San Javier, low season

I decided not to sit at home any longer and to finally go somewhere. Somewhere close and somewhere I could go to and back without a map. San Javier seemed like a perfect place, with its 40-odd km distance from Murcia and its proximity to both the Mediterranean and Mar Menor. I packed some water and some food and off I went.

When I was on the bus, the moment I dreaded most, which was getting off it at the right time, didn’t come thanks to two nice little ladies sitting next to me who told me where I should get off. When I did, the town looked pretty abandoned, with only a few cars passing by every once in a while. No people but surprisingly, there were some goats right by the road. “Wild country. Seriously.” I only thought, shaking my head in disbelief, and I kept on going. I tried to follow the bus line, since a not very exact map with marked bus stops was the only point of reference I had. Anyway, I walked for quite some time before I got to the beach of Mar Menor. Again, hardly anyone there, palm trees, the sun and the warm water. Yet, I didn’t have this “oh-my-God-it’s-so-beautiful-in-here feeling”. Maybe because it wasn’t that beautiful after all or maybe because I’ve seen my share of beautiful views and now it will be difficult to top them. What surprised me was the fact that if there were any people, they were either British or German pensioners. That’s some way to spend holidays – the sun, peace and quiet. It that really all you need? I’ll have to wait till I’m 70 to check that.

Anyway, Mar Menor didn’t sweep me off my feet and I wanted to see the real thing, that is the Mediterranean, so I walked and walked and… well, walked. When I thought that instead of going in the direction of the Sea I was walking along the sandspit called “La Manga” which separates Mar Menor from the Mediterranean, I saw a road sign “Las playas del Mar Mediterráneo” or something like that. The funny part in it was that ten minutes before that I was thinking that they wouldn’t be the Spanish if they did place a sign like that. This is what I call a positive disappointment. The result of that was even more walking and I was running out of my water supply dramatically fast. There were no people walking, no shops open, no shops at all actually, no bus stops to follow and no signs.

I didn’t know where I was but I wasn’t desperate enough to turn back. Finally I saw a sign informing me that I could get to the beach in question by either walking for 4 kilometres more along the road or for 6 kilometres more across the nature reserve of “Las Salinas y arenales de San Pedro de Pinatar”. I like nature and all, but given the fact that it was hot and very smelly from the salty waters of the reserve, the map warned tourists about muddy areas and I was wearing sandals, and given the fact that I’d most probably end up alone with some birds I didn’t know and other slimy animals I wasn’t looking forward to meet, I decided to take a raincheck on the Salinas. After 40 minutes I finally saw the Mediterranean. I didn’t smell it though; maybe because there was no breeze to carry the salty, fishy, iodine smell of the sea, or maybe because it doesn’t have that kind of smell. Still no water to be found (I mean sweet water) and 35 degrees with little shadow.

Lying on El Mojón beach for almost an hour turned out to be hardly bearable. I never was very keen on doing nothing. No book to read, no-one to talk to; time didn’t actually fly there.  The water in the sea was warm; this temperature in Poland in high season is something we can enjoy very rarely. Feeling that my quest for this day was over, I headed for the closes bus stop, which, after analysing their complicated bus timetable, turned out to be San Pedro bus station. Another 4 km walk. This time, due to the scorching sun, I became reduced to two things: water and shadow. The two things I couldn’t get at that moment and I knew I wouldn’t get for the next 30 minutes or so. It is not true that it’s hottest at noon. Noon was pretty crisp in comparison to the heat the air was permeated with at half past three. And why the hell couldn’t the shadow fall on the sidewalk and not on the road???

When I reached the bus station I felt accomplishment but I was parched and, since I had still some time left, I thought I’d look for some water and surprisingly, it took me only 10 minutes to find a supermarket that didn’t close for siesta. Orange juice was extremely tasty.

Upon arriving home, I discovered that my back and my face, forehead included, were kind of red but who cares. I went there alone, I managed to get back, I had a 15 km long walk. Generally a nice day. I think Cartagena will be next. 

On teaching and language

I’ve committed a sin of becoming a teacher. Why do I call it a sin? Well, because now everything I do is defined by my profession. It is difficult to learn something when you are a teacher yourself, I mean, you’re not used to being given orders, being told that this is not how something is done, to being corrected.

