On September 28, at a press conference that took place at Finca Sanià, on behalf of the Fundació Finestres, we inaugurated a project that we had been working on since May 2022: the Residència Literària Finestres (RLF), a territory of calm and seclusion, away from urban worries, where imagination and thought are cultivated through writing.
Located inside the Castell-Cap Roig Natural Space (Palamós, Girona), the house – white as a page without ink –, where we welcome writers from all over the world, stands on a cliff on the Costa Brava from which it takes Its name: Cala Sanià. This is the same place where, in 1962, the American author Truman Capote was isolated while working on his famous non-fiction novel In Cold Blood.
That we compare this white house with a page without ink is in no way a literary affectation, but, rather, the most direct approximation to the meaning of what we have proposed to carry out in this space.
In ancient Rome, a page was that rectangle of land in which four rows of vines were grown; Derived from the verb pangere – which means to drive, nail, fix –, and also linked to the Indo-European word pak – from which comes an immense term: peace –, a page is a place in which one works with the land. This means that a page is a fertile space, like an orchard or a garden; And what is even more curious, in Catalan, a Sénia or Sínia is a waterwheel, that is, a tool to raise water from wells and irrigate a piece of land where vegetables are grown, for example.
Hence, coexistence in this white house, determined by the work on the page, also implies the assumption of responsibility with Mediterranean nature and, above all, an attitude of humility before it (a word that, in addition, comes from the earth, humus).
In this sense, the RLF is also a page in which we bring together different voices – from poets, novelists, essayists and short stories –, and such a meeting – or collation – is a form of writing, since the experiences of all the guests to Sanià constitute a story always in genesis. Below I present a brief anthology of fragments extracted from the written pages left by all the people we invited to Sanià as residents of RL Finestres.
03.10.22
How did you manage to write such a dark and terrifying book in this beautiful setting. This would be a retort: if he did it, why can't you too? He had to have rejected walks, invitations to swim, long conversations. Before coming to Sanià, he had never read Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. It was one of those books that he put off. For what reason? A vague idea of the plot; a supposed rancidity.
10.03.23
I finished reading In Cold Blood on a beautiful October day in the same house where Capote wrote it (last night we saw the biographical film in which Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Capote and we were happy when it came out on the Costa Brava). It's a great book and it's also a miracle that he wrote it (he couldn't finish any other one). It's the kind of book that other crime novels aspire to be like: compassionate and chilling, gritty and precise, it manages to evoke a bigger picture through the accumulation of minor, insignificant details. It has suspense, but, unlike other crime novels, this is not the element that defines it. One does not run through its pages. I transcribe a sentence in the notebook where I was following the process of my own novel: “Imagination, of course, can open any door. Turn the key and let the terror come in.”
February 2023
White effervescence against the rocks, sparks of foam that decorate the blue to the horizon. The palette of a Rothko painting, Rust and Blue, is printed on the marine expanse, which is my favorite among those that appear in the book about Rothko that is in the Sanià library. Stripes of colors with more fragile boundaries, more irregular contours in the sea than in painting. Marine is the oceanic in its dissolving quality, although it also has a military sense, of division of the army.
March 2023
I listen to the night: there is something deep, like an entrance to an endless cavern, in this night broken by the voices that laugh and drink and celebrate and embrace. I write to prolong the party for a long time, to never leave, to repeat to myself that running away, like writing, is a crowd of people dancing to a music that comes from afar and that they will never find.
I said I would write about escapes.
And it's the same as saying: I like these people I don't know. I like this place that can with me. I like this wind that stops me. I like this sea that worries me. I like this very green green. I like these people I'm getting to know. I like this room so empty and clean. I like this sun that blinds and burns. I like this dirty table. I like this half-baked library. I like this dirt road where I run in the morning. I like these people I already know. I like that salt in the air scratching my skin. I like this cliff that tempts me. I like this frozen pool. I like this powder so dry and so heavy. I like these people I know well. I mean, these people I already love. I like this longing for I don't know what. I like this non-stop writing. I like this place, yes, it's so simple, it's so plain, it's so obvious: I like being here. I like this old house cold. I like this fear if it's night. I like this hammering on the head and chest. I like these people that I start to miss before I leave.
