Spain Vacation Quotes

I remember a story about Jesus meeting a rich man and really liking him. Jesus invited the man to go with him, to sell all his stuff and follow him. The rich man really wanted to go but didn't want to sell his stuff. Jesus looked at the man and loved him. Jesus didn't berate the man or chastise him but actually stood there and felt love for him. But in the end they went their separate ways. I used to think that story was about the dangers of wealth, and to some degree I suppose it is. But I also think it's a story about boundaries. Jesus didn't give up his purpose and community and calling to swim in the rich man's pool or vacation with him in Spain. I think that story about Jesus and the rich man also means that while everybody is invited, not everybody is willing.

In 2018, a British woman, Freda Jackson, then aged 81, claimed her holiday was ruined because her hotel had “too many Spaniards in it” and that “Spanish people should go somewhere else for their holidays”. She had a vacation in Benidorm, Spain.

I remember another story from church. I remember a story about Jesus meeting a rich man and really liking him. Jesus invited the man to go with him, to sell all his stuff and follow him. The rich man really wanted to go but didn’t want to sell his stuff. Jesus looked at the man and loved him. Jesus didn’t berate the man or chastise him but actually stood there and felt love for him. But in the end they went their separate ways. I used to think that story was about the dangers of wealth, and to some degree I suppose it is. But I also think it’s a story about boundaries. Jesus didn’t give up his purpose and community and calling to swim in the rich man’s pool or vacation with him in Spain. I think that story about Jesus and the rich man also means that while everybody is invited, not everybody is willing.

Of course, come to-morrow" I said and gave him my address in Brooklyn. Before he arrived, he sent me a magnificent arrangement of flowers. We had moved to Brooklyn in November and had the essentially necessary furniture, but no flower vase. When the flowers arrived, I used two borscht jars to put them in. Carlos Bendayan arrived and we talked and talked. He was the son of a wealthy Sephardic family from Venezuela. Carlos was a young man, about 21, on his first trip abroad alone. He was telling me that he realized that I must be Jewish and it became clear to me that I knew very little about Sepharadim. His name was Hebrew, it meant: son of the judge. He was going to spend the Christmas vacation with his parents and younger brother in Spain. Actually, he was being groomed to enter his father's business.

From where is the material for my picturing this scene derived? I search my memory to find a similar place, with similar docks. It takes a while. But then I remember a trip I took with my family when I was a child. There was a river, and a dock--it's the same dock as the dock I just imagined. I realize later that, when a new friend described to me his home in Spain, with its "docks," I was picturing this same dock--the dock I saw on my childhood vacation; the dock I "used" already in imagining the novel I am reading. (How many times have I used this dock?)

She’d visited the Continent five times on vacation and twice on business trips with Alfred, so about a dozen times altogether, and to friends planning tours of Spain or France she now liked to say, with a sigh, that she’d had her fill of the place.

Her mother bought her a burgundy pair of VANS summer shoes in Italy, and they took a picture of her laughing happily while holding them in her hand in an exaggerated scene, as if they had been teasing him to take a picture of her for her boyfriend in a park somewhere in Italy. Shortly after, she started wearing them in Barcelona and cut off the tiny VANS logo with a scissor. When I asked her why, she tried to avoid answering at first until she said something like she didn't like it, or that they looked better without the tiny black VANS logos. It was suspicious that someone must have told her the urban legend in Barcelona soon after her Italian vacation, that VANS stands for „Vans Are Nazi Shoes.” It became more and more obvious in Barcelona that my life was in danger, as an awful vibe surrounded us due to the construction. It was mostly caused by rich tourists who I had never seen do much work in life, too high to take on a task as simple as changing a password on a bank account on an iPhone app – a crime organisation, quite international already and increasingly so, with a growing number of participants and secrets becoming more and more dangerous, I thought, and I wasn’t wrong, I just couldn’t see the whole picture yet as I was blindfolded. As if her nickname, Stupid Bunny which she had printed out at Ample Store with Adam, was a cute, nice thing, a reassurance after the day before she had been crying for some unknown reason and printing out the phrase, “You never loved me, you just broke my heart.” That couldn't have been further from the truth. She would fidget around and draw at home, and I didn't realise she was bored of being with me when she had so many other options in her mind because of what others had fed her, as if I was a monogamist who wouldn’t forgive her for cheating or making a mistake. Even if I had seen her, when she showed up at home she seemed in love with herself, watching herself in the mirror in her new tight, short shorts. It was weird. I had noticed something strange in Martina for a while now and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I thought it was only the drugs she was secretly doing behind my back, but I was far away from having all the answers.

Oh, buying a vacation house somewhere near the water. Writing a novel. Taking a photography class. Brushing up on my sailing skills. Traveling. Spain. Egypt. Spending a summer in Tuscany.” She