WEBVTT 1 00:00:05.360 --> 00:00:09.199 There are certain details you notice only in retirement absences, 2 00:00:09.240 --> 00:00:12.880 mostly trains that you no longer need to catch, bells 3 00:00:12.919 --> 00:00:15.439 that might as well ring out for someone else. I've 4 00:00:15.480 --> 00:00:18.000 lived in this corner of Andalusia on and off since 5 00:00:18.039 --> 00:00:20.800 the seventies, but this was my first true summer as 6 00:00:20.800 --> 00:00:24.359 an inhabitant, not a visitor or a commuter. I thought 7 00:00:24.399 --> 00:00:27.199 this time would be spent requenting myself with the familiar 8 00:00:27.600 --> 00:00:32.240 long mornings leafing through doggyared books afternoons that stretched noiseless 9 00:00:32.320 --> 00:00:36.759 up the white hillside. Instead, everything started changing at the 10 00:00:36.759 --> 00:00:40.359 height of a noon so bright I almost squinted thinking 11 00:00:40.399 --> 00:00:45.039 about it. In July, Puente Salada glows white. A tight 12 00:00:45.119 --> 00:00:48.200 lattice of stone alleys wound up from the plaza, every 13 00:00:48.280 --> 00:00:52.520 surface sun blasted to a nearly blue, feverish reflection. On 14 00:00:52.600 --> 00:00:55.320 my third week here, I woke early and set out 15 00:00:55.320 --> 00:00:58.840 into the plaza to buy bread, keys jangling in my palm. 16 00:00:59.280 --> 00:01:02.479 The air bristles with heat even before the bell tower 17 00:01:02.560 --> 00:01:06.879 marked midday. As I passed beneath the plane trees, the 18 00:01:06.920 --> 00:01:10.719 mosaic tiles, and drowsy chatter of vendors under striped awnings, 19 00:01:11.040 --> 00:01:14.519 I caught myself performing one of those small ingrained checks 20 00:01:14.920 --> 00:01:17.680 a glance at my own shadow. I don't know why 21 00:01:17.719 --> 00:01:22.120 I did it, old habit, remnants of scientific alertness, maybe, 22 00:01:22.480 --> 00:01:24.439 but what I saw stopped me in the center of 23 00:01:24.480 --> 00:01:28.239 the stone. There was a suggestion of gray at my feet, 24 00:01:28.280 --> 00:01:31.280 barely more than a smudge. Not the crisp silhouette I'd 25 00:01:31.280 --> 00:01:33.879 grown up with, the one I admired as a child 26 00:01:33.959 --> 00:01:37.239 stalking through hot city streets, neither the erratic jumble that 27 00:01:37.319 --> 00:01:40.959 flickered around me on wind torn evenings, just a faint fog, 28 00:01:41.239 --> 00:01:43.640 as though some one had dusted my outline with flower 29 00:01:43.959 --> 00:01:46.959 and then swept it away. I held my hand up 30 00:01:47.000 --> 00:01:51.439 against the glare, fingers spread awkwardly, expecting a stronger imprint 31 00:01:51.439 --> 00:01:55.920 on the flagstones, still only a hint of form, barely 32 00:01:56.040 --> 00:02:00.000 enough for my mind to draw a connection. I moved tentatively, 33 00:02:00.280 --> 00:02:03.640 half smiling, searching for a spot where the real shadow 34 00:02:03.719 --> 00:02:06.640 might emerge, a trick of angle, or perhaps a spot 35 00:02:06.640 --> 00:02:09.960 where the sun's glare was less merciless. But no matter 36 00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:13.319 which paving stone I crossed, or how neatly I rotated 37 00:02:13.319 --> 00:02:16.159 on the axis of my own feet, the absence held 38 00:02:16.759 --> 00:02:20.000 my shadow was hardly there at all. It was an 39 00:02:20.039 --> 00:02:23.400 odd moment, so small and yet so dissonant that I 40 00:02:23.479 --> 00:02:27.719 nearly said something aloud. The waiter balancing three teetering cups 41 00:02:27.759 --> 00:02:31.280 between his fingers, the couple gesturing with animated hands at 42 00:02:31.280 --> 00:02:34.360 the corner table, even the swoop of the plaza's old 43 00:02:34.400 --> 00:02:38.199 iron lamp. None of them had proper shadows. Under this 44 00:02:38.319 --> 00:02:41.599 blinding radiance. Everything should have been pinned to the ground 45 00:02:41.759 --> 00:02:46.280 by its own sharp double. Instead, the plaza felt buoyant 46 00:02:46.479 --> 00:02:49.240 and slightly untethered, as if it could all be swept 47 00:02:49.360 --> 00:02:54.240 up and rearranged by a well placed breeze. But life continued. 48 00:02:54.759 --> 00:02:59.120 Children darted between unseeable borders. An ancient dog sighed under 49 00:02:59.120 --> 00:03:03.159 a bench where a delivery van reversed with operatic slowness. 