Red Rock Road, Light Blue Sea: Love and Art on Formentera

By Nowick Gray

Edging Spain, southern France, and Portugal, a midlife Canadian couple tracks landscapes between bliss and burnout, art and love. After the rigors of backpacking and wild camping, a Formentera cottage offers cozy comfort, honeymoon bliss, creative freedom. Noella sketches in watercolor, while Wilson skirts the boundaries of the postmodern novel. Amid the wild and picturesque beauty of landscape and sea, their refuge becomes a crucible of creative and romantic tension. Will it yield despair and separation—or, through willing embrace, a new intimacy, a new metafictional art?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nowick Gray
• Release date: Jul 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781777135959

Book preview

Red Rock Road, Light Blue Sea

a nonfiction novel

by

Nowick Gray

Cougar WebWorks • Victoria, BC

Copyright © 2017 by Nowick Gray

All rights reserved.

Book 3 of the My Country Series.

Published by: Cougar WebWorks – CougarWebWorks.com

Cover design by CougarWebWorks, incorporating art by Oiseau.

A metafictional quest by a midlife Canadian couple—hiking, wild camping, and chasing palaces in backcountry Spain and Portugal—ends with a creative honeymoon, exploring love and art on the island of Formentera.

Literary approaches and topical themes include: metafiction, creative nonfiction, experimental, travel, travelogues, essays, Europe, backpacking, architecture, the Camino.

In Memoriam: Michael Mlosczewski

Thanks go to writers: Michael Bryner, William Boyd, Don Cushman, Daniel Defoe, James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Carson McCullers, Iris Murdoch, Satyam Nadeen, Henry Thoreau, Henry Miller, Robert Pirsig, Michael Sky, Ariel Spilsbury, Stephen Wright.

Thanks go to readers: Paulo da Costa, Charles Finn, Chris Gardner, Ian Irvine, Merrilee Prior, Carol Ross, Margaret Rose, Margot Russell, Fred Sengmueller, Jordan Zinovich, David Bruneau, Sivalla Lin, Nora Morcos.

Permission has been granted for excerpts from The Mayan Oracle: Return Path to the Stars by Ariel Spilsbury and Michael Bryner, published by Bear & Co, Rochester, VT 05767 – Copyright © 1992 by Ariel Spilsbury and Michael Bryner.

Red Rock Road, Light Blue Sea

Contents

Fictional Foreword

Map

I Tableau: Dinner and Dancing

II Water and Stone

III Jam at the Lizard Lounge

IV You Wanted a Moorish Palace

V Capriccios

About the Author

F

ictional Foreword

What This Is

A novel, a poem, a meditation,

a sketch, a life-work, a painting,

a symphony, a word-jam, a play,

a rebellion, an edifice, a puzzle,

an evolution, a highway, a mountain path,

a stream, an ocean, a starry sky,

a hut, a bed, a festive meal,

a heady wine, a compost heap, a chocolate dessert, a shingled roof, a vacation, a temptress, an invocation, a confession, a whistled melody, a flickering flame, a conundrum, a composition in sand, a dialog of many voices, a rustling of leaves, a container of rendered fat, an accounting of sins and victories, a manifesto, a wondering, an investigation, a leafy bower, a tent in the desert, a spray of sea-foam, a rumble in the cliffs, a deer stepping out from the cover of trees...

Let's suppose that all of the foregoing might be contained in that most versatile ark, the novel. As the narrator of this true tale, though at times I have fancied myself an empty vessel, I have to admit a certain ballast of personal history to account for, and the weighty responsibility to navigate safely to new lands.

Simply said, coming to the end of fifty years of struggle and pleasure, focused work and chronic diversion, sporadic success and numerous mistakes, I found the need for perspective, a break, a fresh start; a way to make sense of it all. I would find my equilibrium, where voyage and vessel merged, in the sweet center of the moving moment.

• • •

On a small, beautifully endowed Mediterranean island, toward the end of the year 2000, Wilson contemplated his life’s trajectory... whether half or mostly done, beside the point. He knew the process that brought him to that charming haven was based on fluid motion, on sacred flow; and so even while coming to rest there with a dimly formed vision of the writing task before him, he knew he would continue to sail past conventional expectations of the novel, memoir, travel journal or any other genre, past all the more static and predictable literary forms.

