PUEDE SER

that when i went back to the christmas miniatures market next to the cathedral on december twenty-seventh to find the stalls being emptied out into trucks without ever having purchased a miniature christmas jamón for myself (although there’s no reason i shouldn’t have noticed the giant banners advertising the market through the twenty-third before then) -- that, in other words, the true meaning of christmas could be so simply elusive -- should be read as an omen…although whether that omen be good or bad remains to be read. and there, having been admonished by rilke on the evening of christmas day not to write if i could imagine life without writing, i was forced to wonder about the corollary of whether life should cease to exist for someone who couldn’t imagine life without writing but for whom it had been difficult to find the time. for example, if, say, a certain blog that had been building up to the holiday then found itself floundering at the holiday’s first peak, should that blog deserve its persistence. in other words, that we may not make it into the new year. or, that the mystery has just been too elusive to allow itself to have been so simply elucidated (compounded now by the impossibility of the jamón). so, you know, it’s possible. whatever that is.

UNA CHUPA GRATIS; or, WE SEVEN QUEENS

after the master of ceremonies (whose group had added our number to its own as bobo was closing) had finished another song, there was a round of applause for the two women left to close café hercules, who had let the fifteen or so of us in for a round (of singing) just as they were starting to pull the shades down over the doors. (they pulled us some drafts and poured us some drinks, too.) but we only got one round before we had to go back out into the cold (because baby it’s been cold outside in the valley of the guadalquivir the last several days), and we counted seven of us sisters in the group before we headed to the alameda to go that one place – that one place that everyone loves because it’s past closing time on a sunday and the place is still open. then we’d lost two of us – along the short way? – but the girls were still fun, and i’m not sure how many made it to the party at the troop leader’s house because i wasn’t one of the ones who went with them after the other place finally closed and that one female friend of the leader’s (who hadn’t been singing in front of bobo or at café hercules) was making an attempt at a fandango she said she loved but couldn’t remember with the help of that guy with the glasses who’s always asking for money on one knee around the alameda.

it’s a shame that the two who had left the group before our penultimate stop had gone when they did because they really had set the tone of our story (even if they weren’t the ones setting the pace). plus, i probably won’t get another spanish lesson like the one i did when we were seven sisters on that street corner any time soon (the poor French girl), and i’ve no doubt that those two could have gotten something for all of us out of that last bartender for free. una chup(it)a? everyone laughs. at the ambiente. en el aire. everyone laughs.

ironically, if it hadn’t been for all the distraction of the holiday spirit (and the espresso machine being out at la travíesa last wednesday), i might have remembered to mention that the scenes of the christmas story in the display windows at the corte inglés are actually accompanied by a flamenco soundtrack. but there isn’t a leg of ham in sight. and one of the giant snowflakes on the eastern façade of the department store is missing some lights. but the spirit has been distracting enough for most people to forget the crisis for a while. (and on the television the gallego announces his new government.)

it’s distracting enough, and sometimes too much after ten-thirty, but sometimes too you just need to get out to get cozy, because sevillian apartment buildings aren’t really equipped to be accommodating in real winter cold, and you remember that it’s probably warmer in the streets – and even more among all the people in the bars. that’s the excuse of the season.

for better or for worse, at least we know that the nights won’t get any longer, and even if people might come back around to feeling the crisis once the spirit ebbs, you still have time to get one for free.

you read this and think, “this sucks.” everyone laughs. yeah. but it isn’t my fault. it was my sisters’.

O LITTLE TOWN OF SEVILLE/BELEN

now the city's been inseminated with the spirit (inmaculadamente of course), it really is on all over the city. and all over city hall. the flags over the doors of the more, amen, celebratory churches have nothing on the nightly light show projected on the plaza de san francisco side of the ayuntamiento building. what you thought was just another parish marching band having an evening rehearsal turns out to be the bombastic soundtrack to a surprisingly impressive spectacle that narrates the history of the city from the pillars of hercules to its present position, which is, of course (and well after the show depicts the renaissance), at the center of the nativity scene.

and the nativity scene is at the heart of the home again this christmas in sevilla. you can get yourself a cheap and easy portal de belen at the chino store downstairs, but if you're serious (and they are) you go to the stalls of the christmas market between the cathedral and the archive building and get yourself a proper one. but where to start? i couldn't have told you the first time i came across the stalls. other than that there were some nativity related miniatures (and not so miniatures) for sale, i probably wouldn't have said the thing had anything to do with bethlehem. i was, however, excited to see the miniature legs of ham and the flayed and salted codfish, because even if they had nothing to do with christmas, they were good enough as christmas novelties for people outside of spain who obviously hadn't been good enough for the three kings to bring here for tastes of the real thing. and with all the spirit flying around, who has time to care one way or another? what says jesus like selling things outside of a catholic church? should it matter what they're selling?

but then a christmas miracle. and on the night of the inmaculada no less -- at least as far as mine eyes recall the glory. it happened that my angel gabriel was a serbian flamenco percussionist, but as they say, god has a mysterious management philosophy. and a revelation is a revelation. "so people are buying things for their nativity scenes. why are they selling jamón? there wasn't any jamón iberico in bethlehem," objects the non-believer. "of course there was jamón in bethlehem in seville." "and the rest of the stuff? why would anyone need the indian chief?" the angel is confounded for a moment -- or feigns it -- but responds spiritedly, because the answer is the spirit. you have your baby jesus and your jamón and, sure, that's all you really need for the nativity scene. but what fun to go back to the christmas market year after year to collect the rest, knowing with each passing year that you're getting closer and closer to having that third king. and then you're at the market with your grandchildren and want to take them home to show them how fine your portal has become over the years and, yeah, what it's still really missing are the indian chief and the rasta guy and the waterfall. "and you know that god would have invited everyone to his son's birthday. even if he didn't really like them, there needed to be people to serve drinks and the jamón."

i was counting my blessings that night. no way i could have expected such a revelation from city hall. when i saw that light display nearly a week later, i was almost shocked to see that its nativity didn't include much more than a baby jesus, the virgin and joseph. but i knew. and, really, even with all that spirit flying around, what could i expect? the municipal government is a secular institution. and i'm sure it meant well.

HAUL OUT THE HOLLY. PRONTO.

it was a catholic feast day yesterday, although i wasn't sure of which one while the festivities were happening. and they really were happening, although they also all seemed to finish in time for lunch, maybe so that everyone not taking the "bridge" day over to the weekend could enjoy themselves in time to get to bed before they had to be up for work on friday. at one o'clock in the afternoon, it seemed like every parish marching band in the city was out playing somewhere, some of them (several, it seemed from the crowd) even at the south end of the solidly secular alameda. i had a vague recollection that the christmas season in poland started sometime around the end of the first week of deeember with what i thought i even more vaguely remembered was the feast of saint stephen, but the explanation given to me by the owner of the restaurant at number six calle regina was to do with the inmaculada, the celebration, per his telling, of one of the sevillian pantheon's many virgins. jesus is conceived! but essentially, he told me, people in spain celebrate the day like "la navidad pronto." and wasn't it festive. (whether he meant that genuinely or in exasperated irony, his place was packed.) for me, the spirit was contagious -- once i'd managed to escape the crowds on the streets and had found a place to park myself to watch them. i completely understand that sometimes you just need a little christmas -- and right this very minute as, apparently, they also say in spain on the eighth of december. and like they also -- also -- say, when in spain, do like the romans do. so it seems like it's going to be a nonstop party until the magi bring us our presents on the sixth of january. haul out that holly, baby. pronto.

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

when the ladies came to pick us up at the bus station in ayamonte, the weekend, which we'd started early with a friday departure but which had only begun a handful of hours before with a leisurely coffee and then a mad dash to the bus station, was already boding very well for itself. it had been drizzling on the homestretch of that mad dash, but by the time our bus had stopped in huelva we'd broken out of the clouds, and at ayamonte the sun was hanging, unhurried, just above the facade of the station, remarkably warm for the second of december and strangely somnolent for only half past noon. we were still on the spain side of the border in ayamonte, but it boded very well, and it was at once a matter of course and a welcome forewarning that our hostess announced that portugal was a country of calm as she drove us across the bridge (by calatrava) away from spain.

it was a matter of course, because we couldn't have failed in already having sensed it, and we'd have found out soon enough anyway when we stopped in monte gordo altura, that spot on the algarve that the arabs are said to have conquered just for its beauty. they also say that the french now own most of the waterfront property there (and we joked about the british owning the most of malaga). and the french have built houses where they arabs left the land to its beauty and they leave their boats to be grounded when the waters of the lagoon recede away from the cliff and back over the beach. there is poetry, both official and more extemporaneous, written on the whitewashed walls of the little stand of buildings at the lookout point. there are a church and a cemetery. and a printed sign in a window in english advertising one of the buildings as available to rent.

there is a two-thousand year old olive tree in the side yard of one of the houses in the development through which we passed to park nearer our next destination, a beach whose name i don't recall being told. although we opted for it on our way back to the car, we chose to walk to the beach instead of taking the little shuttle train, and maybe that made our catching sight of the ocean the more exciting, or maybe just the opposite and it got us better acclimated to the calm. portgual may be a country of calm, but our hostess told us that the atlantic was a different story and that the waters weren't usually so still in the winter. they were, however, still, and the only sign of their movement beyond the lapping of the surf were the long horizontal lines of shells left in the sand by the tide. braver visitors swam (they were on the shuttle train with us later still in their swimsuits), but we relaxed with a snack at a beachfront restaurant. a snack and beers, which were remarkably better than anything available in spain, as was the bread, which the portuguese seem to take as seriously as the calm, and which we savored with our salted tuna while bewailing the poor excuse that we dealt with daily in sevilla.

