Book 1:5 - Tangiers 1

Destination of My Dreams

POSTCARD FROM TANGIERS

 Dearest Mama,

Surprise! I’m travelling in Morocco. Now don’t worry, I’m with Tom, a surfer friend.  Left B with K on Formentera. We have to sort out a few problems, so I’m having a couple of weeks away. Thinking time.

Now in fabled Tangiers, can hardly believe it. 1,001 Nights come to life!

Staying in the perfect riad in roof pavilion – all Moorish tiles, stained glass, filigree brass lanterns & inlaid tables. A fountain in the palmy courtyard. Views over Straits to Gibraltar. Clean and airy. You’d love it too.

I’m dancing again, it’s been too long since I was able.

Off to Marrakesh in a few days & then we plan to walk with a donkey down the Atlantic coast from Essouira looking for waves.  
How I miss good surf. .

Think of you often.

Love A.

Twirling, leaping, spinning round & round in my new silky caftan bending, stretching, reaching, hair flying, pirouetting in shafts of sunlight rainbow streaked and dappled blue, yellow, green and red from stained glass chemmasiat. Dancing again. It had been too long since I’d been able to unleash my inner Isadora. Tom’s seductive flute driving the rhythm, letting my voice loose in soto dolce gentle intonations as I circled the splashing fountain, trailing my fingers in the water, sending a whoosh of diamond shards to catch the light. At last I was free again. Free to sing, dance, celebrating my love of life in sheer ecstatic bodily expression. The dance of the butterfly.

Morocco ignited my latent sleeping muse, firing up whole new regions of my imagination, helping to ease the pain of leaving my family with an overlay of sensory intensity. A country can be many things, how each of us experiences it is an individual thing. Here some might remember the heat, flies, sand, others might have had a gastronomic affair with the food, or, not. For me the first impacts were the colours, the infusions of light, the intensity of the dyes, the beads. The lilac sunsets and indigo night skies. The sounds of the music. The pace of life. 

Old City

 Camels and donkeys, the soft shuffle of babouch-clad feet in narrow dusty lanes, the muezzin calling to prayer. A street musician strumming the stringed lotar to a gentle soft drum. Loose clothes that let the body move freely. The wind moaning in the crenulations of the turrets and towers and snaking, rustling, down the narrow alleyways. Mint tea in a hole-in-the-wall 4-seat shop. A brief glimpse of hooded figures at end of a tunnel alley disappearing under an arch – gone in a flash. All this created a magic. I was entranced.

However beyond the inviting exterior I saw there were aspects of this culture, as all cultures, I needed to understand better. The way men and women related, religions, manners, class and caste, how the money worked, the treatment of animals – all these were embedded and part of the whole and if I was to move in this country I needed to be aware and have respect for customs or suffer consequences, some of which I knew could be horrific if I got it wrong. Communication was the key - time to brush up my rusty French and learn Arabic.

Tangier was beyond my expectations. I hadn’t really much idea of what it would be like, just knew it was an exotic destination that had attracted a lot of creative people over the years. Anton’s retinue had given it the thumbs up with “cool baby, it’s the scene, go meet Brion Gysin, Bowles, the Gettys, such FABulous people there now” Hmm. I had my own agenda, but Tom’s interest was spiked at the mention of scenes and names. I also knew Tangiers, by reputation, had a seamy side and I’d have to be careful. But what I found over the next days was wowowow outa sight!

We walked up from the ferry into the Medina and immediately fell under the spell of all things Moroccan. Suddenly I was in a land where everything around me inspired and ignited my imagination. I felt travel-worn and dirty, confined in my clothes, longing to be in something loose and free inspired by what I saw the people wearing and of course Tom’s free Indian cottons. Emotionally exhausted I felt a deep need to just stop moving and sit quietly, away from other people in a secluded place where I could unwind and contemplate the last week.  I didn’t want to stay with Tom’s friends again, nor get a hostel room. I wanted to cocoon and self-nourish in my own time, then to emerge, really immerse myself in the Moroccan ethos. Anton had given us directions for a riad he said would answer all expectations at the top of the Medina. He'd even rung ahead and booked us in. Fingers crossed he had it right. But first we flopped down in a tea shop stop for a first taste of mint tea. Then we shouldered our baskets and headed up the hill into the Medina’s maze of narrow streets & alleyways, taking it all in with an ever-increasing sense of wonder. Somewhere in all this Paul and Jane Bowles held court with other literary legends and wrote their hearts out. But those kinds of expat Beat Generation influences that had initially attracted me here no longer seemed important. Tangiers itself was now my muse.