On the surface, his quest takes the form of a hybrid vacation in Spain and Portugal—part outdoor adventure, part working holiday, part retreat. Also part honeymoon—for the quest is not his alone to undertake or enjoy. He shares it with a lover and companion, Noella, who is also marking a new beginning, in her fortieth year. Their partnership of less than two years has arisen, a magic firebird, from the ashes of respective marriages decades long; and for months they have conspired, saved, and prepared for this flight to the sun.

Could wild open landscape solve riddles of history centuries long? Could self-discovery, partnered harmony, and artistic vision coexist, goals of a common journey? Could monuments of ageless wonder compete with mundane pleasures in passing them by?

Noella might be content to survive this crucible, weathered and refreshed for a reunion with children back in Canada, and packing a portfolio of fresh watercolors. For his part, Wilson will not be satisfied with anything less than a creative resolution of all the possibilities before them—haunted, above all, by the vision of a Moorish palace, and the impossible yet irresistible construction of its literary facsimile.

The life story in the making insists on its ever-presence, refuses to lie down submissively in the archives of the past. It bounds forward, a precocious puppy, at the parting of its master, dogging his heels... like the three dogs, on the French side of the Camino, who walked Wilson and Noella halfway to Spain one hopeful day, before the hikers’ conscience won out and urged the trio back with hard looks and blunt commands: Vas-y!

The hounds turn and watch the strangers depart, wondering what it is that drives them on their journey, what other lands they are bound for, what palaces they seek.

I Tableau: Dinner and Dancing

Setting the Table

The bus from the ferry deposits us in Sant Ferran, where we top up our backpacks with groceries. Hiking the last four kilometers, we follow directions sketched on a ragged map. At sunset we find our cottage by the sea: Casa Sophia lettered in tile on a low whitewashed stone wall.

The cottage stands in humble perfection with its rounded edges, its blue doors and shutters, its roof of red tile, at the edge of an open field within sight of the Mediterranean. A strong warm breeze wafts in from the sea.

The word honeymoon on our lips (though we bear no marriage certificate), Noella and I heave off our packs and stand facing the sea, breathing deeply of its rosemary balm. There is just enough daylight left to locate, under a flowerpot, keys for the doors. Inside we find instructions to hook up the butane fridge and stove; then we work together to prepare a modest feast of chicken breasts, pasta and cauliflower, with a dark red wine.

Candles in sand, inside cut-off clear plastic jugs, flicker in the sea-breeze, lighting our meal on the terrace.

We should have got the white wine, I remark over plates of pale food.

Noella scrunches her eyes, behind wire-rims. You’re always wanting to backtrack.

True, I acknowledge silently, with a nod: I am still nursing the missed tour of the fabled Moorish palace complex, the Alhambra, on our way through Granada; and before that, Zaragoza’s Aljafería. But I haven’t expected this verbal sparring, with the first meal in our love-nest not half-consumed.

Anyway, I prefer the red, Noella adds. It provides contrast.

Can’t argue color with a painter.

The wry look she gives me, out of one eye, pricks another sore spot: am I just trying to please?

She persists: Didn’t you choose the red? Romantic, you said.

I liked the association, Sangre de Toro. Mea culpa, never judge a wine by its label. Anyway, now who’s backtracking?

Point taken. Okay, I’m looking forward.

To dessert, you mean.

We’re still wearing our apparel of the road, sturdy canvas hiking shoes and lightweight pants, identical sea-tone rain shells. Noella’s straight, shoulder-length hair is gathered up in a purple silk twist, leaving her swanly neck exposed. Her large round glasses sit perched over a wide nose and high cheekbones. Her eyes are calm and intelligent, her Swedish lips sensuous as a massage.

Finished first, she prepares and serves the dessert, peach ice cream with garnish of fresh grated ginger. Spoons clink and tongues savor; then, with plates emptied and cleared to the sink, we retire to the bedroom with glasses of wine in hand and reflect on our two long days of bus and ferry rides from Órgiva, via Almería, Alicante, Denia, Ibiza. Now we can enjoy this charming hideaway, and an island to explore, for the next month and a half.

Our skins are still sticky from the final hike to the house; but when Noella tosses off her clothes with the promise of a shower, she is met with a dribble of tepid water. We settle for the cool comfort of clean sheets.

