On the Friday night, here in lovely Mijas, there was a poetry book presentation at Casa Museo...yes, I know, don't you just love when people tell you... there was!! Sorry, but I did not know about it either until that very afternoon.... we should all read Mijas Semanal much more than we do!
I'll continue.... the author of this poetry book, Eduardo Martinez y Hernandez, to the right, presented his latest book of poetry called Entre Menhires, Dolmenes, Tumulos y Calvarios..... I went, thinking this is going to be a real test for my Spanish, and listened with incredible pleasure to the gentleman in the middle talk at length about the book, his friendship with the author and his wife Margrethe Johannessen Kul, who has written the prologue to the book, and about the subject of the book...... the stones, that we, humanity, have raised through the ages to commemorate, well, ourselves, the buildings we have built and continue to build and what they mean in our lives. He spoke with surprise about the stones, that someone would choose to write poetry about stones..... it does not surprise me at all.
I grew up with stones, rune stones, dolmens, and a grand mother who took us round "our" island in Denmark, to see them, first on bicycles, later in cars, we visited these stones almost every trip I made to the island. My grandmother worked in the local museum, and was familiar with not only the big stones, but also the shards found in the fields, of ancient arrow heads in flint, of which we had serious collections as children. Stones, for me, also an integral part of the beach, not the sandy stretches we are familiar with here, but wild, wave and wind swept beaches, where winter determined next summers best bathing spot, never the same. There, eyes firmly on the ground, we looked for "rassle stene", perfectly round pieces of flint, with a small hole, where the water got in to clean away the limestone, around the kernel of flint in the middle, this made them rattle, hence the name, and we priced them enormously. More so, than the dolmens. For a child, a treasure in the pocket, means more than any sense of history. Later in life, as an adult, I return time and time again to those dolmens, for me, who grew up without a real sense of roots, that place meant that many feet had walked where I now stood, and coming every year, was as close as I could get to "coming home".
Reading the poems, google translate firmly on my iPad, I am delighted, they are beautiful, my Spanish is not sufficient to follow all of it..... so maybe I make some things up... does that matter?
Reading the poems, have made me think of those dolmens, that I have not seen now, for many years.
The poems have made me think of what I call "coming home", why it is home, why my heart belongs here, and not somewhere else? The stone mountain at my back, the sea to the front, and my world in full view.
The poems talk of love, and of respect, sometimes lost, in a world of haste and superficiality and I will read them again and again. Thank you, Eduardo Martinez y Hernandez.
