Friendsgiving (II)

Whenever I try to explain what Thanksgiving is to Spaniards, I end up failing miserably at explaining it in any meaningful way. When my roommate C asked me to clarify what the day was like, I finally found the perfect explanation. It's like any typical Spanish Sunday.

You see, what I love about Thanksgiving is the fact that the point of the day is FOOD. That's also the point of a typical Spanish Sunday--the mid-day meal, which for many is a few courses, maybe a large rice dish like a paella.

Sure, the rest of the day may have other activities (watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, watch football, take a tryptophan-induced nap, or go to a movie), but the point is to eat a lot of food, to linger at the table and chat about life (and hopefully not politics--especially this year, ay madre mía!), and to just in general pause, exist, and express our gratitude for the life we have. But the thing that I love the most about Thanksgiving is what in Spain we would call the sobremesa: the post-dinner chat when all the plates are finished (or mostly-finished), and everyone feels fat, happy and relaxed.

And so, Friendsgiving legitimately turned into a very Spanish Thanksgiving after we had all spent a few hours, and given our thanks and written some thank-you notes, and after I had given a short talk about the history of Thanksgiving (of which, let's face it, I only remember a bit because I learned it back in kindergarten with the Pilgrims and the Indians and sowing the fields with fish so that they would be well-fertilized. The things you remember when you're 5!).

I went ahead and took a short video of the more Spanish side of the festivities:

On self-care: Nutrition

I recently saw a list of ideas for self-care on Pinterest, and it got me thinking about what a broad umbrella term self-care is. Sometimes it's eating a pint of chocolate ice cream and binge-watching your favorite movie, but most of the time, what I've discovered is that self-care (for me) is just a euphemism for plain, old "adulting".

Self-care, to me, is tracking my expenses and paying my bills. It's showering every day, but washing my hair every 3rd (curly hair doesn't like water). It is drinking 8 glasses of water, and getting my exercise. It's going to bed on time and getting 8 hours of sleep (and not falling asleep on the couch watching TV). It's meditating and doing my work and being kind to my present self and kind to my future selves and kind to my past self by not beating her up about stupid decisions or mistakes.

But mostly, it's about vegetables.

I'm so much happier when I eat my veggies, it's not even funny. It isn't even so much that I like the way they taste; I'm getting better at appreciating the bitter flavor of kale, chard and spinach, but I'd still rather eat a chocolate napolitana more often than not. Rather, I think my body just knows immediately whether I'm feeding it the nutrients that it wants or not. If I'm drinking plenty of water, I don't get headaches. If I'm not, I do (and I start playing with my hair). If I drink alcohol, my nose itches. When I don't, it usually doesn't also. If I eat too much sugar, I start playing with my hair (and maybe get a headache and get sleepy and need a nap). If I eat vegetables, I don't.

Self-care isn't about acting like a child. Self-care is about treating myself like an adult. Self-care is beautiful, and sometimes it's incredibly boring.

Friendsgivings

Last Saturday, my friend T had her annual Thanksgiving dinner with lots of her Spanish and American friends. It was a potluck, so I brought brownies (good brownies are pretty hard to find around here, so I try to spread the news of these Salted Fudge Brownies far and wide. Seriously, they're delicious. Everyone should go bake some now. I'll wait).

There were maybe 30-40 people in attendance. It started at 2, and I left around 9 (while the majority of people were still there hanging out). 

One guy asked me about politics, and I got into a very impassioned argument with him (I didn't want to talk politics, but when it's with foreigners, it's a bit different). I then whooped him at Taboo and won the large plastic lollipop I'm holding above. 

It was a really lovely event, and a great way to celebrate my favorite holiday, since I can't be there to celebrate it with family. 

Los pasos

Going back to the Museo de Escultura, another of their main exhibits is of some floats that are carried in the Holy Week parades in Valladolid.

Holy Week is a BIG DEAL all throughout Spain. Seville is perhaps the most famous city for its Holy Week celebrations (the costumes, the parades that stop the city, the fancy dresses and the candles). Valladolid has similar parades, with large floats of wooden sculptures depicting various scenes from the Bible being carried around the city.

The three scenes that we saw (they have about 10 total, but only bring a few out at a time in the museum) all depicted the construction of the cross and Jesus' death.

