Leeuwarden City of Literature invited writer Patrícia Soley-Beltran from Barcelona to live and work in the city for a month. Today the last part of her diary as writer in residence.
THE WATER
Ancient Mediterraneans thought there were only three kinds of men: dead men, living men and seamen.
I belong to the third kind. Words are my boat. Reading and writing, my compass. I board on language to travel into the eye of the storm. At a risk.
Water is omnipresent in Leeuwarden. The canals are the city’s veins. I initially referred to them as “the canals” but I realised people talk about “the water”. They would say, for instance, the “water that comes from the North”, “you cross the water”. It’s always “the water”.
When the course of “a water” is altered, it leaves a sort of magical trace behind. One can feel it in Noordvliet. I sensed something does not quite fit there, but I couldn’t pinpoint what it was. I took an alternative route whenever possible. My unrest was explained when I learnt that it had been a canal. The buildings with city names on their facades were warehouses. Its concrete speaks of fluid’s absence.
One evening, ambulances, fire people, and even, as I later learnt, a helicopter got mobilised to attend somebody who had fallen into “the water”. I thought to myself: Frisian and Dutch are experienced seafarers. Even Sinterklaas arrives by boat! Was the fallen one a foreigner trying to duck out with the flow? Certainly not me…
THE FLOW
On Sinterklaas I present my work at the ELLA! meeting (Frisian women writers working group). ELLAs help me navigate into the depths of a young woman’s beauty. What a wonderful gift! They make my day, my week, my month… That night the full moon rose high and bright and the tide must have run strong in my veins, for it took my sleep away.
DBIEB, the one and only prison-library, is almost completely surrounded by water and the Zinnenfabriek is back with their poets. I meet Jamie, a bright eyed young playwriter. She is wearing a medallion with a shimmering green scarab in it. The flow has it that an old Egyptian scarabat is found by my novel’s protagonist in a Phoenician tomb in Ibiza.
Sometimes the flow scares me but not today. My own turquoise scarabat awaits for me at home. There is love. I’m safe.
Writing is diving naked into an emotional lake. Your craft allows you to breath below the surface.
THE WISDOM
Rain falls softly. Water flows from above, from the sea, from the land. It will soon become snow, I believe. I saw it once.
I fall in love with a delicate Nativity scene made in contemporary white and gold porcelain.
I must take all these with me.
Definitely “Grote schoonheid geen bezwaar!”
Thank you so much Leeuwarden UNESCO City of Literature! Long live!
