DAMNED IF YOU DO, DAMNED IF I WON'T

the big news this morning was that the catholic church still isn't so down with the gays -- or at least the bishop of alcalá isn't. (and at least the spanish broadcast authority is protesting his good friday homily.) in other news (at least the news running on the television at the station cafeteria), rising gas prices and a spike in traffic accidents at the end of the easter weekend, especially near the beach. so of course we rented a car. but it was the train that took us away from the surreality of all of the pomegranates -- lining the streets, and on the street signs, and all over that fountain on the paseo de violón. that professor of geopolitics might have had something to say about the oil situation as it was reported on the television at the station (and probably something about the bishop of alcalá as well), but he was staying in the city until the afternoon. no class for him the day after easter, although, as he pointed out while buying torrijas for his parents on sunday morning, the holiday wasn't public nationwide. the dirty sugar factory on the vega does not smell sweet, but it has had the fortune (even as it might have been the undoing of the fortune of the garcia lorcas) of being rescued from ruin and converted into art and living spaces. the crumbling olive oil factory in bobadilla hasn't been so fortunate. and it smells like fish. that second coffee in the cafeteria across from the station didn't make taking the car ride any easier. but where we were going the train don't go. ask the bishop of alcalá.

BIG THREE; or, GAYS IN SPACE

you are not a bad writer, or a bad photographer. there are some things that just elude words or resist being captured in photos. it doesn’t matter if people have written the descriptions or have the pictures to show. it doesn’t matter if you have written the description or have been shown the pictures. it’s possible, sure, that the problem is just the weight of the unwritten words piling up or that it was just something with your camera lens or with the flash. (sometimes.) but like those long vistas of the ocean or of the mountains that don’t even manage to convey that the ocean or the mountains are something large -- let alone spectacular or breathtaking -- no matter how much the experience of seeing the esperanza move off of calle pureza onto the bridge of triana might move you, don’t try to take a picture -- not even just of the heartwarming spectacle of the people filling the altozano at three in the morning -- because it won’t seem to manage.

the same will go for trying to describe the silent procession of jesus del gran poder across reyes catolicos and down the narrow street next to the burger king. your stomach full of churros and chocolate, you hear an intersection of seville in silence, and the superb irony of that portuguese remarking that this is the only time you’ll hear the spanish shut up is impossible to put into words. still, and even if the virgin of the macarena and the esperanza of triana have long eclipsed the christ in the story of the passion on the early morning streets of good friday in seville, most of the people are shut up as he passes. “the body of christ incarnate in the heart of the most beautiful city in the world.” you can say things like that when you’re an announcer for giralda tv and after several earlier processions have been cancelled due to rain and you’re waiting, as he was for the weather reports at ten and eleven, to find out if the big three might not make their penitence either. repeating that, however, will just make you sound like driveling trash.

mercury certainly took its sweet time coming back around to the side of reason, but by midnight on thursday the god that flies had finally deferred to the men crawling the earth under the shrines, and the skies were clear. triana wouldn’t have to wait another year.

they said, too, that the macarena was beautiful, that the songs they sang when she came out of the basilica at three and the ones they sang when she went back in almost twelve hours later sounded truly inspired, and that’s disappointing because you know that their descriptions are pale shades of the reality of what you missed. but you can’t see both the macarena and the esperanza leaving at the same time, and by the time the macarena was making her way back home, it was time to do the same. by the time the cab had dropped the group at the bottom of the macarena around six, the front of some other procession was already blocking the way to la campana, and who knew how long would have been the long way around to seeing the procession from the iglesia de los gitanos.

at least the way to the disco was still open -- and the disco too -- and there was just enough time left before the lights came on in the back. by the time, however, that the lights had been on for an hour outside it was definitely time to leave. lucky, too, that it was just before the front of the procession of the macarena blocked feria (although it was still hours before the virgin herself would pass). it’s not worth going to the trouble of trying to describe.

i was asleep when she finally made it home, but i doubt i could have made it very close to the basilica had i woken up even an hour earlier. and when i tried to show the ones who saw her how my night had been, somehow the esperanza and the gran poder had disappeared from all of my pictures and i was left sharing a camera full of the men in the crowd. but nothing doing. regrets are almost as worthless as explanations. the big three had stumbled back inside, and easter was over in seville. hope you got laid.