and we had another beer on the seawall at olhão before heading to the store to buy what we needed for a dinner to go with the wine that the friends of our hostess would be bringing with them later to her home. carlos deals in wine, and he brought at least a case of it to rosie's; but as i rationalized to him a bit shamefully (but only a bit shamefully) later when he inquired after my apparent aversion for it, maybe a confident sensibility for drinking bad beer was better than wasting something good of something else. maybe. but like what we'd had at the ocean, whatever it was that the ladies brought the two of us who waited at the seawall while the business in olhão was finished was much better than the family of cruzcampos available in spain (even if i can't remember the name of whatever it was or whatever were the others i had that day or the next), although that beer at the seawall was probably given an edge by the sunset. and there won't ever be a shortage of renderings, tritely artistic, of sunsets over the ocean, how the light and the colors change gradually but perceptibly, in the sky and in the water, and reflected until the sunlight is gone and the water is an almost black shade of purple, imperceptible to anyone who didn't watch the entire transition. but our sunset, which had given an edge to our beers, had a special edge of its own, for the beer and the rest, yes, but more so for the lighthouse, which rosie had pointed out earlier (and i'd mistaken the name of the object for the name of the island where it was located), but which hadn't been lighted (or anyway it seemed) until exactly the moment when the two of us waiting at the seawall had noticed the light and the colors changing.

and then we were at the seawall in olhão again. the market had closed at one, but even a two-thirty breakfast didn't make it too late for meeting the group for coffee nearby. the place where we'd sat the previous evening as the sun set wasn't far. in fact, that place was only a short walk both from where we had our coffees and where we caught the water taxi to farol island. it wasn't exactly clear where they'd met rosie, but the friends of hers who had joined us for dinner the previous night had originally met on the island. and the island was where we were going to meet he rest of them, except for carlos, who came with us and our bag of jackets on the water taxi (with his two giant bottles of wine).

the walk from the docking area for the water taxis to the lighthouse on farol island takes about as long as the ride from the seawall to the island. in other words, they're both over too quickly. but there's more to walk to the end of the jetty after the island path passes the lighthouse. and that walk -- and the one back -- we passed much more deliberately. or it seemed that we passed them much more deliberately because we were suddenly caught again in the sunset. up and back the jetty, which was increasingly haunted by fishermen as it got darker, twice past the spot where a ten foot slab of concrete had been torn out of the pathway and deposited half in the water on the other side. the atlantic, however, was still weirdly calm. one of the portuguese joked that one of the would be spaniards must have brought the stillness of the mediterranean. the peacefulness of the water seemed to unsettle the native calmness of the land. but that concrete slab thrown over onto the one side of the jetty was a sign from the sea that it had once moved there, just like the arabs had once been at monte gordo, even if the latter hadn't left so much trace.

the sun had done most of its setting on our journey out, and by the time we'd nearly made our way back off the jetty (which was nearly as long as the breadth of farol island), the last light of the day was nearly gone. but the corona of the sun was still visible over the strip of fishermen's huts on the (nearly) deserted island (that's the only name they have to call it) across the water to the west. it was to the two adjacent and conjoined ones at the rightmost end of the strip that we were going for dinner, but we stopped to wait for our ride at the restaurant near the base of the lighthouse. we didn't eat much because we had plans to eat at that other island, but we did order snacks to go with our beers and ate them (quickly, our ride was coming) while we drank behind the sheets of plastic that protected the covered patio of the restaurant from the wind at night and in winter.

the sunlight had completely gone when the last of us took our turn in the smaller boat that took us from the one island to the other, an even shorter trip than the first one and even closer to the water. then, up on the jetty on the other side of the water people start making comparisons to the movies because in moments like the one they're experiencing that's the easiest unreality to reference. true, though, up ahead, lit on the outside only by two long, bald, yellowish fluorescent bulbs, the blue-green of the fisherman's huts looked especially blue-green as through a lens and from behind a filter, and the strip of huts in the foreground of the darkened and otherwise deserted island was extraordinarily scenic as if the scene had been set.

the fisherman himself was quite the character, suntanned and wrinkled like older fishermen are expected to be, but jolly -- and that jolliness was expected of someone who had spent decades living at those huts on the water and then also surprising in someone who had done the same. his inventions were everywhere and included a system for alerting him when the water had been heated in the outbuilding that housed the toilet and the shower. he had electricity from somewhere, probably the place making the generator noises in the dark about thirty yards behind the outbuilding. there was a wood plank path that led back away from the strip of huts, and it forked not far from where it started, one way leading onto a nearby beach and the other past the recess in the sand that was making the humming noises (that was probably the somewhere making the electricity) and off through the brush to the interior of the island.

the sunlight was long gone, but there were the stars. and like the type of people put stupid by the surreality of being invited to dinner at a fisherman's hut at one end of a strip of fishermen's huts on an otherwise deserted island, we remarked that it was almost more difficult to locate the constellations when they were visible because all of the rest of them were getting in the way. and that larger one near the horizon isn't a planet, it's a signal tower, although we were sure of the moon, half full, and the moonlight more than adequately lit that wood plank path, which we used at intervals to get away from the populated part of the island at the huts and ponder our ignorance of the stars.

there was fish for dinner. and rice. and a salad. and we managed, the eleven of us, to fit inside the hut that wasn't the fisherman's sleeping quarters to eat. the fisherman sat with his back to the sinks and the stove, and on the wall across from him, across the table and all ten of his guests, were hung a sampling of his press highlights. he told the story of his interview for a german television program to the one of us who asked him after dinner about the ethicality of eating those little calamari. (she wasn't happy to find out that the ones she'd been eating were in fact baby squid and not a unique species, but she was glad she asked.)

dinner was simple, and so also, it seems now, was our conversation, both at dinner and afterwards. or maybe it's just that what seemed remarkable then would only be worth remarking upon after sharing another couple of oversized bottles of wine. there was that spirit too, clear and sweet and nameless (forgotten literally in spite of itself), which we poured into each other's shot glasses from that unmarked bottle. it's made from some fruit they collect in the mountains. and it made things easily remarkable. or so i can try to excuse our taking of simple pleasures.

it isn't, however, our fault that our setting was so perfectly cliché. some things are too good to be true, and other's are too clichéd to be taken as good anymore, but we couldn't help the sunsets or the water or the impossibly idyllic scenery. who knows, maybe we'd have experienced that same feeling of a long anticipated reunion (although we'd only all just met and had all just been together less than twenty-four hours earlier) even without the fisherman and without the island that would have been completely deserted without him. but it's also possible that we wouldn't have shared the same camaraderie that we did that night (both for better and for worse) had the scene not been set so perfectly for the comedy.

but no. ours was special. that second night too we had the lighthouse to keep us sure of our bearings, and from its position across the water on farol island we could locate the seawall at olhão and then the city of faro further up the coast, which made amusing allusion to rosie's house in montenegro and our night before. and it was the lighthouse that kept us walking through the semi-darkness toward where the water taxi was waiting after we eventually left the fisherman to his inventions and his huts.

who knows if portuguese water taxis run all night, but one-thirty was late enough for those of us who had taken our dinner early at seven -- not to mention that our return load was several liters of wine lighter than what we'd taken to the fisherman's. we did, however, somehow manage to acquire a guitar.

and then we were back again at the seawall, though not entirely so quickly. none of us knows, actually, why the boat was idling for so long, adrift off the dock at the north end of farol, the opposite end of the island from where the lighthouse was shining. we were tired, but we were lucky. by the time we started up again the half moon had positioned itself low on the horizon, now larger and brighter than before, and as our taxi moved closer to our destination the moon seemed to set its pace to ours, its reflection in the water becoming less and less diffuse until both the half moon and its reflection finally disappeared into a line of boats moored in the distance in the same moment as our taxi pulled up at olhão, the lighthouse still blinking back from farol.

it was something special. maybe you wouldn't, however, suspect it from the tritely artistic renderings. still, it is true that the unhurried sun in ayamonte had boded well for our weekend in the land of calm, even if that isn't the whole truth. but as they say, something always calls you back to the algarve, and what happens on the islands...

if that lighthouse could talk.

NOVEMBER TO REMEMBER

three consecutive days of mail, including a box from montpelier with a package of navettes de provence and a card, which was correct in reminding me that i'm lucky to be here.