50 00:03:03.759 --> 00:03:06.599 The surface world was as grounded as it ever had been. 51 00:03:07.080 --> 00:03:10.719 Only this minor breach, this missing weight, made it all 52 00:03:10.719 --> 00:03:14.879 feel just a notch away from expectation. I decided I 53 00:03:14.879 --> 00:03:17.240 would not mention it to any one. I had no 54 00:03:17.400 --> 00:03:20.479 urge to be the newly retired odd ball, already asking 55 00:03:20.560 --> 00:03:24.919 quirky questions before I'd even lined my books on the shelf. Still, 56 00:03:25.240 --> 00:03:29.240 the curiosity burned low but persistent, as I carried my 57 00:03:29.360 --> 00:03:32.840 bread home. Retirement cast you into the heart of a 58 00:03:32.879 --> 00:03:35.960 town in a way no summer holiday or borrowed week 59 00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:39.919 can match. I found myself filling days not with grand projects, 60 00:03:40.199 --> 00:03:44.560 but with small, repeating rituals. After breakfast, I'd strolled to 61 00:03:44.599 --> 00:03:48.240 the cafe under the vine laced veranda, where Matteo, a kind, 62 00:03:48.439 --> 00:03:51.120 heaver set man who'd been my friend since the years 63 00:03:51.159 --> 00:03:55.120 when the town's only tourist traffic came on mopeds, waited 64 00:03:55.159 --> 00:03:59.120 with a joke about my foreign city ways. He greeted 65 00:03:59.159 --> 00:04:02.000 me every morning as if our friendship began anew with 66 00:04:02.120 --> 00:04:06.080 every cup. There were coffees, of course, but also the soft, 67 00:04:06.439 --> 00:04:10.120 unnecessary debates about whether clouds would finally gather over the 68 00:04:10.199 --> 00:04:13.800 southern hills or whether this year's olives would be worse, 69 00:04:14.199 --> 00:04:17.560 which is better, you know? For flavor, I'd make my 70 00:04:17.639 --> 00:04:21.360 way to Carmen's bakery, whose windows spread sugard sent all 71 00:04:21.399 --> 00:04:25.560 down Caldel Rosaria. Carmen moved with the confidence of some 72 00:04:25.639 --> 00:04:28.680 one who never doubted her hands, slapping dough on to 73 00:04:28.839 --> 00:04:32.120 flowered boards, humming through the strain of a radio that 74 00:04:32.240 --> 00:04:36.199 never tuned in properly. She always shouted my name first, 75 00:04:36.480 --> 00:04:38.600 as though announcing me to the loaf of the day, 76 00:04:39.720 --> 00:04:42.519 to Mars. The handerman would wave to me from whatever 77 00:04:42.600 --> 00:04:47.040 surface he was maintaining, paint, whitewash or rattling roof tiles, 78 00:04:47.519 --> 00:04:52.079 His tan a study in subtle gradients. Elina, the gallery manager, 79 00:04:52.399 --> 00:04:56.199 was relatively recent, her accent revealing her roots in Madrid's 80 00:04:56.199 --> 00:04:59.079 bustling arts district, and she always wanted to know what 81 00:04:59.120 --> 00:05:02.120 I'd seen through my camera that morning, as though hoping 82 00:05:02.199 --> 00:05:05.279 to collect an outsider's vision before it faded into the 83 00:05:05.319 --> 00:05:09.000 everyday blur. Was hard not to feel folded into the 84 00:05:09.079 --> 00:05:13.319 rhythm of Puente Salada, the way Siesta unspooled mid day tension, 85 00:05:13.639 --> 00:05:17.519 How every Thursday's market felt both theatrical and pragmatic, How 86 00:05:17.560 --> 00:05:21.959 gossip traveled faster than weather. My perspective wore gently with itself. 87 00:05:22.399 --> 00:05:25.319 I taught physics long enough to catalog the precise way's 88 00:05:25.360 --> 00:05:29.639 southern sun sharpens a shadow's edge, how whitewashed lime reflects 89 00:05:29.639 --> 00:05:32.759 harshness away. I'd broken up more than a few student 90 00:05:32.879 --> 00:05:37.920 arguments about seeing his believing here it seemed a person's 91 00:05:37.920 --> 00:05:40.680 gaze was less a tool for analysis and more a 92 00:05:40.720 --> 00:05:44.240 way of soaking in safety. And yet As each day 93 00:05:44.319 --> 00:05:48.199 drew on that lack, those missing shadows persisted. The town, 94 00:05:48.319 --> 00:05:51.040 for all its sunlight, was both more dazzling and less 95 00:05:51.079 --> 00:05:55.160 defined than other places I'd known. In casual conversation, people 96 00:05:55.199 --> 00:05:58.720 would wax poetic about the light of Puente Salada. The 97 00:05:58.759 --> 00:06:01.560 brightness was a badge, but no one ever mentioned the 98 00:06:01.600 --> 00:06:05.000 other face of light. It's opposite its anchor. There was 99 00:06:05.040 --> 00:06:09.000 a gap, quiet but insistent, at the edge of every routine. 100 00:06:09.879 --> 00:06:12.639 By the end of my first month, it felt almost 101 00:06:12.639 --> 00:06:17.399 impolite to notice. I confessed my initial observation to Matteo, 102 00:06:17.839 --> 00:06:21.560 huddled over sticky table tops stained with decades of sugar 103 00:06:21.680 --> 00:06:25.279 and newsprint. Why do you think everything looks so bright? 