Spanish Dictionary

The Spanish/English dictionary no longer tags along in my purse— instant access, tangible answers to unraveling the unknowns of Spanish. Well-thumbed pages and separated binding witness its use. Cheat sheets of verb conjugations struggle to find their place in unglued pages.





This summer of Spain is over. But annotations for my dictionary of Spain still pend, harder now with a keyboard bare of accented vowels.

¿Quién sabe que aventura viene próximo?

Música en Los Jardines del Real Alcázar

I enter the gates of the gardens of the Alcázar, resigned to the bothers of open-air concerts--mosquitoes, heat, traffic noise. My list is long and personal.

Inside, I feel a manton of peace settle around me. Tranquilo, as C says at the house. The gardens work their magic.

Música Prima takes the stage, and the city melts away. There is only this--clear sky, cooling winds swaying the sky-sweeping palm trees, and music from the Middle Ages.



It is the International Year of Reconciliation. Period instruments weave a fabric of music--Christian, Sephardic Jew and Islamic--distinct but nuanced by years of intwined existence. Strings and percussion carry the notes with familiar shapes and sounds; wind intrigues with mechanical rarities, organetto, a portable pipe organ, and zanfoña, a hurdy-gurdy.

Literal meaning takes shape as familiar words emerge here and there in explanation and lyric. It is the music itself, though, that transcends spoken word, a way of knowing through the centuries.

The church bell, when it finally tolls, loses it metallic harshness and drifts into the soft night air, an anonymous fourth to the group´s trio.

Cloudy, With No Chance of Rain

For an hour or six this morning, Sevilla´s empty blue sky greyed, hinting at the possiblity of rain. Was that a drop just now? Alas, only the condensate from the air conditioners overhead. Wewake from siesta to perennial azure.