Espana

To people watch in Alicante is to find all mannor of elegance and sweat, elegance and buzz cuts, elegance - the high-waisted skirt fitted to the slim woman, now past children, now in a phase of her lfe she has found power and confidence in her straight spine and sure of her beauty

when the theatre opens the seniors are lined up, older women in eyeshadow and gold hoops with silk scarves and loneliness- B. would love it here. People do not get old and fade out, shuffling through their last decades with degradion and solitude- they go to the beach with their friends, sporting a new red poka-dot bikini, their beach chairs and coka in hand. they dress up to walk BLVD Espana in a shift dress and low heels, hair curled and smart, colorful glasses framing her face, bringing out the green hazel in her eyes

I love Spain. the quiet evenings of green olives and salted fish, the buttered toast and cafe con leche to open the day.
the men here are not without style either. While S and Z played on the playground of trains and planes and automobiles. a gentleman walked by with a crisp peach shirt, short sleeves, top white button undone. sunglasses shading him from the last Med´n sunlight

The market here, indoors at the top of the city. 1921, the 1st floor you enter on in all meat but no smells of the dark edges, the slit of fur from fat here. just gorgeous meat, neatly arranged and seperated. Maybe I am a sucker for the organization of the state. the cleanthliness codes and control regimes/ if I can buy four types of heirloom tomatoes, tigre babies, sweet fat cherries, marbled that just fit in your palm and firm bathing beauties, so be it. bring on the power of the state.
there are dried mushrooms and fresh- oyster and portabella, so many I don´t have the names for/ I´d simply point and order / grill with deep green olive iol, crumble of sea sale and serve.
the artichokes and fava beans, the white donut peach- donut peach I´ll rename olympus peach-

we wander to the fish and such silver fresh sardines brigh and luster dazzling in a way the frozen ones I buy in NYC have lost- sunfish and emperor and the impossibly strange lemon fish- a great Red Armored fish with its mouth puckered an even deeper monsterous red- the size of a huge belly of an old man- the thick red skin with seeminly no scales-
the skate a light, virgin pink and white sliced and spread /

we buy black figs and white peaches, raw and salted sunflowers and when we leave an hour has passed by under the vaulted ceiling and thick cooled walls/
Ah, Espana
Ah, Viva