A HORSE THAT FLIES

ha. made you look. you know who you are. and you're like, "have you ever seen a flying horse? ...you don't even know the song." but you know what i have seen? a flying god. a god that flies. with his winged sandals and his winged staff and his winged cap -- looking much better than the flat footed statue of neptune above the fountain one courtyard over. and the fountain with which the other two form a nearly equilateral triangle is the one that's the last one in spain that plays music by means of a hydraulic organ. and one of only three in europe. it doesn't, however, play on the hour as the placard advertises. and today the peacocks from the english garden might get lost in the maze. and although the abundance of orange blossoms and lilacs has been too much for any spell of rain to completely overcome, it seems not quite completely possible to lose yourself in the fragrances of the gardens in april if the clouds don't stay in one place. it's all a bit confusing. but i can blame the god that flies. and you (all) can shut up, because if we're putting up with so much superstition this week then it might as well be mine. then again, there's also the science, but the thing is that right now the science is off. and that's what sticks the procession in the middle of the bridge in the rain. and that's what causes your server to bring you one too many plates of honeyed short ribs and two too many of that -- granted -- really amazing thing that they do with the poached egg and the mushroom bizcocho. lost? ride your flying horse there. the point is that i understand. i understand that nothing makes sense, and so the least that you can do is to understand my inability to understand the thing with the flying horse.

worry, however, not. two more days and the god flies out of retrograde. and yes, that's a word. no, not retrocession, which -- yes -- is another word, but they have something different to do with the same thing. communication, logic, technology...all of it flown out the window. not following? that's the point!!

but worry not. two more days and he flies right, just in time for the processions on holy thursday. we can evaluate them then with an even temper and a cool head, even if all those heads under the hoods might not be so cool. for the first day out of the quagmire and worth predicting, they're predicting sun.

MI NIÑA LOLA

and so they fell, the orange blossoms, with the rain that was precipitated by three days of wind, and the streets were wiped clean to be ready for the processions. and so it's upon us, the resurrection, because when the band members and the nazarenes are in the streets in full costume they're no longer practicing. but they've been practicing for months, and for months the city has lived in fear of the coming of the glory. and it will come again, as it does, and the people will have already forgotten the irony of the demonstrators having taken the same processional route on the morning and afternoon of the general strike that the virgins and the cross burdened jesuses will take to the cathedral during holy week. but, probably, the people moved by the chanting of the strikers will not be the same as the people moved by the bands and the nazarenes, and any traces of the fliers that filled the streets the day of the strike that were later missed by the sanitation workers when they went back to work will have been erased by the rain -- or trampled by the nazarenes. mine eyes have seen.

the friday of dolores. "...for those who suffer." and they name their daughters things like angustias, too... there were seven dolores in jesus' story, and now there are thousands in spain. ready or not, here they come.

"...no me ocultes tu pena...cuéntame tu amargura...dime la verdad."

her mother was preoccupied with not having already bought all of the accessories she wanted for her daughter's feria outfit, and i had my sevillanas class to worry about myself, but as the rains were threatening to start i was happy to swap my tutu for the paper crown that two year old lola had gotten at daycare for her saint's day and spend the afternoon at ease.

CHICK-A-BOOM

"too much money in too few hands. we'll be on our way once you meet our small demands."

"this whole system's been keeping us down down down." now me and my friends think it's time to turn this bitch around.

THE NAKED CITY

a statue of aníbal gonzález stands facing the plaza de españa built for the iberio-american exposition of 1929 at the parque de maria luisa in seville, the grandest and most widely recognized of the structures designed by the sevillian architect. and in front of the two story brick building at number seven plaza carmen benitez a statue of the cuban singer antonio machín, who found love in seville in 1943 and played his final show in the same city thirty-four years later. but the building could be by gonzález, even if it's not on any of the aníbal gonzález sightseeing routes -- which is to say that gonzález did design some buildings to the east of the city center, generally in and around the neighborhood of san bernardo, and that simple knowledge helps the building to concentrate its vague pertinence to the neo-mudejar style for which gonzález was known in the later years of his career. it's obvious that neither the church of san bernardo nor the (perplexingly buttressed) royal artillery factory behind it were projects of the architect. but, like number seven plaza carmen benitez, the building at number forty-two san bernardo might have been.

although it probably wasn't a private residence, it could, possibly, have been any number of other things. it might have been a library, or the offices of a utility or an administration of the municipality. it might been a school. although from inside it's difficult to tell if the space at the center of the of the edifice between the two lateral wings was always open to the sky or if the roof has fallen, the building is obviously in a state of disrepair; and if it was in fact designed by aníbal gonzález, it's nearly certain that it isn't on any of the sightseeing routes because it's been occupied. it's difficult, however, to argue with the banner on the front door of the autonomous, self-managed social center, which defiantly proclaims to its more expensively dressed (although still crisis stricken) neighbors that when living is a luxury, occupation is a right. the (self-)management of the center would certainly be open to a debate about its raison d'être. but regardless, and even if the center doesn't have anything special to do with the architectural legacy of the city, it's undeniably well situated: the home of the city's alternative bloc in the vanguard of the sexual revolution definitely deserves to have its rear end facing the puerta de la carne (even if the spanish don't get the joke).

