"Oh, the healing silence of Spain! It is like lanolin being rubbed into your soul."
This was written in 1963 (a good vintage that!) Penelope Chetwode in her book Two Middle-aged Ladies in Andalusia rode around the interior with poor maps and hardly any Spanish - a good read. This is how I feel when I sit on my patio with only views and the silence broken by bird song.
"Preparation, I have often said, is rightly two-thirds of any venture." Amelia Earhart
"A man alone without any human contact dies away like a candle without air."
Blaise Pascal
'' Just because my path is different doesn't mean I'm lost''
Gerard Abrams
"Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."
A. A. Milne
"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude."
Dr. Maya Angelou
"You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself."
Alan Alda
And here´s my favourite introduction from the hordes of books I´ve read (what does it say about me).
"To be alone by choice is one of the great luxuries of the world. I went to Spain alone. I wanted to discover it, not have it pointed out to me by friends, guidebooks, experts, or that most powerful of Big Brothers, controlled tourism.
I knew enough Spanish to eat, ask directions and find the bathroom ....."
These are from the book Spanish Recognitions by Mary Lee Settle who at 82 years old travelled from the USA to Spain (alone!)
This book is on my re-read list but if you´d like to borrow it I´m happy to post it to you, as long as you post it back. Remember, I´ll know where you live!
Antonio Machado, born in 1875, wrote that “my childhood is a memory of a patio in Seville, and a bright orchard where the lemon tree grows”.¨There’s clear evidence that multi-tasking just makes you bad at multiple things simultaneously.¨
These are my own words written after a
Writers Retreat in Barcelona....
“I wrote and shared, laughed and cared, I grew, I learned, I was encouraged, and I knew that in five days those five ladies touched my life. They helped me grow in self-confidence, in confidence in my writing and in myself.”