104 00:06:25.720 --> 00:06:29.439 I tried keeping it light. We love the sun here, 105 00:06:29.600 --> 00:06:33.360 he replied. Haven't you heard how foreigners complain their eyes hurt? 106 00:06:33.639 --> 00:06:37.279 He snorted, as though the idea amused him deeply. You 107 00:06:37.360 --> 00:06:39.560 get used to it. You go back to the city, 108 00:06:39.600 --> 00:06:43.199 you'll see feels dull heavy. Here we have real light. 109 00:06:44.279 --> 00:06:46.959 But don't you ever notice. I don't know how the 110 00:06:47.000 --> 00:06:52.439 shade isn't really shade, He laughed, a big rolling sound. Ah, 111 00:06:52.480 --> 00:06:56.439 you want to cool off, go behind Carmen's my cousin says, 112 00:06:56.480 --> 00:06:59.720 that's the only place that counts as shade. But even there, 113 00:06:59.839 --> 00:07:04.199 the cat's squint, not just the heat that I faltered, 114 00:07:04.519 --> 00:07:07.480 wondering if I'd already run out of words the way 115 00:07:07.600 --> 00:07:12.399 things look. He shrugged, unconcerned. We say the light here 116 00:07:12.519 --> 00:07:15.759 keeps trouble away. That's why we paint the houses. Yes, 117 00:07:16.240 --> 00:07:19.439 otherwise the sun would burn holes in our heads. Don't 118 00:07:19.439 --> 00:07:22.279 think about it too hard, neighbor. That's what lets you 119 00:07:22.439 --> 00:07:26.519 enjoy your afternoons. I let myself laugh it off with him. 120 00:07:26.879 --> 00:07:30.360 Matteo wasn't a man for puzzles. He liked his world intact, 121 00:07:30.759 --> 00:07:34.360 but a scientist's restlessness lingered in my chest. I made 122 00:07:34.399 --> 00:07:37.279 a note in my battered note book, first attempt at 123 00:07:37.319 --> 00:07:42.199 casual inquiry, deflection, humor, share theory later, and closed it 124 00:07:42.279 --> 00:07:46.439 with a snap. Neither poetry nor folk wisdom could quite 125 00:07:46.439 --> 00:07:49.279 explain the way the town's own post cards depicted the 126 00:07:49.319 --> 00:07:53.439 place I'd paused by Alena's gallery, pretending interest in a 127 00:07:53.519 --> 00:07:57.199 rack of blond sun bleached water colors, pretending not to 128 00:07:57.279 --> 00:08:01.199 squint at the near indistinct geometries, white on white buildings 129 00:08:01.279 --> 00:08:06.319 piled like clouds. Occasional awnings rendered in improbable pastels. The 130 00:08:06.399 --> 00:08:12.079 Plazas fountain almost ghostly in mid day, but always without exception. 131 00:08:12.639 --> 00:08:16.399 The shadows below trees, benches, and balconies were so faint 132 00:08:16.800 --> 00:08:19.560 I had to tilt the cards to even distinguish where 133 00:08:19.600 --> 00:08:23.000 stone met air. I compared the cards to what I 134 00:08:23.040 --> 00:08:26.959 saw now looking across the square. The same effect all 135 00:08:27.000 --> 00:08:29.680 the definition in the world, except where the solid was 136 00:08:29.680 --> 00:08:32.679 supposed to meet the ground. The trees seemed to float, 137 00:08:33.200 --> 00:08:37.720 The benches had no anchor, no gravity. Visually speaking, even 138 00:08:37.759 --> 00:08:40.879 the children's colorful hats failed to throw shapes onto the 139 00:08:40.960 --> 00:08:46.360 luminous tiles. It wasn't failing eyes, I assured myself, Nor 140 00:08:46.480 --> 00:08:49.919 was it some simple peculiarity of the hour. I tried 141 00:08:49.919 --> 00:08:53.240 to catch Carmen between customers as she loaded rings of 142 00:08:53.279 --> 00:08:58.200 sugared bread on to the window's warm sill. Carmen, I asked, 143 00:08:58.519 --> 00:09:00.759 have you ever noticed how the light here sort of, 144 00:09:00.840 --> 00:09:06.600 I don't know, erases everything. She looked up, dimpled and brisk. Well, 145 00:09:06.679 --> 00:09:09.399 that's what good whitewash does. Isn't it too hot to 146 00:09:09.480 --> 00:09:13.759 keep dust? Too bright for stains? She grinned, Even shadows 147 00:09:13.759 --> 00:09:17.919 give up trying. I watched her no irony, just the 148 00:09:18.000 --> 00:09:22.279 pride of someone whose world always gleamed. Her laughter was honest, 149 00:09:22.600 --> 00:09:26.080 but something in the words she chose pricked me. Back 150 00:09:26.120 --> 00:09:29.039 at my rented apartment, I unearthed a small stash of 151 00:09:29.080 --> 00:09:32.960 post cards I'd kept as mementos from decades before, one 152 00:09:33.039 --> 00:09:35.960 from a university trip in eighty two, another I'd sent 153 00:09:36.000 --> 00:09:38.480 to my parents when I first bicycle to the coast. 