MAYDAY is an online cultural magazine produced by New American Press and I am very proud that they accepted my piece for their Culture column!
The Ghastly Ghost Writer is my takedown of Philip Roth, who tried his hardest to erase Anne Frank…. When I happened to stumble over his book I was appalled and disgusted. A year later I was still disgusted, enough so that I wrote about it.
MAYDAY agreed with me. I hope you will, too. Follow this link to read my essay in MAYDAY Magazine: MAYDAY Magazine: Culture
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Jadi Campbell is from Germany / Upstate New York. Jadi is one of IHRAM Press’s treasured writers. In this interview, she shares her musings, inspiration, and honest thoughts on her experience with us as an author and activist.
Jadi’s latest publication with IHRAM Press, “Red Red Roses,” is featured in the IHRAM Quarter 2 Literary Magazine: Reflections of Feminine Empowerment.
Thank you for all you do, Jadi.
Now, be honest, how has your experience been with IHRAM Press? How did you find us, and why did you choose to publish with us?
For several years, I took part in a variety show to benefit V-Day, begun by Eve Ensler, to end violence against all women, girls, and the earth. I began to look for a publication that might be interested in the essay I wrote for the show: “Red Red Roses.” When I found your call for submissions on the topic of Reflections of Feminine Empowerment, I knew my piece might find a perfect home.
Would you recommend IHRAM Press to other writers/artists?
I already have!
Share a quote from your ESSAY published in IHRAM Literary Magazine 2024!
“One day out of the blue my father astonished me by confessing that he and his male peers had watched with envy as my generation experienced the sexual revolution. I have no idea how much sex he imagined I’d had, but clearly he believed a generic ‘we’ were in and out of beds often.
Of course, he was speaking as a man. The cultural shift for women was complicated and it was messy. We inherited society’s clichés, including how we should look. My mother told me that when she was a girl she was instructed, it takes a lot of work to be attractive, and women just have to suffer in order to be beautiful. Mom passed this dubious wisdom on to me and my two sisters.
Another cliché I was taught is that nothing bad happens to girls who are good. We lived in a small town and I had no idea that terrible things could happen even there.”
Now for the fun questions! What compels you to pick up a pen or open your laptop to free-write? And what inspires/influences your writing, particularly when it comes to addressing human rights issues?
At the age of 6 I decided I was going to be a writer – and waited until I was 50 to get serious about it. A compulsion to write now rules my waking hours. I’ve belonged to a writers’ group since 2012. We talk about a writer’s need to bear witness. I write both fiction and nonfiction, and believe that compelling writing tells the truth no matter what genre a writer chooses. What influences me is a desire to make readers feel and empathize with the lives of others.
The human rights concerns addressed in the IHRAM literary magazine are often complex and challenging to navigate. How do you navigate the balance between highlighting these challenges and maintaining a sense of hope or optimism in your writing?
I couldn’t write about real-life attempted rape and societal blame without leavening the piece with humor. I also tried to give the story a historical perspective, and talked about the world my mother bequeathed to me and my sisters vs. what she had lived through. I marched on the streets 40 years ago and witnessed progress. I cannot believe that the majority of us want to turn back the clock.
How do you personally connect with our mission? Particularly on the power of art and literature to influence social change, and our values of beauty as a fundamental creative principle, sincerity, vulnerability, celebrating diversity, and opening doorways of engagement.
Your work is electrifying. The mix of international perspectives as well as the incredible artwork you feature produces a beautiful and stunning magazine. The word I keep coming back to is inspiring. I am incredibly proud to have been featured in such a global group of artists and writers. We are all interconnected, and using art to celebrate and explore what that signifies is healing and powerful.
The IHRAM magazine aims to celebrate authors contending with their identities within the context of their environments. How does your environment influence your view of the world (your home country, city, and surrounding culture)?
I’m an American who has spent half her life in Europe and another language. Experiencing a life between cultures informs everything… A dear friend once told me I’d become a citizen of the world. My German husband and I travel a great deal, and the globe is like a pointillist painting. The dots gather and connect, and create a larger and more detailed picture as I slowly fill it in.
In comparison, how does your intersectionality influence your view of the world (your personal beliefs, gender expression, religious affiliations, etc.)?
I seek out the sacred places of each place I visit. I will try to set my own ideas about what is ‘right’ or ‘true’ to one side and see if I can understand what a foreign culture has to tell me. With that said, a society that holds a group as more important or valuable than others is never justified.