My father tends to say that teaching is like shit, once you step in it, it’s difficult to get it removed. He stepped in it over 20 years ago and can’t leave the job though he doesn’t like it. My mother doesn’t complain that much but I can see that for her it’s also an ambivalent feeling, what she feels towards the job.

One way or another, teaching runs in my blood, whether I want it or not. I also have it on paper, my teaching license so to speak. I’ve been doing it for four years now and I’ve been watching my parents do it and I know enough to both hate it and love it.

The things I hate are: the fact that my day is hectic and that it’s difficult to draw a line between my private and professional life, and I need that line to be there, otherwise I’m at work all the time, preparing classes and checking homeworks. I also hate the sound of my phone when a text message comes – it usually means that someone wants to cancel or put off classes. The doorbell ringing gives me this feeling of anxiety; it usually means that one person leaves and another comes and when it’s my fifth class on that day, I start to think that it will never end, this migration of people through my flat. The last most annoying aspect is having my day planned to the minute and whenever someone comes earlier, which also happens, it is usually tantamount to my being hungry or unprepared.

The rest, the bigger part it seems, comprises the things I love about it. The fact that people come to you with their doubts and fears and inabilities, and you give them something that makes the very core of people’s existence. You give them language, thereby giving them identity. If they care enough, that is.

And so, there they are, telling me stories about their lives or telling me truths and gossips the world is living with. And I am there too, with my teaching mode on, listening attentively, joking, correcting, being understanding and compassionate or strict, if need be. They and their lives evolve, go on, they become mothers, fathers, they graduate, they buy cars and move to new flats, they change jobs. And I? I just am there, listening. Hardly anything ever changes. I am there, listening to them and at the same time I let my mind wander off their perspective and focus on mine: “Will I still be like that in five years’ time? Will something ever change for me?” Sometimes it’s difficult to be full of stories, none of which is yours. On the other hand, I love the stories they tell, each of them different and each of them informative in its own way, and I listen to them greedily.

Another thing I like in teaching is the passion it awakes in me and the fact that, with my point of view, I have the whole government to battle against. I don’t know why but only presented with an opposition of some kind do I feel alive. Polish system of education is a perfect example of such opposition – nothing is as it’s supposed to be. Such points are usually good starting points – anchors that keep you focused and catapults that help you move forward.

Now, why have I written all that? Before leaving I felt worn out, stuck in a rut, not knowing what to do with my future and generally in crisis. Here, I do miss my friends and family, but surprisingly the thing I miss most is teaching and no matter what I’m doing I feel I’ve been moulded into the teaching form, if there is any, and I can’t get out of it. I don’t think I even want to get out.

I have also written all this to make another point, not directly related to teaching but rather to language in general. Those who know me as a teacher, here I mean all my students who are reading this and those who are not reading this, know that I like to say that if they can’t say something in one way, there are probably a few more ways to express it and that they shouldn’t just focus on one and stay blocked. Before my getting here I knew it was a challenge, to stay open-minded. Now I know that I had lied to them, partially at least. While during the classes, which range from 60 mins to two hours, looking for another way to express what you want to say is a challenge; being in another country and being forced to do it 24/7 is almost impossible. By this, I’m not saying that it’s impossible to find another alternative but rather that it’s impossible to let your thoughts be compromised in that way, to let the complicatedness of them and profoundness of them become belittled by a language which isn’t yours and by the fact that you haven’t mastered it enough. Consequently, every sentence you utter is a compromise. How many things a day do you compromise on? How much do you like compromises, meeting somebody halfway, giving up a part of your views, plans, emotions? Now think about how many sentences a day you speak, and finally think about how many emotions get lost in translation when you can’t find word-emotion correspondence, for example, or any correspondence whatsoever. Should you go on with these pathetic attempts of yours, with this pitiful theatre where you are given lines that are not yours? Should you keep on losing your personality with every inadequate, insufficient sentence you manage to give birth to, mentally lexically and phonetically? I guess many people don’t mind. I do, so I’d rather not speak. 

Tangoing

You already know that I’m a tango fan and, though I’m far from calling myself a tango dancer, I’m doing my best to be called so one day. I decided to tell you a story about how it happened that I am where I am now, i.e. how come that I, despite my age, started to dance tango. The purpose behind it is twofold. First of all, running a blog makes me an exhibitionist and tango has become a part I want to reveal. Secondly, maybe after reading this some of you will decide to give it a try.