154 00:09:38.919 --> 00:09:42.519 Several picked up during short touristy forays into the region. 155 00:09:43.320 --> 00:09:48.519 These two, regardless of age, regardless of the photographic technology, 156 00:09:49.000 --> 00:09:53.360 rendered the village with the same pale, unanchored effect. In 157 00:09:53.399 --> 00:09:56.320 the oldest black hand white ones, the buildings all but 158 00:09:56.440 --> 00:10:01.240 levitated against the hillside. Not dramatic shadow, not the chiaroscuro 159 00:10:01.360 --> 00:10:06.879 i'd expect from unfiltered southern daylight, but a persistent, unexplainable absence. 160 00:10:07.840 --> 00:10:11.759 The contradiction was now impossible to dismiss. In Seville, an 161 00:10:11.840 --> 00:10:15.039 hour east, the same white town houses baked under fang 162 00:10:15.120 --> 00:10:18.159 tooth shadows, line so sharp on the ground that the 163 00:10:18.200 --> 00:10:23.000 city's heat seemed doubled. Here, nothing held still. The brightness 164 00:10:23.000 --> 00:10:26.919 felt clean, but incomplete, like a language missing its negatives. 165 00:10:27.919 --> 00:10:32.679 I started collecting small, inadequate explanations. It was the local stone, 166 00:10:32.679 --> 00:10:38.200 perhaps limestone mixed with river clay reflecting sunlight unevenly, maybe 167 00:10:38.240 --> 00:10:41.120 a trick of latitude, or the angle of local streets 168 00:10:41.279 --> 00:10:45.679 tiled just so. But every theory contradicted something obvious. Why 169 00:10:45.679 --> 00:10:49.200 would every drawing, every painting by visiting students that I 170 00:10:49.200 --> 00:10:52.919 had seen in Elena's gallery, like the heavy definition of shadow. 171 00:10:53.919 --> 00:10:56.480 Why did not even the church spire cast a proper 172 00:10:56.519 --> 00:10:59.799 mark upon the ground at noon, no matter how sharply 173 00:10:59.799 --> 00:11:03.759 the sun carved through the probossis of bells and pigeons overhead. 174 00:11:04.759 --> 00:11:07.559 A camera, a battered digital inherited from a niece who 175 00:11:07.559 --> 00:11:12.120 prefers phone snapshots, became my confidant. Some days I'd mark 176 00:11:12.120 --> 00:11:14.679 an anomaly and try to document it several ways, at 177 00:11:14.679 --> 00:11:17.840 once the plaza at noon, the lane of cypresses in 178 00:11:17.879 --> 00:11:21.240 the park, a stretch of laundry fluttering from carmens and 179 00:11:21.320 --> 00:11:24.200 casting only a tender, pale echo on the wall behind. 180 00:11:24.799 --> 00:11:29.559 No matter how I adjusted the settings exposure, contrast, white balance, 181 00:11:30.000 --> 00:11:32.559 the image on the small screen and on print out 182 00:11:32.600 --> 00:11:37.360 afterward never delivered a true shadow. I snapped comparison images 183 00:11:37.399 --> 00:11:42.320 in Seville, clean edged contrasts, stone knife points beneath cafe chairs, 184 00:11:42.559 --> 00:11:46.679 the familiar physics of form and darkness, here only the 185 00:11:46.679 --> 00:11:50.600 shimmer and melting play of an ever cautious daylight. I 186 00:11:50.679 --> 00:11:54.679 was not the only curious observer. I discovered Elina reviewing 187 00:11:54.679 --> 00:11:58.120 a local art school. Submissions. Remarked that all the students 188 00:11:58.159 --> 00:12:01.799 struggled with anchoring the buildings in their sketches. She brought 189 00:12:01.840 --> 00:12:05.519 me several. One. A graphite study of the church square 190 00:12:05.879 --> 00:12:09.440 captured light almost hypnotically, but the trees appeared to float 191 00:12:09.440 --> 00:12:13.320 above the ground, their trunks dissolving rather than rooting in dirt. 192 00:12:14.399 --> 00:12:17.519 I offered the camera to Sophia, a French student who'd 193 00:12:17.559 --> 00:12:20.200 arrived with sketch books and a haze of paint on 194 00:12:20.279 --> 00:12:23.840 her hands, and asked her to photograph the plaza, trying 195 00:12:23.879 --> 00:12:27.080 to catch the shadows if you see them. She nodded, 196 00:12:27.320 --> 00:12:32.039 returning the camera an hour later. Say difficile, ice, she said, 197 00:12:32.120 --> 00:12:36.559 switching to halting Spanish. No shadow, only white everywhere you 198 00:12:36.600 --> 00:12:38.960 want shade so your eyes can rest, but you only 199 00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:43.320 get more white. She smiled, apologetic, but showed me her photos. 