Adventure.

Salt and vinegar burn the sides of my mouth, the tiny granules sinking deep into the holes I have chewed in my lips and peeling tiny layers of skin off of my tongue. It has been a week or two since my arrival in Madrid and I am starving; the little gas station where we have pulled off to grab some lunch serves some fairly questionable bocadillos. I am still craving the beautiful tomato and mozzarella salad from last night, my single glass of white wine turning yellow in the moonlight, but for now these chips will have to do. I am tired in the best sense of that word. My body has been abused by my time traveling in Spain, spending hours on my feet in cathedrals and castles, in bars across town, and shakily standing in Metros. I have warped myself physically in order to take in all of the sights and sounds and scenery that make up the culture of this ancient city. I am exhausted, but happy.

In Madrid, we do not rest, we do not stop, we do not sleep. Instead, we fill those craved hours of slumber with bottles of red wine and true tourism. I have never once heard the uttering’s, “Hasta manana.” We do everything today. Ironically, the Spanish way of life is leisurely and slow-paced. Each business man, fruit stand owner, and fútbol player takes a half an hour break cada día at 11; the only people still employed during that sacred half-hour coffee break are the baristas who crank out miniature cups of café con leche for weary patrons. The afternoon siesta that takes place at noon is mandatory, especially for those who remained at the bars until their 6:30 a.m. closing time. From what I can tell, they sleep, they party, they sleep again, and they are not worried about tomorrow.

I know that I am an American solely because I need the rest where my European companions do not. If not for that detail, I would be able to give myself completely to the feeling that I belong here. Everything else about their culture and society are things that I have desired my entire life but have never quite known how to ask for. The Spanish people appreciate detail in ways that I have never before imagined possible. They taste their colors instead of seeing them, arranging bright green and red tomatoes on a bed of lettuce, adorning the salad of colores vivos with a regal crown of golden corn kernels and shreds of queso blanco. My señora hands me a plate far too full of this dish, imploring me to eat, and I do. I feel as though I am stuffing one of Kandinsky’s masterpieces onto my tongue, trying to draw meaning and personalities out of each flavor and color.

The architectural achievements of Spanish artists are clearly visible in every city I visit, from the Escher-like streets in Toledo to the Muslim palace, Alhambra, in La Granada. We teeter uphill in the calles angostas, slurping jet-lag reducing gelatos and sipping from our plastic to-go cups of wine. When we reach the seventy-fifth step, stumbling drunkenly out of the tower of whatever castle we have just succeeded vanquishing, our eyes are opened, really opened, to view the endless stretch of patchwork landscape in the paisaje de campo of beautiful Spain. If we chose our religion based on architecture alone, I would convert to Catholicism immediately.

The beauty in Spain is dispersed from the physical and the structural to the emotional and the imaginable. There is a certain kind of magic that takes place on the dirty underground metros unlike anywhere else in the world. Standing shakily on the tiled floor or grasping tightly to the vertical, orange handrails, we learn to fall in love. I am in love with the city, in love with the olfactory senses, and in love with stranger smiling shyly at me in the seat across from me on the subway. The cramped space between strangers leaves little room for timidity. You make a five-minute friendship that remains in your heart for a lifetime. Then, the blue line stops at the yellow, and you tumble out of the metal doors, stepping blinking into the sunlight.

The epicenter of Madrid culminates at the metro stop, Sol. Everyone clambers out here, from the club going adolescents to the dingy protestors living in tents outside of the entrance. The world of Spanish college students looks so vastly different from my American friends. Instead of wearing neon tank tops bestowed upon them by their fraternity brothers, the college graduates in Madrid are garnished in dingy hippie clothes and dreadlocks. Their armpits are sans deodorant, and their teeth do not appear to have greeted the bristles of a toothbrush in weeks. These protestors are fighting for their right to hold down a job, while their American counterparts are still fighting for their right to party. It is a completely different world off the red line.

A short walk from Sol leads you to Retiro Park. The park is next to the Prado museum, but the real artwork is in the nature and beauty within the gates. There are miles and miles of perfectly manicured trees and soft, luscious Spanish grass, and a little lake with a tiny fleet of row boats upon its glassy waters. The sun is reflecting light off of the marble statues and columns surrounding the lake, and the only logical solution is to blow off studying for finals and purchase a large Mahou and another bag of chips.

We take the bus to Santander, a little beach town on the northern border. Tomorrow I’m going to wake up early and do yoga by myself on the beach, surrounded by miles and miles of perfect white sand and fat-bellied tourists. The view from my hotel window looks like the picture of Spanish beaches that I had in my mind before I embarked on my adventure. Everything about Spain seems to be better than whatever my imagination dreamed up, and for the first time in my life, I know what it feels like to be completely free.

