'The way / we make this frail planet ...'

 

walking through Ferreirola at night

 

Granada & environs, past and present

these were taken right before I went back up to the mountains (the Alpujarras) where I saw this:

 

from the bus, and this:

 

from the balcony where I stayed, and this

                   too, from the same balcony.  A bit of local color intermingled w/those ubiquitous pomegranates:

   ... (note the sign on the side of the truck: Cristo Nos Ama / Christ Loves Us) ...

And the patron saint of Granada and its environs apparently spent some time up here too, in Pitres:

 ("Here I am in Pitres, village sans voice nor pigeons in the Sierra mountains, crucified in the 'Y' of the tree.")

BIG week

celebrated a birthday (not this one) by taking myself to the beach, water calm and bathlike, temperature cool & refreshing but not cold, swam & also floated on my back for awhile basking in the gorgeousness of my perfect day, started a new novel that I brought back last summer but just got around to now (Richard Powers' Generosity), spoke with a kindly gypsy whose white-painted, geranium & cactus decorated cavehouse fronts the beach and thought about Percy Bysshe Shelley, Bob Grenier and Barack Obama, wondering who else I might know of or even know with the same birthday.

 

The night before I was with friends having drinks out in one of the terraces of the Campo del Principe, then dinner and wine up the hill at another terrace, lots of wine, and later 2 liter and a half bottles full of water before sleeping so I could wake up the next day without a hangover and go to the beach.

Also, and now the next day (August 5th) Lynn Behrendt and Anne Gorrick published a selection of my work from Mekhtoub on their small press magazine site Peep Show (http://peepshowpoetry.blogspot.com/2011/02/blog-post_13.html), the American economy is collapsing again, perpetual collapse and I'm watching a good deal of my hard work at building a freelance business shred apart as clients don't pay or insist on paying in dollars although they're not even located in the states ... & how those dollars shrink quickly with transfer and wire costs and just the value of those dollars to start with having little to do with the rise in the cost of living even here, in Andalucia, but then I have to come full circle again because otherwise it's maddening and I'll lose the sense memory & contentment I felt while on my back in the sea on such a perfect, hot, sunny day that was even breezy.