My wispy white-streaked beard lies draped upon her plump, drooping breasts. The children, not of this union, are safely tucked half a world away.

We enjoy a tender intimacy subdued by fatigue, gratitude, and habitual contentment—or so I will later summarize our muted lovemaking, censoring the graphic details. For even in that primary record, I feel reticent about exposing the marrow of our privacy. In the moment, Noella and I lie content in each other’s arms.

As we drop off to sleep, I wonder, What do we add to this recipe?

Day Two in paradise...

Over rolls and coffee on the sunny terrace, we write in our respective journals. While Noella guides her fine-nibbed pen upon the pages of a bound notebook, I tap the chiclet keys of my pet computer the size of a flattened burrito, the trusty Psion:

Formentera Journal, 19 October

This morning we rise at dawn and walk down to the sea to sit for an hour, awaiting the sunrise. On the way along the shore stretches a surface of red-tan rock, bare and smooth as tarmac until, in range of the incessant waves, it becomes as gnarled and craggy as the inside of a limestone cavern.

Silvery bright, the water ripples all the way to the eastern horizon, where pink suffuses the sky and the small gray clouds give way to an unearthly peach and blue canopy stretching far away to the dark above. We sit in rapt observance, my arms snug around my lover, in a smooth rock cove like an egg, a womb.

Later we walk together back to the Casa Sophia, and for a moment stand mute on the terrace, enchanted by the brightness of the early-morning blue sky above the rich and glossy green of the myrtle tree and the more muted gray-green of scrub juniper. Fluffy white clouds float above us; from the waking land comes the buzz of motorbikes and chafing of distant machinery; and we drink with gladness the clear, faintly salty, lukewarm lightness of the air.

Tomorrow...

My pastoral reverie is broken as Celeste arrives from next door with a broom for the sandy tiles. The orange-haired French caretaker explains, with dramatic gestures, how to pump household water from the underground cistern to the holding tank on the roof, and says her husband, Jean-Pierre, will take care of the shower problem. He’ll also bring his truck later for a run to town, where we can buy large jugs of drinking water.

Domestic matters proceed with wringing and hanging a load of hand laundry together. Then, freed once more for more refined pursuits, Noella browses the Casa Sophia’s modest library while I indulge in a solo drumming session on the terrace. The aluminum doumbek, I’m pleased to discover, sounds fine despite the fresh dent in its mylar skin.

The blemish appeared when unpacking: a dime-sized dimple, caused by the pressure of a bone button from the shorts I had placed under the drum head to protect it. Pam, my previous wife, made these blue silk shorts with aqua trim for my forty-seventh birthday, the last one we shared together. I figure if this small pit marks the extent of her presence here, I can live with it. I find pleasure in the deep and clear tones of the drum, sending rolling rhythms out over the open landscape of red rock and rosemary which surrounds the cottage.

At length, thoughts intrude. Where is this going, endless improvisation? What about that budding project to assemble and publish a collection of traditional rhythms? Could personal compositions be a part of it? What about issues of copyright, cultural appropriation...

I set down the drum, pondering what we are doing here, with all of this creative freedom available, the endless demands of the hiking itinerary behind us. Creative writing is more of an open-ended affair than the drum rhythm project. I will continue keeping a journal, as I did during the more mobile first half of the trip. I also have vague ambitions to produce a more substantial work—turning water, so to speak, into stone. As for reading, I haven’t sampled much yet from the half-dozen English-language titles on the cottage bookshelf, but they lie in wait as yet another inspiring pastime, given this relative eternity (nearly seven weeks) of leisure on the proverbial desert island.

The world of literature beckons like a black hole, and I’m wary of its pull on my latent desires. After six weeks of walking, without books and with only casual journal entries along the way, a writing-and-reading program of any sort smacks of work—a forced march. I do hunger for the good old English language; but I want to examine it from a distance, not indulge that addiction automatically.

I get up to find Noella and see what she is up to.

The library leads to lunch, and that in turn, back to the bedroom. Somehow, in the afterglow of a lovemaking that seems tainted by a sense of the obligatory—completing the session of the night before which quickly faded to sleep—the conversation snakes around to making love in public.

I ask rhetorically why, among all the rebellious and deviant acts humans have perpetrated over the years, that one is the least known. It’s practically unheard of. What’s the story? Fear of getting busted? Too vulnerable?