As we passed one hole-in-the-wall shop I saw a beautiful simple white caftan wafting on its hanger in the sun, screaming “Buy me, I’m yours”. I bought two and another in the men’s style for Tom.  The storekeeper brought out a dramatic burnt red hooded burnoose  and I saw how useful it would be, not having a warm coat. Tom wanted one as well, in black, so we left the shop with very satisfying booty. 

Me & my burnoose setting out in Tangiers '68 - gotta larf

Then we entered the labyrinth that is the Medina, leading to the Kasbah up the hill. Narrow twisting high-walled lanes with doors that gave little away as to what lay beyond.

Kasbah canyons

  After a few wrong turns and asking directions we found Anton’s favourite place, a riad owned by friends of his. Through an arched old door leading off the narrow lane we left one world and entered a piece of Paradise, so unexpected that I gasped. We were in an elegant sahn courtyard, open to the sky above, surrounded by an upper riwaq balcony. White walls reflecting the light, geometric zellij tiles spreading in from floor up walls, everywhere. Columns supporting a surrounding upper balcony, potted cumquats and palms, a large central hexagonal sparkling fountain that refreshed the air and gave a tinkling sound that merged with the soft drone of Arabic music coming from one of the chambers set back under the balcony. Once the private palace of an old Moroccan family it was all Anton had promised and so much more.  Luxurious, clean and with beauty everywhere I looked. A world away from any hotel or pension I’d ever stayed in. I decided that even if I had to sleep on the side of the road from now on, I had to have this one experience of this kind of luxury. I had the money, for now. It was to be my treat for us both and to show my gratitude for Tom’s care of me in Spain.

Pockets of Paradise

similar styles to the riad we stayed in

We were given a pavilion on the roof which had views out over the hazy Medina to the distant port and the intensity of blue sky over the Mediterranean. Through French windows and  voile curtains wafting in the sea breeze, the long cool white room was a shady cave, foiling the heat and glare of the hot mid-day sun outside.  Geometric tiled floor, bright Berber carpets and a curtained divan set in a filigreed arched wall niche. Brass lanterns and tiny tables. At the far end through a low arch I could see a white bed strewn with jewel-coloured silky embroidered cushions under a canopy of white lacy netting. Heaven! At last I could come to rest where I could think, assess what I had done and was doing in a safe place, away from all the people and the pressing needs of the road.

I ordered lunch then took myself to a nearby hamam . I felt filthy after all the travelling and no real baths. I stripped off my dusty old clothes and immersed myself for an hour, letting the steam and delicious waters deep-cleanse my body and soul. After a massage I slipped into my new white silky caftan and emerged a new being. Tom was playing his Indian flute near the fountain as, light as a feather I almost floated back to our suite, the music sending me twirling and spinning, the houri unleashed. It had been nearly three years since I had danced in this way and the release as I found this neglected part of my being was like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon and I flew, laughing, singing, in my re-found freedom pursued by my Pan god, up the stairs to our piece of Heaven.

Over a late terrace lunch, lazing back on huge cushions under the shade of a billowing cream silk parachute canopy, we took in the view infused with an hazy apricot late afternoon light, feasting on vegetable tagine, khobz bread and fresh fruit. Tom was in good form, raving on about a tea shop he’s found. 

It's still there- the Cliff Cafe is a Tangier Legend that has survived!

 While I’d been in the hamam he’d gone out exploring, following the twisting canyons of the Kasbah maze lanes right up to the cliff edge where Café Hafa was perched on a series of terraces that dropped off sheer from the cliff. Not many people there, he said, and mainly young Moroccan men but also other travellers and a few foreign expats. He’d clicked with a Swedish couple, Ute and Sven, musos with a band based in Majorca but living in Tangiers in a rented riad for a month or so to sorb the Moroccan vibes. They’d been touring in California, had been in Haight Ashbury for the Summer of Love and had just been participating in a seminar on Tao and Nature with Allan Watts, Gary Snyder and other spiritual gurus of the new age at the Esalen Institute, Big Sur . Authentic Self was the lesson learned apparently. They’d arranged to meet up with us tonight to play music at a café called 1,001 Nights. Of course it was! What else!

I looked at my amazing man, this crazy exuberant wild hippy preacher, eyes afire with enthusiasm, his blond hair bouncing and the motor-mouthed beard trying to charm me, high as and all ready to rock n roll…..and I wilted. Exhaustion had set in. These sounded like great people to meet and sure, tomorrow, but all my Authentic Self wanted was to veg out. To doze and drift and maybe catch up with my diary notes of the last few days on the road.  This idyllic eyrie was too beautiful to leave and I wanted to watch the light changing as sunset swept across the city and the Straits from nowhere else but the bed, or one of the terrace cushions with a long cool drink to sweeten it all. No way was I going anywhere.  So I let him down gently and told him to go, to enjoy, to get in the groove, find what he would find and tell me about it all later….much much later.  He probably needed a bit of time out from me anyway. Never a slow man he understood, scooped me up, carried me to the bed, stroking me, saying all the things I could ever want to hear from an ardent caring lover, pulled a silky sheet over me, lowered the net curtains around the bed and blew me kisses as he shouldered his basket with its drums and flutes, threw on his burnoose and flitted down the stairs into the Kasbah twilight.  Within minutes I had dropped into oblivion.  Dawn was streaking the sky when he crawled in beside me, nuzzling me into wakefulness, whispering that he had so much to tell me, later, snuggling in close and sexy, spooning his long lean body around me, then dropping instantly asleep like a cat.

