Shorter Posts

It is always a pleasure to arrive – anywhere – in Havana or Reykjavik, or Rome. It’s a special joy to arrive in Valencia, on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. The city has welcomed me for more than 30 years. Of course, the opposite is also true; leaving is invariably sad. Especially when you say goodbye to friends.

What makes Valencia feel so open to foreigners like me? Diversity: every day in the streets and stores, you hear the languages of immigrants from China, Venezuela, Germany, Pakistan, Lithuania, Japan, Romania. And every day you encounter those immigrants while you are doing the most mundane things., like sharpening knives. For the past few days I have been saying goodbye to such friends, old and new, with the added sadness that these goodbyes might be the last. So farewell to:

Paco and Maye, my hosts for the last two months,
Álvaro, knife-sharpener without equal,
Chelo, expert herbalist, who also sells incense,
Jorge y Gustavo, brothers, in whose store I buy most of my brushes and colors,
Alen, who sells books, all in English,
Ibrahim, a clerk in my favorite bakery,
Elena, fellow artist, who owns the Black Light Gallery,
Soledad, another artist, and a kind, kind woman,
Esther, who makes photocopies when I need them, and
Victoria, the lady who plays her accordion on a windy corner in front of a bank.

There are more friends, but here space is short. I did not embrace and say goodbye to the person I most wanted to, Viviana. She’s an immigrant too, from Italy; Valencia is her new home. She and I never say goodbye.

This is the final image of my transformation of Paco’s aunt. The first impression of her when he showed me the original portrait six weeks ago was not pleasant. The lack of warmth in her expression reminded me of some nuns I had the misfortune of encountering during childhood. “People are misbehaving somewhere,” she seemed to be thinking, “and are going unpunished.”

During her life she was called, Pura, short for Purificación. The Pure One. How does one live up to such a name? In the Catholic tradition, a soul that is not sufficiently “pure” at the time of death has to spend time in Purgatory to make the soul worthy of entering into heaven. When I began to repaint Pura, I had no idea of where we were going, except that I just wanted to treat her gently, with care. So I gathered my colors and brushes and we began to wander away from Purgatory. It was a surprise to paint trees and night and the moon around her, as if they welcomed us. Then came snow and clouds, then the edge of the sea. Everything began to feel like an embrace.

I tried to paint edges of energy, shapes in-between: between autumn, winter and spring, between day and night, between the sea and the forest, the organic and the mechanical, jewels and leaves, the lights of a city landscape. Or is that shape at the bottom of the canvas just a circuit board, or a strange pinball machine?

In a few days I’ll be leaving Pura and her nephew here in Valencia to return to my home in California, to a different, beautiful bardo. So this not a final image. It’s just where I have been able to pause a bit from painting us.

Everyone who is reading this is doubtless aware of the catastrophic storms and floods that have crippled a large part of the Province of Valencia here on the Mediterranean Coast of Spain. I post this photo of me (and Susanne Moisan, my friend from Hamburg, Germany) to assure all of you kind people who have sent worried emails inquiring about my health, safety and whereabouts, that all is well here in Valencia city. We have been spared the worst of the disaster. More posts will follow. Thank you for caring.