LO QUE DUERME EN EL CUERPO DE LOS GITANOS

the truth, to admit it from the beginning, is that i didn’t do my (any) research. and my excuse, to allow myself at least the one for having admitted the truth from the beginning, is that i thought i’d have more than enough time to myself in lebrija to discover something appropriately historical or to wander myself into an interesting anecdote. but the truth is that i needed something, because i hadn't done much investigation into the show. and i should have had all night, because the last train from lebrija for sevilla leaves nightly at nine fifteen (fifteen minutes before the show was scheduled to start), and the first one out on a saturday morning wouldn't have come for me until seven fifty-four. the night didn't, however, end up as i'd foreseen it, because i was offered at seat in a car at (almost exactly) the eleventh hour of the night before. of course, i was happy at the prospect of company, and also for the excuse -- and i let my nursing a sore throat that found me off my guard on friday morning and threatened my passing of the night with excitement (company or not) excuse me from buckling down to any research before i needed to meet my ride at the arch of the macarena at seven. the truth is...something like that.

and of course i wasn't at all unhappy when my ride turned out to be the angolese portuguesa to whom i was introduced (as a friend of hers) the night that i met lakshmi. (maybe it was because i'd left her that night expecting to see her again sooner than later that, when i didn't, i expected that i might not see her again.) but she was the one who got out of the driver's seat of the car that pulled up next to the arch, in front of the basilica. she then got on her phone to find out what none of the rest of us did, which, outside of a bus or a train car, was the way to lebrija.

the way seemed clear enough, though, for the person with whom she had a brief conversation in portuguese, and it wasn't too much past seven thirty when we crossed the river on our way out of town and made our way onto the highway. from there, i can't say exactly how long it took us to arrive at our destination, but it's about an hour by train, and i think it must have taken us about the same. i thought we'd arrived earlier when i saw that church lit up on the hill above that town just off the highway to the left. that was about where we exited, but then we took a road that veered off to the right and left what, from the road signs i could see, i took to be las cabezas de san juan behind us.

it didn't seem that anyone in the car had been to lebrija before, so when we arrived a dozen or so minutes later, we didn't know either which way it was to the theater. and after we did find it, it turned out that we didn't see much of the city other than what was on the path between it and the car, although it was possible to see a lighted minaret of pre-reconquista arab design from road that sloped upwards from a larger plaza to where a crowd was gathered around the box office. i probably wasn't incorrect to assume that it was smaller than the giralda, but i hadn't done any research, and that vista, which i could see during my wait with the group in front of the theater and then saw briefly again on my way out, was all of the geographical history of lebrija that i got.

but there's definitely a strong gitano tradition in the city, and there was a beautiful history excerpted on the front of the programs for the show, "zarabanda: lo que duerme en el cuerpo de los gitanos." i'd missed the homenaje in jerez the previous friday (although jerez seems to like to throw those and there will surely be others), but i hadn't any idea about the singer who was being tributed and had been mostly enticed by the idea of staying with the family of a friend. i did, however, know of lakshmi, even from before coming to andalucía, and had, even, met her on that one occasion (or rather had introduced myself after recognizing her by reputation), and it was her show that was being given in lebrija. or, at least, it was lakshmi that most of the people that i recognized from sevilla seemed to be in lebrija to see.

unfortunately, i can't tell you much about the dancer herself. (no research.) but i do know, beautiful program histories aside, that she isn't gitano. she's from san diego maybe? that seems right when try to remember what people told me about the workshops she gave in portland. other than that she was gorgeous. and that she was, gitano or not, for her show in lebrija. the singing and the guitar and the percussion should be as closely followed as the dancing in any flamenco show, but it's still usually the diva that steals the show when she's on the stage. granted, the standing ovation started when the older man who had set the scene for each segment of the show with his spirited narrations took his bow, but only lakshmi took a bouquet -- and i doubt that anyone else's could have been bigger.

that isn't, however, to say that she didn't earn it. gitano or not, lakshmi does seem to know what sleeps inside the gitanos' collective body. or, maybe i was just been taken by the exotic charm of the program -- or should be giving more credit to the stagecrafters and the directors. but, with all due credit given, the spirit of the show still moved essentially through the dance, which every other element was designed to showcase in a cycle of segments that moved the dancer through a full array of moods and styles but placed her at the end of her soleá in exactly the same spot as where she had begun the sigueriyas amid the storm that opened the show.

the zarabanda was arguably the most gitano of the dances, and lakshmi's adornments and phrasing for that segment were the most similar to the picture of the dancing woman on the eighteenth century advertisement for "Bayles de JITANOS" reproduced on the program. nonetheless -- and maybe even a bit ironically -- it was the alegrias that best demonstrated lakshmi's talent for interpreting flamenco as a form in general. her footwork sections weren't anything to criticize, but despite the (expectedly) spirited tempo of the percussion and the song, lakshmi danced the dance almost subtly, although the overall essence of her interpretation might be better described as simply controlled -- and impeccably -- to imply that no movement or set of movements was allowed any special explosion, even as, at the same time, nothing was held back. and the dance's captivating synthesis -- by way of its seeming contradictions -- with the music was nowhere more visible than in the simple but careful movements of lakshmi's shoulders and hips as she made her way through her paseos, defiantly compliant with the style of the palo.

so i was only expecting the best when, near the end of the soleá that closed the show, lakshmi fell. which is to say that i didn't recognize the fall when i saw it, especially for lakshmi's quick recovery which, as the friend who confirmed to me after the show that the dancer had in fact fallen pointed out, was a physical feat unto itself and executed perfectly in compas at that.

and that is what must be sleeping inside the body of the gitanos. or else it probably came out at the reception after the show (for the artists, friends, family and anyone who'd come from sevilla apparently), or at the juerga that followed the reception in the same reception space in the restaurant behind the theater. it was obvious, at least, that whatever sleeps inside the gitanos sleeps during the day. after we'd had our fino and had a wary laugh over deciding that any one of the displaced or expatriated of our group could easily be the spy, we waved goodbye to the bit of lebrija to which we'd become acquainted and headed back to sevilla by the still unfamiliar road by which we'd come.

from what i'd seen, i wouldn't have had any easy time finding my way into an anecdote after three thirty en lebrija, but the new flamenco club in triana was full when we got there sometime after four. the portuguesa wondered how long the place would be around after our interaction with the bar staff, but later it seemed certain that our drinks were paying for the sharply dressed security crew which did end up breaking up a fight and ejecting one patron in the after after hours, about a half an hour before the lights came on and everyone had to leave. thankfully, the night itself had the consideration not to break into daylight until after the breakfast group had gone on its way and the windows were shuttered, twenty minutes or so from when my train would pull in from lebrija.

F*CK U JIMMY FALLON; or, AUSTERITY MEASURES, part 5

the guy who does jimmy fallon during the “f*ck u jimmy fallon” segment of “otra movida” doesn’t look especially like the american late night host. (from what i saw of both men during the one episode of “otra movida” that i’ve seen, the spanish comedian’s suits fit much better.) but, i haven’t seen enough of the american late night host’s late night show to know whether the “otra movida” segment is a good send up or not, but after i’d stayed a moment on the channel airing the show to appreciate one of the hosts, the name of the segment alone was enough to keep me there. that and the perfect maintenance of that one host’s and the other guy’s stubble.

i heard it recently proclaimed -- by a television personality -- that the social force of television (in spain) was fundamentally democratic, so it’s good to be watching lately as we wait to see how sunday’s historic electoral victory for the popular party of spain affects the democracy. already on sunday, when the socialists were outvoted by nearly four million votes and ceded its legislative majority to the wave of “popular” support, there were cries from the opposition camp that rajoy’s succession to the presidency signified a return to franco. granted, a conservative shift in spain might not be as drastic a transition to the right as it might mean elsewhere, but rajoy’s election night rhetoric of “a government for all” on the verge of certain cuts to federal social programs definitely sounded the charge for a return to politics as usual.

there were those sevillanos who celebrated the popular victory with champagne, even as the province of sevilla, joined only by the province of barcelona, awarded the majority of its seats in the legislature to the socialists…although the majority of historically socialist andalucía voted for the populars. elsewhere, only the nationalist parties in cataluña and país vasco were able to take more seats in their autonomous communities than the popular party.

who can say whether there will be more or fewer champagne toasts under rajoy than under aapatero. we’ll just have to stay tuned. It should be an interesting several months as the variety show regulars hone their rajoys. and sure, those will get old at some point, but democracy will always have something to beg our participation, and, sure i’ve only seen it once, it’s probably a while until people get tired of that beaming picture of jimmy fallon riding that middle finger.

CHRISTMAS IN JULY

it was a good thing that there was quite a bit of reading that needed doing this week, because there was quite a bit of recovery that needed doing after friday’s early christmas meal. granted, we were still in the first part of november -- and not in winter proper -- when the group convened at the bodega across the street from the restaurant for drinks at two, but the sun was shining and had warmed the air to a degree at which it might have been summer -- not summer here, of course, but imaginably somewhere else -- and the pleasant temperatures held well after we had finished the comida de la navidad itself and moved to the covered patio of one of the cafés on the alameda. And hence the joke, which was toasted with coffees and digestifs to spirited rounds of “merry christmas.” twelve hours later, as i was putting the mistress of ceremonies into a cab at close to five, i had long since regretted my choice of footwear, but my short walk home wasn’t going to do anything worse to my feet than had already been done, and my socks had already been well ruined with blood. and it was from that observation that i planned to write something about our christmas in july the next morning, an observation that i made around three-thirty at our final stop, a venue off of calle calatrava that i knew hosted regular flamenco shows but had no idea drew a more standard dancing crowd afterhours on weekend nights. at the time i made it, that observation seemed to me intensely charming, not to mention evocative of the valiance of my efforts to give myself over to the spirit of the day and night as it moved me from place to place. so i was smiling as i danced where i could amid the tightly packed crowd and as the conversation permitted. Before it was just the two of us we were three, accompanied by a german man, “lolita,” who produces the most prominent flamenco periodical in his country and who was in sevilla for the weekend for an international flamenco conference. at the previous stop (where most of the rest of the group had ledft us), the subject of our conversation had somewhere turned to semiotics, and i’d flailed, literally, in spanish and body language to depict an epic conflict between roland barthes and noam chomsky to the german. so, although i did enjoy his company, i was relieved when he excused himself to get whatever sleep he could before his morning business and left me alone with my hostess to not much talking at all. besides, the two of us had charmed each other enough already, and it was time to relax and enjoy not really being able to enjoy any more drinks. but that didn’t stop them from coming. maybe it was just our proximity to the bar -- and that we weren’t showing signs of instigating an end from our side of it -- but both of the bartenders came around whenever there was a lull in orders to join us in rounds of shots on the house. and whether they were tequila or honeyed rum, most of the second halves of my companion’s shots ended up in what was left of my glass of cruzcampo, possibly as a jesting challenge to an earlier assertion i’d made that someone who’d lived in portland for as long as i had could keep downing beers unto forever. but, i’m chalking the hospitality up to the presence of my companion. i can attest that the charms of a woman from san sebastian who neither dances nor plays the guitar nor sings and who owns a flamenco school in sevilla are endless, and when i kissed her into her cab, none of those charms showed any sign of waning, even for the hour or the alcohol. when i made the observation that had kept me smiling until we parted ways and i walked my ruined socks home two hours later, i had planned to use it as the departure for what i would write about the festivities in the morning. but there aren’t really mornings where a day and a night like those ones come from. luckily, the postal service had made a visit while i was gone. i don’t have a chimney, so someone must have buzzed them in. in any case, i had a box, and in that box i had some books. i was given quite a bit of advice on a variety of different subjects over the course of that first day (and night) of christmas, but “live it” is the only one that i feel compelled to recount so long after the fact. i can’t say whether my participation in the comida or the long hours of reading that have followed is the better example of following that advice, but to say so is, i suppose, to acknowledge the possibility that it might be both. or so i’d like to think on the eve of another friday. hmph. so it is written; and so it might be done. live it. and keep reading. merry christmas. and stay in school. you never know when that anecdote is going to come in handy.