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E.B. White was born on July 11, 1899 in Mount Vernon, New York. He was a staff writer for The New Yorker Magazine, and edited the classic handbook The Elements of Style. White wrote essays, letters, meditations on the natural world, and books for children. My sisters and I talk often of our sweet childhood memories: our father read us Charlotte’s Web numerous times before bedtime. In his honor (with apologies to Charlotte), I give you a post I wrote about spiders after we visited Cambodia. – Jadi
One of the exotic foods I have (NOT!) eaten is a Cambodian treat of crispy fried big black hairy spiders. Sold at a roadside stop when the bus from Phnom Penh thoughtfully stopped for a bathroom break.
Crispy Fried Big Black Hairy Spiders .. who doesn’t love ’em?
Actually, this post belongs to my blog thread describing what to call groups of animals. Here I give you: a cluster of spiders. Realize that these are (were) each about the size of my closed fist, and you will understand why I lost my appetite.
The spider in the next photo was as large as the span of my whole hand….
Really, you don’t even wanna imagine a cluster of these guys in Northern LaosHow about a cluster of these spiders – also gigantic – from Japan?
I can’t imagine eating these spiders. Or the scorpions, or larvae, or bugs fried up at various markets we’ve visited…. But they are a source of protein. “Over 1,000 species of insects are known to be eaten in 80% of the world’s nations. The total number of ethnic groups recorded to practice entomophagy is around 3,000. …Today insect eating is rare in the developed world, but insects remain a popular food in many regions of Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. …FAO has registered some 1900 edible insect species and estimates there were in 2005 some 2 billion insect consumers worldwide.” [1]
In memory of E.B. White, July 11, 1899 – October 1, 1985
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My award-listed books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name. My most recent book, The Taste of Your Name, was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award.
Author Colleen McCullough was born on June 1, 1937 in Wellington, Australia. She wrote a highly regarded series on Rome; she taught and did research at Yale’s Medical School Dept. of Neurology. And while she was working at Yale – because neurology and a position at an Ivy League university somehow didn’t take up all her time – she wrote The Thorn Birds. In her honor I give you the post I wrote after visiting the Outback. —Jadi
In The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCullough vividly depicts a turn of the century sheep ranch in the Australian Outback. The hardships of working an unforgiving landscape, conditions that seem too extreme to be real, and the isolation are all accurately portrayed.
You’re already yawning, right?
All right then, how about this? In The Thorn Birds, young heroine Meggie and the priest Father Ralph de Bricassart, many years her senior, fall in love. Their life long passion is both forefront and backdrop to the fates of a family in the Outback.
That caught your attention!
I’m not usually one for the guilty pleasure of romance novels, but this one works on so many levels that it’s irresistible. Whether as romance, family saga, or historical portrayal, The Thorn Birds is a great read. It’s also accurate to a fault. As you read this book, you experience Australia’s hard climate along with McCullough’s characters.
Uwe and I drove through a small portion of the Western Australia Outback. Our goal was the gold mining town of Kalgoorlie-Boulder and we had a long, stop-every-3-hours to stretch our legs drive to do. The Coolgardie-Esperance Highway goes on with no bends or turns (and very few trees).
We halted briefly in Norseman
Norseman, Western Australia
and purchased sandwiches and drinks for a planned picnic stop. But there was a problem: no picnic tables anywhere. We drove and drove. Why, on such an endless highway, were there were no facilities?
We finally gave up and pulled over to the side of the road.
At least there was a tree and some shadeNote the deep red soil
I got out of the car and spread lunch on the hood. I was too hungry to wait for Uwe, so I unwrapped my sandwich and yummy cake, and gazed out into the endless empty brush.
The Indian Ocean is somewhere on the other side of those mountains
Every fly in the endless empty brush left wherever they’d been snoozing. Within seconds my eyes and mouth, my hands and arms, and my lunch were engulfed with fat hungry insects. My sandwich was rendered way beyond salvaging; it had vanished under layers of crawling flies. I wrapped everything back into a bag to throw away later and contented myself with a piece of fruit (eaten in the car, with the windows all closed).
In case you’re eating your own lunch as you read this I won’t tell you what it is in The Thorn Birds that’s covered in flies. But man, that McCullough sure can write!
In memory of Colleen McCullough, June 1, 1937 toJanuary 29, 2015
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My award-listed books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name. My most recent book, The Taste of Your Name, was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award.
Maybe it’s weird, but I know more about people in my imagined universe than I do about the real people in my life. I figure real folks are entitled to their privacy. But if I thought you up and wrote you down, I DO know and WILL share salacious and embarassing details.
I create back stories for all my characters. People in my books reappear in later works. I take characters who showed up in an earlier novel or short story and fill in their profiles – sometimes against their wills.