200 00:12:43.600 --> 00:12:48.200 Each failed softly. One morning I tried a test. I 201 00:12:48.240 --> 00:12:51.639 placed a water bottle upright in the sunlit square angled 202 00:12:51.639 --> 00:12:55.639 beside a stone planter rich with purple petunias, and stepped back. 203 00:12:56.320 --> 00:12:59.840 Even at the sharpest angle, the projected shadow was transient, 204 00:13:00.279 --> 00:13:02.799 a blurred oval that seemed to shimmer away from its 205 00:13:02.840 --> 00:13:05.799 own edge, dissolving before it could make a claim on 206 00:13:05.879 --> 00:13:09.960 the tile. As I clicked through each experiment's result, I 207 00:13:10.039 --> 00:13:14.240 found myself opening childhood albums, searching for even one photograph 208 00:13:14.240 --> 00:13:16.360 in which my cousins and I, in the midst of 209 00:13:16.440 --> 00:13:19.559 holiday games on these same stones, were joined by a 210 00:13:19.600 --> 00:13:24.000 proper ink double beneath our feet. Nothing only the subtle 211 00:13:24.039 --> 00:13:28.000 suggestion of gray memory, it seemed, had always left out 212 00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:31.519 the detail. Perhaps I'd never truly seen it. Perhaps I'd 213 00:13:31.559 --> 00:13:35.440 simply never asked before it became a kind of obsession, 214 00:13:35.799 --> 00:13:39.000 though I masked it with practical errands. On a visit 215 00:13:39.039 --> 00:13:42.159 to Carmen's for breakfast, I mentioned my puzzle to a 216 00:13:42.200 --> 00:13:47.240 pair of German tourists adjacently sipping orange juice. It's the 217 00:13:47.320 --> 00:13:51.840 southern light, the man offered, adjusting rimless glasses. You don't 218 00:13:51.879 --> 00:13:55.919 notice it after a while, it's more creamy, yes, his 219 00:13:56.039 --> 00:14:01.679 wife nodded. Everything bounces, she said, laughing gesture to the buildings. Here, 220 00:14:01.799 --> 00:14:05.519 the light is soft like milk. I tried to press them, 221 00:14:05.799 --> 00:14:10.720 but you're not bothered. No sharp lines anywhere. The woman shrugged. 222 00:14:11.120 --> 00:14:14.320 We are used to it. It feels RESTful, like a 223 00:14:14.360 --> 00:14:17.639 place with nothing hiding. But by the end of their 224 00:14:17.720 --> 00:14:20.879 second day, when I ran into them again buying figs, 225 00:14:21.360 --> 00:14:24.440 neither seemed even to recall the distinction that had struck 226 00:14:24.480 --> 00:14:29.000 them initially. Why should people stop noticing something so odd, 227 00:14:29.399 --> 00:14:33.240 the absence of a universal companion so quickly. Was it 228 00:14:33.279 --> 00:14:36.120 a trick of attention or something in the very way 229 00:14:36.159 --> 00:14:40.360 this place was kept year after year. If anything, the 230 00:14:40.360 --> 00:14:45.200 phenomenon's persistence only exacerbated my own sense that something quietly 231 00:14:45.240 --> 00:14:48.919 impossible was on show, day in and day out for 232 00:14:49.000 --> 00:14:52.440 anyone who wished to notice. It was hard not to 233 00:14:52.440 --> 00:14:56.279 surrender to wonder. Despite my training as a teacher, I 234 00:14:56.360 --> 00:14:59.200 taught children to make sense of effect and cause, to 235 00:14:59.240 --> 00:15:02.759 weigh up evidence with more skepticism than are now. I 236 00:15:02.840 --> 00:15:06.679 made entries in my notebook like test with mirror beside stairwell, 237 00:15:07.039 --> 00:15:11.399 no measurable repeatable shadow increase and corners of bread shop 238 00:15:11.480 --> 00:15:16.120 window angle of refraction. The scientist in me hurled itself 239 00:15:16.120 --> 00:15:19.200 at the wall of the unexplained. Was it the particular 240 00:15:19.279 --> 00:15:23.039 minerals in the local lime, creating a diffuse reflection too 241 00:15:23.080 --> 00:15:27.159 efficient for shadow. Was it the constant repainting a kind 242 00:15:27.159 --> 00:15:33.200 of unwitting photonic technology preserved through custom and labor. But objectively, 243 00:15:33.440 --> 00:15:36.960 the effect bled into every visible thing. Even a lone 244 00:15:37.000 --> 00:15:41.039 olive sapling projected only a hushed glimmer, never the strong, 245 00:15:41.279 --> 00:15:44.799 leafy profil one would expect at a sun's zenith. The 246 00:15:44.840 --> 00:15:48.799 domed roofs and tiny bell towers so beloved by painters 247 00:15:49.159 --> 00:15:53.320 became more vulnerable to the mystery the longer I studied them. 248 00:15:53.360 --> 00:15:58.480 Passing tourists adjusted with indifferent speed content to describe the look, 249 00:15:58.840 --> 00:16:03.240 if they commented at all, as an atmospheric or stylistic flourish. 