Every day when I come home from work, there is a group of people who gather on the grass near my apartment block. They sit there every day in giant circles of lawn chairs, one for the men, one for the women, and then a smaller circle for children on a nearby stone wall. People come and go, and I hear voices from seven in the evening until midnight sometimes. They’re dressed in black, and Magi told me they are gypsies who come together because someone died, and they’re there to remember that person.
Gathering every evening to chat, sitting in the heat and watching the day slide away, being a member first and foremost of a community. Whenever I see them, I try to scuttle past without arousing too much attention. What a different life that must be, to gather and chat. Mine is faster and driven by the need to be at work for eight hours a day, to come home and eat, to go out and see the rest of Madrid. My life is solitary, encapsulated in a little bubble of things I think I need to do and English.
I wonder when they will stop congregating like this. Is there an official date that people stop meeting? How will the individuals feel when it ends? Relieved that their mourning period is over? Empty because they no longer meet together every evening, and it is no longer a major part of their lives?
Their lifestyle seems so much simpler, more village-like, more community-oriented. I think that as an American, and as a shy American, I have missed out on that sense of community. It reminds me of something Lala told me about: porching. When the day is done, dinner has been had and dishes cleaned, people sit on their front porches and watch the evening pass by. They chat with neighbors passing by, watch as their children play in the street, take life slowly.
Other Americans can do it - can't I?
Can we porch, Scripps style? As another shy American, I lack but long for that sense of community as well.
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