Across the Pond
By Noah Borgandy
Noah Borgandy is a sophomore English major studying second semester in Spain.
I always wonder what to write for my column from Spain. I wonder if people who’ve never met me want to hear my thoughts from across the ocean, or if people want to hear about the cathedrals and castles we saw during our rainy journey to the south.
It seems the most important things to recount from Andalucía would be to say that we visited the Alhambra in Granada, the Mezquita in Córdoba, the Museo de Bellas Artes and the Cathedral in Sevilla (Seville).
But it is difficult to relate the beauty of these things, to impress them upon someone who has not seen them.
And, at the same time, I find that it is the little things I tend to remember most anyway, and these are the things that I enjoy hearing from the travels of my friends.
It’s the oranges lying on the streets and sidewalks in Sevilla, and the wet ground, and the dark clouds drifting over the Cathedral, where they used to ride horses up to the bell-tower, and the city skyline. Or the neon lights from the bars reflecting on the quiet Guadalquivir late into the night, and us returning to the hotel at four a.m. and still people were out on the streets.
It’s the little Arabic café I had lunch in, and the lonely walk through Granada with my hood up and my shoes getting wet.
Or the cats crawling under the hedges in the Jardín de García Lorca-Federico García Lorca, the Spanish poet killed during the civil war, who wrote “Verde que te quiero verde.”
I thought of that as we ate our lunches in the park, and the gray clouds threatened to bring rain over the brown apartment buildings and the far off snow-capped mountains.
And the views; the rolling Spanish farmland from Sevilla to Córdoba, the snow in the Sierra Nevadas, and the sun setting over the dry hills when our bus stopped at a gas station on the journey back north.
I believe that this living with our eyes always open and seeing the gifts that we receive has something to do with our perception. “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness” (Matthew 6).
I do not think this involves the closing of our eyes to that which does not make sense to us, to that which is the sin of the world, to that which is pain. Often joy comes with pain, and often beauty is found amidst ugliness.
I only share these specifics in the hopes that something universal can be seen, in the belief that this world is a letter from our Lord, which we are to read and enjoy, in the belief that every comma and ellipsis is a pause and a mystery where God exists.
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