On our walks to “Il Rio,” the river turned Turia Park, we pass a gated door on a walled corner garden of the ancient city of Valencia, Spain, with yellow birds coloring the air and flowering trees stretching skyward. Valencian restoration recently painted one word beside the secret garden door: “Refugio.” An affinity and pang for refuge knocked on my heart, as a dawning 2021 proved challenging with an unstable man loitering by our door hurling obscenities, neighbors’ non stop parties despite COVID restrictions and six straight months of construction noise. Refuge, that gated secret garden, beckoned during unsuccessful attempts to drown out drilling, subwoofers, echoing chatter, and reverberating high heels until dawn. Rose colored life in El Carmen, with its late night culture, reached maximum saturation. In Old Town Valencia, 2 am is a normal bedtime, and residents have remarkably high thresholds for loud noise while they sleep. Noise pollution, traveling up the walls and through floorboards during quiet hours, doesn’t register on their radar. Attempting to adapt, as we wanted the ancient ambience, we pushed off bedtime until the last midnight church bell sounds and wake up at the first 8 am bell. But being born with an extremely sensitive nervous system, the intrusive noise at all hours brought on a wistfulness for refuge.

This last week while walking down Carrer dels Serrans, I noticed another newly painted “Refugio” sign with the same art deco letters by the secret garden door. A little research uncovered that in 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, the Second Spanish Republic moved the Capital to Valencia. Because of it, Valencia was bombed over 400 times, killing 800 people and maiming three thousand. Nearly a thousand buildings were leveled. To protect Valencianos, 250 air raid shelters or Refugi were designated all over the city. This Refugio on Career del Serrans street was built to hold 300+ people at a time. After Franco’s dictatorship ended at his death in 1975, this bombing refuge was turned into a banana warehouse, later became a space to build floats for the Fallas Festival and now has been designated as a monument of cultural significance. The Refugio’s back exit is none other than the secret garden door. We reserved a tour online to visit the Refugio shelter in March when restrictions are lifted, and we will eat lunch at another recently refurbished Refugio, now a Michelin starred restaurant. And funny enough, in another moment of synchronicity, yesterday walking through Placa de Tetuan, I paused at a tucked away cultural sign that I had passed numerous times but never understood its significance until that moment– ‘near this plaza are more hidden Refugi.‘

“We can find true refuge within our own hearts and minds-right here, right now, in the midst of our moment-to-moment lives.”- Tara Brach

Being off kilter and floundering in all the chaotic noise, I started doing a morning Mindfulness meditation to become more resilient and restore my equilibrium. I found it interesting to learn that floundering, while an extremely vulnerable and distressful place, it is where we can gain more clarity and find firmer ground. While I wanted to tuck tail and run from Old Town Valencia, I am discovering there is wisdom in floundering. I am learning there is a grace in giving in and feeling the destabilizing qualities of floundering. I am learning about equanimity, being comfortable in uncomfortable situations and learning to relax in what is beyond my control. (Something I learned in yoga but never applied to my mental wellbeing.) I started reading a book about calming the “monkey mind,” the part of the brain that controls emotions and anxiety. It confirmed what I intrinsically knew, that getting lost in art and literature, and visiting new places, opens a space where master skills can be acquired. A space of trusting that life coalesces out of formlessness… a place where curiosity pulls the floundering from helplessness to hopefulness…from floundering to flying.

In this place of finding toleration, growing and stretching, I put on my boots and went to the new Joaquin Sorolla art exhibit. Just five minutes after getting lost in the beautiful masterpieces, a quiet space of calm surrounded me despite children crying and excited exclamations and conversations. I started thinking as I stood on the “one meter apart,” floor marker how COVID distancing, culture clashes, and a longing for refuge had made me disconnected from myself and humanity. I began to see that no longer resisting life’s inevitable moments of helplessness and floundering actually opens a door to refuge.

Art should be an oasis: a place or refuge from the hardness of life.” F Botero

The exhibit, entitled “Femenino plural” was selected works of Sorolla from the late 1800s. Sorolla loved women’s grace and beauty but also their strength and courage– their dual sides. He painted this pluralism with great emotion and love. He used his wife and daughters as the subjects of his paintings as well as fisherwomen, peasants and street workers. As I stood hinged forward, looking at a lovely image of a woman at the seashore holding her baby, I was asked by a grandmother if I could help her move the stroller, holding her sleeping granddaughter, up the stairs. In a instant I was moved by her smiling eyes, the kindness that emanated from her, and I felt connected to humanity again. A glimmer of an understanding surfaced on the dual sides of situations designed to teach flailing/flounder and on the flip side –flying.