250 00:16:03.600 --> 00:16:07.480 Several insisted they remembered seeing traditional shadow on their first day, 251 00:16:07.799 --> 00:16:10.279 but could not point to a photo or scene where 252 00:16:10.320 --> 00:16:15.039 it remained true. The university in me started ceding ground 253 00:16:15.080 --> 00:16:18.480 to something of the folklorest. I began to suspect there 254 00:16:18.559 --> 00:16:21.720 was more at work than reflected sunlight, that the effect 255 00:16:21.840 --> 00:16:26.320 wasn't just physical, but cultural, something more quietly entwined in 256 00:16:26.399 --> 00:16:29.480 the fiber of the place. It was to Mars who 257 00:16:29.519 --> 00:16:34.519 reinforced this sense unintentionally over a bier one afternoon, he 258 00:16:34.639 --> 00:16:39.159 described the games the neighborhood children played when we were small. 259 00:16:39.279 --> 00:16:42.840 We'd spent whole days playing Esconder and Cora, hiding mostly 260 00:16:42.879 --> 00:16:46.519 in corners, behind walls, under the covered market stalls, but 261 00:16:46.639 --> 00:16:49.879 never in the shade. Not really. There isn't any proper shade. 262 00:16:50.159 --> 00:16:52.600 You couldn't disappear the way you can in Grenada. Say 263 00:16:53.000 --> 00:16:55.960 you have to use the tricks people's business, or noise 264 00:16:56.200 --> 00:16:59.480 or the smell from the bakery. Never the shadows. Only 265 00:16:59.480 --> 00:17:02.320 in the church did it sometimes feel darker, But even 266 00:17:02.360 --> 00:17:06.559 there it was more cool than truly shadowed. He accepted 267 00:17:06.559 --> 00:17:10.559 this as ordinary. His laugh was gentle, but the implications 268 00:17:10.599 --> 00:17:14.079 stuck in my mind. Hide and seek in a town 269 00:17:14.200 --> 00:17:18.440 without hiding, places made by light and dark. That evening 270 00:17:18.519 --> 00:17:21.640 I walked past a primary school. The painted iron gates 271 00:17:21.640 --> 00:17:25.920 flung wide through the open classroom windows. I glimpsed children 272 00:17:26.000 --> 00:17:29.400 learning from a diagram of trees casting sharp black angles 273 00:17:29.480 --> 00:17:33.160 under stylized sun, a model rendered in the standard text book, 274 00:17:33.200 --> 00:17:38.680 issued presumably by a central office in Madrid. Scanning the schoolyard, 275 00:17:38.759 --> 00:17:42.680 not one real patch of ground matched that diagram's insistence 276 00:17:42.759 --> 00:17:46.559 on contrast, What did it mean to teach a physics 277 00:17:46.640 --> 00:17:50.480 lesson whose rules never functioned in real life? Just beyond 278 00:17:50.480 --> 00:17:54.000 the pane. Elena, who'd lived here a few years now, 279 00:17:54.240 --> 00:17:57.039 told me she had noticed the difference when she first arrived. 280 00:17:57.640 --> 00:18:00.920 I was dazzled the first summer, she remarked one evening 281 00:18:01.039 --> 00:18:03.680 as we walked together past the tiled steps leading up 282 00:18:03.680 --> 00:18:06.119 to her flat. And I even looked for somewhere to 283 00:18:06.160 --> 00:18:08.960 sit that wouldn't hurt my eyes. But after a few 284 00:18:09.000 --> 00:18:11.880 months I didn't miss shadows. You just see the light. 285 00:18:12.400 --> 00:18:15.000 You forget you ever wanted the other side to rest 286 00:18:15.039 --> 00:18:18.640 your eye, to have wait. It was a strange relief 287 00:18:18.720 --> 00:18:22.000 in a way, to hear her say it, relief, but 288 00:18:22.079 --> 00:18:25.359 also a dawning sense of isolation that I might join 289 00:18:25.400 --> 00:18:28.839 the other residence in a mutual forgetting, or that continual 290 00:18:28.880 --> 00:18:32.400 observation might leave me an outsider to a pattern everyone 291 00:18:32.440 --> 00:18:36.559 else had absorbed. I began to wonder was the missing 292 00:18:36.680 --> 00:18:40.000 shadow a quirk, a side effect of sun and stone, 293 00:18:40.519 --> 00:18:43.599 or was it, in fact a consequence of sustained attention, 294 00:18:44.119 --> 00:18:46.960 a kind of collective agreement not to anchor things too 295 00:18:47.039 --> 00:18:51.240 firmly to the earth, a longing for buoyancy, for luminous clarity. 