Good morning everyone! Sorry for the ridiculous hour of this post but sometimes words come to you at odd hours, so what can you do but embrace them! So anyways this post is just a quick poem that I wrote by accident tonight when I was procrastinating doing a paper for Spanish composition. I was really tired and zoned out thinking about what I was going to write for my essay that I quickly found myself just daydreaming about my trip abroad/some of my favorite memories about it. Of course this led to a subsequent hour of going through my pictures from the trip 3 times, as well as Googling random things “Spanish”. I then accidentally stumbled upon a quote by Pablo Neruda that I really liked, and so I saved it in a Word Document and started thinking about what it meant to me. The quote I am talking about reads:

“Algún día en cualquier parte, en cualquier lugar indefectiblemente, te encontrarás a ti mismo, y ésa, sólo ésa, puede ser la más feliz o la más amarga de tus horas.”- Neruda

Or in English,

“Someday, somewhere – anywhere, unfailingly, you’ll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.” – Pablo Neruda

More or less, I love this quote. I particularly appreciate and can reflect on Neruda’s words because upon reading it, it immediately reminded me of one specific (no matter how brief) moment of my trip that I will never forget. Of course I am talking about the day I left Spain to return home to America. I remember the moment distinctly with chills to this very day, from how harsh the change was from getting out of the freezing-cold-Air Conditioned taxi to the 100 degree heat outside the airport’s doors, to the taste of the jamón y queso bocadilla that I ate for breakfast that morning, the last of probably 150 I had eaten in my month abroad. The day radiates in my mind, however, not because of how hot it was or what I ate for breakfast. This day stands out in my mind as a moment that I will never forget because it was the last day of my first (of hopefully thousands) of trips to Spain, and I simply wasn’t ready to leave.

I remember getting out of that taxi, seeing the giant BARAJAS – AEROPUERTO sign in front of me, and immediately thinking to myself, what on earth am I doing? I was so happy in Spain and had never been treated so kindly before that I didn’t think I would ever be able to go home to America. A lot of the students that I traveled with constantly talked about missing their pets, their friends, their cars, their boyfriends, their houses, etc. throughout the trip, but (not to sound horrible) I more or less forgot life existed outside of the bubble I lived in abroad. I was too happy and head over heels in love with life and breathing in everything Spanish to there to think about anything else. I didn’t think past my daily siesta and night walk everyday to remember that life was going on without me 3,000+ miles west of me. I didn’t know anything but what I had lived and breathed that July, nor did I want to anymore.

This reasoning is precisely why I loved the the Pablo Neruda quote that I included above. Neruda talks about how some moments in life can be small yet powerful enough to stick out distinctly in your mind forever, and I have to say I totally agree with him. I love the paradox that he mentions in this quote, of how these distinct, little moments, can either be the most beautiful/treasured or the most hated/bitter memories of our lives, or at times both. So not to reveal anything more, this poem that I wrote (by accident) is a reflection of one of my very final experiences abroad, as I stood in line to check in at the airport, a month from starting my senior year of college at UMass, no more than 10 credits shy of graduating with a Bachelor’s degree, yet actually rationalizing to myself why I should leave it all behind and give everything I once knew up to stay in Spain. Perhaps some people will think I am a crazy or aren’t serious when I say that I was thoroughly contemplating skipping my flight and staying in Spain for good (courtesy of my EU passport), but please believe me it was a tough, last minute decision call to stay. I really wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Obviously I ended up back at UMass/in the United States and sided with my rationale/brain in this case, yet I to this day do not feel that I chose what my heart wanted. This is the million dollar dilemma that I have faced in every single subsequent day since I got back from Spain, of whether or not I made the right decision according to what others/society would perceive as correct, or whether or not I made the best decision for me. Keeping this all in mind, los versos de “Se queda en el extranjero” siguen:

Se queda en el extranjero
por Siobhan Elvin, Spanish 2014

Algún día en cualquier parte, en cualquier lugar indefectiblemente, te encontrarás a ti mismo, y ésa, sólo ésa, puede ser la más feliz o la más amarga de tus horas…Neruda.

Me pasó al llegar al Barajas en aquella mañana de julio. Al abordar el avión contra mi voluntad interna….al sentarme en la silla asignada…..al abrocharme el cinturón de seguridad….y al final, al despegar el vuelo de regresa. Mi corazón me gritaba quedarme en el paraíso, olvidar todo del pasado y del conocido, tomar un riesgo y reiniciar la vida en un mundo nuevo.

Pero no lo escuché. Había escuchado al razón en vez de mi corazón. Como estadounidense para yo. Entonces, abordé el vuelo. Me senté en la silla asignada. Me abroché el cinturón de seguridad. Y al final, despegó el vuelo de regresa.

Por eso, mi corazón se queda en el extranjero.

Aguarda que venga para empezar la vida. Si no conozco nada más, estoy seguro de estas tres cosas: Primero. Que hay una magia indescriptible en el aire madrileño…una felicidad, una locura y un amor que no se puedan encontrar en ningún otro sitio. Dos. Que hay una belleza profunda en el placer simple de dormirse bajo de la luna española y despertarse al sol castellano. Y más que todo, sin poder explicar porque ni como, el tercer hecho: Que yo vivo y me muero para España.

En un segundo, vuelvo a ese momento. Llego a Barajas en aquella mañana de julio. Sin abordar el avión, sin sentarme en la silla asignada, y sin abrocharme el cinturón de seguridad, yo miro como el vuelo de regresa despega sin yo.

Algún día en cualquier parte, en cualquier lugar indefectiblemente, te encontrarás a ti mismo, y ésa, sólo ésa, puede ser la más feliz o la más amarga de tus horas…Neruda.