The story begins with unrequited love… I don’t cope well with feelings and when I’m overwhelmed by them I either don’t do anything or I throw myself into work. Since being in love is a rather long-term state, and for me this was a really miserable time, it was difficult to do nothing for half a year or so. The only option I had then was the second one – workaholism. I took on more classes, more students, I started to cook like crazy, usually preparing some very time consuming, gourmet food, just to turn the feelings off for a while. The flat was maintained in a high state of cleanliness and I never rested. Finally, I got tired. Took me six months to get tired. Tired of doing stuff, tired of the thought that nothing I was doing would change the state of things, that is the “unrequitedness”. Then came a moment when I finally woke up from my workaholic haze and decided to take control over my life and change something, to bring its taste back, and I did what I’d always dreamt about – I went to a milonga.

The idea of learning to dance tango had been there for such a long time that I don’t even remember where it came from. In that aspect I have to agree with the ones who say that you don’t choose tango but tango chooses you and it’s not an easy relationship, the kind where you take to doing something and it gives you satisfaction. No. It’s not like that.

My not being the most open person in the world, that milonga was a challenging experience for me, but later on turned out to be fruitful. I met my future teacher there. The only thing I needed to do was to find myself a dancing partner and I thought: “Ok, you finally did it, you went there, so you can as well take one step further and look for a partner on the internet”. And so I did. Two months later it didn’t turn out to be such a good idea because he wanted something more and I wasn’t interested. The next one got ill with hernia or something like that but he came tipsy to the classes anyway and, well, let’s just say that it wasn’t in accordance with my control issues. The third guy was nice and danced well but he was a hen-pecked husband and generally wasn’t allowed to go to tango classes or milongas. The fourth one, and my last, was a professor from Norway, a guy in his forties, shorter than me, the features which eventually turned out to be disadvantageous. The problem with me (not with them) is that I never know what their objective is and if there is a ghost of a chance that they want to date me or have their way with me, I instantly go into reverse. I just want to learn tango and it is surprising for me that they don’t seem to get it, that sooner or later most of them want something more. I always thought it’s women who get emotional when working, not to mention dancing in pairs. Well, I don’t. The problem with tango, on the other hand, is that there are not enough guys who want to learn, so the women have to make do with those who do.

Despite the fact that I’m not very talented when it comes to expressing music with my body (I can hear the rhythm and I can repeat the melody but I can’t externalise it), despite the fact that all my dancing partners were failures in one way or another and despite the fact that the tango circle is really hermetic, due to which I’ve had many crises, I am grateful for one thing. I am grateful for the people I’ve met thanks to tango – if they read it one day, they’ll know it’s about them.

There are days when my little tango adventure really gets me down and when I have a feeling similar to the one when something you love doesn’t love you back. Imagine that you feel repulsed by your dancing partner and yet he is one of the few people who want to dance with you, because if you are a beginner there ARE few guys who want to dance with you, and you do want to dance. A perfect, vicious, sadomasochistic circle. Then, there is the economic aspect, of course. Tango, apart from being a wonderful experience, is also a business, which you can see that all the time. You pay for the classes, for milongas and workshops. During the classes you do learn the basics, different combinations of steps and so on but it’s the milongas that carry the most educational value, as they let you dance with different people extending your knowledge to the choreographies they use. However, if you are a beginner, no-one dances with you, so you don’t develop, so you should also go to workshops which usually are (contrary to a functioning fridge) an extravagant expense. Another vicious circle. Those who share the journey through tango as a couple probably have it easier.

That’s all about the possible obstacles. Why do I go on? Probably because being in conflict with myself gives me the feeling of fulfilment, the feeling that something is happening and that I’m alive. I don’t think I have ever done something more difficult and conflicting than tango. I’m a control freak and yet in tango I have to be dependent on another person, a man, who invites a woman to dance with him and then is supposed to dance both of them safely through the music and the dance floor full of people. I’m independent and self-reliant and here I have to take support from a partner and listen to the signs he gives me, to work in a tandem. I still have my streaks of independence and believe me, I use it when I know he isn’t decisive enough, but now I don’t mind being treated as “the little woman” as long as I’m respected as a woman. My feminism and liberal point of view died or at least were subdued and I don’t mind it. Just as now I can’t imagine myself wearing trousers only or only flat shoes. Just in case someone thought I might have been: I don’t feel brainwashed either. Now I feel more like all the puzzles in the jigsaw were finally on their right places. It all fits. Maybe I have become more conservative about certain things but I don’t care about the people who are going to criticise it.