296 00:18:51.440 --> 00:18:56.759 Over contrast, my curiosity grew fierce, almost resentful of its 297 00:18:56.799 --> 00:19:00.839 own boundaries. I wanted not just reconciliation with the town's 298 00:19:00.880 --> 00:19:05.000 soft radiance, but to know its root. So I gathered 299 00:19:05.000 --> 00:19:07.400 my evidence and paid a visit to the one person 300 00:19:07.440 --> 00:19:11.519 in Puente Salada whose memory I was assured outmatched even 301 00:19:11.559 --> 00:19:17.119 the town's minor saints, Don Alejandro, the unofficial historian, bureaucrat, 302 00:19:17.319 --> 00:19:23.400 and archivist of everything curious, dubious, or barely believed. Alejandro's 303 00:19:23.400 --> 00:19:27.039 house was a museum without intention. Rooms lined top to 304 00:19:27.079 --> 00:19:30.720 bottom with wooden shelves layered, I suspect to protect the 305 00:19:30.720 --> 00:19:34.759 contents from moods of dust, damp, and time. At the back, 306 00:19:35.200 --> 00:19:38.640 sunlight wove thin shadows between stacks. But even in his 307 00:19:38.720 --> 00:19:43.160 old study, clarity pulsed against every object, perhaps an illusion 308 00:19:43.240 --> 00:19:47.759 created by generations of white lime and open shutters. He 309 00:19:47.839 --> 00:19:51.480 made tea the old Andalusian way, sprigs of wild mint, 310 00:19:51.759 --> 00:19:55.680 a chipped cup, sugar cubes mashed by surprisingly steady hands. 311 00:19:56.240 --> 00:19:59.880 I gave him my most patient introduction. I've been trying 312 00:19:59.880 --> 00:20:03.079 to understand the phenomenon with the shadows here, I said, 313 00:20:03.440 --> 00:20:07.440 voice careful to bridge respect and urgency. I wondered if 314 00:20:07.480 --> 00:20:10.359 you had ever come across anything in your records or 315 00:20:10.359 --> 00:20:14.640 in the stories the oldest families tell. He considered me 316 00:20:14.920 --> 00:20:18.000 a faint gleam in his eye. Ah, I have heard 317 00:20:18.079 --> 00:20:22.480 every explanation at least twice. Witches, sun gods, some chemical 318 00:20:22.519 --> 00:20:25.519 in the lime. Take your pick. My great aunt used 319 00:20:25.559 --> 00:20:28.119 to say, we have no shadows because the angels look 320 00:20:28.160 --> 00:20:32.839 after us very closely. He smiled, neither dismissive nor credulous. 321 00:20:33.839 --> 00:20:38.480 We spent the afternoon sifting through his vast portfolio travelers diaries, 322 00:20:38.559 --> 00:20:44.039 painstakingly transcribed from Italian, German and English, faded architectural renderings 323 00:20:44.039 --> 00:20:48.160 on brittle paper, notes in thick black ink. Every image, 324 00:20:48.279 --> 00:20:51.880 every effort at realism, every water color, and every quick 325 00:20:51.960 --> 00:20:56.240 sketch shared the same spectral phenomenon. The village stubbornly refused 326 00:20:56.279 --> 00:21:00.799 to darken, no matter who held the brush, and produced 327 00:21:00.799 --> 00:21:05.079 one particularly old plan, an architectural sketch from eighteen twenty 328 00:21:05.079 --> 00:21:08.039 four of what was apparently the oldest house in town's 329 00:21:08.119 --> 00:21:11.960 hillside row. In the margin a neat but urgent script, 330 00:21:12.440 --> 00:21:18.759 Cassa's sin sombra construacy, Paula tradission, houses without shadow. Builders 331 00:21:18.799 --> 00:21:23.480 tradition dictates it's everywhere if you look long enough, Alejandro 332 00:21:23.599 --> 00:21:27.119 offered softly. Builders still use the rules, whether they admit 333 00:21:27.200 --> 00:21:30.960 it or not. Walls as pale as clouds, curvature this way, 334 00:21:31.079 --> 00:21:36.119 windows shallow, always with internal light wells. The reason, he shrugged. 335 00:21:36.599 --> 00:21:40.680 They'll tell you it's always been done. So has anyone 336 00:21:40.759 --> 00:21:45.839 questioned the origin? I pressed? Was it for safety, for health? Superstition? 337 00:21:46.920 --> 00:21:51.200 He shook his head, amused. No one here is truly superstitious. 338 00:21:51.559 --> 00:21:54.880 Most think it's just effective architecture. Keep the sun off, 339 00:21:55.079 --> 00:21:58.880 save your eyes, placate your grandmother. But the preference goes 340 00:21:58.960 --> 00:22:03.720 back generations. It's all too systematic. Maybe the answer is lost, 341 00:22:04.039 --> 00:22:06.279 Or may be it simply that we prefer to remember 342 00:22:06.319 --> 00:22:10.279 the light. His words lent every absence a new gravity. 343 00:22:10.799 --> 00:22:12.960 The lack of shadow was not an oddity bred by 344 00:22:13.039 --> 00:22:16.880 climate or material, but a living tradition, a thing made, 345 00:22:17.079 --> 00:22:21.400 cultivated and rebuilt again and again, even as the logic faded. 346 00:22:22.000 --> 00:22:26.079 The forced whitewash of every june, the pride in undifferentiated brightness, 347 00:22:26.319 --> 00:22:30.200 the careful curation of every surface. None of this was accidental. 348 00:22:30.839 --> 00:22:35.000 The town, perhaps unconsciously, conspired to preserve the absence at 349 00:22:35.039 --> 00:22:38.680 every scale. It struck me this was not a quirk 350 00:22:38.720 --> 00:22:41.599 of optics left to chance, nor a mere fluke of physics. 