Another success!

In daily living our successes often seem small and insignificant. When we maintain a journal, we can clearly see where much more occurred to our good credit than we might have been aware of. We have many adventures, I am telling all of you, throughout the day. Your surroundings are like a stage or a story plot, with you in the center! In the end, when everything else around me crumbles into dust, I still have my writing. That why I am a firm believer in everybody developing some sort of artistic talent, be it whatever it may. When all else crashes one may then throw himself into his creation.

http://activemuse.org/2022_Collections/2022_shishir/stories/HL_Dowless.html

Wow, AND away!

Tuesday, 7/26/2022

Well, its a real stuck in the mud day. We awoke, had breakfast, then went walking. The administration area is closed. We have no internet access. There is not much around to do. We put together a bed. We watered flowers. We bathed, and we lounged around.

Real life is like that sometimes. Life can’t be all action and excitement, especially when one is on a limited income such as I am. 3 grand must get me all around here, and to Hawaii and back. I’ve sure played and done it all in my day. I had a publishing success story. I signed a contract with a company to publish my story, Bartolby Hill, in a Christmas anthology. He wanted unusual stories, and I had one to send to him. Nobody has ever written a Christmas story like the one I did. I made 40.00 dollars on it. I am not getting rich, but who knows who might get hold of that story. I was based on a grain of truth.

My mind loves to drift, since often I am thinking of my next poem, short story, or novel. An idea for another novel is gradually coming into my mind. I want to write a realistic Gothic style of horror novel about a man with a ghostly lover. Since I am here in Latin America I am getting ideas in regard to the scenery.

The community is filled with concrete houses surrounded by Bastille walls. The houses have large Doric columns on the front porch patio, and massive wooden double doors. In the center of the Doric columns hangs crystal and gold plated chandeliers. Scenes of the Virgin Mary and of the Crucifixion passion colorfully scream out from above the huge massive double doors. Many of the windows are crafted from fragments of glass colored emerald, sapphire, amber, and gold. Few windows have picture scenes, only the colorful tint described.

The porch areas and the areas leading up to these homes are covered by white, black, and gray pewter tiles. These homes seem to be based on the same designs found in the ruin of Pompeii, and Italy at large. The Italian Villa style is dominant, and one that truly pulls at my own heart, as if it has soul. Shattered glass of many colors sitting atop the Bastille wall intimidate like snarling fangs out at all those who walk on the street passing by. Electric fence and barbed wire make the lives of potential thieves even more complicated when it arches above the knife-like shards of kaleidoscopic glass. The magnificence of these homes may be viewed through the bars of iron gates in various places along this large granite stone and white concrete wall.

The environmental spirits applaud the design of these homes. This supernatural cheer is evident in the dance of clear red, blue, and purple flowers found on vines growing all over this wall, as far as any walker can see. This general union with the gray and off-white stone, blended with the white of the concrete mortise, melds into an astonishingly natural panorama scene, rather than contrasting against any type of lucid secular order. The eternally guarding glass-shards and the evil angled electrified razor wire, add a certain elegant spice to the mortal scene, being tinted back, gray, and silver, rather than crimson, orange, or bright yellow, which lash out against the spirits of nature.

Upon every roof is cemented orange or brown tile. Some have an emerald appearance, resembling more the tint of fresh bamboo sections slice in half the long way and turned upside down, than any type of porcelain. This color marries the home at large more with the puffing wind, the dancing flowers, the date palms, the colorful ibis lilies of multiple varieties, and the perfectly trimmed carpet grass.

In the center of this community the walker is impressed with a large open park-like garden of palm trees, elegant steel and wood benches, head high palm flowers, and perfect awe inspiring hand-chipped statues of ancient Spanish and Greek gods, standing near small pools of water. Upon the arms of these statues often hangs the guarders of newly wedded couples who have taken their vows, in beseech of celestial blessings throughout their marriage. Two cups of blood-like rose wine and servings of bon-bon sweets, seals the deal according to local custom.

How does it sound thus far? Did the visuals establish a mood, that gradually sets a scene? Stay tuned for more tomorrow.

Traveling Spain & Greece On A Pauper’s Dime With A Purpose

For food any time at McDonald’s is no deal when in Spain. Always go local, for better quality and more quantity at a lower price. While at the bus station we had coffee and crescents for 2 Euros. The bus ride to Salamanca began at 1500 and was pleasantly relaxing. The Spanish countryside was open, with scattered fir trees and other vegetation, interconnecting antique stone walls crisscrossing the open landscape, overlooking abandoned stonewalled farmhouses with numerous working large corn and peanut fields. Strangely I noticed few olive plantations as we traveled.

We arrived in Salamanca at 1730. From the bus station we caught a taxi to our new address at Calle Martin Alonzo Padres, block 3, rows 14/16, a 35 minute walk from downtown, and approximatly15 minutes from the closest bus station. As we walked haplessly along, from the balcony window our hostess, named Marcala, greeted us with waves and cheers. She promptly opened her doors, welcoming us both warmly into our new abode for the next 6 weeks. Her fees at the time were four hundred Euros per month.

Soon as we made our way inside our new room, dropped off our bags, and made ourselves comfortable, Marcala brought in a large bowl filled with fresh cherries. She showed us where the kitchen, bathroom, and living room was located, informing us that we were welcome to use them. Marcala continued speaking with us, assuring us that breakfast would be served up fresh in the morning when we awoke.

When she had finished speaking with us, she hurried us both along, inviting us to catch the bus with her where she would show us the avenue to the college where my wife was attending, and the locations of the market. She kindly gave me the keys as we rode past the market, then exiting at a cathedral library somewhere on a main avenue. She parted with us, to my surprise since my Spanish translations are sometimes off, and we both were soon on our own way.

The wife and I walked down several streets in Salamanca, not knowing where we were or how to come back. We stopped at the local grocery market and purchased a weeks groceries for 10 Euros, including two beer and two liter boxes of red wine purchased for 2.84 Euros. The lady had informed us that if we become lost, then she lived at the last bus stop on line thirteen, at Huerta Otea, near the bus station at Advansa. She kindly informed us that her house was the only one with a pool in the entire area. After more than two hours of walking, asking questions, and searching, we finally found the residence again, but shame on us for not retaining the address with phone numbers in case we ever become lost.

Finding specific bus pickup points can be somewhat of a challenge, since most are only triangle shaped six feet tall poles, with the specific number of the bus stopping located at the bottom of a list with many additional bus numbers. All of this occurred on the day of June 17, 2019.