All that aside, what can be better than meeting someone, dancing the music and the magic (if you’re lucky) with him for 6 or 7 minutes and then walking away, no remorse, no hurt feelings, no other knowledge of him except for the way he dances. When you have this nothing else matters and when you felt it even once, this feeling will be your beacon of hope that maybe one day you’ll feel it again, this sense of unity when you are yourself but also your partner, the music and floor on which you take your steps of cautious decisiveness.  

A void

No matter what I do, I just can’t blend in with other people.

I went to Pepe’s house, the guy I met at the milonga, Teresa (also from tango) was also there and the most amazing thing happened – a home tango lesson and practice, for free. This is what I miss in Poland – people are interested in tango but not interested enough as to do something like that.

Yesterday, Pepe texted me, asking whether I’d like to go with him to milonga to Alicante and I did something typical of me, I panicked. I mean, I barely know him, he’s a lot older than I am and I just want to dance tango and I knew that neither Teresa nor Carmen were going to go with us because they weren’t in Murcia at that time. To that I have to add my previous experiences with men, who turned out to be thinking about one thing only and with one part of their bodies and that part wasn’t the brain. In the end, I came up with a lame excuse and I didn’t go. The good thing about it is that I don’t feel remorse or anything.

At the same time, I was at the official opening of the academic year for the Erasmus students, hoping that maybe I’ll be able to bond with someone. I couldn’t do it either. People were already in groups, I didn’t recognize any familiar faces and besides, to me they seem to be like 16 and not 20. They want to get drunk, get high, fuck and do all the stuff they couldn’t do in their country. They live with other Erasmus students, using English, not Spanish, which doesn’t make sense to me, and I’m still counting the days left or the days left till Monday because this is when my tango classes are (even though the classes are pretty impersonal too).

The day before yesterday I went to visit N and D who also came here from my university and who happen to be living 6 minutes on foot from my flat. I thought it would be more… personal, that for a moment I would feel like home. It wasn’t and I didn’t and I felt the odd one out, not wanting to smoke weeds and expressing my doubts about my being here. I bet that when I left their place, they went on behaving as they had been when I was there because, in fact, when I was leaving they were a bit high.

In consequence, I’m not in Poland, but I can’t pull myself together being here, I just don’t feel it. I’m not sad because of that, I’m empty. I left my friends and family, people who matter in Poland; my hopes and expectations related to my stay here shattered, or maybe something less dramatic – they just died; I am here alone hardly knowing anyone, being in love with no-body, and with a whole volume of things I would like to say but I can’t because of my language inadequacies, so I might as well have written that I am here only partially, because only a part of me is externalised. Yet, somehow, it doesn’t matter. I just feel empty and tired. 

Así se baila el tango (?)

Today was the D-day for me. I went to my first milonga in Murcia. (For those who are not acquainted with the world of Argentine tango – milonga is a place where people dancing tango meet, talk, drink and first of all dance tango). Of course, I was really nervous but, on the other hand, a year ago it had been my first time in Poznań, so I knew what to expect more or less.

There weren’t that many differences between milonga here and milonga in Poznań. People were also not so open, there were groups and the whole environment was quite closed. Probably there are also conflicts I don’t know about. It is a pity that something as beautiful as tango is spoilt by the pursuit of money but this is how it is, and for me it was a bit disappointing that even here, where people generally care less, it is like that.

Another trivia from the Murcian tango world is that here milongas, or at least this particular one, are more chaotic (yes, I know I’m in Spain). Sometimes there are four, sometimes three tangos in a tanda; the rule that a man should dance with one woman throughout the whole tanda wasn’t respected that much and it wasn’t because the women were poor dancers. Instead of a traditional cortinas, sometimes the people were dancing salsa or cacharera, which was quite shocking to me.

