“O men and women of Al-Andalus, how happy you must be to have water, shadows, river, and tree!
The Garden of Eternal Felicity is not beyond your world, but is part of your earth…
Do not believe that you might enter into hell. No one enters into hell after being in the gardens of paradise.”
—Ibn Jafaya (1058-1138)
Seville, May 25th 2025
abba Sevilla Hotel
Our final night in Seville. Mostly packed except some swimwear and hand-washed clothes drying out on the hotel room patio, we flip through dubbed Spanish-language programming on TV. Sitting in bed next to me, Lindsey cries out, “I was watching Property Brothers, and now it's bombs!” Spanish narration over grainy World War II footage of aerial combat; not her cup of tea. A combo HGTV-History Channel situation; classic misdirection. We flip to something else. I’m watching halfheartedly, culling through photos from the day, as well as organizing work from the past month on my phone. A giant collection of landscapes from my productive week in the Outer Hebrides, developed at record pace. It occurs to me that time is slipping through my fingers in a strange way. I keep checking items off my extremely organized bucket list - big trips, new experiences, radical change - and yet everything somehow still feels the same. Age, and perspective, do that perhaps. I look at the bucket list. It is almost entirely comprised of travel, hobbies, and creative or expressive work. Outside the bucket list, though, is where I live the majority of my life. There, I am grounded by two incredible yet incredibly mundane patterns. One: wake up, go to work, and walk people through life-changing illness, serious grief, often death. Clock in, clock out, sometimes watch hearts shatter (or have my own shatter) in between. Two: get home and do roughly the same thing with Jordan every day (read, play, goof off, share a smoothie, clean up, laugh, go to bed). In many ways a boring home life, were it not for the human being growing and developing and acquiring his own feelings and loves and dreams beneath our roof and our watchful gaze. How to make sense of this? The passage of time, so ordinary as to be banal, depressive even. And yet, such a gift, so much beauty, on an average day. The bucket list - being on this trip, in Spain - helps me see it, gives me space to actually feel it. I’m trying to feel it, to not let it slip from my grasp. The sand keeps running through my fingers, to the other end of the hourglass.
In the late afternoon, after spending a few hours with Lindsey up at the pool (for the last time), I get dressed and wander off into the city alone before dinnertime. Moving quickly, I head west to the banks of the Guadalquivir, and then over the bridge to the neighborhood of Triana. Across the river, the cosmopolitan bustle of Seville gives way to quieter authenticity, to alleyways lined with streetlamps and colourful facades, to dogs barking and old men playing cards on a Sunday afternoon. On my own, I find myself immersed in the scene, shooting with the intention and clarity that I usually gain when approaching cherished landscapes. And I get very, very lost in my thoughts. Strolling back along the Muelle de la Sal, the riverfront walk on the east bank, I think back to other introspective, silent walks, and the people I have shared them with. For obvious reasons, my mind turns to Mexico and our Lady of Zapopan. The significance of some days, some journeys, some conversations, does not become clear until long after they have come and gone. How I wish I could do this in reverse. I will someday read this again, just as I have looked back on my old writings from those formative, halcyon days. But what if I could go back and show my younger self this journal, these thoughts and feelings? What would the former me say? Would that we could all crawl out of our graves, happily, our newborn eyes blinking away deep sleep, ready to experience the world all over again.
Earlier this morning, the four of us toured the Real Alcázar of Seville, an elaborate royal estate of interconnected gardens, courtyards, and palaces. I misread (or misremembered) our planned ticket time, nearly made us late for entry, but nothing that a slightly expedited morning routine and a brisk walk down to the cathedral district (the American in me showing) couldn’t rectify. Four days ago when we checked in, Lindsey and I marveled at our hotel’s liberal breakfast hours (until 11 AM); we’ve now come quite close to sleeping in so hard that we miss it. We have just about adopted la vida tapa, or perhaps it has adopted us. The palace itself - the photos will probably speak for themselves. I take a few portraits of Lindsey, and her family, with the surroundings. Moreso than the architecture (an eclectic blend of Islamic and Christian-European influences that seems to vary from building-to-building and room-to-room), or the flora (marvelously landscaped magnolias, yews, and plane-trees; colourful oranges, jacarandas, bougainvilleas, lantanas, and trumpet vines), what impresses me is the way that natural and designed elements flow into one another. It’s a marvelous place - the ostentatious wealth of the former Spanish Empire on full display, wealth which flowed from the subjugated New World all the way across the Atlantic, up the Guadalquivir from its marshy mouth, and to the river-port right here in Seville. Impressive as it is now, the Alcázar must have been quite the sight in its heyday.
Night brings a subdued, somber feeling, evocative of transitions and new directions. After returning from my walk alone, I meet Lindsey and parents on the hotel’s rooftop lounge to cash in our free drink vouchers (one per person), sipping on vino tinto as the sun sets upon the city skyline. Dinner in the restaurant just thirty feet from our hotel entrance downstairs - we’re too lazy to walk any farther. Lindsey’s mom tells me about what a good kid she was growing up; I share paella de mariscos with her dad. In the morning, it’s off to the train station and Granada. Goodnight.
