PINK FLAMINGOS

the pink ones, she says, come from africa. that's where they eat the shrimp. and the other flamingos are grey, including -- but not limited to -- the older ones too tired to fly off the continent. the purple swamp hens aren't exactly purple, but you're lucky if you see one at all (let alone three), and you can imagine that they're less close to black when it's less close to dark. still, the thistle is manifestly purple, even at dusk, and the color of the spines of its only blooming flower seems in fact to be more of a light than a shade. and as the shade of night falls it's more and more difficult to tell if the birds in the water are flamingos or storks or egrets, unless you know -- and as she explains -- that the storks and the egrets don't so much like to stand and fish in the saltier of the salt waters. then the flamingo grey is forgotten, because at the moment when it's impossible to tell whether the light in the darkness is the glow of the half moon or the tip of the tail of the sunset, the grey of the salt pools is otherworldly. not grey, but also not exactly pearl or opalescent like you are wont to describe it, and then the light seems to be coming from the shallow pool itself as the breeze keeps up the perpetual motion of the even ripples that never lap up at the edge because they are moved by the breeze simply to feed the flor de sal that grows through the night, even after the clouds have completely obscured the moon.  

HELLO WEST COAST!

the renault clio that came to the island before the bridge went out was not a late model, and it arrived early. insurance is a delicate business, and the ones holding the policy holders want to make sure that they've taken care of their clients. so, stowaway now in tow, the clio (insured by who knows whom) hopped back over to the mainland, hopped onto the highway and then made its way west through the toll signs of the expressway on a tank full of one hundred percent billable.

halfway to where the expressway turns north there's a fortress. but the fortress visible from the expressway is a fake. someone put it up to attract people toward one of the golf courses or to some fancy new foodie experience, but from a distance it isn't readily apparent that the structure is new. there's something more authentic a little ways inland at silves, but the clio is going west. there are, however, the ruins of a little castle at the top of the highest hill in aljezur, and after the clio makes its laborious way up the road that goes down to the beach below vale da telha, that's where it heads. not to the top of the hill, but to a parking lot below it where it stops, after conspiratorially greeting the two policemen in front of the post office, to park and let the driver out to visit the insurance office. and if there the tranquilidade exists in name only, it's absolutely palpable from the top of the hill, where two of the watchtowers of the eleventh century almohad castle still command postcard perfect views of the river town and its surroundings. not much changed, probably, in the daily life of aljezur after its thirteenth century reconquest, its people keeping on keeping their bees, catching their fish, minding their cattle -- and drinking their medronho -- while the knights divvied up their (new) king's share of the people's products. unfortunately, the design firm halfway down the hill does not make a postcard of the flowchart describing the steps from strawberry tree to intoxication that decorates the wall behind its reception desk.

at amado, carrapateira the boys with their boards were starting to make their ways in groups down the long, wooden staircases to the water (and the clever old man was passing his metal detector between the parked cars), but the clio wouldn't tarry longer than the time it took to snap a few photos, because it was following the serious surfers to the end of the road. and at sagres the traffic police didn't know the name of the street where the insurance agency was located and so said to ask at the post office. the wind, they say, is what delineates the extent of the coast they call the west, and they say that it always blows at sagres. the surfers (half of australia) are down at tonel, but above them, at the ends of the flat, narrow cliffs, the massive fortress of sagres and the lighthouse at the cape of saint vincent take the full force of the wind in their faces, undeterred, monuments to a people that had seen the relentlessly bitter force of nature at the end of the world and had left behind the tranquilidade enshrined in those insurance offices and gone to conquer a new one.

the beach at nearby ingrina is much calmer, but after the clio had passed the big roadkill snake on its way to lose its way there, the less imposing rocks of the cove simply presented other dangers. but still, the beach was calm, as were the hills of golden cereal fields around it: the dry, windblown hills that from some vantages appear to be the ends of the earth themselves, but don't, strangely, let on at all that the ocean is only a few kilometers beyond them, easily visible from their other sides. the hills with the fields and the cow pastures, the peaceful pines and the furious ones, and the clio making its way through all of it over snakes and past the cow crossing signs on the road back inland from ingrina. the old windmills with the wooden blades at one time actually milled, but the new ones, giant robots, power the grid, which included two more insurance offices in lagos.