Which brings us to Brian Klevenger. He made a brief appearance in Tsunami Cowboys, remember? Brian is Scott McCreedy’s best friend. He’s an only child, the son of alcoholics, and spends as much time as possible at Scott’s house.
Brian takes center stage in my most recent novel The Taste of Your Name. He’s fled to Germany where he does reminiscence therapy with dementia patients. He’s sleeping with two sisters. And (because I wrote his story) I tell the readers his most secret inner thoughts and emotions (because getting to do so is one of the great rewards of being a writer).
Brian is one of the most complex, complete human beings I know. You can meet him here: Amazon.com. Available around the world as eBook, hardcover, and paperback.
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name. My most recent book with Brian, The Taste of Your Name, was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award.
Author Washington Irving was born on April 3, 1783 in New York. Washington Irving is a lifetime favorite, beginning with my childhood: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow! Rip Van Winkle! We lived near the region he set his stories in and it was easy to imagine his terrifying headless horsemen or the bearded men bowling in the hills and creating thunder.
I’d forgotten that he stayed and wrote at the Alhambra in 1829, when it was a neglected ruin. Now, that’s artistic inspiration. In his honor here is the post I wrote after visiting the Alhambra. —Jadi
***
“Perhaps there never was a monument more characteristic of an age and people than the Alhambra; a rugged fortress without, a voluptuous palace within; war frowning from its battlements; poetry breathing throughout the fairy architecture of its halls.” ― Washington Irving, Tales of the Alhambra
I made a second trip to southern Spain. It had been over forty years between visits, and I had no idea what – if anything – I might remember. My first trip was with my high school Spanish Club. We were all young, and boy were we excited to be able to drink legally for a change!
In an earlier post I wrote about my spatial memories in Granada. At the Alhambra I had strange wavy recollections of reflecting pools and intricate walls.
To visit the palace rooms of the Alhambra is like stepping inside one gigantic extended scrollwork of interlocking geometric design.
I can remember loving the symmetry. I sure don’t remember any specific part of it. As I say, my memories are a blurry recollection of warm stone walls with ingenious decorations. Just… an impression of a harmony that contains a hundred thousand details you will get lost in once you begin examining the space more closely.
Southern Spain is frequently the hottest region in Europe. At the peak of summer, it stays oppressively hot (100°F and above) and very dry. We visited Andalusia at the very end of September/start of October, and the temperatures were still in the 90s. You seek relief in rooms with the latticed windows that let in light but not heat. Or you walk in the walled gardens.
Water, water, everywhere…. The former Islamic rulers built a sophisticated system of fountains and pools. Those fountains were designed to include the sound of flowing waters, and flowers and fruit trees were planted to delight the senses with their perfumes.
Memory returned vivid and at the same time somehow distorted at the Alhambra palace’s innermost courtyard spaces. Only those wonderful carved lions at the private fountain were just as I remembered them.
And those were more than enough to make me very, very happy.
“In the present day, when popular literature is running into the low levels of life, and luxuriating on the vices and follies of mankind; and when the universal pursuit of gain is trampling down the early growth of poetic feeling, and wearing out the verdure of the soul, I question whether it would not be of service for the reader occasionally to turn to these records of prouder times and loftier modes of thinking; and to steep himself to the very lips in old Spanish romance.” ― Washington Irving, Tales of the Alhambra
In memory of Washington Irving, April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name. My most recent book The Taste of Your Name was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award.
Anaïs Nin was born on February 21, 1903 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. She wrote essays, diaries, short stories, novels, and erotica. She befriended and promoted fellow author Henry Miller. Her work is strong, feminine, and unapologetically sexual. In her honor I am reprinting the post I wrote after we visited an amazing temple complex in India: Khajuraho. – Jadi
When we visited, Khajuraho could only be reached via a long trek on bad roads. Since we’re talking about India, this means the roads are bad indeed.
Where’d the road go?Down here maybe?
The driver we’d hired was there to meet us at our hotel in Agra, and off we went. Five bone-jolting hours later we reached our destination.
Along with its inaccessibility, Khajuraho is notorious for 1,000 year old, perfectly preserved, UNESCO World Heritage erotic carvings.
Somehow this site survived a millennia (millennia, people!), in a spot that had no fortresses or fortifications to speak of. The temple complex existed simply for the purpose of worship.
And what worship. Every single inch of the temple buildings are carved in high relief, depicting gods, tender lovers, voluptuous attendants, monkeys, elephants, assistants for the sexual act….
Hundreds of skilled stonemasons were hired to build the site. The Khajuraho region has excellent sandstone, and the sandstone temples were built with granite foundations. All were constructed without mortar! Instead, gravity holds the stones together with mortise and tenon joints.