Hip

This is for any girl

Who has dated some hipster

With an all-organic pantry,

And a blue and yellow bike,

And an economic beard,

And a book on Kafka that he doesn’t understand,

And a Kandinsky in his foyer,

And a cat named Mary Francis,

And a new, skinny little girlfriend

In BDG high rise cigarette jeans

That smokes the blue American Spirits

That you never could learn to enjoy.

As hard as he tries to be cool and urban,

The fact still remains that

He’s not even from Brooklyn,

And he works at Jamba Juice,

And has a pedophile mustache,

And spends more money on pot than rent.

“I’m just trying to be free,” he says.

And you want to smash his free-range eggs

On his stupid little bike

But

He would just think that the paint chips were artsy and cool.

And you would only give him new material

To self-produce on his indie-label album

That no one has ever heard of, except you.

Because you used to “respect him as an artist”

Or some bullshit like that.

So honey,

Keep dating girls who look like Zooey Deschanel

Or Meredith Godreau

Or Florence Welch

And raving about David Bazan

And Headphones

And Pedro the Lion

Even though they’re all the same person,

Because eventually, all those American Spirits

Will cancel out all the health benefits

Of consuming locally grown produce,

And your yoga class wont be able to save you.

Because even though you think you’re a god,

You’re just a man

Who hasn’t showered in awhile.

DISCLAIMER

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Glass

My two best friends passed away last year. I called them Mimi and Oopie, because when I was learning to talk, I could never quite pronounce “grandma” and “grandpa” correctly. They didn’t mind. They loved me more than anybody in my whole family, more than my screaming, divorcing parents, more than my sullen stepbrothers who came along a few years later when my mother remarried. Mimi and Oopie were my whole life.

I’ll never see their house again after today, but I have it memorized from when I was growing up. Their blue carpet never seemed strange or outdated. Mimi and Oopie were artists, and their taste in furniture and decorations reflected this. Modeling portraits of my mother hung above their off-white stripe-patterned couch. The walls were wooden, giving off the appearance of a cabin-y, artsy home. On the right wall of their kitchen hung an old 1950’s radio. It was built into the house when they first moved in, a few years after my mom was born.

Artifacts were delicately placed on nearly every surface of the house. Little wooden animals hand-carved by children in South Africa from the safari they took before I was born marched up and down the side table near the entrance of the proper living room. Nobody was allowed in there, unless they were very special, fancy company, but Mimi and I used to sit on the floor in there for hours, looking at the little painted orbs she brought back from China.

“The man who painted this went blind after he finished it,” she told me, pointing out the tiny little details. “He painted the whole thing backwards on the inside of the ball with a single hair on a paintbrush.”

At age eight, the man himself didn’t impress me, but the time my grandmother took to get to know him before buying his piece of artwork did. Next, she showed me the little balls of Venetian glass that she had taken back from her trip to Italy with my grandfather in the early 1970’s.

My grandfather entered the room at this point, crouching down near the arm of the couch where I was curled up, inspecting the colorful little glass balls an inch away from the tip of my nose.

“Mimi and I nearly got taken out by the Italian police,” he says, and I jump at the sound of his voice, my concentration breaking for a moment. I rest the glass in my lap, looking up at him.

“What happened?” I ask, and Oopie laughs.

“Why don’t you tell her this one, hon?” He glances over at my grandmother, who has a far-away look in her eyes. Oopie always called her “hon.” He only really referred to her as Ruth when he was talking about her to other people in conversation.

Mimi smiles, and begins telling their story.

“I was very, very sick in the hospital when your mom was about twenty-five. The doctors didn’t think that I was going to make it. When I was finally told that I was being released from the hospital, Oopie was so happy that he showed up early to take me home. The doctors were helping me pack up and get dressed, when he showed up in my hospital room with an envelope. Your grandfather was always trying to surprise me. I opened the envelope and inside was two tickets to Germany. The airplane was to leave the next day. I looked up at Dr. Wallace for support, to get him to back me up on the fact that I was sick; I needed to go home and rest, but the doctor just told Harv what a marvelous idea it was. Adventure was just what I needed. Your grandfather didn’t let me think about being sick even for a moment. We packed our bags when we got home from the hospital and left for Germany the next day.”

“When we arrived in Germany, we decided to buy a car, so we bought a beautiful new Mercedes. Harv’s next surprise was to take me to Italy, so we got in the car and began driving to Venice. At this time, Germany and Italy weren’t getting along. Several Italian policemen with big machine guns stopped us at the Italian border. I have never been so scared in all my life.”

Mimi reaches over and grabs her husband’s hand, and the two of them look at each other for just a moment. In their eyes are all the memories of a fifty-five year marriage that began when my grandfather was fresh out of the marines and my grandmother was only nineteen. She continues to speak.