ONCE...

if the proprietors of the discount furniture superstore next to the hotel macarena had made it just a few more hours, they might have had the luck to avoid the fire or whatever it was that brought all of those patrol cars and fire engines (and the one news van) out last night to block the traffic running west toward the andalucian parliament building just down the street, in the anterior gardens of which, just like on every other weekday evening, the marching band of the hermandad of the basilica of the macarena was practicing for the next time it would accompany the city’s favorite virgin into the streets for the night. and the band made itself heard, just like on every other weekday, even above the noise of the sirens, which might not have had to announce the hurry of so many emergency response vehicles to the discount furniture superstore had whatever it was befell the proprietors not befallen them until this next, more auspicious day: today, the much anticipated eleventh day of the eleventh month of 2011.

i suppose, at least, that this day has some significance elsewhere, because when i went searching last night (just before passing the fracas next door to the hotel macarena) for the time of the special lottery drawing to find out if i still had time to buy a ticket this morning, the “news” articles to which i was directed were generally bent toward the same vague dime store numerology that insisted on the universal luckiness of the numbers one and eleven. but, cosmic or esoteric significance aside, el once del once del once will certainly be a lucky day for a lucky twelve people here in spain, because those twelve were lucky (or just foresighted) enough to have bought tickets for the special ONCE lottery, which will award eleven million euros to one lucky contestant and one million euros to each of eleven others. and, apparently, as of yesterday morning, tickets were all but impossible to find, sold out from nearly every ONCE lottery outlet in the country.

which, i suppose, should be seen as auspicious for the issuing organization itself, as we can expect that ONCE (organización nacional de ciegos españoles, the national organization of spanish blind people) will have made more than enough from ticket sales for this special drawing (it runs other -- some of them daily – lotteries, all of which offer tax exempt prizes to winners, throughout the year) to cover paying the lucky winners and then to devote a sizeable amount to its social and cultural projects. and who could begrudge them the opportunity to capitalize, since, as the news has pointed out, they won’t have another opportunity for benefiting from the synonymity of a date for another thousand years.

the essential thing is, however, that i don’t think anyone here would think to begrudge them. like any charity, ONCE, founded in 1938, has surely had its share of intrigues, ethical inquiries and administrative snafus. or not. the most i know of the organization is from the commercials for the special drawing -- and as a result of those, which include spanish subtitles to accompany the voice describing the collective celebration that is to be 11/11/11, i can only say that the organization has been nothing but helpful in my personal experience. and from what i can tell from the action in the streets, many of those who participate in the daily drawings do so because they want to support the ONCE staff that sell them their cupóns, many of whom are visually impaired or otherwise disabled.

the secret of spain’s dual economy -- the one legitimate and the other, no less pervasive and functional, but illegitimated by the legitimacy of the first -- is pathetically poorly kept; and if international monetary policy is the means by which the two could be rationalized and everyone brought into the fold, then perhaps spain should be left to its own devices. here, the other half may not live at the top of the world economy, but it does, if simply, live well. of course (of course), there are still the homeless and the extremely impoverished (although international monetary policy would have little to offer those people in any consideration), but that essential thing is that those lucky twelve ticket holders probably did want to help (regardless of how they might end up spending their winnings once they find themselves legitimated). nowhere else have i seen such genuine respect for and desire to assist -- publicly, in all senses -- the disabled, the elderly, the infirm and those friends in need, or such clear absence of guilt or vanity in the provision of that help, especially for its regular public display. (and the spanish call themselves catholics!) on average, it may never get that second flat screen television -- or the first, but it would seem that most of spain can expect to be fed -- or at least given a drink so as to share in the spirit of the rest of the people in the plaza.

so, as luck would have it, maybe the proprietors of the discount furniture superstore didn’t need to be thinking about luck after all. it’s likely that someone would have been there after the fact to help, in some simple but significant way, even if the emergency response could do nothing to prevent the fire or whatever from spreading to the hotel and razing the whole block as the band played. that’s what i’ve been thinking, anyway, this morning of el once del once del once, which, for me, will soon turn into the afternoon of the season’s first christmas party. and maybe it’s just the spirit of the impending season that’s clouding a feeling that would otherwise be something, if not guiltier, then certainly much vainer; but it’s also for wondering as much that i wonder if i haven’t already shared in the celebration of the day for thinking that, yeah, we should all be so lucky.

FLAMENCO, FLAMENCO...REPRISE

on a corner near the end of where calle vascondagas goes nowhere, there’s a fun bit of graffiti that reads, from about knee level, “i hate flamenco music [signed] - seville.” and the not so cryptic message written into that bit of graffiti near that not so hospitable cul de sac probably isn’t far from expressing the sentiments of many of the locals here, especially those of theirs that surface when they’re confronted with the fawning adoration of so many of the visitors. it must feel at times like working at the mall at christmastime (which season has already started here, by the way, company parties and all -- but certainly not to any complaints from this visitor), and it’s understandable that there are those (if not the most of them) who are simply doing their time because they have to until they can put something else on. and, for their part, there are even those visitors who have been at it long enough in the vacated posts of the locals to have learned to request something else from the dj before the party.

but -- and maybe it’s just the early spirit of christmas (which, here, es una cosa, en serio) -- the calling of whatever it is that moves people into and inside of the sphere of flamenco (and there beyond overly earnest conversations on arte and ambiente) still makes its proud appearance in the streets -- at least in those others away from that dead end of calle vascondagas. and it was there in the plaza de la gavidia the other day when the spare changer put that empty fruit box between his legs and started playing it like a cajon, and then singing; and then some of the diners at the edge of the patio of the dos de mayo started singing with him, and then the man who had brought his guitar (there was actually a man who had brought his guitar) started playing as some of his friends danced (or at least moved) to the music with some of the children who had been playing in the plaza. or maybe they hadn’t been called by anything and they’d just had enough to drink; but, then again, so probably had the rest of the patrons of the restaurant and the one next door (and everyone sitting at any of the benches in the plaza), enough at least to ignore the group of impromptu flamencos if they’d had enough.

FLAMENCO, FLAMENCO

the group that gathered for lunch yesterday at number 12 calle duque cornejo was mixed, although we invitees were all common in our foreignness. luckily, by the time that the french woman, the dancer, arrived with her polish friend, the guitarist, i’d already made my regular mistake of offering my hand to the female roommate of our host and did the cheek kissing thing with the appropriate newcomer.

the lunch itself was far grander than i’d expected, and of extraordinarily bohemian proportions: a giant stew of lentils and tomatoes and chorizo that went by some andalucian name that i’ve already forgotten, with sandwiches of sliced chorizo and jamón iberico to necessitate washings down with beer, followed by a round of tea and cakes, which were prepared and served during the rolling of cigarettes and the sipping of digestifs. (and all of it sustained with much less pretension that all that.)

i’d expected to be alone with the host, but with the french woman and the polish man and the two roommates we were six, and my spanish was by far (by far) the worst of the group, and i was, even for the comfort of the food and the drinks, even more afraid of sharing with the group than i’d already expected to have been when i thought i’d be in the situation one on one. but i could listen; and yes, i had seen “flamenco, flamenco,” and i’d seen “flamenco” too, but i didn’t contribute my opinion on either, although the conversation was familiar.

the guitarist thought “flamenco, flamenco,” the latter of those two of carlos saura’s films, a work of kitsch that seemed intended for viewers outside of the world of flamenco, and our host, who had worked as an assistant on the film after finishing film school in madrid, did his best to justify the elements of it that he thought justifiable. it’s true, the film absolutely did not need those long close-up shots of farruquito’s face as he was just kind of jiving to the playback. and it may not be true that farruquito is handsome, but the film does also (although perhaps not for self-described “purists”) have justifiable elements. like i said, i didn’t contribute my opinion this time around. but i was charmed and humored, nonetheless, and not just by the graciousness of our host and the fine meal -- and not only because the french woman at one point inexplicably broke my silence to compliment my posture.

it was the atmosphere, and that the group was talking about art and atmosphere, and about art films and whether a film expressly about flamenco should be one or not, and about whether it needed any affected atmosphere in addition to what the art itself already had. and amid all of that i smiled to myself while musing on arte and ambiente and informal spanish lessons from get-togethers past, and thinking to myself what you’re probably thinking about all this description of it. that’s right. this is really gay. And nobody ever suspects la mariposa.