Some of these stones are megaliths weighing up to 20 tons.
The glory of sandstone is that it loans itself to delicate carving. Even viewing the temple walls from the ground we could see the wrinkles in Ganesh’s trunk; the fingernails of the apsaras and the beads in their strands of jewelry; the sheer layers of veils over their thighs and buttocks.
Uwe vanished almost immediately with his camera, leaving me alone with the young male guide. I could feel my face go red, and it wasn’t a hot flash or sunburn. I was terribly afraid of how embarrassed I was going to be. But the guide pointed out the various depictions of the act of love and spoke in a clear calm voice, explaining the significance (pull your minds of out the gutter, dear readers) in terms of energy, religion, and esoteric philosophy.
It was mid-January, past the usual Christmas tourist season. It was also a two-week period when northern and central India get swathed in fogs – something smarter tourists than we knew. As a result we had the pleasure of being two of the few Westerners at the site.
Most of the others were Indians on holiday, and I was touched to see that at Khajuraho, this meant young married couples. They walked around the compound, standing in front of particularly erotic carved panels, heads together in discussion.
How about the next panel?Is that a new yoga position?
While only 10% of the carvings depict sexual acts, you can guess which panels elicited the most commentary. These were the love-making couples known as maithunas. Other carvings depict everyday activities: playing musicians, potters, farmers, soldiers on horseback, etc.
Musicians
The temples were probably built in the one hundred year period between 950 and 1050 AD, during the Rajput Chandella dynasty. According to historical records, by 1100 Khajuraho contained 85 temples covering 20 square kilometers. Roughly 20 temples still stand. They were located 60 kilometers from Mahoba, the medieval capital of the Chandela kingdom.
Khajuraho was mentioned by the Arabic historian Abu Rihan-al-Biruni, in 1022 AD, and by Ibn Battuta, the Moroccan traveler, in 1335 AD.
When Muslim rulers took control, heathen places of worship were systematically destroyed. Ironically, even centuries ago the remoteness of these temples helped secure their survival. Nature did the rest as vegetation and forest reclaimed the site. For years the temples were covered by dense date palm trees which gave the city its name: in Hindi, Khajur = date. (The more ancient name was Vatsa.)
The scenes explain Hinduism’s four goals for life: dharma (right way of living), kama (aesthetic enjoyment), artha (prosperity) and moksha (liberation). The complexity of the geometric layout and the grid pattern of the temples with their circles, squares and triangles, the importance of geographic orientation and bodies of water and the carvings’ iconography is beyond my very weak grasp. Instead, here is an excerpt from the UNESCO website:
Greatly influenced by the Tantric school of thought, the Chandela kings promoted various Tantric doctrines through royal monuments, including temples. Sculptors of Khajuraho depicted all aspects of life. The society of the time believed in dealing frankly and openly with all aspects of life, including sex. Sex is important because Tantric cosmos is divided into the male and female principle. Male principle has the form and potential, female has the energy. According to Hindu and Tantric philosophy, one cannot achieve anything without the other, as they manifest themselves in all aspects of the universe. Nothing can exist without their cooperation and coexistence. In accordance with ancient treaties on architecture, erotic depictions were reserved for specific parts of the temples only. The rest of the temple was profusely covered with other aspects of life, secular and spiritual. Source: UNESCO/CLT/WHC
Khajuraho remained forgotten by the outside world until 1838 when a British army engineer, Captain T.S. Burt, was carried in via palanquin. I laughed so hard when I read that the Victorian officer was shocked by what he found….
Khajuraho!
In memory of Anaïs Nin, February 21, 1903 – January 14, 1977
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name. My most recent book The Taste of Your Name was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award.
The Merchant of Venice, Act V scene I: “…There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st But in his motion like an angel sings….”
my cherished Complete Works of William Shakespeare Illustrated by Rockwell Kent
According to the Royal Shakespeare Company, ‘[t]he title page of the first edition of the play, printed in 1600, states that it has been ‘divers times acted by the Lord Chamberlaine his Servants’. The first recorded performance was at court on Shrove Sunday, 10 February, 1605. King James and his courtiers must have enjoyed it because it was performed again two days later.’ [1]
Here, in honor of The Merchant of Veniceand the Immortal Bard, is my original post about the music of the heavenly spheres.
