Sevilla

In Magellan's day––by the way, I'm reading a book on Magellan––Sevilla had twice the population of London, and it appears the city has lost none of its vibrancy. As the families flood the main street, along with Punk-influenced teenagers with creative facial piercings and the innumerable and pram-contained babies, I can imagine the flood of traders that led the world to assume that absolutely anything could and was bought and sold in Sevilla.

I am trying to find a place to write, but while there are some open chairs, it is a Sunday afternoon and every table is filled up with families, food, and babies, babies, and the strollers which carry babies. So I am on a bench outside of a Starbucks, waiting for the line to die down so I can purchase americano-warmth, and I am opposite what at Magellan's time was the third largest cathedral in Europe, after St. Peter's in Rome and St. Paul's in London.

There's not much time for reading, though, what with essays and all. Now is the daunting essay about my body of creative work––the numerous poems in the rough, the plays, the screenplays in process, my journalism and scholarly work, this blog––and I'm hard pressed to articulate it all.

It is probably good that we are in Sevilla. We have a great hostel and wonderful travelers. Our Canadian friends Neal and Bria just left so loved, and I regularly discuss Brazilian and Italian history with Alex & Anna, Mateo & Betty; we love the hostel staff, and Nate gives me the last of his churros. This is a city filled with families, babies, street performers, and babies, all things that fill me with joy. So what if in our times before and after the Camino we have seen all of Sevilla? There is still excitement over seeing the rowers on the river and the unkempt '92 World Expo site, overgrown and cordoned off as if it could house zombies or velociraptors (Neil and Bria suggest I make a zombie/dinosaur film there, and Neil has offered to don a velociraptor costume... I think he'll be in the scene where Merav gets eaten... or where she and the velociraptor meet, become friends, pick olives on a hillside, and eventually travel together).

It is a good spot for me to pour over these applications too, and Ryan and Merav seem to remember, in spite of the regularity, that they are more than sufficiently awesome, greeting these days with excited, new eyes.

Jolted out of my iPod-influenced writing trance, two Moroccan girls greet me in Arabic. They are looking for jobs, see me with my green blog notebook in front of the cathedral, and think that not only do I look like someone on-the-job, I also look like I speak Arabic. I did not know that I looked this way. Nonetheless, I tell them the truth (that I'm an American guy with no job writing to you, dear readers), wish them luck and they fade into the families stepping into the expanse of families and the slow, open tracks of the Sevilla tram that bisects them. I love this culture: how, because of Franco's repression they smoke in front of No Smoking signs; how kids being with their parents is as much a necessity as grease on a car mechanic; how we can drink beer with our lunch and everyone is going to do it respectfully; how they are so friendly that, if an Ice Age suddenly descended, they would pull me in like male penguins and keep me warm, not caring if I stutter through their language. There is some terrible history, like many countries, but it is a marvelous present.

Passions

Merav creates a didgeridoo our of an old branch she hollows out and lacquers in her spare time. Ryan uploads video of goats and landscape and sound. Sally and Ian raise animals and create massive globes in the style they were made before North America had tried and true boundaries which could be sketched. Others have passions here too, from the dogs chewing on the leftovers from the pig matanza to Blackie the cat dashing into the house like an unwelcome, over-cuddly shadow. The sun goes up and down with regularity.

For me, I poke my lip out a little because I am a writer. I don't know what that means half of the time, and sometimes I wish I wanted to be a doctor, saving lives, and sitting here in Spain, deciding about future, I would know, regardless of what kind of medicine I wanted to do, that I needed to go to medical school. Of course, for a doctor, there are tons of decisions about future, but I'm not talking about those. I'm saying that, right now, instead of one logical path, there are several different question marks on the horizon, hidden like a prize you're not sure you want to receive behind a game show curtain. A writer is a ship that manufactures its own wind.

So, after tottering for a while, I am applying to a film school. This is not opposed to Divinity School; in fact, I feel it's more a completion of it. Frederick Buechner said, "The place God calls you is where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet," and I believe one of my areas of deep gladness, which is unique to me, is to bring lessons I have learned through my faith into film and other storytelling. Though, like a good David Mamet fan, I have tried to avoid film school and its formalized systems of education in favor of cutting my teeth on film jobs, with the DC filmmakers, the real McCoy. But after months of pestering my contacts, there were no jobs for me, and no benefactors to step forward and say, "Let me encourage and develop your craft." All that I have is the incredible blessing of you, my readers, family and friends and fellow travelers, all of you that make me feel on top of the world, reminding me that God has given us gifts for a reason, and how some of the best art comes out of catharsis.

I can't remember where I heard it, perhaps at a Christian leadership conference, but someone told me that a person should do "whatever makes them pound the table." If I do not do this film thing, I fear I will slide into apathy, which I have no time for anymore. The world is hungry, and I, like you, have deep gladnesses to meet its hunger. And where hunger is fed, I like to think there is reason to dance in the streets.