and lagos has its undeniable charm. its stone sidewalks and tiled façades. its thoughtfully conceived cafes and specialty stores. maria de mar sells nothing but canned fish in carefully designed retro packaging, but the store is too obviously new to sell anything that was ever packaged at the lagos cannery, the ruins of which (lagos was an old commercial center, too) are two tall chimneys on the estuary, the tops of which have been squatted by storks. and after it had made its round of the business of tranquilidade in lagos, the clio made for the road that passes by those chimneys on its way out of the city, done with work, but still with half a tank to help it race the sunset down the expressway to marinha.

it got us there in time. and just the hint of the paradise in the cove below the parking lot was enough to thrill us as we stood on either side of the clio putting on our bathing suits behind our towels. the water was much too cold for swimming, but that didn't keep us from going for a swim before laying ourselves out to dry below the cliffs. we'd found our towels the perfect patch of sand, and the susnset we had beaten to marinha only darkened that last little piece of beach at the exact same time as the tide rose to meet the shadow cast by the sun as it fell behind the cliff where the clio was parked and lit up the one that formed the eastern edge of the cove.

back east, then, went that not late model clio, much later than when it had set out to quality control the tranquilidade of the west coast. the bridge would be open where the wind didn't blow quite so fiercely, and albufeira and those twilight concerts with the mystery sangria would have to wait for another excuse.

DROLL FOOD; or, THIS, APPARENTLY, IS MY LIFE

when the sturdier of the two drag queens had finished removing all of her jewelry, tearing off her hose, wiping off her makeup and changing into her (or his, at this point) street clothes to shirley bassey's "this is my life," we got up from the mats on the rooftop terrace, walked down the two staircases that circled the sprawling bougainvillea overhanging the courtyard, exited onto the street and went in search of the next house marked by the o with the grave accent. and blindfolded at the bottom of the next staircase we covered our faces with brigadeiro, cream cheese and mango, deigning sometimes also to give each other tastes of the contents of the covered containers. no one, the one of us said on the way to the next house, would believe that the city could ever have gone out like this. (and i, for my part, would never have thought that those were the houses behind those charmingly decrepit façades.) up the next staircase (and through the wildly unexpected modern kitchen) the woman was giving a workshop on whips. and then, on the way to artistas, everyone was seeing the world in buttons.

lunch was supposed to be late, but the cachupa ended up an early dinner. and for the better, probably, because it's sleeping food. if we weren't already tired from our last night's night walking, the cachupa did the rest. groggily, over tea, we agreed that it's difficult to get a really good coffee at the beach. bitches. them and us both.

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, part 3

the environmental engineer takes me for a run. and had she not been with me, i wouldn't have had any chance at going, not just for the fact that she was the one that took me, but because i probably would have been deterred by the private restricted access notification that had been stenciled onto a block of cement next to the gate where we enter, which, ironically, is the only visible point of ingress onto the nature reserve between the island and the airport. the sun is nearly set, but it's still possible to see the flamingos wading in one of the salt pools to our right after turn off the path we've been following since the gate. the pink ones (and there's only one) come from africa, she tells me. that's where they're eating the pink shrimp. the shrimp in the salt pools (i don't ask if there are shrimp in the salt pools) are apparently of a different color. i don't, however, know that they're salt pools yet, and it isn't until she directs my attention to one of the ones from which the water has almost completely evaporated that i understand that this part of the system of pools in this part of the ria formosa lagoon corridor isn't for irrigation. a "long legs" flies across the path with its feet flung back past its tail feathers, looking to stake its own claim somewhere amid the mines that glitter in the setting sun. gourmet salt is algarve gold.

then the road forks. there's a house in the middle of the nature reserve -- a big one -- and the environmental engineer tells me that it belongs to a former head of the administrative region of the algarve ("europe's most famous secret"). the television on inside isn't huge, but it's large enough for me to see someone waving the flag of greece on the screen as we run left at the fork.

after we pass through the cluster of trees that separate the salt pools from the golf course we see madonna's house. or, rather, we see the cluster of houses that includes the house that madonna owns and visits -- like most of her neighbors on the golf course -- once every ten years or so. to the aggravatingly calming sound of the golf course sprinklers, the environmental engineer tells me that if those people hadn't paid so much to never live in their houses here that the nature reserve probably wouldn't exist. the people on the golf course like it quiet and prefer to not to know what they're missing. most of them probably don't know about the island -- and they probably wouldn't know about the salt pools if the ruins of the pools that the romans built weren't on the golf course side of the trees.

