f scott

'It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road. "How do you get to West Egg village?" he asked helplessly. I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.'

I've just reread The Great Gatsby for the umpteenth time, having left it alone for an unusually long spell of two years, and this quote caught my attention. I had no recollection of it, and given my almost embarrassing level of familiarity with this book, I have to assume that it had always simply seemed too inconsequential to commit to memory.

But when I encountered it the other day, it struck me that I've experienced precisely this feeling in Zafra, where lost-looking tourists occasionally wander through empty streets during siesta hours and, in either desperation or ignorance, overlook the fact that I hardly have the face of a person who might know her way around a southern Spanish village. In speaking to them, I find I recognize their accents, that in their heavy esses and lispy dees I hear Madrid and Andalusia, not the mysteriously vague 'somewhere in Spain' I heard two years ago. Moreover, I know exactly where to send them. This is no great accomplishment, considering that they always ask for the central tourist sites, which are more or less concentrated within a small circle that also encompasses my apartment, but I can't help but indulge in a moment of self-satisfaction. It pains me a bit now to leave that comforting mastery behind.

Leaving always makes me sentimental. Just yesterday I spoke with a friend from college who is packing to move away from our beautiful campus town. As my flurry of reminiscence was reaching its crescendo she reminded me, quite truthfully, that it's not the place I miss, but the time. I was tired of Bloomington's spirit, of drunk freshman and pretension, and I'm tired of Zafra's isolation and immutability. But despite the cons list, it's hard to let go of such a great time.