Meet Chet Baker

As many of you know, I have taken the last few weeks of August to do a semi-retreat in a small town south of Catalunya, to write, disconnect and spend a few weeks in an amazing home with a kind host and his dog Chet. Chet, I promise, will be the model dog on the front covers of doggie world. He is the most photogenic puppy I have yet come across and he loves posing in front of the camera and making his little puppy eyes for the world to see. We are currently working hard on forming a loving relationship in which he doesn't bite my ankles, feet and hands. Carles pushes me to smack Chet on his snouzer (spelling?) every time he bites me and I am learning how to be stern with Chet and not let him dominate me, but who can smack a face like this? He follows me around the house, nipping at my ankles and begging for a treat or two. He sits at my feet when I write and destroys anything I leave at hands reach.
The last few days have been made of sweet magic and tranquility. There is something about being outside of the city, in a small country village where the air is clean and sprinkled with the smell of burning wood and cleanliness. The house, although spacious, is cozy and quiet, the perfect setting for writing a novel. I wake up in the mornings, light and inspired, have breakfast with Carles and then lock myself in the writing room and write with the morning sun at my feet and a view of the garden. I write for almost two hours, slowly and carefully and then I come out of my abode and help prepare lunch. Depending on the weather, simple as is it sunny or not? we either go to the beach...Carles has shown me one of the best beaches I have yet seen, the water is an amazing blue blue blue with the contrast of the green forest and white rocks and big swelling waves that help you float...or we nap. In the evening I gobble the amazing collection of music Carles has. Turns out that he is an avid music collector and has over 80,000 albums in his collection! I am in absolute heaven, working diligently on my novel in the mornings and organizing my own collection of music now that I have my dusty fingers on his collection. I have all the music my heart has ever desired and if he doesn't have what I want, he finds it for me...oh life, precious precious surprises it holds...After sitting in front of the computer for a few hours we prepare dinner, eat, then sit in the living room drinking wine and talking into the quiet summer hours of the night. Sounds perfect? It is.
On Saturday, Idoia finally came back from her 15 day trip in Egypt and I was so excited to see her and give her a big hug. Just so you get an idea, Tarragona is about an hour south of BCN.



Tarragona, if you have been paying attention is where Idoia lives. Reus is about 15 minutes inland from Tarragona. It is a small town, a bit on the country side famous for the modernist houses it has and the time that Gaudi spent here. For being a small town, it is filled with culture and amazing architecture which Carles happens to know tons about. Okay...back to Saturday. So in the afternoon, Carles and I went out for a yummy lunch and afterwards he took me to a small Ermita in Castelvell, a small village. An Ermita is a small church where the hermit of the village used to live.

What's special about this Ermita is that it is where people used to place relics of lost limbs, dead babies, injured animals etc, asking the Saint of the Ermita to bless them and help them. The relics have now been replaced by old paintings of the relics themselves, small works of art in bright happy colors demonstrating horrible and drastic situations. I wanted to take all the pieces of work with me, they were so strange.

That same evening we went to dinner with Carles, the house owner and sweetest host I have met, with Idoia who was glowing with peace after two weeks in the desert and Red Sea and a friend of Carles, Rosa. Turns out that Tarragona was celebrating its Festa Major and that that Festa Major was celebrating the saint of water and so we found ourselves in a Plaza with a giant Watermelon, jug, clam and I don't know what else with a sprinkler system that soaked everyone and everything. It was unlike anything I had ever seen in my life and I had the time of my life.We danced under the colorful array of light and tried our best to avoid getting wet, since we did have a long night ahead of us and were not prepared to walk around soaking wet until the wee hours of the night.


















After the water festivities we made our way back to Plaza del Font where there was another concert and we danced our little booties away to all the types of music you could imagine...from Soul and Funk to Pop rock and Heavy Metal. The giant smiles were pasted on our faces and the confetti fell from the sky as we twirled skipped and jumped. Finally, as the concert came to an end some time after 5am, and the last notes of electric guitar were strung, it started to rain, just in case those that thought they had escaped the water party earlier, the rain made sure to take care of us. We walked to the car, barefoot, singing, and soaked, delighted with the summer raindrops. It was absolutely movie like.
The night finally came to a wet end as we sang Bebe in the car at the top of our lungs on the way back to Reus. I had the time of my life and slept with the tenderness of a baby, delighted to have danced in the rain. On Sunday I was fortunate to be invited first to a vermouth in a plaza in Reus as Carles told me stories of the people in town and then after dropped off at Idoia's parents house to eat lunch with the family and rest.

I have absolutely everything I need, all the love and care I could possibly demand and as time goes by, I realize that I am one of the most fortunate. I write, I read, I breath and I live...it's a dog's life.