there aren't many birds visible in the late twilight when we arrive at the lake, but the pictures on the wall in the raised viewing shelter indicate that dozens of varieties make their homes at the lake at some or another time during the year. (from the sound of things there are at least as many varieties of frogs.) it's best, she tells me, when they're coming up from africa. in the spring. they're not so tired as when they're flying down from the north. but our attention is drawn away from the thought of the birds by the moon, the slightest of slivers, just now waxing, and pendent as if suspended from the only star visible in the waning gradient of sunset light, stopped at the edge of a pendulum swing out over the ocean. because we prefer that the spell not be broken, maybe, the sprinklers seem strangely in harmony with the chorus of frogs. in the forest where you're taken when you go right at the fork forced by that former administrator's house is where they get together at night to practice magic.

the moon is at our backs as we head back to the gate. we're back on that first path, which stretches from the gate at the road to the airport, past where we turned through the salt pools and all the way to the lake. it's now that time of nascent nighttime during which the eyes struggle to make use of the last traces of lingering light, which makes the running almost more treacherous than if we had been trying to follow the path in complete darkness. luckily we have the light of the island to guide us back to the road, and after our final sprint we're lucky that we have so many mosquito kisses to scratch, because they force us to stop before getting into the car and take another look back at the sky. and when we turn around again it's there, shining through a fog that must have just rolled off the ocean as we were stretching and scratching: the lighthouse on the barrier island across from olhão. and had it not been for all of that beauty, what a sad though it would have been to imagine how lonely and deserted the staircase at el faro de triana.

HOW THE SOUTHWEST WAS WON; or, AUSTERITY MEASURES, part 1143

the narrow littoral region at the western edge of the continent is by no means a stranger to conflict, but visitors who manage to avoid the agitation in the streets should still manage to discovery its characteristically idyllic charm. to be sure: the luminous capital on the coast and the old roman city in the southeastern interior have seen their share of ravage (both historical and as a result of the delicacy of the political situation at present), but their quiet way of wearing their not so hidden diminuition is as a testament to the resolve of the entire country to do its best to maintain the calm, which is certainly being tested by the current crisis. interlopers will lope. and if it's angela merkel and the international monetary fund that are having their way playing at queens and kings throughout the rest of the zone, then the problem in that country at the eastern edge of the sea is undeniably british. because the british didn't want to deal with the problem, and so they've mounted the vanguard and led the world in sending the problem somewhere else. after their own conflict ridden real estate adventure in the region, why not? two birds with one stone, they thought, maybe, as they encouraged the problem group to resettle. after all, the diplomats argue as they survey the map in the aftermath of the culture wars, these people shouldn't be forced to live in scattered diaspora throughout the countries of the north. why should this displaced, persecuted people not have a country of its own, a country founded on its devotion to a shared faith?

and so the hippies were packed into their campers and sent with smiles to follow the sacred call of their world music to the promised land. and when they arrived, they said the calm was theirs -- and that it had been -- and they circled their campers around fires in the parking lots and campgrounds behind the british owned vacation homes on the beach. and at every world music festival in that narrow littoral region at the western edge of the continent was to be heard the sacred cry of "woof!"

the families whose families had been in the region for centuries should be willing to share this holy land, the queens and kings of europe argued, and -- happy to have the hippies gone from their own territories -- they supported the policies of the british in its new mandate. the families, however, would only be pushed so far. when there were fewer seats at the festivals for their children than for the interlopers' dogs, and when there was no more room to strike because the newcomers slept with their dogs in the streets, the families closed the campgrounds and imposed stricter hiring regulations at the organic farms. and the hippies called it inhumanitarian -- terrorism! -- their firmly shut to the effects of the shortages caused by the needs of their dogs on the children of the families. so they appealed to great britain (or was it germany...or the united states), and mom and dad send money so that the hippies could stand and fight for their religion, in hopes that the world music wouldn't come back to play at home.

now the hippies are building a wall.

and when the displaced families are forced to abandon the (now only mythic) idyll of their calm and move east, they're met with indifferent excuses. the people across the border have much in common with the displaced families, but they would prefer that the families try to resettle their country from the resettlers -- and that they do it themselves. the people across the border have their own problems with the hippies -- not to mention with angela, the imf and its own dog soiled streets.