I slipped out of the bed and wrapping myself in my new burnouse, called down to the kitchen for coffee while I had a quick wash. Tom was dead to the world and going to be that way for hours I figured, so when the coffee arrived I took it out onto the terrace to watch the sunrise. I may have missed the sunset but now I was fully charged and was not going to miss a second of this next day in Tangiers, starting with a spectacular unforgettable light show over the Straits. Somewhere far away I heard the Fajr dawn prayer being called. Wriggling in sheer delight I started unwinding my body with yoga and some basic dance exercises then, as it rose though the haze to the east, did the Salute to the Sun.

Book1:4 - A Bit of Backfill

Before I take you into Africa I should introduce myself. 

Watching a bio docco of Woody Allen has inspired me to bring this blog briefly into the present. I realised that altho I have presented a few impressions of myself and my companion of the road, Tom, I’ve not really introduced myself.  From the previous posts you will have understood that I was married to a brutal abusive husband and we had a baby daughter. But I haven’t given you a view of myself except as a damaged confused wraith fleeing Love’s betrayal on a dream quest for the Truth, first stop Atlantis to test the validity of that myth, and hence the destination Morocco.

If this stuff it isn’t to your taste, well just go to the sidebar and find a post more to your liking, or surf away to other sites. But for those still with me here below is a thumbnail sketch of what you need to know about this protagonist.

At the start of “Manhattan” Woody uses an effective stuttery comic device  when he tries to immerse us in to the book he is writing, but pulls up repeatedly, saying his approach was too corny, romantic, preachy or angry, before finally launching into it in his inimitable way and giving us a laugh.

I may fail to strike the right note but, paraphrasing, I’ll take his cue, I do like to laugh. 

How’s this:

#       Tough and romantic as the planet I love with the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat in my gorgeous goddess surfer’s body……

#       Earth is my planet, as it always would be…….

#       The essence of art is to provide a work-through, walk-through situation so we can get in touch with the feelings we didn’t know we had.

#       Talent may be luck but courage is what is important.

Will that do the job? Inflated delusional ego is always good for a giggle. 

Thank you Woody.  Let’s GO!!

In my earlier posts I just jumped straight on in, romantic, preachy, corny & all. Writing not in anger, but in sorrow. After my last post I went into a soggy depression, reliving the pain and despair, bemused by my naivety, in an agony of doubt as to whether I should go on. I thank my good neighbour(s) for reassuring and resuscitating me - restoring my joie de vivre. So yes, I will continue. It is the Phoenix rising, not the sky falling. I do have a story to tell.

This woman does prevail. She does find what she was looking for on so many levels. It involved a very long walk among the various cultures she found on the way and what these peoples showed her in their lifeways, belief systems and behaviours. Finally deeper truths, like “who are we, where did we come from and where are we going” are revealed once she establishes a core belief that stands immutable after all the tests. 

A picture is worth a thousand words.  I hope you’ll find the following useful. 

   

This is me, the bright-eyed new mother, 1967 in London.

About to leave for Formentera in Spain, 

still sporting my Greek headscarf from our sojourn on Kastellorizo - 

a Greek island some 50 miles east of Rhodos in the Dodecanese, 

of which you will learn much more later.

This is me in 1968 with Tom on the road, both of us in Moroccan caftans.   

As I have to protect his identity I have (badly & obviously) Photoshopped another face on him 

to rather strange effect, but otherwise the picture is as it was taken. 

Yes, that’s me, 28, waist length glossy mane, besotted by my Nordic godling.   

No doubt you will read what you will into it.

So who is this dreamer, this truth-seeking damaged woman?

I had a family back in Sydney, Australia.  I won’t regale you with the details of what was basically a good childhood with a relatively happy family. We had our share of problems, but many had/have it worse.

I left school early at 16 and had good day jobs, starting as a model, then moving behind the camera in advertising agency production work. I went to Art College at night.  I wrote and liked to draw, I read prolifically and saw as many films, especially non-Hollywood foreign films, as I could. 

In those years physically I was an avid rock climber, runner, walker and surfer, body and health conscious, a vegetarian. Intellectually I tended towards the Bohemian, hanging out with a large group of people who questioned and challenged the mores of our time, were collectively known as The Push, and included well-known artists and intellectuals like Germaine Greer and Brett Whiteley. We were activists, out to change the world and we did.