351 00:22:42.079 --> 00:22:46.039 The missing shadow had been made deliberately, then unthinkingly, by 352 00:22:46.079 --> 00:22:49.799 hand and by Habit woven into the architecture and more seductively, 353 00:22:49.799 --> 00:22:53.160 into vision itself. The shadowless effect was not just borne 354 00:22:53.160 --> 00:22:56.559 by local stone or sky, but by an inherited belief 355 00:22:56.599 --> 00:23:00.799 that darkness, at least visual darkness, could be made of unnecessary, 356 00:23:00.799 --> 00:23:04.440 by judicious labor, by shared assumption, by the subtle force 357 00:23:04.480 --> 00:23:09.319 of cultural expectation. The implications swelled behind my eyes like 358 00:23:09.359 --> 00:23:13.880 a growing storm. If the effect was maintained purposely, even now, 359 00:23:14.160 --> 00:23:17.319 how many generations had gone into its defense. What did 360 00:23:17.319 --> 00:23:19.599 it mean to raise not just the sight but the 361 00:23:19.720 --> 00:23:23.839 very memory of shadow? Was there danger, once perceived in darkness, 362 00:23:24.000 --> 00:23:28.480 long forgotten? Or was the town's identity, its pride, even 363 00:23:28.519 --> 00:23:32.200 its calm, rooted in this choice for radiance over contrast. 364 00:23:33.240 --> 00:23:36.440 I left Alejandro's house into a late sun that painted 365 00:23:36.440 --> 00:23:40.079 the village with the same incorporeal gold as every postcard 366 00:23:40.119 --> 00:23:43.279 before it. I crossed the plaza with my head spinning, 367 00:23:43.680 --> 00:23:46.240 unable to resist peering at the walking feet of a 368 00:23:46.240 --> 00:23:50.720 group of students, each in their own light, floating inches 369 00:23:50.759 --> 00:23:55.839 above a stony world without anchor. My curiosity, no longer 370 00:23:55.839 --> 00:23:58.920 a simple quest for an explanation, was now tethered to 371 00:23:58.960 --> 00:24:02.200 something at once older and more fragile than I had imagined, 372 00:24:02.839 --> 00:24:07.000 a collective vision, held together across centuries by memory, maintenance 373 00:24:07.319 --> 00:24:10.200 and perhaps a need for the world for once to 374 00:24:10.279 --> 00:24:14.599 contain only light. Elena met me under the jacaranda tree 375 00:24:14.640 --> 00:24:18.240 on the plaza, a rolled up pastel sketch tucked beneath 376 00:24:18.240 --> 00:24:21.279 her arm. There was still that sense that the world 377 00:24:21.359 --> 00:24:24.480 hovered rather than landed, that the sky pressed in so 378 00:24:24.680 --> 00:24:28.240 close that you became forgetful of any separation between your 379 00:24:28.279 --> 00:24:32.079 outline and the stone. You look like someone who's discovered 380 00:24:32.079 --> 00:24:35.880 the town's second heart, she said, a small smile tracing 381 00:24:35.880 --> 00:24:38.720 her face. She'd grown more knowing in the months I'd 382 00:24:38.759 --> 00:24:42.400 known her, or perhaps more patient with outsiders tripping into 383 00:24:42.440 --> 00:24:46.440 local mysteries. Carmen sent me, said, you left her bakery 384 00:24:46.480 --> 00:24:50.599 in a haze and forgot your order this morning, I winced, 385 00:24:50.799 --> 00:24:54.279 feigning embarrassment. You could say I found a question with 386 00:24:54.359 --> 00:24:58.359 slippery edges. We threaded through the heat toward her gallery. 387 00:24:58.599 --> 00:25:01.359 The windows pushed open to an hail the sharp noon air. 388 00:25:01.839 --> 00:25:05.640 A single fan circled slow as a stopped clock. Inside. 389 00:25:06.119 --> 00:25:09.039 Elena motioned to a display by the door, where students 390 00:25:09.079 --> 00:25:12.200 sketch books lay open, pages splayed out in a fan 391 00:25:12.319 --> 00:25:15.039 of white. Do you want to see the latest efforts 392 00:25:15.039 --> 00:25:22.440 at defining the indefinable? I paged slowly through quick graphite drawings, church, plaza, rooftops. 393 00:25:22.440 --> 00:25:25.440 As before, there was a sameness to them. Now, the 394 00:25:25.519 --> 00:25:29.440 shape still adrift, the sky dominant, the absence of anchored 395 00:25:29.480 --> 00:25:32.599 shade as striking for its repetition, as for the gradual, 396 00:25:32.759 --> 00:25:36.839 resigned precision in every hand. Every time I look, I 397 00:25:36.839 --> 00:25:39.839 imagine someone will rebel and give you a solid midnight 398 00:25:39.920 --> 00:25:44.519 below the benches, I said, Elena shrugged, pulling over a 399 00:25:44.559 --> 00:25:48.319 canvas of her own. I tried last spring lost the 400 00:25:48.400 --> 00:25:51.759 sense of the place altogether. It started to look threatening, 401 00:25:52.119 --> 00:25:55.960