ME CUESTA DEL SOL; or, TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, part 2.5

the province of málaga: birthplace of pablo picasso and home to the british. if england had won modern day orlando from the spanish and had the treaty brokered by german lawyers, the result would look something like the costa del sol. but if foreign investment in the hospitality industry on the mediterranean coast of spain has gone too far, well, it's also only gone so far. if you go to the irish pub next to the restaurant that serves all day english breakfasts and you're not obviously from the united kingdom, you might as well be spanish. and you realize the overall effect: when the hairdresser buzzing me head so that it can burn on the beach with the rest of my body asks me if i live here, it's not because i've been conversing with her in spanish but because my spanish is probably bad. but it could be worse. the tanorexic women that come in to ask about appointments don't even make an effort (and probably have no idea of the problems that their stylist is having with the license for her salon). so there's nothing else to do except for to buy the tiniest swimsuit possible at the shopping mall in marbella and wear it with sunglasses to buy beer at the supermarket across from the irish pub. then it's off to the beach, even in the wind, even under the clouds, because the closer you are to the water the less you have to see of what's happening inland. (princess diana, by the way, has her own virgin, the image of which is set above the entrance to the princess' namesake park in miraflores.) but to the northeast, a lighthouse, and because the wind and the cold -- and the alcohol (let's admit it) -- make it difficult to sit tight for more than a few hours without wanting to move (and swimming in the cold april mediterranean is reserved for the end of the day when there's nothing left to do but leave the beach and shower), just because it's there, i try to walk to the lighthouse. and it's too far. i think i get close on that first and only try, but in the rental on the way back to the station three days later it's obvious that i would have never gone all the way. (there was nothing on the beach during those few days in anglo-germanic disneyland that would have made me go all the way.) but there was a sign, and i wanted to take it as one. "el faro," it says. "cambio de sentido." and it isn't right to take it in that, er, sense...but that's what you do when you're at a loss. lost, maybe. and the lighthouse in faro and the one at the edge of the bridge to triana feel immediately closer although i know that they're worlds away in portugal and in spain. then it's just strange to be speeding past the hilltop castles overlooking the white villages of the southern spanish countryside, but at least the ave lets you slow down enough to appreciate the sun coming through the low hanging clouds over the hills between the city and toledo. but it's only later --with the old man -- that i laugh at the strange poetic symmetry of the wind turbines on the hills behind the castle hills. i'm not opposed, but he's decided that the the best way not to worry about having to constantly piss is to keep buying beers along the way so that he can use the bathroom at the bars where we buy them... along the way to the plaza de españa where, yes, i do think that we should take a picture of the statue of don quijote.