But I loved to be out in the surf at sunrise when most of the Push folk were just downing their last drop of red before bed.  That set me apart, but I still embraced the passion for the revolutionary changes of the times, universal human rights, equality and the overturning of feudal class systems still so embedded in our lifeways then (and now, some would say).

I married my architect surfer husband when we were both in our early twenties. He shared many of my values, or so it seemed to me then. Avid for adventure we started travelling, firstly surfing all the best surf beaches up the New South Wales coast & up into Queensland, then taking ourselves to tropical far North Queensland where we worked in the Cairns region, always saving for the Big Exit, our dream of overseas travel.   We eventually left in 1965. I was 6 weeks pregnant and looking forward to living on a Greek island where I could bring up my child in ways free of all I was repelled by in Australian society and fulfil dreams of writing, inspired by the likes of Lawrence Durrell and Charmian Clift.


Greece was all it promised, but proved less than ideal for giving birth, so we took the Orient Express to London, stopping in Zagreb, Venice, Switzerland, & France before finishing the journey in London. After just a few days of bleak grey foggy February there we longed to see the sun so, with my due date immanent, we took ourselves to Devon where we lived on a sheep farm on the banks of the Tamar, looking across to Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. My husband worked as a shepherd and I gave birth to our beautiful baby girl, grew vegetables and later worked on a cider farm. 

1966. Happy new mother and her weeks old baby in Devon

 looking across Tamar River to Bodmin Moor in Cornwall beyond

After summer was over we returned to London and all it offered. We moved into Brett’s Ladbroke Grove old studio, one big room with French windows that gave onto a miniscule balcony and looked over the street below & across to Portobello. I took menial temporary day jobs that allowed me to have my baby close as I worked and himself worked in the Tropical Palm House at Kew Gardens, resplendent in his canecutter’s blue shirt inside the glasshouse while overcoat-clad Londoners passed by outside, hunched and shivering. At night I worked in the National Film Theatre, filling my data base with seasons of Mae West, French Film Noire & Nouvelle Vague, Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and so much more while he minded our baby. We had to recoup our savings to travel more.

Then came the ’67 Summer of Love and what was working well for us turned pear-shaped.  I would come home from work around midnight to find my husband hosting parties of drunk & drugged people in the studio and our baby wide awake. Or find another woman in the bed when I crawled in in the dark, dead tired after the long day.  Then came the 13 -year old LSD tragic who found my husband irresistible, knocking on the door at 4 am ringing her little tinkly bells, looking for the servicing she was obviously getting. That’s when I threw him out. Told him to pull himself together and find out if he was a husband and father or wanted this other life that seemed so attractive to him.

I had another agenda and what I wanted, above all, was for us to be a united loving family in order for us to make it happen. It involved simple living and high thinking, not this decadence I was surrounded by, the perpetual alcoholic haze and smoky dopey mindless feckless people. After London our plans had been to leave for our long-held dream destination, the Marquesas Islands. This originated in far north Queensland which had instilled in us a love of the tropics. Especially the Big Blue clean Pacific Ocean with its clear light that enhanced and saturated tropical colours, the Polynesian culture with its’ freedom, laid-back living and food. After reading  "Aku Aku"  by Thor Heyerdahl we had been enchanted by the whole ethos of the Marquesan lifestyle and we had hoped to live there until our daughter reached puberty.

I determined that we had to do this to save ourselves from the threatening destruction.  So I met with him in a park, letting go the hand of our precious beautiful toddler when she saw him coming towards us across the grass so she could run to him, hoping to show him what was really important. We sat and watched her play and I told him I was prepared to put the last months behind us if he would stop drinking and smoking drugs, pull himself together and get real about what love meant. He agreed and we decided to leave London asap. However it wasn’t quite as simple as that. 

One night in his absence I had left my little one in the care of a trustworthy neighbour and went to a poetry reading where I read a few of my recent poems. And met Luca, an Italian American poet also reading that evening. It was instantaneous folie d'amour - worlds in collision. …a mind-meld. I felt I’d met my soul mate, the man I could spend the rest of my life with. With Luca I experienced a passion I’d never thought possible – I was shocked to my core.  But I knew I had such a situation around me that this “love”, no matter how demanding and satisfying on so many levels, could never be ours to keep. So I turned away and set my crushed bent heart to saving our family and fulfilling our original dreams. Unfortunately Luca wasn’t going to give me up and came calling. My husband found out what had happened, and despite my protestations that it had been a brief affair, over now, he started drinking heavily again, which led to blind red rages. He threatened me but didn't hit me as neighbours intervened. They'd heard the ruckus and banged on the door until we let them in.  

