I’ve just returned from a bit over 3 weeks in southern Spain.

The second two weeks was spent with a group, on a tour curated by Ned Sublette, a favorite writer of mine, who became a personal acquaintance during the COVID shutdown, when he began a Zoom group showing wonderful documentaries, showcasing what he calls the Afro-Atlantic, and who’s now a friend.

Ned said to us at the beginning of the trip that he hoped it would be transformative – a pretty big aspiration. But it was, for me, in several ways.

BTW, the last time I took a transformative trip – a trip that’s stayed with me throughout my life – and the last time I crossed an ocean – was almost exactly 40 years ago. That trip was more overtly “spiritual” as it was an ecumenical religious tour to India. But during the course of a lifetime, what’s spiritual in ones life evolves, so this trip certainly fell into the realm of the “spiritual”, too. For several years, Ned has led tours to New Orleans (I didn’t really feel the need for that) and to Cuba. Although I didn’t join one of his tours there, it was something he wrote in his book, The World That Made New Orleans, that finally got me there.

But when he sent out a feeler last year, saying he was considering an Andalućia tour, and wondering how much interest there was, I thought – now here’s a tour that piques my attention.

You know how things go – at least they often do for me. I thought I really can’t afford it. Maybe next year I’ll be better able to afford it. Some other year will be better, perhaps … until Al, my younger brother left us; until he just didn’t wake up one morning, and I got a serious “wake-up” call from the “universe”, if you will. There is no other time. We are not promised some other year.

So, shortly after Al’s funeral, I contacted Ned and committed to the trip.

I felt Al with me on this trip – like he had given me a gift, even in his death – the wake up call to go out and live my life.

One of my fellow travelers, at one of our last lunches together said something similar. She had spent time in Rwanda after the war and the rebuilding of that country. The image of a little boy’s eyes she had seen in a photo in a museum there haunted her. She asked the image what message it had for her amidst all this suffering. Go out and live. Live for me. Live your life, it said to her.

I told her about Al, and we understood and shared the solemn charge. She was traveling with her husband who had admitted to me earlier that he was traveling with early stage Parkinson’s disease and a recent cancer diagnosis.

It was a gift to me to see so many living their lives – in spite of the illnesses, the age, the uneven gait – a sign of degenerated knees – that I recognized and shared with them. Just go out and live. Live your life.

Frankly, I’m still processing it all – and may be for quite a while, but I want to go ahead, anyway, and start sharing images, sounds and later, perhaps more thoughts with you.

*Images of the Mesquite arches and sunset in Cádiz are courtesy of fellow traveler, Marty Lipp