GUADALQUIBEAR…ES UNA COSA

and the basketball game, it was a strangely metaphysical experience, a demonstration of the (sometimes upsettingly) easy facility by which “the mind to quit the body is manifest” as virginia woolf once put it, to see my name on a envelope of tickets -- to which i had to struggle my way in spanish because i never would have expected it to be at the press entrance (although that’s now being done at least a petty justice) -- given to me by a friend of a sister, a woman married to a basketball player whom i’d known absolutely almost not at all -- and in an absolutely different context -- and who now plays for a basketball team in some other place in spain, and whom, on saturday, i watched play a game of basketball at a stadium somewhere in spain.

afterwards, i acceded to one (in so many words) because i felt i wasn’t in a position to be inhospitable after (having been so graciously guided to) my free tickets, and the jeers of disbelief that i got in response weren’t at all in jest. and, true, it didn’t even take those jeers to convince me past that first one, especially since the people watching on the alameda was so what it was, which was exactly what you would have expected from the posters advertising “guadalquibear*,” posters of that da vinci man in the circle with the radial lines and with his limbs splayed except that the “fit” man (it’s a question of body image and internet dating site deceit) had been replace with a bearded one with a full belly -- although without as much other hair as might have been expected.

and the bears were definitely on parade around – and in front of and everywhere else about -- the bars on the alameda, gay or not, that night, and, strangely, it was i who had to explain the phenomenon, and it gradually became the joke of the night that the bears were parading, because this halloween weekend, well, it was a thing. the thing itself became the next joke, because something being a thing wasn’t yet a thing in spain, and then it was as we made our way to the gay bars where guadalquibear was DEFINITELY a thing, even more so than usual -- or at least more so than usual outside of those couple of bars.

then, at one of the others, someone remarked on how many beards there were beyond what seemed to be the men participating in the weekend’s particularly special activities, and, since it had been where i’d been living, i had to explain that, well, “es una cosa,” which, by that point, could have been said about anything to elicit a round of laughs.

and if not for this year’s calendar i might have been damned. but, fortunately, the weekend was followed upon by a monday that wasn’t really a monday, being as it was both halloween and the one day before the national holiday of the feast of all saints. so i was able to endure the pain of the shave, knowing that i was essentially responsibility free until wednesday. so after half a day of compulsorialty, i quit. and it hurt, after nearly eight weeks this time, but i shaved. you get used to things, and, well, that’s what they become. just like the parade that one night of guadalquibear.

but now, for better or for worse, my beard is gone. and, well, it’s a thing.

*the guadalquivir is the river that runs through sevilla.

THE RAIN IN SPAIN, part 2

the season has now certainly changed. after one week of autumn gave us respite from the oppressiveness of late summer, the winter-- as it seems here -- seems here to stay. that’s what they told us would happen, and, sure enough, now the thermometers dip under fifty during the night (if the thermometers here work, which isn’t to be expected because none of the clocks do), and even the midday sun can’t raise temperatures much above eighty. but there are chills in the air (if exaggerated to justify a citywide change of wardrobe), and, even if they don’t ever manage to stick around for the entirety of a day, there are clouds, and those clouds, the winter clouds of which we were warned, make rain.

monday morning, it squalled until almost noon, and the sun wasn’t able to reassert itself until after two o’clock, at which time it had already had to resign itself to being the background image for the day’s entry in the weather tables. but the rain stayed away on tuesday -- perhaps because the home team had another late away game. on wednesday though, despite a clear and brisk morning that warmed into a perfect afternoon, the rains made a late evening appearance, and, since those rains weren’t of the southern spanish variety as we’d come to know them but rather more akin to an all too familiar lingering spray, we walked.

and on the way down calle san luis, a friend, and it was one of those nights on which you would have needed one; or i did, anyway, and this one, from paris, invited me into her nearby apartment for tea, tea and cookies, french ones flavored like orange flowers, which were the perfect compliment to her artistically rustic apartment, straight out of montmartre, at least as far as I knew from that movie, having never actually been inside an apartment in montmartre. But we did talk about movies, the spanish ones she’d bought that day along with some books of spanish poetry, although none by poets with whom i was familiar.

we did, however, get around to one I knew, or, rather, we’ll get around to him here, because in that conversation with that parisian friend i hadn’t the temperance (mind you, though, we were only drinking tea) to admit that i hadn’t much enjoyed paris the one time that i had been there, if only because on my self-guided the-life-and-times-of-andre gide reality tour i’d been so disappointed not to find any sort of commemoration in the rue de…medici?...where gide was born that I’d spent most of the rest of my time there reading (holding strong to a twenty-two year old’s prideful grudge) in the luxembourg gardens in (both the good and the bad kinds of) ironic protest.

and it happened this week that i spent a considerable amount of time looking for a book, a book called ocnos by an author named luis cernuda who was born in sevilla, had been a colleague of lorca’s and all the rest of those, had gone into exile after the beginning of the civil war and taught in the united states, but most applicably had been an avid admirer of gide’s and whose work, as a result, was typified by an undeniable frankness when it came to matters of desire. (i was assured by a friend after complaining that i hadn’t been able to find the book at any of the stores i’d visited that no bookstore in sevilla didn’t have a copy and that i all i needed to have done was ask. i did end up asking, and in fact there wasn’t a copy at the bookstore where i swallowed my pride and asked after book in spanish with demonstratedly poor communication skills in that language. the book wasn’t there, but i did manage to gather that cernuda was a poet and not a novelist -- as i’d assumed when whoever it was had made me the recommendation -- and then found ocnos -- granted, a collection of poems in prose -- at the next bookstore i tried.)

but it wasn’t until this morning that i realized what i hadn’t realized until then, that i’d known cernuda’s name before i’d known it, or had read it at least, when i’d happened on a commemorative plaque in calle acetres weeks before and stopped to attempt a read, if only out of respect for the city’s efforts to commemorate things with plaques. when i saw the same plaque today, having set out with an address specifically with a mind to laying eyes on the commemoration before writing anything about it, i recognized it, and the sign for the crystal dealer above it, and then nothing, i guess, nothing except for the ridiculously unprofound realization that i would have remained in the city to read my copy of ocnos had sevilla been proud of its significance or not -- and then a bit of embarrassment at my poor treatment of paris.

or maybe i won’t read my copy of ocnos, because in my excitement over having found one i bought it without much consideration, and the one that i bought is spectacularly white with luxuriously wide margins. for what it cost, i’d already decided not to mark it up, even for the sake of exercising my spanish education, and i’m at a complete loss as to how to keep myself from soiling that spectacular whiteness (the bad kind of ironic protest), especially since i’ve become accustomed to reading in parks, which, here, don’t provide any shelter from the rain.

somehow, though, (ironically?) the rains and the winter have brought the parrots back to town, parrots about which we were also warned, but weren’t prepared to be prepared for until april when they come back north and are said to occasionally drop lucky feathers from the trees. and the palm trees in the plaza de san lorenzo were full of them this afternoon, although they weren’t dropping any feathers. now, in the present season, they’re on their way out. the parrots have to leave. and if i wasn’t struck by any profundity other than that of my own silliness at seeing cernuda’s commemorative plaque earlier in the day, i did open my notebook to where i’d copied its inscription and thought about…something. “el poeta ejemplar de amor, el dolor y exilio.” what’s someone have to do to get remembered with words like those? And i thought…something, something much better than simpering about those stupid birds.

THE RAIN IN SPAIN

sevilla f.c. didn’t beat f.c. barcelona last night, but they didn’t lose, and that seemed to be victory enough for many of the fans watching the game on the television outside of the bar/restaurant next to the alameda cineplex. and sevilla certainly had a fantastic opportunity for losing: in the second of the four overage minutes of the second half, barcelona was awarded a penalty shot for a double foul on the striker responsible for most of its shots in that half, which for the most part saw sevilla on the defense. the shot was blocked, but only after a fight had broken out between the penalty box and midfield over the calling of the foul and one of sevilla’s was sent of the field with a red card. the shot was blocked in the fifth of four overage minutes, and the game was finally called in the seventh at a nil-nil tie. and that seemed to be victory enough for many of the fans. (sevilla, with one recent liga championship, is one of the few teams in seasonal competition to bust the monopoly of barcelona and real madrid over the league.) the forecast had been for rain all weekend, but that rain held off all of yesterday and let those sevilla fans cheer their team to a non-loss to barcelona (at barcelona) in front of an outdoor television for the entirety of the match, which ended just before yesterday did. but the forecast kept its promise for today, and the clouds that had been gathering throughout the morning started sprinkling in the early afternoon and then let it all out in torrents between three and four. by six there wasn’t left any trace of the storm – except that the air was fresher and crisper. and damn, had it needed the clearing.