The statues were pretty large and lifelike, with dramatic, theatrical expressions. I think that the stark facial expressions help make it clear to the crowds during the Holy Week parades what is going on.

It was pretty intense. The sculptures were all very vibrantly painted, with bright colors. It would be cool to see them out and about in the streets of Valladolid. 

El Museo de Colón

Valladolid has several museums, in addition to the amazing Museo de Escultura. Before I left, I went ahead and checked out the Museo de Colón, a museum dedicated to Christopher Columbus.

In the states, there's a growing movement to recognize the genocide and slavery that Columbus wreaked upon the Americas with his 'discovery' (Let's not forget that loads of other groups had found the Americas long before him--I highly recommend the book 1491, if you're curious about that time period). In Spain, though, Columbus is still pretty venerated. There's a statue or plaza or street dedicated to him in just about every city in Spain (especially the ones that he visited or lived in, which is just about all of them, because he was following the itinerant court of Isabel and Ferdinand in search of funds).

After his 4th visit to the Americas, Columbus returned to Spain pretty disgraced. His title of Governor of the West Indies was removed by the Spanish Crown, due to his tyranny as governor, and he was denied the profits that he had originally been promised as a result. He died in Valladolid in 1506 after a rather lengthy illness.

The Museo de Colón is kind of dedicated to this last portion of his life. It's got some cool exhibits (that I couldn't take photos of), and gives a really good history of the technological, economic and political trends in Portugal and Spain that led to Columbus' voyages. It also has a nice exhibit dedicated to the tribes that he found and their way of life, and the mestizaje (racial mixing) that happened in Latin America as a result of the Spanish conquest.

The most memorable part of the exhibit for me was a video at the end, focused on Columbus' illness and last days in Valladolid. It was rather gruesome. 

Llamar al cerrajero! (Call the locksmith!)

One of my favorite things about Valladolid was getting to meet S's parents. S is the youngest of 4 sisters, and her parents are both in their 80s (they don't look a day over 70 though, in my opinion). Piri & Pili regularly go dancing at the local senior center, walk around town and pretty much live an independent lifestyle.

One evening while I was in Valladolid, though, they locked themselves out of the house. It wasn't just that they forgot their keys, but rather, they had left their keys in the lock on the INSIDE of the door and even a spare key wouldn't work to open the door. (Something about leaving a key in the inside lock means that the lock is impenetrable in Spain.)

I don't really know how it works, but we all spent a good while in front of their doorway while V tried to slip the lock with various bits of laminated paper and old X-rays.

In the end, they had to go ahead and call the locksmith. It was an exciting evening! 

Tisquantum and Turkey Day

At a Friendsgiving, I was asked to give a brief overview of how Thanksgiving came about, and I started the story with Squanto.

(Actually, I started by calling him Sasquatch, because I couldn't remember his name because I'm no longer in kindergarten. And then the Americans in the room corrected me, and the story went on its merry way.)

Squanto (or Tisquantum) epitomizes to me the beauty and the tragedy of Thanksgiving. He helped the Pilgrim colonists at Plymouth survive so that they had thanks to give for a bountiful harvest, and is nonetheless relegated to a footnote in history, though Charles C. Mann's excellent history of the Americas before 1492 (called 1491) does much to try to rectify that. And yet, thanks to the aid that Tisquantum gave to the Pilgrims, Native American tribes throughout North America were annihilated by disease and slaughter.

At issue for me this Thanksgiving is grappling with how being thankful for all the benefits in my life often precludes recognizing the oppression from which it has derived. It's far too easy to simply give thanks for my computer, my Fulbright, my right to vote and even my family (which I do), and not recognize that all of these things came with a price. And yet, as I grow older, I've come to realize that a proper giving of thanks must recognize the tragedies too.

My computer--without which I would not be able to do my job nearly as effectively--was most likely made in a factory whose workers wage under slave-labor conditions.

The Fulbright scholarship--the one allowing me to be in Spain this year to conduct research and complete my dissertation--arose out of the tense geopolitical situation of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War and demonstrated a recognition of the potential benefits of 'soft' diplomatic power. I'm really grateful that such a program exists--so many Spaniards may never have the opportunity to meet an American, and their only conception of what life in the US is like comes from Hollywood. And my future students back in the States will benefit from this experience as well, as it has enriched my research and deepened my understanding of the ties that bind Spain and the US. And yet, it only came about because of a horrible war that I hope we never have to fight again.

