Spain: A Land Ignite

Announcement to the World:

Spain is the land of all beautiful men.

I do not know if it is the over-chlorinated water, the Mediterranean sun, or the free-flowing vino, but for some heavenly reason, a population of genes collided, producing a country of stop-you-in-your-tracks gorgeous men strutting the streets, the shops, the metro in all their God-given glory. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark lashes. Chiseled cheekbones, jaws, lips. Olive skin.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is a whole new sightseeing experience.

But, there is something beneath that Adonis exterior that draws the eye,

Something beyond those dark lashes and dark eyes, extending into some part of cosmic space where the Spanish sun first caught fire.

Desire.

Desire unlike anywhere else on earth. Red-hot, burning, fusing, folding the trinity of our being:

The Carnal. The Platonic. The Spiritual.

In Spain, you want it all. Each as indistinguishable from and just as vital as the other.

Creating a land where Nirvana knows no existence.

Only wanting to wanting to wanting to want.

Have you ever heard the Spanish guitar under the Spanish sun?

It is a hand down the small of the back as the back begins to arch.

It is a red dress.

It is heat. It is movement.

It is stillness suspended.

It is wanting to wanting to wanting to want to standing on a Spanish street, staring into those dark eyes. Breathless. Spanish guitar playing in the distance.

Barcelona at Sunset

35 Travel Quotations

The first 5 quotations are all you need to read. The remaining 30 quotations are just mind gravy... delicious mind gravy.

1. "Don't tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have traveled."

Mohammed

2. “Travel is fatal is prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”

Mark Twain

3. “When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money.”

Unknown

4. “Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.”

Cesare Pavese

5. “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”

Robert Louis Stevenson

"Travelling is like flirting with life. It's like saying, 'I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.”

Lisa St. Aubin de Teran

“Living on Earth is expensive, but it does include a free trip around the sun every year.”

Unknown

“When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.”

William Least Heat Moon

“He who would travel happily must travel light.”


Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“Life is a bridge, cross it but don’t build an house on it.”

Indian Proverb

“The greatest part of life is to go to places you’ve never been before, and to live dangerously.”

Noran Bakrie

“I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything; you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work; you can’t even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.”

Bill Bryson

“The wanderer’s danger is to find comfort.”

William Least Heat-Moon

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

Marcel Proust

“You know why you like to travel? Everywhere you go, nothing belongs to you. When you’re home, you’re weighed down by your possessions.”

Thai monk

“Beyond the east the sunrise; Beyond the west the sea

And East and West the Wander-Thirst that will not let me be”

Gerald Gould

“What gives value to travel is fear. It is a fact that, at a certain moment, when we are so far from our own country, we are seized by a vague fear and an instinctive desire to go back to the protection of old habits. I look upon it more as an occasion for testing.”

Albert Camus.

“A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.”

Tim Cahill

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.”

Robert Louis Stevenson

“When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.”

Clifton Fadiman

“Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.”

Mark Jenkins

“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.”

G. K. Chesterton

“Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.”

Antole France

“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.”

Bill Bryson

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.”

Paul Theroux

“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.”

Freya Stark

“When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.”

D. H. Lawrence

“People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.”

Dagobert D. Runes

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.”

Jack Kerouac

“The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.”

Samuel Johnson

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”

Oscar Wilde

“If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears.”

Cesare Pavese

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Mark Twain

“Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs.”

Susan Sontag

What are your favorite travel quotations?

Most recent travel: Cambridge, England

Tennessee Rain

Have you ever been kissed so passionately your lips bruised?

That is how the rain falls in Tennessee

Wind flits the pale underside of leaves, whipping your hair into knots, rippling fabric across your chest, your legs, your back

The light changes, colors deepening, clouds thickening

Birds forget to chirp, forget to fly

And you can hardly breath from anticipation

Silence.

