Then she said..."pareces Gitana" (you look like a gypsy). I had to laugh, not at her statement. But, because I had recently started talking to someone that brought back memories of a gypsy lifestyle. I laughed...and she looked at me, apprehensively. She probably wondered what the heck I was laughing at. So immediately, she started saying, that I looked like the women from Southern Spain because of my eyes. I then explained why I had laughed. She seemed relieved that I wasn't offended by her comment.
I remembered at that moment, that a gypsy to some in Spain is not a positive thing to be. I met this guy from Spain, who once told me about the gypsies there. He spoke about them living together and lighting fires and getting together around the fire. His statements about them were spoken in a negative sense. When he told me this, I remember thinking......we get together around fires back home, will he think we are gypsies. When he visited me, we took him to our farm, and we lit a fire, just like always. We all gathered around the fire, like always...and talked, laughed, ate....just like always.
I wondered later what he thought of us and our "gypsy behavior." I really didn't care though, because that was something we did during summers while out in the wilderness, camping or just hanging out and, in no way, had it ever been anything negative to us. It was a gathering point, it provided warmth and also provided the heat to cook our meat, potatoes, hot dogs and roast our marshmallows or whatever we had in our coolers.
I kept thinking about the statement "pareces gitana" So I had to ask my friend from Southeastern Spain, someone who I knew would tell me what he thought...hmm, he had always been honest with me, so I knew I had to ask him. So, we were instant messaging one day and I brought it up, I told him what had happened. When I said she told me I looked Gitana, he didn't say anything for what seemed like forever. Ok...it may have been seconds... but seconds when instant messaging seem like forever.
During that time, my mind was going 100 miles an hour, assuming that he was thinking something negative. When he finally answered, he said, well, maybe because of your dark hair and eyes and because you're morena (tanned/darker skin). Then he said, "although, once you start talking they'll know you aren't from there, because of their accents." I laughed and asked if he was referring to my accent. He assured me that they have a very distinct accent even from other Spaniards.
I then told him, that reading our family history, our Lobato ancestors came from Galicia. He laughed and said, the Galicians were known for traveling or migrating. Gypsies are also known for traveling from one place to another, migrating.
My first memories of the word "gypsy" go back to when I was a kid, watching old black and white movies. My favorites were the horror movies....Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman. I remember in The Wolfman, there is an old gypsy woman fortune teller who tells the guy who is bitten, that it was her son, the wolf, who bit him. So that was my first recollection of a gypsy. A woman with a bandana, scarves, jewelry. In no way did I think of her as something negative, although she did look a little scary out in the middle of the forest in the fog.
Later on, I met someone who made me aware of gypsy love, amor gitano. I don't have a definition for gypsy love, and I have looked for it online, in english and in spanish and don't find anything other than movies or songs. My definition of this is someone who loves more than one or many. They may not be the same form of love for all, but its having many loves. After analyzing it, I believe its going from one love and on to another, just like a wanderer from one place to another. Loving with no ties, loving freely. When I think about it, it makes me think of lonely love. Or is it unfulfilled types of love, like the 60's free love, where its mostly physical? Hmm... I'm not sure.
After my friend read this blog, he told me that I too have been guilty of gypsy love...amorgitana. After thinking about it, I realize I have been. I've been married twice, just recently separated from the 2nd. I've loved and lost and loved and left. Nothing planned, but its where fate and choices have taken me. I've loved blindly, and quickly. This was a hard realization for me, but in no way was it how I planned my life. My friend says I've been unlucky in love. I can't conform to that...because I choose not to believe the negative. I will put it in a more positive form...and say, that my path presented bumps in the road, toward the perfect destination. I can only think in a positive sense, there is no other way...
When I traveled to Spain a few years ago, I became intrigued by the beautiful gypsy/flamenco type music. The music has sadness behind it, yet the beat makes me feel alive. It makes me want to get out there, dance and get lost in the beautiful sounds. Its mystical...the guitar entrances me. It carries me away. And I love it! Now when I listen to it...I fantasize of dark narrow spanish streets...dancing shadows in the moon. This music is something I play when I write. It fills my soul with ideas and sensations that want to escape onto paper...or the keyboard.
I sometimes, think of my taste in clothing as a bit gypsy/bohemian... Bohemian as defined in the American College Dictionary is a person with artistic or intellectual tendencies, who lives and acts with no regard for conventional rules of behavior. " Is that me? hmm ... it may be. Not in the way I live, but it may be the way I think.
In looking back at my life, I have lived a gypsy type life. In the sense of how I've moved from one place to another. Well, I bounced around Colorado until I moved here to Miami. I never thought of it as something out of the ordinary. Hey, everyone moves here, there and everywhere. Its good for us, as we're exposed to new things, new people. I know it has made me more open minded to the differences around me.
The Sagittarius in me may have something to do with it also...you know...not liking to be tied down. Is that what has made it easier for me to come and go. That part I'm still trying to analyze because I am truly one that likes roots and stability...
Gitana...Gypsy. Free. Free to come and go as you please, free to love who you please. I see nothing negative in it. Freedom is what we all long for in one form or another and I'll always go where my heart takes me...whether its back home or on to new lands......something permanent or just for the moment! :)