Millions of women lived and died before me (and many still in other countries)--unable to vote, suffering from gender violence, genital mutilation, human trafficking, and so many other inequities. The rights that I have are intimately linked with the violence borne by my sex throughout history, and having them does not free me to simply be grateful. It does not absolve me of this past. Rather, having them means that I must continue to fight, so that others may have the same rights that I myself enjoy.

And all of this brings me back to my family. Last year, I learned that one of my ancestors was John Rolfe, a colonist at Jamestown (many in my generation know him as John Smith, from the Disney movie, Pocahontas). (I didn't do the genealogical research to verify this, but the great-aunt who did swears by it, so I'm trusting her.) I'm grateful to be alive on this earth today, but I'm also grappling with the means of my existence, given that his marriage to Pocahontas was a political alliance, and their only son a baby when she died. There's a lot of swerves of fate that led to my being born, and some of them were downright tragic. Miscarriages and forced conversions and forced marriages (not to mention probably a rape or two at some point over the course of history), and all of that is a part of me too.

So this Thanksgiving, I am grateful. For my life, my liberty, my family and friends. For M² and for my job and for the pursuit of happiness. And I'm also deeply saddened and humbled by the misfortunes that have befallen my family and the world in order to shape me into the person I am today. If I learn anything over the course of my life, it is to be able to hold the dark and the light, and to recognize that we're all made of both.

"There is a crack, a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in." -- Leonard Cohen.

So this Thanksgiving, I'd like to ask...what are those things (both light and dark) that you're thankful for?

El museo de escultura

While in Valladolid, I got the chance to go to the Museo de Escultura, or Sculpture Museum. It is a beautiful museum. Even my friend A--an art historian--agrees. She usually can only handle going to a museum for an hour or two at a time, but she says she spent a full 8 hours there when she went.

One of the most stunning aspects of the Museo de Escultura is the ceilings. When they were renovating the museum years ago, they bought/ salvaged/ restored loads of ceilings from monasteries, palaces, churches (and mosques that had been converted to churches). They then designed the new rooms in the building to fit the rescued ceilings. Imagine a massive puzzle that's shaped like some 14th-15th century palaces with cloisters, needing to be filled with heavy wooden ceilings (usually coffered and painted, with intricate designs). I do not envy the architects, engineers, interior designers and museum staff who had to figure those equations out (and deal with transport, installation, etc...).

This particularly ceiling apparently has no nails. Just intricately carved and fit together.

I just loved the architecture of the building in general. It had the coolest staircase and cloister I've ever seen. 

So intricately carved and and beautiful!!!

It also had a really amazing facade. 

On Self-Care: Understanding Affects

I think I've written a bit about how my research deals in part with a branch of literary theory called "affect theory". Literary theory is, broadly speaking, the selection of tools used to understand literature. It goes all the way back to Plato and Aristotle (both critiqued poetry, and Plato was actually really against the act of writing itself, claiming that it made our memories weaker), and tends to borrow from philosophy (Kant, Hegel, Heidegger), psychology (Freud, Lacan), economics (Marx, Engels), and linguistics (Saussure, Althusser), among other disciplines.

Within the past 20 years, a new approach to reading literature--affect theory-- has arisen, and it brings together a lot of disparate fields, including even physics and biology. Whereas the 20th century saw theorists of literature trying to cement its study as an objective science, affect theory brings the subject--the reader-- back into the text by engaging with his/her emotional experience.

Understanding affect theory has helped me understand myself in a more profound way. Once you gain the tools for understanding how emotions circulate textually (pretty much like all other ideas-through repetition), you gain a clearer understanding of the empathy required to even engage with texts. I used to always pull out my hair while reading, and I never understood why. Thanks to affect theory (and other experiences), I now realize that my body--though relatively still while reading--was primed for action because of the heightened emotional state captured by the events I was reading and imagining in my head.

I've recently been reading Canadian professor Brian Massumi's Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, and I am mildly jealous that I didn't get to write a work like this first. He opens the book with the following sentences: "When I think of my body and ask what it does to earn that name, two things stand out. It moves. It feels." (1). Of course, these sentences then begged the question, "What does one do with a body that actively (consciously or not) fights feeling? That intentionally does not feel? What is that body then?"