Noella sits up, with the sheet around her waist. What about those orgies in the sixties—or in Roman times?

I don’t mean just doing it together in a group. I mean, for public display. With an audience.

Performance sex? Now she pulls up the sheet around her breasts, an impromptu toga. I hear they have live sex shows in the UK.

This is coming from your ex?

Her response is a slow, measured inbreath.

Anyway, I say, what I’m thinking is more like another sixties theme, taking theatre to the streets. I guess it comes back to the question the Beatles asked: ‘Why don’t we do it in the road?’

The Beatles—Daniel did tell me this—were inspired by watching monkeys copulating in front of tourists in Rishikesh. Is that what you’re suggesting?

Well, not literally, you and me. But it might make a good novel. I’m sure one creative couple could be devised to carry it off.

But not us, right? Her eyes shine bright, large, serious. Almost deer-in-the-headlights fearful.

No, no, don’t worry. It would be totally fictional.

I put my arm around Noella to reassure her, but she tenses, sensing the self-conscious intention behind the gesture. I let my hand drop to the sheet to rest upon her thigh. She eases and gives me a nervous smile.

The discussion winds around to my old girlfriend’s visit when I was with my first wife, Janine, in the seventies. The girlfriend brought along a new boyfriend of her own, and an evening around the campfire ended with a double switch in the tent after a bottle of mezcal. As the tale extends through the serpentine history of my infidelities, Noella’s right upper lip begins to quiver.

You know I’m finished with all that, I say to her.

That’s what you told me once, when I was on the outside.

So fate rewarded us for our prudence. Now you’re on the inside.

The telltale lip continues to tremble. My verbal niceties are too glib to soothe bruised emotions, nursed over fourteen years of cold storage for a smoldering passion.

There’s something else bothering you. What is it?

She has to choke back tears and then the words come out in a small voice. It’s not that I don’t believe you. I believe... your good intention. I also understand... how hard it is sometimes... and how things... just happen.

We hear the crunch of gravel outside the cottage. I dress quickly and go out to meet Jean-Pierre, arriving in his truck to take me to town for water. The cistern, our caretaker explains with a grimace, is unsafe with its last application of chlorine and lime in June.

He speaks a mixture of French, Spanish and English with a genial, long-toothed smile. His balding head of frizzy, gray-blond hair bobs wildly as we rattle over the unpaved back roads and he chatters away. He tells me he used to live in Paris, where he worked as a props and special-effects man for James Bond movies, assorted French films, and commercials. Five years ago he gave up the stress for the good life in the sun on Formentera. Celeste, once an assistant director, now works (orange hair and all) as a receptionist for a local dentist. And Jean-Pierre paints houses, works at odd jobs. He still takes on maybe one commercial a year, if a film crew shows up at the right time.

I ask if he misses the creative work of his former profession.

"Mais non, says Jean-Pierre in a rumbling voice, shaking his head. Too much stress in that world. For me, is better this way." He smiles and gestures outside at the sunny fields.

The days and nights begin to roll past like languid waves on the nearby shore: ceaseless, murmuring. Noelle embarks on a series of watercolor sketches. I continue my casual drum sessions and pennywhistle ditties; but these don’t satisfy my literary itch, so I delve more into reading and journaling. As with the musical pursuits, I aim to follow the organic impulse before all else, going with the flow of present inspiration, without grandiose ambition.

No quixotic need to emulate the builders of failed empires, at least not here and now, on this island of abandoned windmills. I will be content with daily journal entries—castles in the sand. Even if, lacking more substantial vision, I have to resort to the derivative art of the book review, or simple reportage of conversation.

Wilson (knocking at the library door): First day on Formentera... so what do we do here?

Noella (holding up a guidebook, Clubbing in Ibiza): Let's go out for dinner and dancing, she says, deadpan.

Castles in the Sand

Among the small house stash of readable books, I’ve discovered a great one: Iris Murdoch’s The Black Prince. Inspiring in its genius of construction and characterization, it’s also daunting to someone freshly embarked on a course of creative self-examination. The parodied narrator himself has produced but a couple of books in forty years of creative effort, and I find it uncanny how clearly he speaks to my condition.

Murdoch’s narrator, Bradley Pearson, while dissembling as a failed novelist, proceeds to weave a taut, tight tale, a riveting plot which turns around his attempt to get away from his small