We are in Deia, Majorca, only a few steps away from the home of Robert Graves who left London for Majorca in 1929. In Deia he found “perfect tranquility”: “I chose Majorca as my home…because its climate had the reputation of being better than any other in Europe,” he wrote, “And because I was assured that should be able to live there on much less money than in England.” In Deia, he wrote, “I found everything I wanted as a writer: sun, sea, mountains, spring water, shady trees, no politics, and a few civilized luxuries such as electric light and a bus service to Palma, the capital.”
Graves’ most famous work is an audacious autobiographical account of WWI. He wrote and published it in order to say “a goodbye to you and to you and to you and to me and to all that”.
The title of Graves’ most famous work is also the title of Joan Didion’s 1967 essay in which she bids farewell to New York. “New York was no mere city.” She writes. “It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable and dream itself.” But as the years passed she began to “distinctively possible to stay too long at the fair.” and so after falling into “despair” her husband takes a leave of absence and they head west to LA and never look back: “Many of the people we knew in New York think this a curious aberration, and in fact tell us so. There is no possible, no adequate answer to that, and so we give certain stock answers, the answers everyone gives. I talk about how difficult it would be for us to “afford” to live in New York right now, about how much “space” we need, All I mean is that I was very young in New York, and that at some point the golden rhythm was broken, and I am not that young anymore.”
These two works, sharing the same title ring very true in my mind over the past 10 days. Deia is one of the most magical places I have ever experienced. The mountains rising from the clear waters of the sea, the windy streets and the stories they hold, the very international and cosmopolitan (and yet very low key) vibe. It is AMAZING. But, as our kids look at every real estate post ready to settle down and spend the rest of their life hiking and swimming I am still unsure whether I am ready to say “Goodbye to all That”. We have left New York and realizing along this journey where our priorities lie. There is definitely an appeal in living in nature, in a small town where within a few days we became local and the man at the counter of the local bakery remembers you and saves you the best slice of cake. But the questions arise in my mind immediately: is settling in a place like this just ‘settling’? Can we afford to live in this kind of town year round? What could I create or do for money in order to make this life where less is more a reality? Robert Graves said “There is no money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money either” — must that be true? Does a happy median exist, or is it just a matter of really wanting all THIS?