I really want to rent a cottage in Jamaica with all my friends. Long-standing fantasy of mine.

EDIT: And thanks, Liese, Deb!

Not really a drabble, it just reminded me. I actually have something written at the time somewhere, but I just looked and deciphering my handwriting tonight would cause major headaches.

I love trains. Steadily chugging out of Barcelona, I'm introduced to my first daylight views of this country in flashes between buildings and tunnels. High rise apartments in slight disrepair, laundry drying haphazardly on the balconies. Bedraggled corner gardens, clotheslines supporting tomato vines. Bright, contrasting hues, the turquoise, the fuschia, the oddest yellows and limes not found in nature.

Redbuds and azaleas flash past, a little darkhaired girl in a faded, dirt smudged dress waves to the strangers in the train as she races through the sand and sagebrush.

And I realize why it all looks so familiar. The colors, in the buildings, in the people, in faded clothes and bright paints. In the greyish green of the vegetation and the shocking brightness of the flowers: this is a collision of my birthplace and my chosen college town.

Hey! I can totally see this in my mind!

Very nice.

Yep. That's vivid and exquisite.

Erin, you should meet my daughter; she just came back from Jamaica and has fallen in love.

Thanks! My experience with Spain was so atmospheric, I always feel like I can't quite do justice in words to the images that live in my head. There was a familiar magic there.

Deb, I would love to meet your daughter; she sounds like a fun girl. I bet we could get into a lot of trouble togther!

I bet we could get into a lot of trouble togther!

Ask ita about that.....

REALLY? Hmmm.

I would like to get into trouble with ita and Jo. Jo could introduce me to cool people, ita could have my back and I...well, I could just crack witty jokes and start shit.

Another Spain:

I found it through music. On the metro, flamenco piped in that no one seemed to notice. Aboveground in a drizzle, I wandered aimlessly through Barcelonetta. First the flute trilling, discovered tucked into a gothic doorway. Then the classical spanish guitar, down a exhaust-stained alley where a cat followed me to curl up in the case. To the right, a moorish arch I gawked at as the rain picked up.

Then the sound of voices singing in Catalan. I followed them by ear through alleys and passages and many wrong turns to a cathedral's sheltered courtyard. As the thunder crashed, I watched the lightening above the palms and found myself huddled next to a station of prayer candles, in awe and humbled by the steady procession of humanity in black and nature's music.

Days later, I tried to return. I couldn't find it, by foot or by guidebook. I don't need to find it again.

Hrm... I should go back.

Hrm... I should go back.

Yep.

I would like to get into trouble with ita and Jo.

Nice thing is, you get into trouble with Jo, you're likely to end up at the Trump and having dinner at Cipriani's. Or possibly in a lift somewhere with a couple of enormous men who play for the Orlando Magic. Ask AmyLiz.

Anyway. Jo gives good trouble.