Skriuwer Patrícia Soley-Beltran út Barcelona wennet en wurket op útnûging fan Ljouwert City of Literature in moanne yn ‘e stêd. Hjoed it earste diel fan har deiboek as writer in residence.
DAY 1. HUNGER
—How are you?
—Starving!
The small sparkling eyes of the bright haired lady at the station are smiling at me, but I’m suddenly embarrassed.
—Sorry, you must be Grietje! Nice to meet you. I had a good flight but the books I carried weighed too much on my shoulders and I was so eager to arrive in Leeuwarden that I took the train without stopping for lunch and I slept all the way not to faint.
While I devour an emergency salmon sandwich, I realized the truth is I’m writing-starved. This fiction which is not such is keeping me grounded in life. I fancy myself as a sort of mythical Ariadna threading her own word path into the labyrinth to meet the Minotaur, make peace and get out. This is the story I explain to Baukje Zijlstra, my novelist pal, and Roelof, her quiet partner, who is from Amsterdam but seems Britishly familiar to me. I trust they will not think I’m mad. We talked and talked while eating the lovely Indonesian food he cooked, and her face became younger by the hour. (Do writers belong to some this world?).
Baukje walks me home. In my apartment everything is salmon pink. A little girl lives here cuddled in softness. If I ever missed softness in my childhood, one month here will suffice to get over my nostalgia.
DAY 2. KEYS
I slept eleven hours steadily like a child.
In the morning, I woke up to a nightmare: Liceu, Barcelona’s opera house, burned down again and I was only a few little steps away from red, but this time I was not alone: my friends kept me away from fire. Once awake, I interpreted my dream: last time I moved to a Northern European country on a trip that felt decisive to me the real Liceu burnt to the stake. Sad in the long Scottish night, I wept.
But that was then and this is now and I am in Leeuwarden UNESCO City of Literature with loads of water in the canals to stop any undesired fire. So, I eagerly open my computer only to find some keys are not working b, n, !, Shift, Caps lock … How inconvenient! Do these silent keys compose a secret code? Can’t find sense.
To avoid anguish, I read “Happiness Delayed” by Baukje Zijlstra which is what I really felt like doing anyway. I dive deep into Frisian symbolic universe. Even the names of the people I meet sound like a fairy tale to me. Another world… In the afternoon, I met the team. All bubbly Frisian writers: Tryntsje, Grietje, Sito and Berber; Ernst is missing because he’s off balance. (I truly think that poets and fiction writers are somewhat otherworldly). I feel at ease and I hear myself speaking like a schoolgirl finally allowed to reimagine the world and herself.
I’ve bent the house door key. I’ve always been afraid of having no home. The bent key still opens the door, though, and I won’t get lost because my fiction is now my home.
On my way home I get lost. The streets are lonely and the water dark. I struggle not to feel helpless. Some kids hold Saint Martin’s lights at night.
DAY 3. TREASURES
I hassle a bit about the silent keys, and, thanks to the team, I get an external keyboard at TRESOAR. I love this word because, if one could momentarily silent the ‘A’, it reads TRESOR, which means treasure in Catalan, my mother tongue.
My mother died four years ago today. She was very beautiful and difficult and made me feel guilty about everything.
While my eyes glide through the pages of my personal organizer, time-space is opening: four weeks in Leeuwarden, many hours to inhabit my work while nobody expects me to do no more, no less than this. What a gift of time! If they only knew how grateful I am.
DAY 4. PACK LIGHT
On my bike for the first time in years. I was too ill and my city too full to cycle. Feels good. A white bicycle, a new start… but wait a minute, I can’t lock it because I can’t get the key out of its keyhole. There definitely seems to be an issue with keys. I used to have a recurrent nightmare during my not so rosy early puberty: I would lose my home keys. Is this unexpectedly haunting me?
I got a mint green new rucksack and an absolutely necessary new key ring to match. I’m now equipped to cycle around all of Leeuwarden’s rings and beyond with my computer and my bent home key. I want to see and smell the landscapes pictured in the magazine LETTER. I want to experience that soft haze wrapping a dream-like land full of fairytaled named people aiming to have happiness in their bag.
I take up my novel and write. I work into the early hours of day 5 while a soft rain is falling on dark desolated Indische buurt.
DAY 5. THE PASSENGER
No more bicycle today, too much rain. I walk to the inclined tower and get into the treasure castle to meet Peter, the light-eyed giant IT guardian of TRESOAR. Sweet as he is, cannot fix my computer. In my external keyboard I trust. I return home under the soft water.
A conversation with a Majorcan friend about gentrification develops into a reflection on housing and identity. He moved away and he is now excited about enjoying driving around without the sea surrounding you. We, mainland Europeans, can drive and drive all the way to Vladivostok, Beijing or Singapore if we fancy. Alternatively, we can also lock ourselves up in a small flat in Indische buurt to write about a Mediterranean island.
DAY 6. TANIT
A silver depiction of the goddess Tanit presides over my failing computer. It’s a keyring I brought from Ibiza. She was supposed to protect me during the trip and bring me light. You can’t trust old goddesses.
Moving moves something inside us.
I hold a small cup I got as gift from the Literary City. It reads: “Grote schoonheid geen bezwaar“ (Great beauty, no objection). It’s a great welcome.
Languages dance around me and my fingertips move the keys to set in my writing hot and moving.
DAY 7. WHY?
I work in the morning eager to meet Baukje in the afternoon. After some small talk about death and the purpose of living, she takes me to visit a prison turned library. I’m also locked up to write. The Foucauldian paradox of subjectivity: limitations enable you.
We have a hot coffee in a lovely café overlooking a shady garden. The sun is falling.
Why write? Why live?
Writing until life becomes a dream.