But apparently sauce for the gander wasn’t to be sauce for the goose.  I saw my love as something pure, honest, unpremeditated, whereas I saw his behaviours as sordid, decadent, disrespectful and deeply offensive, especially as it all was in full view of our little girl in her cot in the same room. In his eyes he had the right to behave as he did whereas my affair was a total betrayal that branded me as unfaithful wife, punishable by her wronged husband. He was positively feudal. I began to see I’d made a huge error and should have left him when I could. Too late now, the die was cast. We sold everything we couldn’t carry and left London. Our ship to the islands was booked and we had a 3 month wait. At the Congress of Dialectics at the Roundhouse friends had told us of the gathering of like-minded people on the tiny Spanish island of Formentera. 

I never saw Luca again; altho when he found I had left my husband and was in Morocco friends later told that he did go there looking for me. I left London with a heavy heart, weeping, holding my baby close as the taxi took us to the train to Barcelona. Weeping for a love I was leaving behind, would I ever find a love like that again? Weeping in the fear I felt for our future. 

Ben, a Californian poet we had met in Paris and again later at the Roundhouse, travelled with us from London on the train to Barcelona and ferry to the islands. He had invited us to share his beachside hut until we could find our own place. We found our bearings and after a week rented a windmill on La Mola. At first Formentera seemed to be the saving of us, I relaxed and began writing.  We enjoyed the little expat community and the islander’s culture. The windmill was fun but the inside space was very confined, the only door opened onto a busy track and passers-by were always looking in, stopping to pass time of day or visiting. So there was rarely a moment alone. 

My sweet baby leads Ben out of the windmill on La Mola 

to show him something special.

When my toddler fell down the big stone steps that led to the upstairs bedroom,I knew we had to move to a safer more practical place with more room and privacy. We found an ancient crumbling isolated finca some kilometres north–east from El Pilar de la Mola, well away from the passing throng, which gave me good creative space and gave our baby plenty of room to exercise her fast little chubby legs. Himself had met a British architect who needed help building a stone mansion on the cliffs and was happily employed there doing work he loved a few days a week, away until evening.  Unfortunately they often shared a drink after work and he would stagger home drunk and noisy, usually looking for more and drinking until he became aggressive.

This situation turned from nightmare to snuff movie when, once again, the snake came into our garden in the form of the finca owner’s son, Juan, who came round after dark every other night, bringing sangria. Bull’s blood. A potent poison. He and my husband would drink themselves legless late into the night.  The jealous London rages returned. Juan would slink away as the ritual beatings began. 

After child-bearing, birth and the life in London I had not regained my former strength and could not defend myself as I might have a few years before. I also had a revulsion for the smell of alcohol and cigarette smoke. Ever since I became pregnant it had made me feel ill. That I would not join in the drinking sessions became extra fodder for his anger.

Thus alcohol, especially sangria, devastated our idyll and I was forced to flee the nightly brutality inflicted by my dearest one, transformed as he now was into a drunken beast. I did not think I would survive much longer and I hated my daughter witnessing such horrific tortures as he inflicted upon me, night after night.  Eventually he damaged me so badly that my thinking was impaired. I hadn’t quite lost it but everything seemed to be happening in a time warp, three stages removed. I felt I was in some nebulous dreamscape. Years later I found he’d dislocated my neck. The first time I had it adjusted it was like suddenly coming above water, suddenly everything became clear, normal. But I still have problems with it and have to get it adjusted to get relief.

And so, on my 28^th birthday on the Platja de Migjorn I made the fateful decision to leave. I could not risk another possibly fatal attack.  I returned to the finca, packed a few necessities in a shoulder basket, then with a leaden heart I kissed my sleeping little one and walked out into the blackness to meet the two am bus from La Mola to the Ibiza ferry.

Which is where this blog of my long walk to truth and sanity begins.........

But one last thing about me. One disturbing thing that I find doesn’t always compute when I look at myself and my belief that I now understand the basic Truth. I have a certain precognitive ability. It has happened too many times for me to brush it off as a fluke. I'll get a flash vision, for example of a balloon going up in flames. Next morning I turn on TV News to find it actually happened, 12 hours later in the Alice Springs dawn.  How to explain this? Paired with this is synchronicity, another recurrent phenomenon that frequently jolts me from my complacent dreams. I know I am not alone in experiencing these somewhat unnerving traits.  So if you want a spoiler just know that altho I feel I got to understand the truth as far as it can be understood by little me, that within that truth is the truth that not all is knowable. Russian dolls. Pass the parcel. Onion rings. Change is constant and every passing moment is a new reveal. So what? Nothing new here you say? It was for me, then, as I broke the moulds of convention and conditioning and starting thinking for myself, working towards enlightenment as to the nature of reality using an Orwellian empathy to understand how others lived as I travelled.