The world is holding its breath

And then it comes

That one wind like a wall of air, and if you turned around, arms raised like wings, you could fall back and be held up

Then fat, wet, glorious raindrops begin to fall

Thunder rupturing the clouds, lightening shattering fireworks of electricity across the sky

Rain falling harder and harder. Contact. Urgency. Exploding into masses larger than themselves.

Drenched.

I’m from the United States, Tennessee

But you’ve already figured that out.

I’ve been here seven months

And I was told that English weather is shit before I came.

Well, it’s not shit. But the rain is.

It rains here in accordance to this country’s mantra, “I can’t be bothered.”

Drizzle kinda falls, dispassionate, umbrella unnecessary

Tell me, have you ever kissed until your lips bruised?

Have you ever stood under the open sky as the Tennessee rain fell hard against your skin and thunder clashed through your bones and in a moment of abandon nothing but the wind held you up?

I have done that.

But I have never had my lips bruised by a kiss.

I have never had a boy hold me as close as raindrops sliding down my skin.

I have never had a boy light up my eyes as bright as lightning bleaching the world white.

I have never had a boy make me tremble like the faint, almost imagined, wind, teasing the loose strands of my hair in that small quiet before a storm.

And in those moments I wonder if I have found a passion in the Tennessee rain that I will never find in any human, any lover.

A teacher once told me, “Some people need fire to survive; others can live with content.” I always knew I was the former. But I have yet to find that fire in another, and sometimes I am tired of burning alone.

Walking home, walking to the store, walking to class, I look at every face passing by, trying to catch a reflection, a moment, a hint of…something. Searching for the face of a person who I have never met and who I do not even know what looks like.
Faces in shops. Faces in bus windows. Faces on sidewalks.
I don’t know who I’m looking for. But in truth, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know his name or his face or when we will meet. I just want to know that we won’t pass each other by.

But when it rains, I can’t see the faces. Umbrellas and hoods and ducked heads block my view. I stare at synthetic fabric and wet hair, and I want to scream, “Look at me!” Because maybe he is passing by, and I can’t see him because of this pathetic excuse of precipitation England calls rain.

If he is going to duck his head and if I am going to pass him by, then it will be in a rain that leaves our lips bruised, red and swollen. And the next day we will not be able to speak or smile or laugh without our lips aching and warm blood pulsing their fullness.

I have stood under the Tennessee rain, so I know God is a being of passion. So if I just trust him/her/whatever our pronouns are too small anyway, but if I just trust God, then I’ll find who I’m looking for.

Right?

I will find that fire that even the Tennessee rain can’t extinguish.

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Final Hilltop News Article

(Preface: While abroad, I have been writing a Feature Article for my home university’s newspaper The Hilltop News on the subject of studying abroad. This is my final Hilltop News article, and yes, with 1,500 students, everyone at BSC sees each other around and knows everyone at least by sight.)

There is a lot I did not get to do because I studied abroad. I did not get to audition for Light Up the Sky or take Advanced Acting. I did not get to attend SoCo, and I will not be at graduation. I did not get to sit for hours in the caf or by the fountain talking with friends. Most importantly and most gutting, I did not get to share that time that laughter that stress that conversation that year of life with those friends. In an article published in September, I wrote, “Studying abroad for my junior year is a once in a lifetime opportunity but so is living at BSC with my friends for that year.” I stand by that statement. I could have stayed at BSC this past year and have been happy.

But I didn’t stay.

I lived in England. I climbed the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. I danced in a pub in Scotland. I mobbed the Harry Potter movie premier in London. I read aloud “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold standing on Dover Beach, a dream held since senior year of high school. I placed my hand on the Berlin Wall. I ate tapas in Barcelona. I stood next to a best friend atop a hill in Wales at sunset and watched the doors of my life swing open and saw the only thing standing in my way was me. I fell in love with traveling and discovered a confidence I could trust. I learned that home can never be replaced and home can be created. Thousands of miles from everything known, I created a life that I could fall in love with, and I shared that life that time that laughter that stress that conversation with people who I absolutely do not want to leave.