"woof!" the idea wasn't entirely misintended on any side, although all sides might agree that the ones who think their dogs have mastered the execution of socialism and don't deserve the kindness of a leash might be better off nowhere. really, hippie, it's fighting with everything. and it's shitting on the beach.

SHACK WITH A HOT PLATE

the owner of the place had been told that i was a researcher from an american university. that i was told. i was not, however, apprised of whether or not i was to be visiting on official research...business?...and neither was i told whether the owner of the place, who also owns the restaurant next door, had been apprised of the same. but when the owner of the place came over to deliver the table for the front terrace, it was my impression that the materials i had spread out on the kitchen table might probably have given the casual observer the impression that my translation had made some actual progress. that, at least, should have done something to shore up the reality of our shared disinformation as the both of us pretended to know what exactly what the both of us should have known. i doubt, however, that my bathing suit and the "boytoy" necklace did much to shore up my credibility as a researcher. and don't get me wrong: when i opened the door (after deciding that i would do worse for my credibility to take the time to change), i was very much that researcher from an american university -- but whatever research we didn't know i was doing probably wasn't very credible. anyway, i had the high ground. sure i was being given the table, but the thing was that the stove was shocking me whenever i touched the metal, and that's something that you don't want happening to a researcher from an american university (even a dubiously credible one) when you're the owner of his place. and, sure, he played the having been hospitalized card, but he still needed to fix the stove. i have no idea what the blue knob ever did, but it must have had something to do with electricity -- or maybe the gas burners used to light automatically without the application of an external flame. and i don't know why he thought i would believe him as he was putting electrical tape over a set of obviously faulty connectors, but he told me the story anyway. that one woman, she used to make a lot of soup. and, he continued in the one language that we shared -- which was neither of our mother tongues -- the liquid from all those soups must have seeped into the crack around the blue knob. and now there was a little electrical storm caught in the humidity inside the stove, and so he had no choice but to disconnect the electricity -- which i still had no idea why was connected to the stove in the first place (the fan in the hood still works). but i gave him the benefit of the doubt. the other day on the beach i met madonna. and i told her that i knew where she lived because a friend who lives in quinta do lago had pointed out her house one day while we were driving by. luckily she laughed. it wasn't quinta do lago, and where i was staying had some problems with the wiring in the kitchen, but at least i hadn't had to drive to get here, i said. then i told her that i wouldn't have minded her giving me a souvenir of the meeting, you know, to show people. and i didn't think that the guy who came over to deliver the table and fix the stove was going to be the first i showed it to, but i was happy that madonna was willing to part with that necklace. but it doesn't matter, she told me, no one's going to believe you.