Here's a bit of ordinary magic - my daily dose of synchronicity: 
This day, July 4, 2012, we have been told of the confirmation of the Higgs Boson particle and the validation of the Standard Model , surely the most important long-anticipated bit of our knowledge jigsaw when it comes to the truth of explaining the existence of It All. They call it the God Particle.

That this, and the also just released very first image of the shadow of an atom, should happen just as I am about to launch into my saga of discovering the Truth (as I found it) rattled my cage somewhat! Spot-On, could not have planned it if I'd tried. Cruel nature confusing the physicists with coincidentals:  excesses of events in one place?

I feel the mysticism of synchronicity embrace me once again. I just love this co-incidence.....what a doozie!! How to explain that? I won't take it personally, co-incidence is never a meant-to-be. The universe is unfeeling. I am tho, been chuckling to myself all morning.

The quest, the carrot and a donkey called Maya.…off we go…yo ho ho....next stop….Tangiers.

Book 1:3 Barcelona to Gibraltar

As we journeyed along the Spanish coast from Barcelona to Gibraltar we passed from one bizarre setting to another, always warmly welcomed.  I’d categorise most of these people as the “International Set”. For the first time in my life I experienced the unique social scenes of wealthy foreigners at play and enjoyed the hospitality of a diversity of non-typical Spanish. All were Tom’s friends from past travels and all were worlds away from anything I’d previously experienced.  Our generous hosts usually drove us to the next large town and we made even more friends from the random lifts we got hitching south and west following the coast towards Africa.  Travelling with my husband was never like this. Tom’s spontaneity & lightness of spirit just gave us wings, opened doors.

I won’t be going into the mundane details of this first week on the road, as we have yet to get to my long walks. I can only give you quick snaps, keyhole views of some of our encounters. You’ll have to fill in the colours, the flavours of Spain and the Spanish culture and imagine how two strangers were coming closer as they travelled. The spaces in the postcards I’m giving you here were of course full of little daily necessities, like eating delicious new foods, washing in ever-stranger situations, dealing with weather, language, navigating cities, getting visas and all the business of moving across a new landscape.  It wasn’t like today where you can turn on TV or surf the net and be instantly shown almost any place on the planet.  All this was new, unknown. 

Compounding this, my personal dose of culture shock, know I was also not fully “with it”, externally calm, seemingly in control, but in a state of remove. Inwardly I was dealing with being the battered wife and bereft mother, being ripped apart by a torture of guilt, shame, betrayal, in a state of shattered deep confusion.   Only Tom kept me focussed, safe and reassured that I was doing what had to be done to survive.  I had to find the Truth and each of the social settings we entered as guests opened my eyes to yet another truth about the way things are, the way people lived and the main glue that kept their lives intact, or otherwise.  I felt like an alien anthropologist, a visitor from some other-world civilisation studying human behaviours on Planet Earth. My life might be breaking apart but I was determined my Phoenix would rise.

Our first stop close to Barcelona was an eccentric artist’s bizarre waterfront studio mansion on the Costa Brava, with geodesic domes and eggs in the garden and a tower to meditate in while looking out over the cliffs and coves across the Mediterranean.  The artist himself was away, but we were welcomed by his model and mistress-companion, a rather wild (to me then) Rumanian woman called Petra, who served us zarzuella, a hot and spicy seafood feast, full of confronting marine beasts with hard horny carapaces and claws.  We slept on a pile of cushions in the tower while Petra danced below in the surrealistic garden around the pool, naked in the moonlight, singing rich Rusky folk songs in her rich contralto……. . Ah, Chichonya.......I fell asleep dreaming of my Russian mother, remembering how she sang this song as she danced with me as a tiny tot.  And woke in tears. Tom sensed my distress and reached across, pulling me close, holding me in an empathic warm comforting hug that eased away my pain and we fell asleep in each other’s arms.

In a finca near Valencia we bedded down in the cold sad family home of Juan, a lonely bullfighter who had fallen from grace.  His mother, a senile ancient crone, all decked in black finery overtopped by the traditional mantilla, shuffled from room to room muttering and testing the antique mahogany furniture for dust, ringing a bell loudly to summon an equally ancient maid when she found any.  Our host drank cognac incessantly, morbidly.  But he brightened up when Tom shared a joint with him and he showed us his clever bullfighting moves as Tom played the cheeky teasing bull.  Lithe and proud, dancing.  The heels of his boots clicking on the tiled floor. Flamenco rhythms.  Midnight velvet eyes, flashing electric shafts in the spluttering candlelight with each pass of his swirling cape.  The drama, the passion.  I was enthralled, despite my revulsion for bullfighting.  But the whole place had a darkness that seemed to echo in the soul of the mother and her troubled son. However the hospitality was generous and we were pampered like royalty.