April 18, 2023
Paradise. Small room, the way I like it, with a small study, the way I need it. Let there be nothing that is not visible, no nook. But as we approached the house by car, I saw that threat already imagined: too much beauty, stimuli, sparks of light, the stories of others like slides smeared with oil. I slip and disappear. My novel fades and remains in the background. In the residences, rather than calming me down, the environment upsets me, it calls me out. That curiosity makes me write things other than the book I have in my hands, giving myself over to passions that are not the passion I came to focus on. Generate another novel. Today the idea crosses my mind and it stays there like a dazzled wild boar: the diary, more than the diary of the writing itself or the stay itself, will be the story that narrates my attempt to escape from distraction and the stories of one's own. around. The environment runs after me to engulf me, I flee. And while I run away, I tell it.
May 2023
The last night in Sanià I reviewed the twenty-nine lunches and dinners that I had been able to enjoy that time – my heart was grateful. I especially remembered the Catalan tripe and roast beef that Ari had made – also his stuffed mullet –, Inma's gazpachos and the Sunday rice that was in charge of Mike. He remembered me telling Ari: “Everything is delicious! But how delicious!”, and she telling me, smiling: “You're easy.” How can I explain how absolutely delicious we ate and how long that deliciousness lasted, with one divine meal after another, for so many, many days? Regarding knowledge and flavor, Juan Cárdenas makes the following reflection in his Elastico deshadow: “Thought is just the opening of reason into the depths of the mystery of flavor, that is, the mystery of the Incommunicable. Well, at the end of the day, one cannot transmit to another human being what things taste like, what a chontaduro tastes like, let's say, what a mamoncillo tastes like, that cannot be transmitted. That is a mystery that cannot be broken, the flavor is the last trunk of the mystery.” I wanted to tell Ari, Inma and Mike that they are creators of mystery, but in the excitement of saying goodbye, I forgot to do so.
June 7, 2023
Yesterday, while walking on the beach, I came across three little girls in a state of delirious excitement, between the ages of five and seven, who were jumping and screaming with uncontrollable laughter. They had a long pole and took turns trying to catch a stuffed toy. As I passed by there, I found myself looking for something encouraging to say to them (“You can do it!”), but I couldn't think of a phrase in Spanish, let alone in Catalan. Then I thought: “why do I have to go around the beach distributing encouragement to people who are living their lives?”, so I stopped myself.
July 2023
One of those sleepless nights in Sanià I realize that a butterfly has gotten stuck between the mosquito net and the window glass, I don't know from what crack it would get right there and it doesn't make sense. Going through the mosquito net from the outside is impossible and going through the glass is even worse, so for a moment I assume that his cocoon has broken right there, in that space where his wings are useless. I'm too short to reach open the window, I jump, I stretch, it's impossible. I'm afraid of climbing into a chair while pregnant, right in that flimsy place where one wrong step will mean that the chair and I will roll down the steep stairs of Sanià's house. I could wake up Belén who is sleeping downstairs, she is tall enough to free her. I go to sleep praying that the butterfly will be there, alive, the next day.
September 7, 2023
In the water I discover that it is from here that I must write about Sanià. The perspective, in the middle of the waves, freed from the crescent of the cove, allows me to see the house, suspended above the copper rocks, among the acidic pine trees, in all its white and clean symmetry.
The first two mornings I didn't wake up in time to swim at dawn. I had arrived in Sanià exhausted, and the absolute darkness that the shutters of my room allowed seduced me more than the sight of a new red sun. In fact, I couldn't do it this morning either. When I went out to the terrace, the shadows were already gathering. Henry, the true sentinel of Sanià, watched the bay, with a cigarette in his hand and, beyond, the light reflected on the cliffs, turning them into gold. I passed by the hut and went down the stairs to Canyers, a small cove divided in two by a rock.
