I have not formalized them in print, like a local former high school teacher, or my own dad a few states away.

    My mom would not watch me play basketball unless I was on a school team. She did not care so much that I put on a uniformed jersey for my church squad. My junior year of high school we were not bad. But not high school level. Sorry mom, maybe I should have figured that out and articulated it then. I think about it now. Or the bronco league baseball I played when younger. I do not think my parents ever watched me. They were working, besides.

    I could have played Little League, but I was not driven enough, and too timid, and not "pushed" enough. Or encouraged enough. Yeah, all those things. I was good enough for baseball, but it required more motivation and effort. It wasn't there, maybe mostly missing from me.

    Woe is me, goes this tale. It's okay. I write more than I do.

    I observe and analyze baseball more than I play. We saw our son play. That was swell. The coaches flubbed his at bats at the end, and they lost the highest glory. All of our loss. A father's thoughts and bias, of course.

    Yes, woe is me. Woe is Rogie, my mom and her sister would say. Back when I watched the All-Star game alone at my aunt's house. Lonely times. I should have used more books as my friends. More of the writers; perhaps a few like me.

    My heart goes across Spain, and a little bit of Portugual, and some neighboring islands. I can vist in Valencia or Valladolid in my waking visions, or sleep and slumber among the plains and the coasts, and the craggy mountains. As some have, like Hemingway or Orwell. Times of more troubles back then.

    The Sun Also Rise in Catalonia. I remember Sarah Schwen talking about Catalunya back in high school. She came over to the house, maybe because of Kirk Sanders.

    Me, trapped in stultifying math class, wither her younger sister.

    Oh, great memories, sort. Great and terrible. Things to come, maybe frustrations to get used to. Wanting to succeed but not doing so.

    We contemplated Spain, we read some books and hosted some students.

    Was it a full three weeks? Long enough.

    I made it back the summer of some of my Hemingway. I am not sure if I finished his anthology, crossing the streets of Boston.

    Tracking down my guy Raines in Montreal, the quest of the raised decade of the 80s.

    Me  in Spain, my heart and love in Spain, the class of El Mio Cid of Spain, the other teacher at BYU from there. Madrid, perhaps. Like my third grade Spanish teacher, with blonde hair.

    Sometimes Spain is too much with us. Or not enough.

    A restaurant in Riverside or Long Beach, I think of them.

    Tapas and churros, quizas.

    Y tal vez ella leera de esto. Y sabra donde se ponen los accentos como pudiera hablarlos.

    Amen.