That night our bedroom was ultimate luxury. I slept high on a platform in a canopied four poster on a feather-down mattress under crisp embroidered white sheets.  Tom had a single sleigh bed in an alcove which must have been used by a servant. Beyond the terrace doors a pergola provided a stage for dramatic dancing shadows in the strong winds which drove scudding clouds across the moon.

In Alicante  we happened upon another of Tom’s chance acquaintances, Milo, as we sat enjoying a late lunch of bread and cheese on sunny steps in the Old Town. He invited us back to his place and I was more than astonished as, in the twilight gloaming, we wandered in to a gypsy camp outside the city, He led us through a warren of tents to one with a luxurious silken tassel and jewel hung interior, where dark people in bright clothes reclined in opulence around a hookah.  A magnificent hawk-featured dark stallion of a man in skin-tight black velvet pants and a jewelled satin bolero over his otherwise bare beautiful brown hairy torso played sensual flamenco in a corner, his hooded eyes flashing me invitations.  A richly throaty-voiced gypsy queen, her generous curves clad in velvets and satins, accompanied him in a moaning humming wail, soto dolce, as she snuggled down on the cushions beside me, her heavy scents invading my space, as she let me play with her little velvet bag of precious gems - diamonds and rubies, sapphires and pearls.  Or were they just glass tat?  No matter, to me they were faery stones full of sparkle and magic, just as her glittering eyes, close to mine, seemed afire with charged mysteries and spells.

I fell asleep on the cushions listening to flamenco guitar, watching the firelight flickering in the dark eyes. It was dark when Tom softly tickled my nose and woke me, whispering that Milo was leaving to visit his brothers near Granada and we had a lift if we wanted. I wanted. In a comfy old battered Chevy Yank tank with Milo in the front passenger seat and a stern old man driving, Tom & I in back with 2 chickens and a goat, it was off inland into the dawn-touched mountains, lurching and swaying over dubious dusty roads, stopping here for food and drink, there for rests to enjoy a view.

Late in the day they dropped near us near Granada outside some stone pillared gates of a large spread. After emotional farewells they drove on.  An amiable old large wolf hound ambled out to greet us followed by a posse of noisy kids riding small horses bareback.  Next we were hauled,  baskets and all, up behind them on the horses and I held very tightly to the teen rider as we cantered across a field to the main villa, a large rambling stone pile set in a green valley surrounded by low dry hills.

Here we spent a couple of very happy relaxed days in good company. I felt a lot of my pain lifting away. It was the sort of happy environment I had hoped my own life might become.

Our hosts were a family of Chilean artists.  A happy colourful group of people who spoke six languages all at the same time. Worldly, gregarious, imaginative.  A huge extended family of four generations.  They all resonated love and I felt it to my core. The children were adored and pampered and entertained us all with their wild energies. The affection was physical and everyone openly emotional, touching, kissing, and hugging. Babies were passed around to whoever had a free hand and old people were included in often raucous discussions on any subject that happened to be being sorted, from milking goats to the state of the economy. At least while I was observing. They loved horses and had large stables at the rear of the villa.   Dinner brought them all together around a Rabelaisian feast on a thirty foot table under a grape arbour.  They all talked incessantly, calling to Tom and me to answer in loud crazy Spanglish.

Afterwards we all played music and danced. The older kids practised magic tricks and gave us a mini circus show with acrobatics and disappearing acts, some of which were less than perfect, giving us all huge laughs.  I felt myself opening, felt my love flow, my pain dissipating like poison draining & being replaced by the life elixir as I twirled and clapped and laughed for the first time since I couldn’t remember when. Tom played his harmonica and drums.  I found a mandolin and did my best at keeping up with the rhythms. I had once again found my sense of fun. But I also found a deeper yearning choking me every time I heard a baby cry and knew no matter how I might be enjoying the moment, my own baby held me tight, the unbreakable bond of mother-love. I would keep going, but she would never leave me.

The last stop in Spain was a cliff-perched fortress of a villa outside Marbella on the Costa del Sol with wealthy Manhattan hippy queens.  At the gate we were met by large sinister spade-cat minders, their black shining bare chests under black leather vests hung about with big silver crosses, their arms tattooed with dragons and skulls, eyes impenetrable behind blackout glasses. Dobermans roamed the grounds. We were collected by a zippy golf cart that swiftly dropped us outside the main front doors where our host, Anton, resplendent in a flowing purple silky caftan, came out to embrace his long-lost Brother Thoma and welcomed us both in the mi casa su casa style.

