This post is not really about travel. But it recalls travel. It has traces of travel. The other day my roommate was looking for some poetry to inspire her while she was painting. So, I pulled out a book my father had given me years ago titled Poetry Like Bread. It is a compilation of international poets' thoughts on plenitude and poverty, I believe. In any event, the book is secondary to the story. The important part of the story its that I found an envelope tucked into the book. The envelope has a tiny icon on the lefthand corner that says "Hotel Arts Barcelona." I found this fitting because I am in the middle of reading a series of books for my Qualifying Exams from Barcelona and often forget that I have been there twice: first on a trip with a bunch of university students; the second time, with my grandmother in 1999. To be precise, in June of 1999, after I graduated college. My grandmother did and still does like to travel in style. And so, I got to stay at one of the nicer (or at least, more expensive) hotels I've stayed at, while I was with her in Spain. We started in Madrid where I think we spent only four days, and then went to Barcelona for about a week.
Anyway, the front of the envelope also says "Brad Miller Marietta, GA." This is what really moved me because Brad Miller was by the time I graduated college, the closest thing I had to an intellectual partner in crime. It was primarily because we both spent countless hours in the library at Richmond and both enjoyed the occasional cigarette. It was also because Brad could talk incessantly for hours about metaphor and image, in John Donne or in James Joyce or in Shakespeare, and could strum up a good theory about why a certain professor gestured this way or that. Brad was actually the first person who had obsessions with professors like I did. He would analyze them to death, and so would I. It was great fun. Of course, Brad pulled A+s whereas I pulled A-s, and Brad went to do a PhD at Harvard's Divinity School and then disappeared from my life, whereas I wandered around for a couple of years before winding up at Berkeley. Because I think of him, because I wonder where he is, because I wonder who I was then, and because I know he wouldn't care, here's what the letter said:
Brad my love!
hello. I am right now in Spain with my grandma-ma and am getting restless since she is 73 and well, that's enough to make me restless. We were in Madrid for a few days and now we are in Barcelona. We're leaving tomorrow actually. So you get this cool Hotel Arts paper. The hotel is in the Olympic Village. I feel like a snob, actually, very Tarafina-ish [he called me Tarafina, I loved it], writing from Spain, but I need an activity and you appreciate letters and for some reason you were popping into my head. I was daydreaming about Boston and thinking how I'd go to school in Boston too and live with you and then I was thinking I'd never see you since we'd both be working and blah blah blah. So how's Georgia? Leaving college really sucked and I'm sorry we never got Mexican together. Home is rather boring. I really wish we hung out together more at college, but hopefully we will in the future. It was like the last weeks of school made me realize who the important people were, or are, I should say, and fate made me hang out with them (or maybe it was just a gift certificate to Amici's?). So, I had dinner, speaking of, at Café Botín, which was one of Hemingway's favorite hang-outs. Personally, I like Amici's or Coppola's better any day. So look, I am subconsciously writing like you, although, obiously not as perfect. I really miss you. You're the first person I am even contacting, except Sarah, because I had to organize her computer pick-up since I have it. I hope you don't care if this is especially long but I really haven't spoken to anyone but Gram and cabdrivers in over a week. My Spanish is improving. . .
So, I got accepted into the World Teach program and I'm waiting to hear from another internship program. But, definitely going to Ecuador. I've got to start working on school stuff. I am volunteering this summer at the Literacy Volunteers of America -- helping a lot of immigrants who don't know English with computers. It's actually great because I get to talk in Spanish a lot. Oh god, I sound so righteous. Oh well. I'm reading Foucault's The Order of Things. Well, sort of reading. It's so hard, but I was needing something to make me think. Here's the word of the letter, Brad. Ready? APOPHANTICS. Tell me what it is in your response. I am not sure. I cannot find any of my graduation pictures because my mother lost them, but I have the one you gave me because it was in a separate place. Obiously I won't mix us with the lower echelons of Richomd that pepper my other pictures. Ha ha. "We're such snobs" as you say.
I am so art-ed out, don't think, oh god, that Tara, in Spain and writing to ME?! But, I've had enough of the art and museums and cathedrals and paper is one of the best entertainments. This hotel is 5 stars, but I could care less. A bunch of American assholes and me. You have to come up North and see me or else I will have to go visit you in Georgia and meet the fabulous Moxley. Impressed I remember? You better be. Okay. I'll stop my lengthy discourse. But seriously. I really do miss you and I hope all is well with you. I would love to see you some time. Write or call me:
ADDRESS
Stay smart.
Love,
Tarafina
I wrote to Brad over email a few times. I heard he left Harvard. I heard he was in Georgia. I heard he was back at Harvard. I heard he was never heard again. I don't know where he is, but I know all I have are the best memories of thinking that someone else understood who I was, inquired as to why I decided to only wear red shoes for a time, and pointed out when he could or couldn't hear my voice in my writing. That made a huge difference then, and makes an even bigger difference now.
A letter discovered in the pages of a book: I'm going to stick it into another one now that I've found it only so that I might find it again, on a rainy, wet day, in ten years, when I am looking for nothing in particular at all.