“Harv got out of the car and ran towards the policemen, waving his arms. I thought for sure that they were going to shoot him. I tried to open the car door to stop him, but he shouted at me over his shoulder to stay put. I watched in horror as he got closer to those big, black guns, and I remember thinking, I was so close to dying three days ago. I can’t lose my husband after all of this. Luckily, the little Italian dialogue that Harv knew saved our skins. He explained that we were Americans on vacation and that we meant no harm. The Italian police allowed us to return to Germany, and we drove the long way to Venice across the French border instead. We brought the car home with us to remember our adventure, along with those little balls of Venetian glass, sold to us by a merchant along the canals.”

Today, I am twenty, and saying goodbye to their lovely home. The women who are going to be in charge of their estate sale are arriving. I try to be strong with my mother as they place price tags on the flowered couches, the big, glass cabinet that held all of Mimi’s Lladro figurines, and even my grandfather’s enormous blue armchair. Nobody was allowed to sit in his chair, not even me, and the thought of some strangers coming over to buy it and take it away from him to let their sticky-fingered children climb all over makes me feel dizzy and weak.

“Excuse me?” I say, tugging on the fat, olive sleeve of one of the estate sale ladies. “Can I keep that?”

She is putting a price tag on the collection of little Venetian glass balls, a meager fifty dollars apiece.

“Of course, sweetheart,” she says, and without warning, pulls me into a smothering hug against her giant bosom.

When she lets go, I realize that I have been crying. Fat, sloppy tears are speckling the front of my dress, and the soggy tissue that had held them back when Oopie’s blue chair was being priced is now in shreds stuck to my palm.

This is all I have left of my dear, sweet grandparents. These little balls filled with swirling colors and patterns and designs. I am only allowed to take two, and I choose the one with blue and pink flowers, and the one with multicolored hexagons. I study them closely, two little worlds in my hands, all that is left of my two best friends.

I sit on the arm of the couch, gazing at the delicate orbs, and they flash rainbow patterns onto the living room walls in the fading Los Angeles sunlight. I slowly come to the realization that Mimi and Oopie aren’t gone, not really. These two little glass balls provide me with a perfect example of their love for one another, a love they extended to their favorite granddaughter, me. Everything that my grandparents stood for has been ingrained in my memory with every story they told. My grandfather, a brave navy corpsman and marine, who married my grandmother just a little after World War II ended taught me the value of aging adventurously rather than gracefully. I imagine him leaping out of their little German car and running with his arms flailing towards the Italian police, and I laugh. He sacrificed himself to keep my grandmother safe.

Balancing my grandfather’s energy was my adorable Mimi. She was beautiful, even in the unflattering, greenish light of her hospital room at age eighty-four. From her I learned to laugh and smile and take in life’s hardships with grace and humor. With Mimi, everything was fun and happy and bright. There were always cookies to be baked and paintings to be created and stories to be told. I’ll miss them everyday, but they aren’t really gone.

I wrap the Venetian glass in newspaper, and walk the landscape of their house one last time. I stand in each room for a moment, remembering, and then turn off each light as I leave.

“Take care, sweetheart. We’ll take it from here,” the estate sale ladies tell me. I walk out Mimi and Oopie’s front door for the last time, the balls of glass safe in my pocket, and their stories safe in my heart.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Creative.

I sat at a marred wooden table with my college roommate, discussing the ever-present topic shared amongst the twenty to twenty-five age group: what am I going to be happy doing for the rest of my life? The two of us sipped espresso drinks, exchanging views on the differences between what our passions are, and what talents we will realistically have to exchange for monetary supplements. Both of us are creators; she an artist, I a writer and performer. In a perfect world, she would be a painter, and I would spin stories. We would be well-known for our creative talents, and we would be paid for doing something that we love. Realistically, neither of us is going to bring home the bacon with those kind of goals and ideals. So what now? Do we give up and allow a wave of conformity to wash over our drab, meager existences? Do we seek desk jobs and settle on art as a secondary hobby, soon to fade out with the responsibilities of a full time position in a company, a husband, a family? I do not think that putting any type of creative passion to the wayside is a wise lifestyle choice. Giving up those talents seems almost as unrealistic to me as actually trying to make a career out of them. So how can we implement creativity into our everyday lifestyles? How can we avoid allowing our crafts to fall to the wayside in the hustle-bustle of adult life?

The answer: Creative Energy pervades the Universe. It is up to the artist to harness that energy and know how to call upon it when it is needed. Here are a few ways to channel creative energy, and not end up a completely boring adult:

Try Something New.

New experiences render us into neophytes, wide-eyed with childlike curiosity. Not only does it provide a new, exciting angle to our listless days, but a new hobby, interest, or sensation allows us the opportunity to learn. Most of the time, I pride myself in being an expert at structuring sentences, spotting out specific breeds of puppies, and baking the perfect cupcakes. Taking a more difficult yoga class, studying a different religion, trying a spicier dish at an exotic restaurant, or having a friend teach me a few new sentences in sign language reminds me that I do not know everything.