MY DATE WITH MARCO FLORES

that he wouldn't be in town for long, and that i probably wouldn't have another justifiable opportunity to spend the night at the newly reopened hotel alfonso xiii were more than enough to make me nervous about being on time. and that i had no idea of how to get myself quickly from aljarafe to the center of the city on foot and hadn't ever ridden the metro were sufficient enough reasons for me to give the train a try. but, even for my excitement, i was tired from the dog show in aljarafe; and even though san juan alto and puerta de jerez aren't separated by that many stops, i did manage to doze off, and when i found myself again awake, nervous and excited, the train was on its way to amate. i knew there was a park by that name, but i'd never visited and hadn't any way of knowing that it wasn't on the way back to the hotel when i arrived. nervous and increasingly late, i felt even less inclined to ask for directions than normal -- and not at all ironically ever since my experience of having been sent back in the direction of the campana when i asked to be directed to the plaza de la magdalena, not knowing that i was already there. so i rushed away in the direction of wherever, which happened to be in one of the other directions further from where i was trying to go. time lost, but not necessarily opportunity: i could at least tell mr. flores all about the curious neighborhood between the park and calle ingeniero la cierva. and my curiosity there was less a result of having stumbled onto a quiet subdivision of unassuming single family houses that more resembled the outskirts of phoenix than what you'd think to find in that part of this city, but was more acutely stimulated by the question of why most of the houses were displaying images of the rocio or the esperanza of triana. for christ's sake -- literally in this instance -- at least choose a virgin from this side of the river... i didn't have much time to think it over, however, because it wasn't long before i exited out of the bougainvillea and porro scented streets onto ingeniero la cierva, which is an entirely different curiosity. it's silly to try to convey what was simply a reoccurrence of unrelated memories, especially without presenting any concrete point of reference, so i won't try to describe why it seemed to me that the street might have been in chiang mai if thailand had suddenly been repopulated by indians. suffice it to say that i felt strongly dissuaded against taking pictures, and not just because of my hurry. (sufficient?) so i kept walking up the street in what became obvious was another of those directions away from the center. then i saw lisboa and hadn't any reason not to go that way. familiarity. and, luckily, that way was the one to someplace familiar. but when i'd arrived at the outer wall of the matadero on the ronda de tamarguillo i couldn't decide whether it would be quicker to head to the station at san bernardo or the one at nervión, and the only reason that i chose the latter course was because the slaughterhouse wall was shorter in that direction. i'm happy now, however, that that's the way i went, because i might otherwise not have ever come across that clinic: the one with the sign that shows a snake winding its way around the giralda -- and a soccer ball. hahahahaha. and you think that's crazy? just picture me in front of the hospital san juan de dios: maybe i just needed a bit of sympathy, but i would have given quite a bit at that moment to be hippocratically sedated and milling about on the balconies with the other patients. even my date with marco flores -- although it wasn't valuing much just then. if i couldn't get myself into the hospital, i'd have to try to calm myself. but, why the need for the anxiety in the first place? i hadn't any reason to think that anyone had told him to expect me, and i couldn't really expect that he would just show up at the hotel all on his own. so why shouldn't i take my time and enjoy the walk? i mean, i wasn't going to not pay for a room at the alfonso xiii just to sleep there by myself. hahahahaha. so i don't go. if only i hadn't wasted all that time in aljarafe trying to find us the perfect pet, because that certainly wasn't for me. i'm really not the biggest fan of dogs. good thing i hadn't committed myself to any deals. committed. ha. that bitch up there on the balcony has all the luck.

YES, VIRGINIA; or, NOT IN THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA

virginia is reading "el imperio eres tú" by javier moro. every year, her son's girlfriend's parents buy each of their daughters a copy of the winner of the planeta prize, and the one of those daughters to which her son's girlfriend corresponds has gifted virginia the book. her son is absent, but his girlfriend visits his mother monthly at the boyfriend's family home on the vega outside of granada. on this particular visit, i'm there too, at the cortijo del pino as virginia is reading "el imperio eres tú" by javier moros, and i'm embarrassed. and i'm not embarrassed because i've come alone with the girlfriend in the boyfriend's absence, but because i've fallen asleep on the couch in the living room after lunch, and when i wake up it's just the two of us: me, sloppy with grogginess on the couch next to her chair, and virginia with her book.

it was lunch. we'd had a big one. virginia's rooms (which are maybe a dozen) occupy the second floor of the cortijo, and virginia was in the large one that is the kitchen making a paella when we arrived. lucky for me, virginia is a woman who calls a day in advance to know how to plan a menu for her guests. there's rabbit in the paella instead of shrimp. and she asks if we'd like one of the chickens for tomorrow. we have coffee with our strawberries and cream. but not even the caffeine (not even to mention the nap in the car) can keep me from falling asleep when i get to the couch in the l-shaped living room that occupies one of the corners of the square corridor between virginia's rooms and the windows that look out onto the central courtyard of the cortijo.

it could also have been the table. there's a mesa camilla in the living room, and after lunch there were five of us seated around it with our legs under the blanket in the warmth of the heater fixed under the table; but when i wake up from not having realized that i'd fallen asleep it's just me and virginia. and because i'm embarrassed i ask about her book, and she tells me about the tradition in her son's girlfriend's family. i'm not familiar with the author, and that embarrasses me more, but, to my ultimate embarrassment, i'm not familiar with any of the other authors that virginia mentions in the aftermath of my unfamiliarity with moro. virginia is a reader, and the built-in shelves on the wall behind her are filled to the high ceiling. in my embarrassment, i change the subject to the table, and virginia is surprised to find out that the japanese use something similar -- and that i had a kotatsu myself in my apartment in college. it's a wonderful concept. i couldn't have helped falling asleep.

