Barcelona. A city that has a heartbeat. You walk down her many winding veins & get to know her heart. I swear I left a piece of my heart in the streets of Barcelona, but Barcelona gave me a new key to a hidden door of my own heart.
I am the most sentimental person I know. I work in a series of lasts: "This is the last time I'll see that building; this is the last time I'll be a kid in my house etc..". I don't mean to, but I try to hold onto things. As I've said before: clenching sand in hopes of turning it into stone. Which never works. I'm so busy trying to create something solid that my hands are unpurposely (I'm aware that isn't a word but wtf ever) too busy to catch new experiences. Looking backwards makes you miss the scenery beside you.
Barcelona taught me to embrace deeply & release thankfully.
I heard a quote once: "Travel deeply & lightly". I never understood this until my feet met Barcelona.
In Barcelona, you see hearts quickly & deeply.. especially in the hostel environment. Everyone is their truest self-- exchanging their dreams & fears the way Americans discuss weather & blind 'how are you?s". I swear it is the the greatest currency I've used.
Often you share things you haven't even shared with yourself-- with people you will maybe never see again. Those people make the greatest imprints on your heart-- lightly & deeply.
Moments like a jam session with brand new friends from all over the world on a hill that overlooks all of Barcelona demand all of you.
I fiercely believe that you are most human when you travel. Maybe that sounds pretentious, but I truly believe it. You don't have much time, so you don't take people, places, sights, tastes or moments for granted. You embrace them each to their greatest point. You have no choice. The hard part is letting go when the camino begins once more. Traveling is about the camino-- the Northern path. Even as I sit on this rooftop in Madrid-- drinking freshly made lemonade, hearing the murmurs of a dozen different languages, feeling the heat & thankful breeze, seeing the Spanish roof tiles wise by time-- I want to hold onto it. I grieve at the idea that one day I may not remember this exact moment.
I even want to remember the crazier moments: having my train from the airport literally derail for a bit.. waking up on a bus from Barcelona to Madrid to a bomb squad & 5 poliçia across the seat from me. I want to clench every feeling close to my chest.
But this is not how you live. Pre-generating sorrow only increases it in the future. You cannot look back with grief or forward will sorrow; you must, must, must live in the present with ever open hands.. embracing the camino fully, deeply & lightly.
I have so many thoughts & memories so sweet I often mistake them for dreams thanks to Barcelona. I hope to sit with her again.
Barcelona taught me how to say goodbye in a way that holds an understanding that life is a camino that stops for no one... but a camino with beautiful views which demand your breath & every sense.
The heartbeat of Barcelona will be a song I will always have stuck in my head.
Thank you to each of the beautiful people I met-- the crazy rambunctious Aussies, the lighthearted Argentinians, the alluring Swedes, the passionate Italians, the thoughtful English men, the adventurous New Zealanders, the Mexican surfers who explained why the police were on our bus. You have made the camino the adventure of a lifetime.
I want to end with one of my favorite excerpts by Aldous Huxley:
"It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.
No rhetoric, no tremolos,
no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.
And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.
So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling,
on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag,
completely unencumbered.”
The camino calls ever North. Throw away your baggage & go forward. Lightly, lightly, my fellow travelers. Ready to embrace unapologetically & willing to walk forward joyfully. Lightly & deeply.
Forever further up & forever further in.
-Brie
