Alone in Galicia, Day 4
One month in a charming city with nothing to do but read and write. The catch: I had to feed myself, and I am a moron in the kitchen.
2 May 2019
Slept 10 hours, woke up feeling like myself again. April was intense, meetings and shoots, trip preparations (hoarding cat food), getting the funds together (as usual, raising travel funds is easier than raising money for rent and utilities) and paying all my bills in advance. And I wasn’t getting my usual sleep (9 hours a night) from overthinking, so I am very tired. The whole point of this residency is to get some writing done, and I need my brain to quiet down before I can write, so I’ll allow myself to get very, very relaxed.
But first I had to figure out my food situation. My grant budget is 20 euros a day, so I can’t dine out all the time. I had to lay in food supplies, and I can’t cook (and refuse to learn), which limits the menu to sandwiches, cereal, and microwaveables. At the supermarket I bought bread, cheese, cornflakes, paté, eggs, breaded chicken cutlets and squid, plus lots of coffee. Three days worth of food for 15 euros—food is cheaper here than in Manila. (Whenever I travel I am reminded that food in the Philippines is expensive.) I was very proud of myself because I am inept at domestic chores and they scare me. I’ve gotten away with not doing them (I only learned to use a washing machine when I was at a seminar at Yale—that is what the Ivy League is for), but I can google.
Got a lot of writing done today—maybe my real profession is not “novelist” but “diarist.” Tomorrow I will walk to the sea.
Yolanda came by at 8pm to give me a tour of the neighborhood. It’s a beautiful area, everything minutes away from the apartment. The street perpendicular to Calle Real leads to the harbor. Facing the water, on Avenida de la Marina, is a row of buildings with gleaming white facades of windows like fine lacework. The waterfront is lined with cafes. In the marina, Yolanda said, the daughter of the richest man in Spain (the founder of Zara) was married and celebrities descended on the city. At the end of the street is a famous ice cream parlor. On the left there is a bookstore café, on the right the house of the 19th century writer Emilia Pardo Bazan. Up ahead is the church of Santiago, the oldest in the city, dating back to the 8thcentury. Further up, a tree-lined square with sycamores (?) like arthritic hands. Then another church, Romanesque, and across the street, a house belonging to the family of the dictator Francisco Franco. Left and down a staircase, and I am back at Maria Pita Square.
Calle Real branches off into streets of tapas bars and churrerias. La Bombilla, known for its 1-euro tapas, was packed. We found a quiet, brightly-lit restaurant where I tried the local beer Estrella Galicia with the ubiquitous ham and cheese croquettes, scallops, and pulpo a feira (octopus). Yolanda told me her life story: her father worked on a ship, but her mother insisted he find a job on land so he could be with his family. They moved from Santiago to La Coruña, where she attended a Catholic girls’ school and joined a poetry contest because she wanted a pair of leather pants that cost 90 euros and the prize was 100 euros. Her first poetry collection was published when she was 17. She has won prizes, been a TV presenter, and been on several international residencies. Since then her dream has been to organize a literary residency.
When the apartment on Calle Real was listed for sale, she saw her chance. She used all her savings, borrowed money from her parents and brother, hired architects. The previous occupants had covered the old stone walls with an ugly PVC and plaster that had to be chipped away. She hired a construction guy who said he could do the work cheaply; he absconded before the job was done. Because of this she became disheartened, but her family rallied round and did the construction work themselves, stripping the walls to reveal the masonry, then adding a bedroom and a study.
I am the third resident, after the Chilean poet Raul Zurita and a young Dominican writer. When Zurita was here he read his poetry on the balcony and a crowd gathered on the street to hear him.