Six Tiny Memories

[Gita]

 

1. Aboard a boat headed away from Majorca, I ate fiery, painful peppers from the market on Calle de San Sebastian because the vendor swore they would prevent mareo on the choppy voyage.

 

2. The women who sold crucifixes outside the old city winked at superstitions and told me not to worry, that wearing their crosses would keep away all evil spirits, as if one purchase would confer on me power, luck and safekeeping.

 

3. I took a lover on Ibixa either because he was clean-smelling or because I was bored or because he had a hotel room and there were none to be had on that eve of the Feast Day of the Madonna, but I don't recall which.
   
4.  A woman in a Madrid café shouted that her father had beaten her into deafness because she had listened to an American blues record when she was fourteen.
    
5. The oyster shells we dug from the north end of Cumberland Island shed a pearly light on the tablecloth so beautiful that you put down your shucking knife and cried.
    
6. At Spirit Lake, the call of a nuthatch sounded like a small hinge opening and closing against the tree where it descended, head first.

[Dorothy Pendleton]

Each one of these makes me want to hold it in my hand and carry it around with me like a perfect shell.  Each one could be a koan for perfect writing.  And also, you started a trend!  Thank you.  I miss you.

[Bob Clay]

Yeah ... Spain is beautiful .... but only drive there if you like playing russian roulette and bungee jumping at the same time.

[Stephen Torelli]

Spain, a beautiful place even if you are listening to the blues.

[Angela]

I felt like I was looking at your scrapbook, and you were turning the pages, and touching things, and telling me...well, all about it.

[Jenny Darlington]

Man, does this make me want to travel! I love how you classify these as "tiny memories" when each on their own is a great big amazing experience, not tiny at all! And each one evokes such imagery, it makes me feel like it's my own memory. Love these 6!

[Ron. Lavalette]

#3 & #4 are my faves.  #3 rocks because it suggests three distinct reasons when it's just as likely as a combination of all.  #4 grabs me for its impact and terrifying plausibility. 

I wish i'd written these.

[Joey Delgado]

#5 made me well up because it's nice to know that beauty of reflecting light and color can stir up intense emotion in everyone.

So incredibly beautiful.

(I just read it two more times before posting this comment.)

[Cita]

LOLOL.  See?  You even pegged me accurately!  There are whole handfuls of people who have known me all of my life who don't know me as well as you people do!  Things are highly sparkly lately.  Whew!  Beats the blackbluedepths.  

T:  Go update your Goodreads page.  I have not gotten to Heartburn yet.  But I did read Salter's A Sport and a Pasttime.  It is incredible.

[Gita]

Look out people. Cita's ovulating!  I love it when she's loving!

[Cita]

I love this place.  I love you people. I love this six.  I am in a loving mood today.