Schwedagon Pagoda, Rangon
In 2009 we spent 4 weeks in Burma, the maximum time permitted on a visa. For years we’d debated back and forth about whether to go. Does one travel to a repressive regime? Just the year before, monks were shot for demonstrating peacefully in the streets. In the end we decided to go and bear witness. A country closed tight and ruled with iron fists, the poverty and corruption are unbelievable… as are the loving kindness of the Burmese and the beauty and magic of their land. I have been pondering what to post about our trip to Burma and how to write it, because Burma is unlike anyplace on earth.
But these are only words.
Let me begin again, this time with a story:
Sacred Pali script
On our very last day in-country, in Yangon we stopped at a café on a busy street with outdoor tables. All of the tables were filled with other tourists. The locals did not have the money for anything so extravagant. A beer, a pineapple juice, and hot green tea arrived; I wrote out some last post cards. Hovering in the street were the post card seller, a hawker for newspapers (used and days old), and a skinny boy with an endless “Hello? hello! Hello? hello!” When a tourist looked his way he said “Eat,” and mimed someone putting food in his mouth. He hovered looking over the wall dividing the café from the street, persistent with hunger.
I became aware of an ethereal music swimming its way up from the background of my consciousness. I thought someone down the street a ways with access to a power generator was playing a recording of a beautiful, haunting voice. Then the sound came nearer, and it was a young Burmese person. At first I thought it was a man slowly making his way down the road. It was a woman: she had her hair up under a cap and thanaka paste on her cheeks to protect her skin from the sun.
A voice from the Heavenly Spheres
She halted and stood very still as she sang, or chanted verses, or recited a Buddhist prayer. It wasn’t clear if she was singing or speaking and didn’t matter. The purity of that voice pierced all barriers and reached all hearts. Every so often the little metal cymbals in her fingers went ching! in a perfect counterpoint.
When she stopped, the entire café burst into spontaneous applause. People kept getting out of their seats to put bills in the can on a string around her neck. I checked my wallet. I knew my last offering in Burma was going to this young woman with the voice that sang with the music of the spheres. This music usually can’t be heard. The Greek mathematician Pythagoras of Samos believed the movement of planets (heavenly spheres) creates ethereal and earthly harmonies; Shakespeare wrote often about how these harmonies affect events. All I know for sure is that on that afternoon, in a dusty street in Burma, a young woman was channeling that music for us to hear.
I walked out with a 1,000 kyat note, stepped around the restaurant’s retaining wall to donate – and saw my singer had just one leg. She was propping herself up with a rough plank of wood.
This is my final image of the country sometimes called Myanmar. This is my avatar for Burma: a transcendent voice beyond language, standing with only one leg, singing gloriously, regardless. [3]
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name. My most recent book The Taste of Your Name was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award.
Last year Epistemic Literary printed an excerpt from my new novel The Taste of Your Name. You can read my story titled Food is Love online. It will give you a taste of what my book is about. (Insert groan at bad pun here.)
I’m honored my work was chosen to appear in Epistemic Literary. It’s free, and I encourage you to subscribe and support the work of Kristin Houlihan & Melissa Rotert.
Click here to go Epistemic Literary and read Food is Love. Enjoy.
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name.
Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories).
The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.
I’m excited to announce that my fifth book is now available!
The Taste of Your Name is the story of an erotic triangle, reclaimed memories, the fates of refugees, and the importance of bread. The story also delves into the history of qurt, koliva, witch cakes, and sin foods. Once you finish reading, nothing will ever taste the same again.
Mustafa is a Syrian refugee who runs a bakery in Stuttgart with an American woman named Neela. Her German stepsister Jo provides trauma massage for a war refugee who refuses to talk about what happened. Neela and Jo both have a relationship with Brian, who is trying to retrieve their grandmother’s memories.
How do we resolve memories, the ones we can’t remember or desperately want to forget? How do food traditions unite us? What happens when reality, bad or good, overtakes your life? Read this book and get ready to forget the outside world for a while!
The Taste of Your Name was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award. Available at Amazon or Barnes and Noble, as eBook and Kindle, paperback, and hardcover. Follow these links for Amazon.com or Amazon.de.
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My previous books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.
Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories).
The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.
I made a second trip to southern Spain. It had been over forty years between visits, and I had no idea what – if anything – I might remember. My first trip was with my high school Spanish Club. We were all young, and boy were we excited to be able to drink legally for a change!
I can remember loving the symmetry. I sure don’t remember any specific part of it. As I say, my memories are a blurry recollection of warm stone walls with ingenious decorations. Just… an impression of a harmony that contains a hundred thousand details you will get lost in once you begin examining the space more closely.
Water, water, everywhere…. The former Islamic rulers built a sophisticated system of fountains and pools. Those fountains were designed to include the sound of flowing waters, and flowers and fruit trees were planted to delight the senses with their perfumes.