In the water I shake some of the moisture out of my hair. The stillness of the sea this morning seems inviolable, as if nothing could break it, not the elusive bird that dives and suddenly appears next to me, nor my own inelegant dives beneath the surface.
The sky is still divided into different bars of soft, blurred colors, as if he were not yet fully awake to reconcile the internal differences that the night has left him. I swim back and forth between the yellow buoys and think about the night before, how I wish the conversations here wouldn't end, I'd like to stay awake, talking on the terrace, until daybreak and, that way, watch the sunrise.
October 2023
They tell me of the ghosts and presences that haunted previous residents. I'm in the haunted room, Marcos Giralt said, but in this house they already did a thorough (spiritual) cleaning, it was smoky and more so I doubt any specter. Leila Guerriero says they are the ghosts of Perry and Dick, the dead people from In Cold Blood, but that's literature. Besides, the ghosts, if they want to harass Capote, are not going to come here. Leila thinks they may be doing it to get revenge on writers, but there are writers everywhere and Capote was everywhere too. I think more about the possibility of a drowned person, a relative of the family who lived here, a suicide from the forests all around.
I have a Tarot illustrated by Jon Bauer that I bought in Sweden: it is a souvenir, these Tarots are designer and unintentionally decorative. But I know the language. I have to find his hand, recognize the cards, at some point they will talk.
For now I take photos with flash in hallways, rooms and dark surroundings. I study the photos thoroughly later. There is nothing, not even a miserable blob.
Day 2 or 3: Ploma comes, the dog who wants to be my friend, but I don't like dogs because I'm traumatized. Ploma doesn't especially want to be my friend, she wants everyone's attention, she is spoiled. When I go into the pool to swim, I come out of the water and find that Ploma is resting a branch on my head and opening her mouth on the back of my neck. The bitch wants to cut my throat. I scream and Ploma leaves. Nobody fully understands my hardship. They love her more than me, logically because they don't know me, and they also don't doubt her goodness. I don't trust any dog. I see Moni, the white chicken, from afar. Moni survived a massacre when a cat entered the chicken coop and she escaped and spent two days in the forest. Moni is cute and recognizes her name. A few days later I hold her in my arms and take a photo of her. Paul writes to me: “bring me Moni, I love her.”
November 2023
exit
sanian table lamps are a kind of stylized flamingo or crane, white, with a pedestal that looks like a transformer. they have a particularity: if you press the button once they turn on at full power, if you press the button twice, at half power. the funniest thing of all is that when you press it three times to turn it off, the lamp hums and lingers, as if it thinks it's too important to obey instantly, and mutes like a diva, surreptitiously, slowly, making valdre, as if to say "without me you are nothing, don't forget it".
cot
I had already noticed something, unconsciously, every morning, but it is today that I fall for it. today when I was taking a shower I understood what was happening: it's the shower. the rhythm of the shower. the shower is measured, fine-tuned, the water pressure is regulated with slight, almost imperceptible splashes that give you the unspoken feeling of bathing in the sea, of a zenithal wave. the inside meets the outside, in the same way that every day it is more difficult to find out where the writer begins and where the writing ends. how well thought out that everything is in sanià!
tree
I discover the path of the wonderful views, a path that skirts the mountain from the turn of the track that goes to Calella, a kind of terraced balcony with pine trees behind, the green skirt of the hill at the feet and a very high and plunging sea at the in front. I go there often and one day – on the twenty-third – I see a bush of cherry trees at the top. it had been thirty-two years since I had seen or picked or tasted one: the roughness of the reddish skin contrasts with the burst of sweetness of the pumpkin interior. I fill my pockets with them to share with the Sanians, who overcome the fear of an early death and delight in them.