After the Sorolla exhibit, I retraced my steps to some street art that had moved me months earlier. Perfect images for Valentines’s weekend.

While wandering down narrow streets appreciating various street artists’ works, a mural of the couple holding hands reminded me of our two recent trips to Gandia. In December we had dropped off my residency paperwork an hour South of Valencia in Gandía, and in January we went back to pick up my new card.

GANDIA- December visit

Persimmon and citrus orchards whipped past while we sat on the train reading the history of Gandia and Spanish knight Rodrigo Diaz, aka El Cid. In the Middle Ages, El Cid, while exiled from home, helped rescue and liberate numerous Berber and Moorish occupied cities in Spain. At Castle Bayren in Gandia, Muhammad Ibn Tasufin and his North African troops camped above Gandia and on the seashore and surrounded El Cid. The situation seemed desperate as El Cid’s band was surrounded and harangued on all sides. While it would have been easier to surrender, El Cid, proficient in Greek and Roman battlefield tactics, rallied his men and led a full frontal charge on the invaders and broke through the center, which made the occupiers flee to their ships. After liberating Gandia, El Cid went to liberate Valencia that was under Moorish occupation. El Cid proved to be a fair ruler in Valencia, allowing Muslim, Christian and Jewish citizens to live peacefully side by side and made the city a refuge for all. I questioned at the time, if it was even possible to coexist peacefully with my apartment neighbors when I was surrounded on all sides by obtuse, noisy night owls?

After exiting the train station and dropping off my residency paperwork at the police station, the rains picked up and we took shelter in an architectural gem–the 14th century Gothic Borja Ducal Palace (See Xativa Castle post, the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance Borgia family). The Ducal Palace gallery with a ballerina and gold leaf baroque decorations was captivating. Crown Hall with its coffered wood ceiling and words from the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians “Every man that striveth for mastery is temperate in all things,” wasn’t lost on me. That nod to temperance, forgiving, refraining from judgement with my neighbors was a master skill that I was in the middle of learning. And there, in the courtyard, was none other than an air raid Refugio. I pondered again the lesson on equanimity and finding refuge in uncomfortable floundering.

GANDIA – January visit

The sun was shining, birds were chirping and we had high hopes of getting in and out of Gandia with my residency card. But after getting in line to be told to get out of line and return at 1pm when cards would be distributed, we weren’t so sure. We meandered back to a park, and then stopped for hot chocolate. Sitting under Collegiate Basilica that had been gutted during the Spanish Civil War, we admired the buttresses, gargoyle water spouts, eavesdropped on a group chattering about their castle hikes, and wondered about the pigeons dyed, yellow, blue and green, scavenging for crumbs. Afterwards we passed the Convent of Santa Clara of Gandia. Many of the Borja women spent time in this convent as well as other women over the centuries fleeing from being married by force. After returning to the station, and waiting my turn to get inside, I was disappointed to learn that my residency card still wasn’t ready. The man behind the desk apologetically said come back at the end of February. I nodded and told myself to flounder with mindfulness and intention. Master skills are learned with acceptance and not a disappointed heart.

It is now the end of February, and we are headed back to Gandia in two days to try again to get my residence card. I hear the neighbors hollering below us, the wind slams the covering on an abandoned building nearby, and the apartment rattles from something being dropped and drug in the construction behind us. I look at the quote by Tara Brach I put by my laptop: “We can fall in love with life over and over every day. We can become children of wonder, grateful to be walking on earth, grateful to belong with each other and to all of creation. We can find our true refuge in every moment, in every breath” …. ‘refuge in every moment, and breath’ feels possible. Coincidence or not, the Academy Award winning El Cid movie with Charlton Heston is playing on the TMC. I’m watching El Cid try for peace and mercy instead of wreaking vengeance on the occupying Muslim in Spain. I have turned a corner and love life again. I think about all the things I am grateful for living in Spain. Living with Noise is just my latest adventure. Third time might be the charm in getting my residency card… if not, I can take a deep breath, and be happy anyway. Refugio was inside me all along.