AUSTERITY MEASURES, part 4; or, PAGAN SPAIN, part 3; or, HOW (TO) CHRISTOPHER GOT HIS GROOVE BACK…ONCE AGAIN

no more eta violence. that was yesterday’s big official news, and today’s diario de sevilla ran a political cartoon that featured a hooded caricature of an eta representative on a small deserted island throwing his gun into the ocean and reflecting that his surrender of his weapon was better than suicide. and what sage, sage advice for all of us, although there’s still much work to be done for peace as all of the papers and television news programs have recognized. last night, at the party, the party to which, incidentally, we wouldn’t have been extended an invitation had it not been for an acquaintance from the basque country, there wasn’t any talk of terrorism, but had there been it would surely have been about the various sevillanos lost to the violence and not about its implications for the legitimacy of the central government’s control of the various autonomous communities of spain. or so we can assume if my conversation with maría, a high school friend of the host’s, was of any significance. maría was a native and had spent some time in japan, so i remarked to her what i’d been thinking for a while about the similarities between the dispositions of the people of sevilla and the ones of kyoto. she didn’t disagree when i said that i respected the strong prides that both peoples held for their cities, not the most cosmopolitan or contemporarily savvy in their respective countries, but both of them their historic capitals and undeniable centers of certain “native” cultural traditions. i didn’t go on to voice my suspicion that those strong senses of pride were what had made the peoples of both cities so stubbornly insular, but maría supplied that point for me and (probably just for gracious sake of the conversation) warned me that i might not be so enamored of the local color after it had had a chance to put me at its disadvantage. and then there was talk of the church, which, with the top of the basilica just a block away and easily visible from the roof of the house where the party was being held, was probably inevitable in a conversation about basic sevillian values. just a day earlier a friend had responded to my challenge that i had no interest in getting married but that if i were to make a play for marriage i would insist on doing so in front of the virgin by saying that she had no plans to be married but that if she were she too would insist on having her wedding in a church because she believed more in god than she did in zapatero. touché. maría, for her part, didn’t think much either way, but assured me that even if the church (as it were at large) hadn’t found many official parts to play for homosexuals that for the most part spain in general and sevilla in particular didn’t bother to make distinctions because the tenacity of the church on both scales was more a point of the stubbornness of a folkloric tradition than a matter of dogma. (the pope might have something to say, but as for the virgin, as far as she was concerned you were a friend.) and so, appropriately, i left the party for a flamenco show (if ever there were a more fitting metaphor for the pageantry of the andalucian church…) at which i finally made acquaintance with lakshmi, whose workshops i hadn’t been able to take in portland but who easily offered up that she was doing her best to go back to give more. and if i can be permitted the sidebar i’ll say that i learned last night that there are in fact people in the world so beautiful that you can recognize them by reputation. she introduced me to her friend, an angolan woman who lived in portugal and in town visiting for the weekend, and maybe it was my familiarity with the two of them that launched the cavalcade, but for the rest of the night i was the uncomfortable beneficiary of more than my share of the venue’s female attention. a miraculous attempt at evangelical conversion? if so, then the holy spirit’s cupid’s arrow went astray. i could have named it a dozen better marks. but i’ll take it nonetheless. it’s a funny kind of stubbornness, but I’m throwing down my arms. it’s better than suicide, and we do know, those of us who know her, that the virgin hates that. and if not the rest of them, at least i can be a friend of mary’s.

PAGAN SPAIN, part 2

on saturdays, come mid-afternoon, the streets outside of the historic churches of the city overflow with wedding guests, the men dressed smartly in lightweight grey and blue woolen suits (this summer is poised to continue well into november) and the women, they’re dressed of course, but these weddings are much less about their dresses and their shoes (in which they do miraculously -- glory be! -- manage not to have to hobble over the cobblestones) as about their hats. they’re really, REALLY something. and the trails of them through the center of the city come mid-afternoon on any given saturday will almost invariably lead you to a set of studded doors in front of which a bride waits patiently with her father while, inside, a vaulted hall full of guests waits, turned towards the doors, less in expectation of the beginning of the familiar wedding march than in anticipation of the procession of latecomer hats that have yet to make their formal debuts in front of the virgin. accustomed to the ceremonial lack of ceremony (as such), some dozens of the guests mill under the umbrellas on the patios of the nearby bars even as the bride waits.

and such was the case at the church of san juan bautista (de palma is apparently his mor vulgar moniker) yesterday afternoon, where at half past noon a young wife to be waited patiently (her father probably wanting to be with his brothers and cousins at the bar across the street) for her friends or their wives or girlfriends to make their plays to show her up in front of the crowd. but at eleven o’clock mass this morning, the same grand church was occupied by only twenty or so of the devoted, at least a quarter of which were elderly and enfeebled and waited of their own volition, unacknowledged, to go to the end of the communion line so that they’d need to spend less time on their canes. there were neither a processional nor a recessional of the priest -- he had no attendants to escort him in any case -- and the luster of the church’s obvious historical and art historical importance was obscured by the motion of the four sputtering wall mounted oscillating fans that protruded from the below the red velvet that covered the top halves of the pillars located closest to the apse.

as soon as the mass was finished (and after the priest had retreated backstage and cut the brighter of the lights that had lit the altar), a crowd rushed in to take pictures of the statue of our father jesus del silencio (located in the alcove to the left of the altar, the right hand of the cross), have their pictures taken with the virgin and her attendant saint john and then to line up at the back of the church to be shown into the reliquary by the male parishioner who had so wholeheartedly appealed the devotions to the faithful few twenty minutes before. it’s difficult not to marvel only at the brilliance of the art in the church of san juan bautista in sevilla, and i was personally rapt by the statues of the two angels that guarded the stairs to the apse, symmetrically suspended by no apparent system of suspension as they themselves held pendant two giant lanterns -- the only two lighting fixtures in the church not to have been converted to electric. and those elderly who had struggled through the communion rite were probably the most disserviced by the catholic hierarchy of all of those who stood in line for the sacrament. but even so, as it was, caught between those wedding hats and the gaggles of tourists, i couldn’t help but feel for the parish of san juan bautista. even for all of the gold (and the apse of the church is glutted with it), i couldn’t help but pity the poor, meek catholic church. but then also to wonder, if by some cosmically beatific irony, it might not, after all, end up inheriting the world.

PAGAN SPAIN

sometimes the smoke turns out to have been coming from a chestnut roaster’s cart, which was the case the other night with the smoke cloud that was hovering below the tenting at the entrance to the pedestrian shopping promenade that begins at the zara store nearest el corte ingles. but sometimes the smoke isn’t floating the smell of charred chestnuts (which don’t seem to have a season here), but instead is carrying the unmistakable fragrance of frankincense, which was the case with the cloud that led me onto the crowd that filled the one narrow intersection on calle regina between the plaza mayor and the church of san juan de palma. and the smoke cloud was just a prelude to the chanting and the clanging of the baubles on top of the staffs that her attendants pounded against the ground to announce the resumption of the virgin’s procession through the intersection atop her seriously ornately gilded palanquin. i can’t say to which church the image belonged, but, probably, neither could most of the other people who had stumbled across the procession and were doing their best to snap photos of the image as she moved through the smoke. and for the smoke, it was difficult to tell if our lady of last night was decorated, under her outsized and resplendent crown, with the crystalline tears that appear on the faces of the virgins in the photographs advertising special viewings or the faded ones that decorate walls of the older cervecerias (or of any older retail establishment for that matter). the virgin passed, and the crowd closed around her attendants behind her. once before, i’d happened upon the carrying of the virgin de la esperanza (the second most celebrated in the city after the virgin de la macarena) back into the santa ana church in triana as a saturday night was turning into an early sunday morning. i’d no better idea of what feast (or whatever other event) she’d been brought out to celebrate that night than i did in regards to the virgin whose path i crossed on my way up calle regina towards home. but no bother. those things are better left to the krewes of parishioners who enjoy the image’s patronage. and they likely prefer it that way -- like those bearers of the portable shinto shrines that carry whichever of those deities through the crowds during festivals in japan -- to be the sole protectors of the gallant and dazzling rites that every so often take their virgin to the streets. i didn’t buy that copy of richard wright’s pagan spain when it was available at powell’s because it had been so severely marked up, and i never found another one. but i think i’ve gotten the gist of it by showing up. and it’s nice to be home.

AUSTERITY MEASURES, part 3

it seemed possible to easily quit the daily caffeine habit that i'd resumed here after a year and a half of abstinence and then just as much time on a more psychologically and metabolically manageable routine of two cups of coffee on each of three days a week. what the coffee in the pacific northwest had done to my nervous and endocrine systems over years couldn't possibly have been replicated by a month of daily single americanos outside the land of narcotic quality microroasts, could it? well, something happened. and after deciding yesterday to tighten my belt -- or for deciding that i should lower my profile in the cafes for the week, one of the two -- there's been hardly an unobligated hour that i haven't spent asleep. i'd have liked to replace my americanos (even if they should only be replaced temporarily) with some of the american beer that i found in the newly opened import bottle shop at 32ac calle jesus del gran poder (i stumbled into the grand opening reception after a wonderfully caffeinated afternoon walk), but paying twenty euro for a six pack of sierra nevada would hardly let me hide behind my belt tightening excuse. and so i've slept. run and slept and slept. and been told that i look tired when the obligated hours have come around. and with no hoppy consolation from the old country (although i definitely don't need any help getting to sleep). it would, however, have been some consolation. instead, all i have is my 750 gram tub of chocolate hazelnut spread, purchased last night, almost all gone, eaten in those short bursts of momentary motivation between naps, (coffee stirring) spoonful by spoonful. and, of course, off brand.

