Growing Different Eyes

 

Michelle and I are sitting below San Miguel Alto, below us the city is beginning to sparkle. It looks like someone has scooped up a handful of white buildings and tossed them into place like dice. The sky is melty orange red, smeared with wispy clouds, and the mountains are all wrapped up in gray.

I’m so glad the Alhambra still amazes me.

It’s sitting there, lights hugging against its incredible, certain walls. I take a swig of bittersweet beer, marveling, too. There had been a brief moment during these past months that felt like I’d reached a plateau, but it’s gone now, and I’m back in the habit of being amazed and thrilled with every day.

When my mother came to see me, she kept saying every day has been absolutely different, every day an adventure of a new sort. It’s true, and I suddenly realize, sitting up on the hill, wrapped up in my polar bear hat with a beautiful friend and a liter of beer wrapped in a plastic bag, staring down at the ancient castle, staring out at the sighing sky, that this is my life. Everyday, an adventure, everyday a swelling of amazement, strange beauty, curious discovery, everyday a brand new page, a new memory. It’s incredible that after seven months, nothing has grown bland and gray even though I have walked many of the city’s curving streets, even though each day I wake up and sit in class, even though I have seen the Alhambra glowing patiently a hundred times, and even though a certain kind of routine has formed, the sense of adventure has never left. And then there’s a moment when it kind of just makes sense.

When you leave everything behind and embark on a journey to a strange place with a simple quest, to learn the language and see the things that place has to offer, you grow different eyes. You are no longer content to wake up each day and move in sensible pre-determined steps, you are instead inclined to throw your arms out behind you and give yourself to the opportunities that appear, to wiggle yourself into new places, experiment with discomfort and rapture, with ignorance and awe, helplessness and determination.  You become determined to build an adventure with your bare hands, and whatever falls into them.