Take Care of Your Body.

A healthy body allows for a healthy mind. When we feel better, we are able to produce clearer, more cohesive thoughts. Our bodies require consistent maintenance to run smoothly, and it is our responsibility to make sure that our souls have a proper house to inhabit. Pick up some healthy habits that you have been putting off, like committing to a daily exercise regime or a whole-wheat eating plan. You do not need to diet or over-exert yourself to be healthy, but eating a balanced diet and stretching your limbs can cause spiritual and physical healing.

Spread Positive Energy.

The energy and attitude that you put out into the world is the one that you will ultimately be greeted with. Negativity is a terrible virus that clogs the arteries providing open routes to your emotional heart faster than a double-double with extra cheese will stop up the ones allowing blood flow to your physical heart. Tell a friend a joke. Give your mom a compliment. Pet a stranger’s puppy. Hold the door open for the girl who still looks hung over from Dia Del Oso. In short: karma, karma, karma. Creative energy is fueled by positive energy. Without it, your artistic gas tank will remain on empty.

Plan Ahead.

Most creativity is often spontaneous; however, when life’s demands are making it difficult to be that impromptu, planning ahead can be an artist’s best friend. Creativity is a form of control. When the rest of your life is balanced, it is easier to harness that creativity into an art form that you can manage. For instance, I decided during my senior year of high school that in order to gain more life experiences, I was going to study in as many different places as I could fit in my passport. I decided that Spain, London, New York, and Texas sounded vastly different from anything that I was used to during the eighteen years I occupied space in California. Two years later, I have been living in the South, and am about to embark on a journey to Madrid next month. Without careful planning and extreme effort to get to this place in my life, I would not be having these brand-new, creative experiences.

Open Your Mind.

Literature, art, and philosophy have been the inspiration pushing and pulling all inventors, artists, writers, and thinkers for centuries. Find out the history that made some of our modern heroes who they are today. Before the Rolling Stones, there was Mozart; before J.K Rowling there was Shakespeare. “The past is a foreign country,” wrote L.P Hartley. Traveling to that foreign country to discover our modern roots can be inspirational. Face it; everything you can possibly create today has already been done before. Accept this, move on, and remember that “good artists copy and great artists steal,” according to Picasso. The real creativity is found naught in coming up with something nobody has seen before, but from updating an old concept and putting an unexpected twist on it, along with your unique signature.

Grow.

How can we expect to blossom into creative adults if we have not forgiven who we were in high school? Delete your Myspace, toss the photos your long distance ex-boyfriend sent to your college address, put your old yearbooks on a back shelf for the next ten years, and start over. You do not have to be the nerd, the athlete, the theatre kid, the Jesus-freak, the introvert, the mean girl, or the douche bag ever again. If you hated who you were in high-school, peel back that skin, and rest assured that nobody in your film class knows that you ate peanut butter sandwiches by yourself in the library the entirety of tenth grade. If you were one of those fortunate people who loved high-school, and every single moment from buying school supplies the summer after eighth grade up until the last slow song on prom night, I am sorry to say that those were your glory days. Either re-invent yourself, or end up the protagonist of a Bruce Springsteen song.

Breathe.

Although we are not members of the robot army sent from the future to destroy John Connor, we as humans need to recharge our batteries. Taking a few moments out of every day to spend with yourself can be extremely rewarding to your creative side. Connect with your inner spirit, meditate, reflect, and breathe. Remind yourself of all of your accomplishments, refresh your memory regarding your goals for the future, and thank yourself for being so awesome.

Renew and Revisit.

All of the imaginary games we used to play as children are living proof that our most raw, creative energy stems from our youth. Revisit your childhood by buying a pack of 94 Crayola Crayons--the smell alone will trigger happy memories. Re-read your favorite Dr. Seuss poem, and remember what it was that made you fall in love with simple rhyme schemes peppering simple truths. Take flight on the swing set at the local park. Eat a whole box of Gushers in one sitting. (Alright...maybe that last one only applies to me, but you catch my drift.) Your inner child harvests all of the untapped creativity that is stifled in your daily life by your grown-up responsibilities. Coax it out of your system with the promise of a new friendship, and maybe just a little bit of sugar-coated bribery.

The future can be scary for all of us aspiring children’s authors, sculptors, actors, photographers, designers, inventors, philosophers, painters, musicians, comedians, song-writers, make-up artists, fiction novelists, art history appreciators, and filmmakers. The job market for fire-jugglers and yoga instructors is quite limited, especially in our current economy. Do not fret. You will find a way to create, even in the midst of your mature, adult life. An artist only starves if he has nothing to feed his creative energy.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.