UN PASEO POR EL BRONX

it was actually on a morning run that i found all of the places that i later revisited in order to spend more to spend more time investigating them (and photojournalizing for the backhanded appeasement of some relations back in the old country) early this afternoon. and early this afternoon it was already too hot and too sunny (yes, portland, those are things) to really enjoy the walk. but i did get inside that cavernous shell of an abandoned edifice that stands -- not entirely bricked up, but almost -- just north of the macarena on the opposite side of the road that follows the western bank of the river through the city. it's full of trash. and lizards. but there was at least one man in there today who seemed to be living in the "room" with the tree in it at the northern end of the smaller of the two connected buildings. aside from rubble (i'll admit to having been a bit scared because i couldn't tell if what was left of the ceiling had done all of the falling it was going to do), most of the trash -- mattresses and plush toys and gutted home electronics -- looked like leftovers from previous squatters. on the old map i checked later in the day, the lines running away from the spot of what were now those ruins seemed to imply that they had once been a train station. on that map, there were also still train lines running away from the plaza de armas, which was replaced as sevilla's main train station after the completion of santa justa station, which was built, along with the the expansion to the airport, for the expected increase in visitors to the city for the celebration of the quincentennial of spain's opening of the americas to european exploration. i'd decided to run further in that direction that i ever had before because i'd spied the steeple of what i assumed to be an older church in the distance (and historic, monumental architecture isn't what you expect to see in el bronx). later, when i took more time to try to find access onto the grounds, i thought i'd seen a sun faded sign describing the rehabilitation of the monastery of some or another saint del buenavista; but the map said it was a cemetery, which i suppose wouldn't keep the building with the steeple from being a church or a monastery, but there was a security patrol along the outer wall with the only apparent access points to the building when i was back on my walk in the early afternoon, and i thought it better to do any more poking around at an odder hour. plus, it was still almost half of my walk to get back to that giant egg. i'd nearly laughed out loud when i'd first seen it earlier in the morning, and seeing it appear over the horizon was even more unexpected than the steeple. the probably hundred foot and hollowed out spheroid protects a huge statue of christopher columbus, who five-hundred and nineteen years ago came to sevilla to secure funds and three ships for his journey around the world to india from the monarchs of a recently united proto-spain (but only the name of the santa maria -- and the strange date of 12/X/1492 -- appear on the egg). and in the end, for the increasing intensity of the sun and the waning of my interest with the depletion of my water, i didn't end up walking all of the way back to it. of that, i didn't really need pictures. but the sevillian celebrations of 1492 were much more successful than the ones held in sevilla's sister city of columbus, ohio, u.s.a., and the continuing presence of the giant egg is testament to that, even if the central expedition site for the celebrations (located on the opposite side of the river and closer to the center of town) are now more scarcely frequented than even those ruins with their one remianing squatter. strangely, spain didn't get the day off today. there are certainly more publicly recognized religious holidays, but columbus day is not celebrated here. wednesday, however, is armed services day, and i've been told that absolutely nothing will be open. nothing other than ikea, that is, which in perfect american form is where (i've been told) the entire city of sevilla will be that day.

that's why we're going early. greetings from the new world.

AUSTERITY MEASURES, part 2

juan jose padillo got himself gored in the face yesterday after popping two banderillas into the back of a bull named marques during a fight between the two in zaragoza. i hadn't heard of the man before yesterday evening when the news of his goring topped all of the news bulletins: "Television images showed the moment when the bull’s left horn ripped into Juan Jose Padilla’s lower jaw to emerge beside his protruding eyeball." a picture of the same occupied the entire front page of this morning's diario de sevilla, and even for the closeness of the zoom, it was difficult to tell the tip of the protruding horn from the white bulge of the eye that it was pushing out of padilla's face. so the stage was set for a big sports news sunday, until i realized from checking the printed soccer stats that the game i'd seen on television yesterday evening between bulletins in which sevilla won two to one over barcelona had been a recording. oh well. i'm not taking all of the responsibility for the error, because, after all, i just don't work here. and that goring is more than enough to compete with this morning's cyclocross spectacle back in the old country, which could only triumph for sensationality if someone there were to in fact get gored. are unicorns still a thing? no. never mind. i don't care. here i am wasting time that i could be using to check on the success of padillo's surgery. and in deference to his courage and sacrifice, i won't buy el país like i'd planned, even if i've been told that the sunday culture supplement is a must have for my look this season. and who has the five (six?) euro to give to frivolity at a time like this. una. grande. viva. in solidarity, and out of battery.

AUSTERITY MEASURES

thanks to the group of twenty year old italian girls who stopped me on the street at two-thirty in the morning to ask me directions, with special kudos to the one of them who happily struggled with me in halting spanish back and forth to finally arrive at the mutual understanding that she and her friends were looking for a place on calle adriano and that i did not know where that was. her dress probably wasn't prada, but it's designer had definitely noticed all the brightly colored stripes in the 2011 spring collection. and then taken them once by mondrian and then by warhol. that's the kind of thing the kids are thinking these days between the bars. what sovereign debt crisis? we've got star power. it was the confidence inspired by that interaction that had me actually offering suggestions two hours later when a man from an early middle aged trio asked me where they should go for one more drink. luckily, it wasn't quite enough for me to grab the lapels of the man who screamed what i thought was a compliment in my face a bit later and toss him out of my way. although it felt like i should have as soon as i was home. the police were busy clearing out the alameda and breaking up the fight behind the fish market.

SUPER SAD, PROBABLY TRUE

the first several pages had me already suspicious that i’d missed the boat, but of course the boat was full anyway, as the american repatriation authority constantly reminds immigrants in the book and as its author is constantly intimating about the real life (as in outside his book) accessibility of lifestyle hub new york. all of the important media bits on super sad true love story (i.e. the ones that had any chance of getting noticed) went up or out last year (and the originators of the unnoticeable ones that circulated at the same time could console themselves that they’d been involved in the moment, if however insignificantly). but there are those people occupying [ref. my hesitation to put that in quotes] wall street and the streets of all those other cities in the states to protest the corporate ownership of the united states government; and maybe that means the beginning of a real life rupture, that we’re finally at a tipping point -- and maybe the spoils will topple down on the side of the low net worth individuals (unlike in the book), since (unlike in the book) they were the instigators of the conflict when things came to blows. dunno. i’m not there. for richer or poorer, i’ve put myself on another boat.

but, last week, super sad true love story was the only book left in the apartment in a language that i could read, in other words the last book immediately available to me that i wouldn’t have to pay for; the last book aside from that one on the development of the japanese new wave and the birth of the art theater guild by toshio matsumoto that i should have passed on to someone who would have read it after nearly a year of letting it sit face down, open to page three on the filing cabinet that was my nightstand at the apartment in the old country. the idea, however, of reading a book in japanese that described the histories of the french and italian new waves at a beach on the coast of spain -- and the idea of being able to talk about that idea -- was enough for me to accept the extra weight in my suitcase. it was enough, even for knowing beyond most foreseeable doubts that the book would probably stay unread, and that if the computer somehow found its way to the beach that there probably wouldn’t be a wireless signal for gloating. but i could still gloat at being in possession of such an erudite “media artifact” as the one(s) i had, and for that i could also sympathize with lenny abramov’s anachronistic fondness for his books in super sad true love story.

of course, super sad true love story, as a depiction of a near future (credit score and streaming media driven) dystopia, is supposed to make you smile and nod at how similar (if in some cases farcically so) the lives of its characters are to your own. (the copy i read went to italy early this morning, but i think i remember something on the jacket positioning the book as if nabokov had written 1984.) the problem is that the future gets old, or any one future does, as soon as the future comes to take its place, and once that happens (and i feared within the first several pages of super sad true love story that it might already have) a book like this one can’t hold on to its urgency and, without its timeliness, loses itself until the discussion on it is reopened a decade and a half later as a way of understanding the intellectual history of the past (which is actually how the unnecessarily sentimental epilogue to super sad true love story positions the story of the book). the future gets old, and the future gets old at the same speed as we canonize a fancifully nostalgic image of the past.

and so I put myself on that beach in hindsight, and it was a greater moment even that it ever could have been in anticipation. the protagonist of (the other) murakami’s almost transparent blue gets things on in that book with an american named lily, the woman who writes the protagonist the letter that comprises the final text of the novel. lily has gone off, and there’s something in her letter about a beach, or at least there’s something suggested in reference to something from earlier in the book, and that’s why murakami’s second novel is loosely considered a sequel to his first, because it begins with a description of a woman on a beach, a redhead like lily who’se thinking or reading or doing something pensive like lily would probably do (and i’m sure that there’s something more concrete to the connection, but neither of the books came with me, and we’re going to go with that there isn’t a wireless signal at the beach). but the exact connection isn’t all that important, because the woman at the beach isn’t all that important to the book except that hers is the perspective and imagination from which things start happening across the ocean in front of which she’s sitting. and there i was at the beach, a detached and pensive secondary character in my own story, reading my book on the japanese new wave and watching a war break out across the ocean (the title of murakami’s second book) just like lily had, in my case a rupture similar to the one in super sad true love story.

and from there? in murakami’s book, the perspective on the action jumps its way around to finally find lily back at the beach, which is where it finds us -- i suppose we never left me there -- still thinking about how to talk about a book that probably isn’t worth talking about anymore. except (except!) for about that yearning nostalgia for an intelligent america in which reading was valued and new york city was an unassailable beacon of honest ambition. even i shed a tear for that place i visited that one time only for how i imagine myself to have been feeling at the time that was that one only time. but who was i to judge, sitting on that spanish beach pondering the value of literary fiction for the here and now in the ugly -- and lengthening -- shadow of gertrude stein and ernest hemmingway.

so away from the beach. but there isn’t an open internet signal here at the metropol parasol in the plaza de la encarnacion either, and, as one of the self-inflicted casualties of the rupture in super sad true love story writes in his suicide note, without connectivity we’re stuck with just “walls and thoughts and faces.” lenny abramov tells his diary about the honest sympathy he felt for that sentiment, even as (or because of being?) a lover of introspection and media artifacts. too bad the feel good sentiments of the epilogue, which takes place after lenny’s diary has been published, have to rob that sympathy of its vulnerable dignity. or something like that, stark and poignant like the end of super sad true love story isn’t. but then who cares? that boat was already full, and i’d long since missed it anyway. better not to draw attention to my lateness in coming. better next time just to buy what i’d prefer to read, timely or not and shut up about it. so i take my headphones out of my ears to be able to put the computer in my bag with my notebooks and things (but not the copy of super sad true love story that i read, because it went to italy this morning). and i fucking shit you not: in the plaza, bruce springstein is singing “born in the u.s.a.”

