España, Day 3 or Then and Now

I remember the first time I went to Spain. It was over 15 years ago. I still remember how magical it all was, even the simplest things, ice cream in the Plaza Cervantes, cobblestone streets, loving how they give you a little snack when ordering my requisite Fanta naranja at a cafe. And may I add that the disgusting, fake neon orange, corn syrup-filled Fanta orange soda in the U.S. is nothing like Fanta naranja. I remember tears coming to my eyes when I saw an Andalucian flamenco show. I remember saying goodbye to a Spanish boy I had a desperate crush on. But that was then.

Now...

I'm with him.

Instead of a Spanish host mom's house, an Airbnb apartment is my dwelling.


















Now I have a kid and missing him like crazy. WhatsApp video chat all the way!
Now I have a research project to undertake and it's going all right. None of my fears about archival work were actually founded. Now that I know how it all works, I'm completely fine.

Lines That I Couldn't Change

"In My Place" by Coldplay has always been my nostalgic/melancholy moodiness anthem.

It reminds me of undergrad, a general sense of wistfulness, a certain sadness at the cognitively dissonant fact that things change yet remain the same, an unsettled feeling, unease at the fact that no matter where I am, no matter how my identit(ies) have (re)adjusted, I hit this solipsistic nerve again and again, it represents a resigned realization that there are certain elements of the circumstances which circumscribe me that are uncontrollable, left to the whims of outrageous fortune, it conjures up something inescapable, something bittersweet, an unanswerable mental query over whether I'd be satisfied even if everything I wished for were instant reality, it's wondering what could have been, what would have been, an unspecified yearning, the inexplicable urge to wander, to slip away unnoticed.

I got this awesome travel grant. I didn't even apply for it. It was a "perk," more or less, of being promoted and receiving the same benefits as a newly hired cohort of professors from so-called underrepresented groups. I ain't mad, I'm just saying. So, with this generous travel grant, I'm going to Spain (among other places) and decided to bring my husband along.

We're leaving next Monday. Well actually, on Wednesday, we're leaving to go visit my parents for a few days, leave the kid with them, and then leave. Which means that I should be doing a ton of preparation and packing and making sure of this and that, but I'm not. Instead, I'm lounging around in my pajamas, blogging, not wanting to do anything worthwhile.

I should be excited. Ostensibly, I am. I mean, hello, a "working vacation" in southern Spain? With your also Spanish-speaking beloved? Kid-free? Why can't you just be happy?

I'm doing archival work. Which means I have no earthly idea what I'm doing. I have a general idea of what to expect, just from talking with others who have done similar work and reading about this particular site online. But I can't stop myself from imagining people's perception of my competence, or rather, lack thereof. I show up to this official, super strictly regulated Spanish archive that contains centuries-old documents looking like how I look. Young-looking, black, female. You're a professor? I mean, I'll have an official-looking letter of introduction to present to the archivists to "prove" that yes, I am indeed a professor who is looking for a very specific piece of documentation, but still, I'm kind of dreading the initial scrutiny. Like, the questioning of if I belong there. Me, an anomaly in the U.S. and most certainly in Spain, among all the "serious" scholars who definitely know what they're doing.

I mean, I'm looking forward to the trip, I truly am. But there's another part of me that feels strangely ambivalent about it.