alone in the living room with her embarrassed guest, virginia is easy with the anecdotes. and it's not so much that virginia is trying to quell my embarrassment, but that virginia is someone with whom one talks and his embarrassment is easily quelled. so i ask her, easily, about the pictures on the wall near the television. and so virginia tells me the story of the cortijo, which is the story of her late husband's father's wife, which is the story of a childhood summer home purchased for a young bride with the fruits of youthful ambition in argentina, and later the story of a farm managed by a young widow. the widowed virginia and her family have kept the house through the crisis by converting a large part of it into tourist apartments, all of which (aside from the newest, which occupies the only enclosed space above the second floor) are located around the courtyard on the ground floor, where virginia's oldest daughter lives with her family. the office of the new family business is among virginia's rooms on the second floor, and the built-ins on the walls of the office are full as well.

when her son's girlfriend returns to the living room, she asks virginia about the article, the one by josé saramago, who had been married to an andalusian woman and had written a brief piece on his introduction to his wife's family. the girlfriend's experience being introduced to virginia's large and loquacious family had apparently been comically similar. and when virginia finds the article and shows it to me, the formation of my picture of what the portuguese author describes is aided by virginia's annotation. from the same file, virginia produces photos of herself at garden parties playing cards with her children's aunts. her face is droll, but life on the vega outside of granada appears not to be strictly pastoral. after the eldest has gone back downstairs and virginia's youngest daughter has arrived (i never meet the third, the one named for her mother), virginia has given up on her reading for the time being and gotten online. there's a ring from her computer, but she reassures us that she isn't going to skype with her french teacher just now. during the week, she trades him breakfast for instruction. and when the rest of the community gathers for social events at church, virginia meets with her teacher and the rest of her group at the library. i'm thoroughly envious when she tells me about the literary excursions they plan.

tomorrow, however, virginia will go to the library to vote. and it's surprising -- although not unlovely -- to hear the calmly dignified seventy-something year old woman say in her bright, unaffected tone that she will not be voting for a particular candidate. which, she asks someone to remind her, is the more asperous word for fascist. and at that question i wonder, however delighted, at the what possible intrigues the cortijo might have hidden -- or those, at least, that i might need to stay awake in order to be let onto. and then i think about all of virginia's armoires. the one in the room i'm using undoubtedly has a story, but i haven't had the courage to open it for fear that what came out would be a ghost i couldn't handle alone under the high ceilings in the dark of night on the vega. it might also be locked. there are keys hanging everywhere, and they seem to simultaneously signify both shelter and exposure. but, what's certain is that the armoires are clean. i know from another anecdote, about another woman in another house, that andalusian mothers like to keep them that way whenever they're expecting guests -- both for those coming in and for those who might come out. and there's no difference here. i'd be hard pressed to call virginia traditional, but she hasn't dropped the standard for her local tradition of southern hospitality. and yes, virginia, i would like another coffee. and the cookies. please. and then i'll probably manage to have another nap, whatever intrigue it might cost me. but better for virginia, probably, because she can get back to her book. i just hope that no one lets me sleep so long that i miss the chicken.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE S/N

the francisco guerrero music conservatory is housed in the buildings where they used to kill the cows. at least that's what you infer from the positioning of the building marked ganado vacuna. the section once reserved for the sheep and the goats is now a primary school. the playground borders the entrance to the area where they slaughtered the fowl. and at the rear end of the courtyard where the music students have positioned themselves as far away from each other as possible to read -- a neurotic reaction to a lingering sense of claustrophobia, maybe -- you can follow how the herds moved through the narrow doorways separating the holding rooms. how felt the people who found refuge there during the floods? avenida de ramón y cajal, no number. edificio "antiguo matadero." (just?) another emblem of the city. and in its neo-mudejar style, do we detect traces of gonzález? he did do the row houses up the street. but the typicality of the slaughterhouse has more in common with the plaza de armas, which currently (although before last month it didn't seem in need of any restoration) stands at the intersection of the torneo and the bridge of christ of who knows whatever behind a giant picture of itself. façades. but currently, the slaughter is in the streets -- and not just near the stadium in nervión where the match is about to end, a kilometer from the old slaughterhouse. earlier this evening, there were even more police there at the stadium than for all the battles of the feria. more ill will for the crosstown soccer rivalry, apparently, although the betis fans seemed to be showing up late on purpose. and a late goal, in the ninety-second minute, to break the tie and win the game for the away team. a roar from the bar across the street. it wasn't exactly a slaughter, but maybe you were there, watching. avenida ramón y cajal 118. el kiosko. they say it's a great place for watching soccer. and they say the snails are good as well. the cows, the pigs, the sheep, the goats and the fowl. and could the snails have souls too? anyway, 'tis the season.