A week from today I’ll be haunting the streets of Barcelona for the first time in four years. I’m getting ready like I’m going to see that ex that got away. Getting the nails💅🏽, hair and skin together. Trying to get my knees really ready to walk. Hoping that old friends say, “Welcome back! You look great!” Lie to me, friends. Lie your asses off. I’ve never stopped loving Barcelona, it’s true. Even though Barcelona was hard on a Sista in regards to the legal aspects—residency papers and all that entails—still it’s the only place that ever felt right to my soul. Not even my 3-year sojourn in my hometown of Akron felt right to my soul. “You can never go home,” it’s said.
But I have to give Montevideo, Uruguay its props because Barcelona is a tough act to follow. If only it was as easy to get a visa in Spain as it is in Uruguay. A Nomad Visa at least. If only housing was as cheap in Barcelona as it is in Montevideo. I would be paying double for rent compared to what I’m paying in Uruguay. And you saw the pics of my place here, it’s gorgeous. Everytime I come through the front door and see the marble staircase and chandelier, I shake my head a bit at the magic✨ that landed me in such a spot.
I’ve been living on magic the past 18 months. I believe the magic that brought me to Montevideo wanted me to be comfortable, satisfied and just bored enough to finish the book I’ve been working on for at least 5 years. I’ve been put on this planet to write but the activities of daily living always got in the way. I need a lot of downtime and boredom to get myself in front of the keyboard and really do the work of finishing a piece. Montevideo gave me that—downtime and boredom.😒
Truth be told, I didn’t make much effort to be “unbored.” Once I settled in the Ciudad Vieja neighborhood, I didn’t feel the need to venture much further. Probably because the architecture🏦 of this neighborhood reminds me of, where else, Barcelona. And every effort I made to form a circle of friends ended in disappointment. Now you know, it takes herculean efforts for an introvert like myself to seek out friends. But I figured I’d need someone on the ground I could call on if I ever tripped on the marble staircase and twisted an ankle. To that end, I tried to connect with a coworker who was newly arrived and solo in Montevideo just like myself. “Neither of us know anyone here,” I told him. “Let’s connect on Facebook.”
We’d only met through the online training that our job required. Twenty hours of Teams Meetings to learn the Berlitz Method of teaching the English. Anyway, became Facebook friends with this dude only to find incessant posts about “libtards” and “Biden is a robot” and “MAGA this, MAGA that, MAGA forever.”
Delete and block🚫. I never imagined a MAGA maniac would leave the MAGA Mecca of ‘Merica for South America of all places. But here we are. In 16 years in Barcelona I only met one Republican and I think she was lying just to be different.
Joined a writing group for social purposes—and yes a little writing feedback. Found 50% of the group had never written a damn thing and never would. The other 50% were writing things like, “Who am I? Where am I? Why am I? War, death, famine…I dreamt of a dapple-grey pony in a Tahitian jungle.”🤪
Get over yourselves. But at least I got an acquaintance out of it. Another newly arrived US refugee from the writing group was looking for a place. I shared a little of my magic✨ and told him about my building. Now he lives across the hall in case I twist an ankle climbing the marble staircase. But so far, I’ve only rescued him when maintenance accidently locked him on the rooftop terrace. That’s what neighbors are for!
Dana, the friend who first blazed the trail from Barcelona to Montevideo, was amazing and generous in giving me what I needed to get settled. And both of us were grown-ass-woman enough to agree that we hadn’t been attached at the hip in Barcelona, so no need to pretend otherwise now. In fact, we never met up outside of the group that brought us together—BIBS, Barcelona International Black Sisterhood. Dana gave me some of her magic✨ to get a job and start up weed and I’m forever grateful.
I could make more effort for friends, but I feel the magic is telling me, “Relax. You have an emergency contact across the hall. Continue doing what you were put here to do. ✍🏽Friends can be distracting.”
And so the past year in the beautiful building, I wrote, revised and ruthlessly cut the unnecessary with a joint🍃 between my lips and wine at my fingertips. I only have 80 more pages to tweak in the 290 page tome. There’s light at the end of the tunnel. In those 290 pages, I’m glazing Barcelona and I’m wondering if that’s what’s making me so nostalgic for the place?
What I’ve learned in the past 18 months is that living on magic requires believing in the magic. You must know what you want and be open to however it comes. The magic is more creative than we’ll ever be. Here’s an example. I was worrying about money💸, as we all do. Food here in Uruguay is expensive as fuuuuuuck. I pay almost as much for food as I do rent each month. Seriously. Looking at my account and calculating how long I could go considering the 10 hours/week I work—with most of that going for food…
Then the magic kicked in and said, “Let me remind this doubting bitch.” Got a text from my Mom telling me that a check had arrived with my name on it. Apparently I’d overpaid the insurance for the house back in Akron. The house that I sold a year ago. The insurance company issued me a refund check of a thousand bucks. Magic✨ money💰 from out of nowhere to remind me to believe.
Do I want to return to Barcelona. Well, duh. But I refuse to be on that struggle bus that Barcelona had become towards the end. The magic knows what I want and I can’t wait to see how it’ll happen. In the meantime, a week from now I’ll be ripping and tearing through Barcelona with The Russian, sipping on the rooftop with Lisa, slow eating with Carmen and Quique, talking about “remember when” with Laura. And the whole while I’ll be in absolute awe of how living on magic has brought such richness to this little girl from Akron.
VAMOS!
P.S.—Magic of the universe, please get me out of here, if for nothing else, the goddamn food! Apart from the beef, I’m sorry but the food is horrendous. I’m a fat woman. I can’t be long for a place with overpriced, bad food, right? Right? About to eat my way through Barcelona, for real, for real.
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