I have yet to formulate a response for this, or to really parse these questions of feeling and not-wanting-to-feel, but the one thing that I have learned is that understanding affect theory only works if people know what emotions actually are and how they work within the body. You cannot study feeling if you cannot fully feel for yourself. For me, understanding affect goes hand-in-hand with embodiment practices like meditation, yoga, and pranayama. 

Las danzas de paloteo

On Saturday evening, we all went with S's parents and extended family to see a show on local folkloric dances called 'paloteos'.

Groups from all over Castilla y León performed, including one from Portugal. One of S's nephews was supposed to perform with his town's troupe, but he had injured himself a while back and was still unable to participate.

No one really knows where these dances came from, but according to the show's presenter, they think the tradition dates back to pre-Roman times and arose out of a need to train men to participate in battle. In fact, traditionally, these dances have been performed by men and only men. Only recently have troupe's started allowing women to participate, out of a need for bodies more than anything else.

Given the dances' male-only tradition, the costuming is deeply effeminate, but I feel like that's the way folkloric costume almost always is. Only the hyper-masculine can get away with engaging with feminine dress. In addition, the regional differences in music and movement are so subtle as to be almost unnoticeable.

It was really cool to see the different variations on a similar theme. And of course, it made me want to learn some of the dances!

Valladolid

Last weekend, I went to Valladolid to visit my friends S & V. I met S & V last fall in Austin, when S was doing research for her dissertation on bilingual education. It was nice to spend some time with some truly lovely friends and remember that there are good, kind people all over the world.

That last little bit is something that I've definitely been thinking about a lot over the course of this past week. My FaceBook feed (and texts with friends and phone calls back home) have been filled with anecdotes of hatred (and some actual hatred directed at me), and that is hard to deal with. So being in Valladolid with friends helped remind me that (in the words of another friend): "people are still kind and good people still want to help others". 

I got there on Saturday afternoon and we went out for pintxos and a walk around the center of the city. Some of S's friends met up with us and we all chatted about home-ownership in Spain (I didn't have much to add to the conversation, other than a few references to the Alex de la Iglesia film, La comunidad). 

S & V live in a really nice part of the city--close to the Cathedral, the University, and the major tapas streets. Here's a few photos of us out and about!

At a fascinating exhibit of African masks and costumes at the University of Valladolid (I think). 

Out for tapas with the award-winning TigreTostón tapa. 

With S at a coffeeshop, where we stopped to eat a zapatilla (a tiny shoe, literally translated, but really a frosted bit of shortbread). 

With V on the staircase at the Museo de Escultura. 

Going Native

A few weeks ago, I realized that I needed some warmer winter shoes in Madrid. I have leather boots, and I have tennis shoes, but Austin has taught me that winter shoes are suede ballet flats, and those don't work in temperatures under 70ºF. (Sidenote: Madrid regularly has temperatures under 70ºF in winter).

I had been thinking of purchasing a pair of CAMPER brand shoes ever since my friend T told me how comfortable they were a few years ago.

So one day, on a walk around town, I decided to pop into a store, just to see what they had going on.

There's something about the shoes you wear while traveling that immediately identifies you as a foreigner. American tennis shoes are comfortable, but (1) they immediately peg me as American, (2) they don't go well with my skinny jeans, and (3) tennis shoes are meant to breathe and be cool, which is not what I want to be happening on my feet when they're already chilly. I wanted to avoid all that.

Plus, I've never owned a pair of high-tops!

The Curious Case of the Car in the Nighttime

On our way back to Guadalupe from Trujillo, we drove through lots of tiny Spanish towns (so tiny that many seemed like they might be ghost towns, with only a few residents left). In one of those towns, a car with loudspeakers pulled in front of us.

It wasn't too late at night, but in a small town, very few people were out, and those that were were probably a bit tipsy or on their way to being so.

We rolled down our windows so that we could understand what the loudspeakers were saying. Turns out, it was advertising for a blood drive. I will let the rest of the video speak for itself because I have no clue how to explain their choice of song.