(UNA SEMANA EN) MA VIE EN PISOS

inspirado en una historia verídica...

no recuerdo cuantos dueños yo llamé la semana pasada. demasiados. no recuerdo cuantos pisos yo fui a ver con mi compañera. no, sí Recuerdo, fueron siete. y había algo mal con todos. el primero piso era bonito y el precio por mes era más barato que la mayoría, pero cuando yo lo visité, el dueño dijo algo sobre una nómina. ¿qué fue? no entendí. despues de nuestra conversación, me preocupaba que mis documentos no fueran suficiente para ese dueño, y por eso yo no traté de alquilar su piso. (¡y qué pena! el dueño era guapo…) los otros pisos eran feos, o si eran bonitos no estaban amueblados, o en el caso de uno, estaba manejado por una mujer muy loca y glotona. y el vencimiento de mi arrendamiento se estaba acercando… Hasta con la ayuda de mi amiga – que llamaba a los dueños por teléfono y me servía de matona – no podía encontrar una situación ideal. en el fin, yo tomé el piso de algunos amigos de mi amiga. ellos pueden hablar inglés, y yo podría haber evitado todas las dificultades con los dueños y sus pisos si en el principio hubiese tomado ese piso. bueno. por lo menos, yo he podido practicar mi español. ¿dónde fue el dueño de ese primero piso?

HOW TO GRIN AND BEER IT -- OR WINE; or, CRUZCAMPO IS ONLY GOOD FOR BAD PUNS

the beer in spain would be awful. we knew that. unfortunately, knowing wasn't much of the battle when it came to experiencing and accepting the reality of the situation. and the reality of the situation is that spain only seems to have one beer, a "premium lager" of the quality that you'd expect from a beer with that written on the label. the labels sometimes say cruzcampo, but they sometimes also say alhambra or estrella del sur. dia even sells bottles of its own brand for significantly cheaper than the rest, and you might as well get your liters of that if you're buying beer at dia, because all of the brands taste the same: not great. there's probably just the one big beer factory somewhere that makes bottles and bottles of all of spain's premium lager and then ships them to the different labeling factories. there's a place on feria that has a few taps of somethings german, but if glasses (glasses!) of cruzcampo are one euro fifty, who knows what a place would charge for a pint of premium lager imported from two countries away. anyway, you can get a glass of house wine for a euro ten. it isn't much against the heat, but it does some kind of job. maybe not the best for enjoying the thursday garbage picnic at midday, but there's a dia right near the picnickers, only then you still have to do the chilling yourself.

those glasses of house wine have heard more than their share of sighs. it's not even their fault. and of course the old country is completely out of mind when we're walking back to stick those warm bottles in the freezer. the old country was nothing but strife. this new world of unemployment has everything more exciting to offer in the way of bohemian vogue. but if someone wants to send a bottle of super dog, i wouldn't consider it a backward step to drink it. we're moving to calle becquer. you can have the address as soon as i have it exact.

TALK TO HIM; or, HOW TO SPEAK SEVILLANO

never lapse from the imperative. and keep everyone involved in the conversation spitting your game. use: "mira!" "oye!" and make sure that everyone knows that what you're doing is for everyone's benefit (which, of course, includes yours, but don't say so in so many words). don't ask: tell. remind them that you're the cousin or the neighbor or the ex-lover of the niece's best friend's godmother's children's piano teacher and that you're more than entitled to a discount or an exclusion or just this little exception just this once. then reason if necessary: use "hombre" (if you haven't already and forgetting for once to pay attention to gender) to let whoever it is that might be doubting you know that you're on equal footing, that you're on the level -- and that you couldn't possibly get by with anything less than what you're asking. (just don't use it like "dude" unless that's what you're trying to mean.) and don't waste your time with pleasantries, because you'll just be wasting the time of the people who really just want to know what it is that you want. don't, that is, until you're saying goodbye, at which time spread those pleasantries thick like sobrasado. make your interlocutors hang up, leave you first. add another "ciao" or another double aspirated "adios." make them want it. and keep them wanting more. just don't forget the balance of accounts: that is, take care to keep that footing equal, on the level.

como yo: speak sevillano. or try, at least! sink or swim, chicas. go ahead. talk to him.

SON LOS TOREROS, part 2

yesterday, the front page of el país (i inadvertently stole it -- it was inadvertent, i swear -- from the cafe when i thought that i was in fact helping the staff by removing for them some of the garbage left behind by another customer) featured an article on the end of the bullfighting season in catalonia, which this year also marked the death (as the paper put it, although i didn't get much further than the headline) of bullfighting in that autonomous community as a result of the catalonian parliament's having voted to ban it earlier this summer. the front page photo, which occupied most of the space on the page above the fold -- and relegated an article on the left taking the french senate for the first time since 1958 to a narrow column on the right -- showed a jubilant crowd carrying a smiling matador out of the bullring, behind him a large flag demanding (in catalan of course), "libertat per a la nostra cultura."

it was clear from his fight with his first bull that josé maría manzanares wasn't likely to win the honor of being carried out of the real maestranza on sunday evening, be damned the expectations and excitement of the end of the season, even at this, the oldest ring in the country. although he was not to be outdone for style in his suit of maroon, manzanares almost completely missed his mark when he went in with his sword for the kill, and his adversary, though wounded, bucked the blade out of its back and stumbled pathetically toward another charge, its miserable condition a certain reflection of the matador's poor technique, which ultimately required that the bull be taken down unceremoniously with a stab to the head by an attendant. the bands didn't play nearly as triumphantly as they had after the first two fights, even for the three swords it took matador number one to finish his job (which, it seemed, we should have assumed to be done less spectacularly than those of the men with the better billings).

but there was certainly no love lost for manzanares over his initially poor showing. in definitely didn't keep us from leaving our seats in the alto sol section across from the royal box -- which we couldn't actually see from where we'd been sitting for the imposition of the pillars of the eave over our section -- to squeeze ourselves behind the security guards protecting one of the portals onto the lower, better seats in hopes of being able to better see his face as he faced off against his second bull.

by the time of that fight, at roughly eight, the sun had set to where it was just barely visible over the upper edge of the maestranza on the opposite side of the ring. we weren't able to see as much of the action at large as we had been from a higher vantage, and that was no doubt in large part due to our having to stretch up to grab the railings beside the the stairs of the portal to keep ourselves on tiptoe and as much of a head as possible above the other spectators crowded behind the guards. (graciously, when they realized it was for a photo opportunity, they did allow us momentary access onto the aisle to get a picture of the big hat under the waning sunlight, that hat that had been come by through so much difficulty only to find itself solidly in the shade when we found our seats.)

it seemed obvious that it should when presented with the reality -- they are, after all, called suits of lights -- but from closer on it was actually possible to see that maroon suit of manzanares' shine, its adornments of mirrored glass sparkling toward every direction even when the matador appeared to be completely still. and even if parts of that last fight were obscured (although probably no more than other parts would have been obscured by those pillars up in alto sol), our position for bull number six and for manzanares' redemption couldn't have been better, if only for understanding (or deciding to appreciate, maybe) the spectacularity of the spectacle of the bullfight. the sparkling matador as he struts around the ring, especially when with his back to the bull after having led it through a half dozen passes, the crowd having risen from its hush to clap and cheer only to be hushed again by an ardent insistence from within its ranks as the matador replaces his sword behind the muleta and stares down the bull for another go. and the bull seems then to be just a given in the setting of the scene, the setting for the real spectacle, which is played out between the matadors and the fans in the crowd. and there's a pun there, at least for talking about the bullring in sevilla where, shade or sun, at least half of the crowd seems to be fanning itself at all times, which is a sight to see in itself -- and perhaps one of the only things seen best, in wide angle panorama, from the cheap seats highest up. and at least in sevilla the popular claim by bullfighting opponents that the spectacle is favored principally by foreign tourists is proven entirely untrue. maybe it was just for manzanares and only for the social cachet of having seen him fight at the maestranza at the close of this historic season, but the identifiable tourists seemed all to have left the ring by bull number four, and that left the maestranza still looking completely full, full of fans with their fans, many of them dressed -- not to rival the matadors -- but still to kill; many of them minors, and all of them with rapt attention for their next cue of the show.

and we followed the most devoted (or maybe just the most enchanted) of them to the gate from which the matadors would leave after the sixth bull went down. manzanares wasn't going to be carried out, but he'd still have to leave, and we were there with the others pressing the shutter buttons of our digital cameras in rapid fire succession when he did. neither of us were so bold as to grab one of his arms to pull him into the frame of a photograph, or we didn't realize that we could have been so brazen until after the crowd had swelled around him and we were being pushed to its periphery as manzanares' entourage pushed him toward the mercedes van that was waiting to collect him at the end of the street, the van out of which one of the entourage was passing photographs of the matador staring down a bull, promotional materials for the new www.josemariamanzanares.com. we were among the devoted who pushed our way back to the center of the crowd and up to the window of the van to fight the flurry of hands to grab our trophies, which we then carried proudly through the crowded, twilit streets of santa cruz, the bars and restaurants of which, already dense with the impeccably groomed heirs to the sevillian upper crust (the ones who hadn't chased manzanares to his van had apparently gone ahead to save seats), seemed to be caught somewhere between the spanish versions of a derby party and the prom. it was lucky we had the hat.

i didn't get far enough into that article in el país to find out if the air around the ring in barcelona was so rarified, but it probably didn't say. no doubt there were confrontations between the saddened supporters of that last fight and their detractors outside of the ring. ironically, had they all been in sevilla, where the bullfight seems to be entirely safe from assault, there would have been shit aplenty for them to hurl at each other, even on the streets of santa cruz. in that front page photo, the matador being carried out of the ring in barcelona is smiling, but his smile seems already tinged with nostalgia, even if he still has the chance to be carried out of other fights during other seasons at other rings. and the sevillanos will be happy to do the carrying. that's the feeling that the price of admission to the plaza de los toros la maestranza bought us, anyway. or maybe we'd just been blinded by the brilliance of the light from those suits. son los toreros. looking damn fine in those pants.