I fiercely, lovingly, passionately encourage studying abroad. Like I said, I could have stayed at BSC this past year and have been happy, but I thank God every day that I chose another course and found happiness along the way.

I will be back at BSC in the fall for my senior year. To my readers, thank you for reading. These words are meaningless without you. I am at a disadvantage now; you know my story, but I do not know yours. This will not do. When you see me on campus next year, please, approach me and say hi. If you are interested in my time abroad or have questions about study abroad, then please talk to me. I want to answer your questions and to talk with you about my experience. Furthermore, I will need to talk about my time here, because though I will love living on the Hilltop again, I will grieve not being in England.

Readers, thank you again.

BSC, shall we have one last go around the sun?

Just some of the people who made it all worth it.

Giant's Causeway, Northern Ireland

Storr Mountain, Scotland

Harry Potter Movie Premier in London, England

Caught in the Mob 

Reading "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold on Dover Beach

Berlin Wall in Berlin, Germany

Sangrada Familia and Guell Park in Barcelona, Spain

Abergavenny, Wales

Expiration Date

I just bought my plane ticket home.
It's 2 am.
I'm going to curl up, cry, and listen to Dave Matthews.

I always knew this time was finite, but now it has an expiration date.
Like fruit.

Good night.

Hug. Please.
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10 Notes-to-Self upon Returning to the US

Self: Read this list when you return to the US.

1. The weather is not a legitimate or interesting conversation topic. Yes, in England, talking about the weather is the standard conversation opener, but in the US, talking about the weather is the lowest form of conversation, a topic that translates to, “You’re boring me, and I have nothing to say to you, but silence would be even more awkward.”

2. You cannot do an authentic English accent. No one in England speaks a remix of the Queen’s English and Cockney, the two accents almost every American, including myself, resorts to when attempting an English accent. When attempting an American accent, the English resort to a nasal mid-western accent; I have no idea why this is.

3. You cannot walk into a hospital and receive tax-paid health care. You will be required to fill out insurance forms, and if you cannot afford treatment, then you will be turned away. The NHS does not exist here.

4. Your now darker shade of teeth does not mark you as unhygienic. It marks you as a cultured Tea Drinker who brushes and flosses twice daily. You will stand by this statement.

5. When Person A asks you where Person B went, respond, “She went out to smoke a cigarette,” not “She went out to smoke a fag.” If you respond with the latter, then Person A will call the police and have you and Person B arrested for an attempted homophobic hate crime. Prison does not fit into your life plan.

6. Pray daily that you did not acquire the black lung abroad. From personal observation, more people in England smoke per capita than in the US, and because cigarettes are significantly more expensive in England than in the US, many English students roll their own cigarettes, thereby cutting costs, ramping the buzz, and billowing smoke deep into surrounding lungs. Please note: I have never smoked a cigarette.

7. Your bank account will be empty. One US dollar is worth 0.65 UK pounds, and certain things like food and rent were necessary for survival while abroad. In order to reverse this personal economic crash, you are allowed to purchase one lottery ticket. Choose wisely.

8. It is no longer acceptable to go clubbing until 4am on a Tuesday. I do not even know if clubs in the US are open on Tuesday. Your going out will be restricted to Thursday through Saturday night house parties like the standard American university student. In England, university students hit the clubs Monday through Thursday and then head to the nearest house party Friday and Saturday when the older, professional crowd that works during the week overtakes the clubs. American students, we really have no idea of what we are missing.

9. Upon greeting people, inquire, “Hi. How are you?” Because asking the English equivalent, “You alright?” will cause people to think that they appear upset. Remember when you first arrived in England and had this same reaction.

10. Being at a loss of what to do in a life without pubs is perfectly natural. There are people you can talk to.

English Evening in Selly Oak