Processing Grief

We all process things in our own ways. I like to do a lot of writing. And a former history teacher of mine does the same. We've been having a therapeutic writing exchange over this last week, trying to process all the feelings and fears for the US and the world that surged for us (and others) last Tuesday.

Receiving his first email last Wednesday evening definitely sparked the tears that had been waiting all day to come. I know some of my friends had burst into tears and were crying all day, but it took a while for the shock to wear off for me.

And when I refer to shock, I'm not referring to the shock of the candidate I voted for losing an election. Rather, I was shocked because I thought America was better than to fall for the xenophobic rantings of a two-bit demagogue. Whatever happened to "country of immigrants", "Give me your poor...", "no official language"? What happened to the land of opportunity for all, not just for those who were here first?

Needless to say, the shock of my disillusionment only broke when the most rationally idealistic person I've ever known (aka: my former history teacher) reached out through the Internet to give me a hug. When the tears finally came, they were welcome and did no harm.

Our emails definitely helped me articulate not just what I was feeling, but also how we wanted to move forward, and what (if any) bright spots we could see on the horizon. He reminded me that partisan politics had gridlocked the federal government for a while, and that the economic make-up of the country right now resembles the Gilded Age--a time of massive inequality that led to some really progressive reforms (including women getting the right to vote, direct election of senators, and lots of economic reform, like Social Security and the CCC in the 1930s). And I reminded myself of ways to deal with the trolls: acknowledge their humanity, protect my self, my space and my soul, and bombard them with love and facts (#Love&Facts).

And then he reminded me that we have to deal with a gold-plated turd as the conspiracy-theorist-in-chief for four years (that's me editorializing). Looks like we've got a LOT of work to do.

The Cathedral at Ávila

About a month ago, I went to Ávila and didn't go inside the Cathedral. But the Toros de Guisando are not too far away from Ávila, so we stopped there for lunch and then I got the chance to duck inside the Cathedral.

It's your typical cathedral. The retrochoir (marble frieze behind the choir) is pretty cool.

I find it fascinating how there is always one black Magi in all representations of the Nativity that I've seen in Spain. There's always one black Magi surrounded by boatloads of pasty white people, and his name is Balthazar. Apparently, there's a historical tradition in Europe of illustrating Balthazar with dark skin and a dark beard, because of a description that the Venerable Bede wrote down in the 8th century.

During the Epiphany parades in Spain, the three Magi throw candy to children. One of them is invariably in blackface to represent Balthazar. It's caused quite the controversy, but who knows whether it will change any time soon...

The Cathedral in Ávila actually forms a part of the external wall of the city. It makes sense--an efficient use of resources--even if it seems strange to think of archers standing on the cathedral's roof, firing shots at potential invaders.

There's also a secret passage somewhere that they're not sure where it was supposed to lead to. But it exists, and I took a picture of the wall explaining it.

Sometimes I wish I knew more about Catholicism so I could better understand the iconography. But studying celebrities has helped me understand why there are so many saints (you never know whose life will speak most directly to one's situation) and why images and visual representations are so powerful.

I've learned a lot about Catholicism in studying Spain, but sometimes I think not knowing more puts me at a disadvantage. 

Los toros de Guisando

On our way back from Guadalupe, we took a detour by los Toros de Guisando. We arrived at 1:55--just in time, because the gatekeeper closed the site at 2!

These statues date from pre-Roman times, and though they are referred to as bulls (they have indentations about where one would anticipate a set of horns to be placed), they may also have been carved in the likeness of pigs.

 Both bulls and pigs are pretty popular animals in Spain, so they could really be either. But they're called the Bulls of Guisando, so that's what I'll refer to them as here.

In addition to the cool-ness of being around some REALLY old statues, these bulls are also famous for having witnessed the signing of one of the most important treaties in the history of Castile: el Tratado de los Toros de Guisando.

You see, before Isabel la Católica became queen, she was just a lowly princess, fourth in line from the throne. In the 1460s, her older half-brother, King Enrique IV, was dealing with a civil war among his noblemen. They wanted him to abdicate in favor of his half-brother, Alfonso (Isabel's brother). When Alfonso died in 1468 (probably of plague), Isabel became the rebels' preferred royal figure, and they wanted her to continue the civil war.

Isabel declined, preferring to negotiate with Enrique IV and end the carnage. She and her brother met at the Inn that was right next to the Toros of Guisando (called La Venta de los Toros de Guisando) and signed the treaty there. 

