"...I rather would entreat thy company
To see the wonders of the world abroad
Than, living dully sluggardized at home,
Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness."
 – Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona








July 30


We did not then that our scouting out of Salamanca would be such a small part of the journey of en pot, there could be no way to know – but that there are certain portions of one's life, I am still convinced to the day, move in different paces, different rhythms. Far too often it is only the content of our years that seem to stack up to make any difference, as though we live for what might be enscrolled onto the gravestone: he was raised in the Midwest, he went to college, he trained at Company Y, and then he hunkered down into that trade like a mole in the dirt tunnels. This was a certain pace, a certain rhythm, and it should work fine, thank you, for so many; yet as we had arrived in Salamanca, what was it that I was feeling at the moment? As we looked across the street from Hotel Rector, each building and each rampart was far more new than I believe some people experience in life times. It is a cafe and restaurant town you begin to see so very quickly as you rise up the cobblestone walkways into the city center, that very labyrinth that must be understood, to very quickly, by all Americans that cannot be fully understood. American cities are blocks and they are square; the Salamanca streets are curved delights, small trails through golden blocks, like cakes, standing in the sunshine, bold, robust, and unmistakably creative. "I think it would be very possible to sit here at the cathedra and look at its red doors for hours," my daughter said. A guitarist was sitting quite causally at a step. He was dark haired, wise, and strong with his guitar, a virtual weapon of serenity. We walked through the street leading to the city center. It opens gradually, like a stage, and opens, for us, Americans, again, used to a sort of set-stage, into something that is tragic-comic, old and new, but very unpredictable, full of seats and waiters moving in and out of clean tables. Of the smells that rise from each small cut out, it is very difficult to describe, to comprehend, Salamanca, a cafe town, restaurants, at ever edge of every block.