Anyway, I had an occasion to dance with a few middle-aged men going by the names of Pepe, Jose, Antonio or Alfonso and another one with a two-syllabic name starting with P. With Alfonso or Antonio it was crazy but creative, with one of the P-named guys it was boring, but the most fascinating was to dance with Irina, hopefully my future maestra here. I don’t have to mention that now when I’m writing this, Irina is probably treating her mutilated feet (I admit to committing the aforesaid mutilation). Nevertheless, with her I felt the music, I was the music, she interpreted it so beautifully. For such moments it is worth paying the price of all the doubts in the world, and believe me, I’ve had a lot of them. 

A romantic

- Tu eres una romantica

- Y?

- Y yo soy una punky.

This short dialogue explains it all. We are completely different. Not that it is an obstacle in us sharing a flat. Apart from the lifestyle defined by the cultures we were brought up in, we differ in many ways. Ana likes experimenting with things and I, understanding as I can be, don’t feel the need to try everything just to know that it is not for me. I will never try drugs, for example. This is the line I will never cross, not because I’m a coward but because I don’t need it. She doesn’t mind meeting with a guy just for sex and I do. I may be old-fashioned but in that sphere of life there are no compromises for me and, yes, I do realise that I may end up old and alone. I am task oriented, I start, I finish and I go on to do something else. Ana is a multi-tasker, she starts a lot and rarely finishes. She has all manner of friends but for me these friendships of her are just close acquaintances which take a lot of time, I wouldn’t be able to maintain so many relationships at once.

- ¿Cual es el mío? – I asked her wanting to know which piece of salmon stuffed with Russian salad was mine.

 - A lo mejor esto. – she answered with a certain playfulness in her voice - Tu eres ordenada, y yo... mira – she pointed at the piece which looked more like a battlefield rather than something edible.

This shows another difference between us. Despite all this, I have learnt that these are the type of gaps one can easily bridge by not questioning them, by accepting that this is the way people are and there is no point changing them. 

Paso a paso

Still functioning with the USB-stick Internet and it’s painful ;/

Today I had the Erasmus orientation day and well… For the first time here, I felt really alone. All the Erasmus people were in their own groups, usually depending on their nation, and they weren’t very inviting. It didn’t touch me much, as throughout the years I’ve got used to loneliness, to observing instead of participating, but it would be nice to have someone to talk to, preferably in Polish. What also hit me was the fact that, when I was trying to talk to someone, they responded in English or Spanish and then went on to talk in their own native language as if I didn’t exist.

Anyway, the orientation day resulted in me having to write a few e-mails after which it turned out that they, at the University of Murcia, don’t know whether I can participate in Master degree courses here. So where the fuck can I? And who is supposed to know that? Damn their fucked up organization.

Speaking about their organization. Imagine living a week without a fridge with the climate of 29 degrees each day. Impossible? I thought so too but then it turned out that it wasn’t all that bad and that now I understand people who don’t have a fridge. They simply buy less and plan one day ahead instead of storing everything for the whole week and then throwing half of it away. But telling people that a fridge is an unnecessary extravagance is not my purpose. My purpose is to show the Spanish way of solving such a problem which could be counted as existential.

In the case above, in Poland, in a middle-class family, when a fridge breaks down, one goes to a shop and buys a new one paying either the whole sum or buying it on the instalment plan. No such thing here, or maybe no such thing with Ana. It took her a week to find a second-hand fridge, or more precisely, it took her 2 days to find one. The rest five days she was thinking how to get rid of the kaput one (by the way, she damaged it by trying to defrost the freezer with a knife!) and how to bring the new one in. After all this thinking we finally took it downstairs by ourselves (I never thought I could muster so much strength as to take a fridge down from the second floor with very narrow staircases with only one more person) and in the evening some bunch of guys brought the functioning one. Normally, one would now connect it, clean it and then put the things that had yet to go off inside. Surprise, surprise! Here it was put off until 3 p.m. the next day. Again, if I hadn’t done it, Ana wouldn’t have done it either, because c’mon, after 8 hours of work they are dead tired here.

This is the way it all functions, step by step (with the steps being very, very small) and I don’t have to mention that every step is cherished like some great accomplishment. I don’t and I won’t understand it. I like my things finished once I begin something.