Seville, Very

four choices at every corner

a single night in this most fabulous city

with long wanders for the fascinated eye

the streets

the back alleys and plazas

the stone and balcony ironwork

the elaborately grilled windows and the high sturdy doors

the intricate and the blunt

the old and the very old

the squares and the alleys

the Islamic and the Christian

the stooping archways and the elegant passageways

the ancient churches and their deep history

[like Saint Isidore

not the religious myth but the scholastic man]

the thin strips of the sky up high

and the smoothed worn curbs under the feet below

the cobbled streets and the

bowed walls

the uneven planes of the

obtruding roots of the

enormous old trees

[unlike anything you get in England or Canada]

and the ebullient bougainvillea hanging from pots

the everyday bakeries still a fascination

and the just-so efficiency of the

restaurants ornately hung with paintings and

tiled with ceramics

where it must have taken a long time

of perpetual busyness

to have that much stuff, constantly used

and yet it all be in such reachable naturalised order

…

where these streets are fabulous

for an idle saunter so ...

here we arebeneath the skylooping loops with an easy eyewandering with softly treading feetover stone and brick and cobbleand concrete for you have to be somewhereand we were there

or near

before we were

here

where thereabouts

and whereabouts makes

hereabouts

where a new city town country culture

is as a magnetic field for the

magnet of the mind to move in,

a dynamo, generating ideas,

a throw into the firmament,

pushing you again and again to the

limits of your language, at thelimits of your language,

beyond the limits of your

language, to find new words and phrases and

combinations and metaphors and

histories to describe to sense to see to word

the bigs the smalls

the details the wholes the juxts...

where we soon decide to, at each corner

why not?

go down the best-looking street and

you know what?

there’s often not three choices

but four

for the way we came looks marvellous as well

the doorways the balconies the eaves the rooves

the colour the lean the curves

the ancient the mediaeval

the towers the tracery

the carvings the steps the fountains the crosses

the eight-hundred year stone

the splendid once-Islamic cathedral tower

all a wonder for the passing eye

drawn in, and along, and up, and down

and up again, and between

and into the darkness of the passageway

at the end of the alley

leading to a square a church a gardens

so are we lost?

well, we are certainly navigationally challenged

and how did we get so navigationally challenged?

because we decided to enjoy that street again

yet kinda forgot we had

so we became a hundred and eighty out

or did we?

we’ll never know, or care

because we half-heartedly aimed to curve back

in the original direction

yet the angles, the bowedness, the archways

the traversing of the square

the avoiding of the tourist queue

all served to steer us off any quest

to let us surrender to another half hour of walking

to give up on any plan

which was probably wrong anyway

because its difficult to make a navigational plan

in a fabulous ancient city

when you know you don’t know where you

were in the first place

and when you have no motivation to

make a plan

for the tightly cornered, urban amble is so fascinating to the

undirected eye focussed again

drawn in again

pulled along and up and down and up

the twelfth century wall

the ceramic Mary / Carmen, and another

the higgledy cobbles

the buns and baguettes in the back of the bakers

the list of ever-different tapas in the window of the cafes

the hanging hams in the restaurants

the passageway leading to the enormous studded doors

where we have to ask ourselves

are we lost?

yes?

and how did we get lost?

well we took a right turn, that wasn’t quite a right turn

and then a right turn which might have been

more than a right turn

or maybe not

so, after three turns i’ll already be thinking of Fez,

in Morocco

where we might well be in November

for Fez was actually deliberately planned, set out

long long ago, to

get you lost

to scramble your bearings

and bend you away from any directional plan

like, in particular

killing the king in the palace in the centre

none of which is helping

or matters really

for this, Seville

last night, this morning, and soon again

is a city which

keeps on

keeping on

giving

with, look, yet more

unseen gloriously attractive old old streets

clearly leading to a whole area we have not seen yet

so why not, indeed

and indeed we do

as we arc a little

and criss-cross a little

and zagzig a little

and stoop down that alleyway

gawp at that door and those ramparts

and skirt quickly past that long winding line-up of tourists

to cross a square and soon

reverse out of a

notably attractive

cold square dead-end

like thousands and thousands of folk before you

must have reversed out of that notably attractive cold square dead-end

to stand a moment at the next corner

bending that neck

up at the figurines in niches

then down at the alley floor of black tiles in stone

whiteish tiles in stone

up at the glass-metal oval lanterns with candles inside

and the glass-metal rhomboid lanterns on curlicued stems

then stopping at the striking view of the

sparsely painted patterns of

deft thin green and red lines on very white

patterns pushing you over the road to regard them fuller

before the minutiae of the carvings on the archway

round the corner

reach your neck up high

to see them closer

before

more

zigging, then zagging, then arcing, then reversing

trying not to wonder, where are we?

until, how did that happen?

we see a street sign

“Fabiola”

which is A, true

because “fabiola” must mean fabulous in some language

and B, leads that way to Mateos Gogas.

and this way to Cruces

which is where our not-bad berth

the Pension San Pancreacan

[Saint Pancras]

is and so, somehow

we have gone down some portal

have worm-holed some eddy in the whorl of the centuries

have unfolded the cubism of this ancient city

simply by walking through it

[if that makes sense]

then refolded it again behind us

[if that makes sense]

have transmogrified into some essence of timeless being

and are now a miasmic presence floating down these passageways of Yore

have somehow re-emerged from portal

wormhole and

other-state, other-dimension

into our temporary

home

to return to our room

the wowed kind of

replete

where i write

this...

...

...

...

Seville

been here before

eight years ago

when i then walked 800k directly North

before 200k West

yet somehow

have enjoyed it even more second time

..

.