A monument marks the spot where the inn was, though now only the foundations remain. 

Apparently, by the mid-17th century, the building was no longer habitable and the prior of the nearby monastery chose to destroy the inn and raze it to the ground, "rather than allow offenses against God to be committed there." 

On self-care: Hairstyling

Feminism tells me that I shouldn't pay attention to my hair. Christianity tells me that spending time styling my hair is vain (and some branches would say, sinful).

And life experience tells me that days when put the time and effort into styling my hair, I don't want to pull it out as much.

Life is a conundrum and trichotillomania is annoying, but ultimately, it's something you can work with.

For a whole semester in graduate school, I got really in to (seemingly) elaborate hairstyles. I started using bobby pins and hairspray and all sorts of crazy tools. I checked out hairstyling videos on youtube and tutorials from The Beauty Department. It may sound like I spent a lot of time and effort on my hair, but putting it up takes me less time than leaving it down (and I don't have to wash it as often).

Ponytail holders slip and loosen, so I'm constantly trying to fix them, but with bobby pins, once my hair is up, it's up for good and I have no desire to touch it (probably for fear that moving one will set off a cascade and bring the whole thing down).

Now, I'm noticing that I want to let my hair dry more naturally, so I recently purchased some old-school plastic rollers. If I shower and set my hair before I write, then I have no desire to touch it while writing. And when I let it down, I won't touch it much (or if I do, it's to feel the softness of the curls, not to pull out the roughest hairs). I may still blow-dry it a bit, but even just putting it up in the rollers helps it to dry relatively fast. And then I get to write without having to wear a headband or worry about wandering hands. 

Trujillo

On Sunday evening, I stayed in and went to bed around 8. It was amazing. I got 12 hours of sleep the night after Daylight Savings Time. I was so well-rested Monday, it was amazing.

On Monday, after we went to the monastery, we drove out to a tiny town called Trujillo. I say Trujillo is tiny, but it's larger than Guadalupe (case in point, there were actually clothing stores in Trujillo). It also has a really pretty plaza with this Cathedral

Trujillo is the birthplace of Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro, and a house built by the money that he sent back to Spain during his conquests lords over the town plaza. There's also a statue of him in the town plaza.

Apparently, when Pizarro was conquering the Incas in Peru, he married Inca chief Atahualpa's sister, Quispe Sisa or Inés Yupanqui, and they had a daughter in 1534, named Francisca Pizarro Yupanqui.

In 1552, Francisca married her uncle, Hernando Pizarro, and they built the aforementioned house. They even made sure to include the familial shield on it: a pictographic history of the discovery, conquest and enslavement of the Incas. It's weird and disturbing.























We wandered through the town, and even took the tourist train up to the castle overlooking the town.










It's a pretty impressive castle. Really pretty walls and turrets overlooking the town (and overlooking some delightful sheep and roosters).

It was a lovely day trip!

El Monasterio de Guadalupe

The Monastery of Guadalupe used to be an important pilgrimage site, just as important or more so than Santiago de Compostela.

It also has the only paintings by Francisco Zurbarán (famous Spanish painter of the 1600s) that are still in their original site in the sacristy. I didn't take any pictures of them, because the guide was kind of picky about where pictures could be taken, but I did take this picture of the cloister, with its decorative central temple-thing (that I am describing as a temple, but is purely just decoration). 

The Monastery of Guadalupe is also home to the original Virgin of Guadalupe (if you're familiar with Mexico, you know she's kind of a big deal there). Spain's Virgin of Guadalupe is a bit different, however, as she's one of the few Black Madonnas in the country. 

Some of the rooms in the monastery have been converted into a museum to display artwork and embroidered vestments. There is also a massive reliquary near the sacristy. 

The monastery is still active, with about 7 monks living there. But parts of it have been converted in a hotel, restaurant and bar. 

We actually went to the bar one evening and were amazed at some very elegantly garbed people who were hanging out chilling. At first, we thought they were members of a wedding party that we had seen wandering the streets, so C went up and asked what was going on. Turns out the most richly garbed man was a Marques in Portugal, and they were making their annual pilgrimage to Guadalupe. Because that's what you do when you're a Marques.