It was such a scene! We lounged back in an almost clinical all-white ultra-modern cool cavern of a room, under high-vaulted ceilings, reclining on huge white deep cushions, looking out into the blinding sun across a tiled terrace over the city to the bay below, waited on by slim nip-arsed Arab houseboys dressed in white with bright Mexican sashes and red Arabic tarbushes on their heads. Our Soho Boho hosts snorted white powders and were so bloody cool, man. 

Anton, was a suave fifty year old dress design mogul with an international clientele, given to the aforesaid shrieking orange or purple silk caftans with lots of rings and silver chains hung with precious stones. He was sensual, warm, open and relaxed, into yoga and eastern mysticism. A likeable generous host who welcomed me into his home, making sure I was comfortable and refreshed.   

Unlike his lover, Precious,  a peroxide crew-cut French-Vietnamese android in painted-on leather pants with lace cut-out insets,   gold glitter eye shadow on his/her cat’s eyes, sardonic thin lips a slash of black lipstick. His little fingernail, gold varnished, was two inches long. The ring-hung hands were claws.  Diamond studs in his nose and penis-head (or so he boasted).  

I remember the cold creepy fear I felt from this creature every time those patronising predatory lidded eyes passed over me, but I returned the look with my mask of gentle sweetness and hoped he wouldn’t come closer.  He was the master of the sneer, the veiled insult, the cruel put-down and made a hissing noise followed by a cruel harsh laugh when he passed me, always too close, threateningly.   His older companion controlled him like a panther on a lead. “Now dharlink, behave.  Be nice to my guests sweetie.  Come and share some candy with daddy”.   They were junkies.  High shit.  Their world was name-dropping of the rich and famous, acquiring ever more opulent symbols of decadence - jewels, cars, art, people.   And white powders to snort, smoke or spike into their veins.

Lunch was served on the terrace under a Tibetan tent canopy on the tiles spread with Mexican rugs. We were about 10 in all, cross legged on cushions as we helped ourselves from a ginormous platter of Middle Eastern type dishes it took 4 men to carry in. hommus, pilaf, tabouli, stuffed vegetables, kebabs, olives, pitta bread and so on.  Huge jugs of pomegranate and orange juice. The platter was taken away by the servants and coffee brought while we stretched out on huge body cushions enjoying the view. I went exploring inside, looking for the bathroom and finding inner rooms where even more people I hadn’t yet met were hanging out, mostly stoned it seemed.

A psychedelic op-art Jimmy Hendrix, a Dali and Andy Warhol’s Marilyn on the walls.  Dylan, the Stones and Cream on the mile high speakers filling the space with a wall of sound. A giant mirror ball throwing patterns of shattered light in giddy flashes across all.  The mating phlegm of fluorescent foetal succubae globules in the gulping lava lamp in one corner.   I looked around the spaced out lounge lizards on the cushions, posed, unmoving and mute, living statues.  Android creatures in exotic maquillage and peacock plumage.   Black leather skin-tight trousers and white pirate silk shirts.   Velvet leopard-print flares.  Full-length Afghan embroidered fur coats.  Elaborate silk caftans. Oriental opulence mixed with pop art, Black Panthers and the rock and roll culture, while Wall Street market prices chattered away on a ticker machine in a small phone room with a large safe.  Ferraris, Jaguars and other pretty toys in the garage. A sixty-foot yacht stood at the ready in the bay crewed by pretty boys who served champagne cocktails and brandy Alexanders at dusk on the canopied aft deck. Midnight moonlit Jacuzzi frolicking on the terrace. Cocaine and Crystal.  

I would never have gained entry to such a high camp ménage if it hadn’t been for Tom.  Met Anton in a disco last time he came through, he said. He wanted to stay a few days as there were hints of a yacht trip next day and maybe they could drop us across the water somewhere on the Moroccan coast. But, despite a warm feeling for Anton,  I was so repulsed by the rest of what I was seeing in the guests and their behaviours, all I wanted was to be gone. Behind the glitz and glamour was an evil corrupt lifestyle. This was not simple living and high thinking but stood for all that seemed wrong in our world I thought.  And I couldn’t cope with Precious. Tom said I was being square. No doubt, I was. I had run against a limit to my tolerance. The walls that protected my Wonderland. This was not a place I would bring my child into if I could help it. That seemed to be the yardstick I was judging these pocket worlds with as we moved towards my dreams of  Atlantis. Where was the love, the goodness, the human kindness?

Anton was the shining exception to my judgemental stance. He must have sensed my feelings because in the late afternoon he put an arm around me and said “ I need a drive – let’s go babe”. So,  in a pink Thunderbird, with Tom & Precious squashed in the small back seats with Lola, a snooty blonde Afghan pooch sporting a diamond collar sitting royally between them, we roared away in a memorably exhilarating exit from this pocket world of chaotic opulence down the coastal highway to Gibraltar.

That night we crossed the straits into Africa. The Big Adventure had begun.