I uncovered this photo beneath another in an old frame. This photo was taken while wandering the streets of Madrid, not too far from the Plaza Mayor. And what I like about this photo isn’t only the beauty in its simplicity, or the sheer Spanishness of it…
What I like about it is the girl who was on the other side of the lens. I took this photo on my very first day in Europe. On the very first day I was abroad. On the very first day I was alone, without my family, without my friends, without all the familiarity of my life up until that moment. And I remember falling in love with the symmetry of the balconies, with the way the light cast shadows at such a particular angle beneath them, with the idea of a lifestyle where the sun greets you in the morning and you stand sipping coffee on a tiny balcony, observing the city below in a robe from your bedroom.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was actually in love with the beauty of discovery. After that day, I’d go on to travel the world; to never lose the longing for that feeling of adventure, to never not pause to appreciate the way sunlight cast shadows upon a building in a foreign city. . Years later, I would find myself standing in the exact same spot, at what had to be the same time of day, and I stopped myself. I recognized the building, the scene, the light. And I remembered myself standing there 6 years earlier as a novice traveler, and then, 6 years later, standing there as a residence of that very city- the city that had given me life as a traveler.
Oh, Madrid. Thank you. Thank you so very much.
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