by chance (or maybe this is exactly why we follow our own sightseeing routes), last thursday was the first day of the anarchist book fair being co-hosted by the center, and since, by chance, the painting exhibit at the pavilion of the united states in the parque de maria luisa was inexplicably closed, we had the evening free to attend the scheduled presentation on socialism, homosexuality and the spanish state. the presenter, who also wrote the book available at his table in that open air space in the center of the building, wasn't much of a speaker. it was true too, as she had remarked while we were waiting for the presentation to begin in the library of the place that might actually have been designed to be a library, that he looked comically like an actor set in the anarchist book fair scene of some camp film. waiting to be shot: shoulders squared with his elbows on the table in front of him and his hands clasped, seated in a too big chair with his feet only just barely not dangling above the floor (although a stylist would surely have insisted on doing something with the poorly tended mohawk). but since she'd also remarked (earlier, while we were waiting to go wait in the library) that my converse and my handbag didn't seem very dedicatedly socialist -- and that the regular centergoers probably didn't think so either -- i felt encouraged to make her stay and listen to the presentation until its end.

although the presenter didn't speak sevillian, he did speak quickly, and, to complicate it more, his presentation was very self-managed anarchist book fair. the representative of the center seated next to him might have in that it was a bit overly disjointed and went on a bit too long for people to be much interested in discussion. in general, what he presented wasn't much more than a political calendar of noteworthy events in the transformation of political socialism and the laws regarding homosexuality in twentieth century spain -- making sure, of course, to make appropriate references to famous figures like lorca and cernuda for the local crowd. unfortunately, he didn't seem inclined to make any sort of synthesis once he'd arrived near the present in the twenty-first century. he did offhandedly mention the passage of the marriage equality law, but stopped short of speculating on what the subsumption of a theretofore (generally) politically radicalized group into the comfortable confines of the patriarchy would mean for the future of his topic (although he seemed to allude to our understanding that it meant bad news). she, however, was out of the room taking a phone call, and we could argue on our own about that subject later. for my part, if i hadn't been thinking instead on how i would like to have been seated closer to the shelves with the le carre books that i could see two rows in front of me, i might have better caught the anecdote about the establishment (whenever it was) of separate prisons for tops and bottoms. it might have been nice to recycle. once the presentation was over, however, i didn't have the patience for my own question. (and what was stopping me from telling the bar owner whatever i wanted?)

what we mean to say, rather -- in this presentation -- is that the point of the walk is just to see what we say. because no, i didn't much agree with the guy's attitude either, but his pompous spouting off about fags and hookers at the autonomous social center behind the puerta de la carne wasn't without value (i insist, and not just because we had stayed to the end of it at my insistence), even if it was generally without coherence. unfortunately, our conversation on the under radicalization of the electorate and the potential success or failure of the general strike was over radicalized by my personal vendetta against the shoe and handbag comment. (of course being a fag hooker doesn't naturally incline you to socialism, but there are historical and social inclinations working alongside the natural ones.) but seeing as we weren't getting anywhere where we were, after the conversation derailed we decided to leave the wreckage behind and relocate. and the beard might have been working at el pasaje as well.

she did intentionally take us along mateos gago, but only because she prefers the route to santa cruz that follows the edge of the gardens of the alcazar and not because the buildings at numbers twenty-four and twenty-six were designed by aníbal gonzález. that, however, had i known it at the time, would have made for an interesting transition into my interest in the multidisciplinary exhibit on the spirit of the flâneur on display at cicus until the end of the month. as it was, i just happened to mention that i was planning to go see it the next day, and the bulk of our conversation we rededicated to depression and infidelity. and i was listening to her as she talked, i just also happened to be trying to look down the shirt of the beard at the same time. (and the beer he was serving us certainly helped with all of the above.) but with him it's difficult to tell, but i stopped wondering as we were leaving because another police patrol was passing through the narrow street outside, the second in less than an hour. because of the elections, she supposed -- and all the more reason to go to the strike, i thought as i collected my bag to leave.

and the next afternoon, the third or fourth pair of police motorcycles passes onto the plaza de la encarnación outside of the café window in front of which i'm brushing up on my disagreements with the position of the situationist international on urban wandering in preparation for my visit to the exhibit at cicus. "the dérive does not demonstrate the pure submission to unconscious desire that characterised the surrealist wanderings or the journeys of the strolling flâneur." that, at least, is the distillation presented by merlin coverley on guy debord's characterization of that "technique of transient passage through varied ambiences." and i suppose that if abortion of purpose can be considered a purpose in itself then i would gladly have myself subsumed under debord's rubric. his map of the naked city, "clarifying certain wanderings that express not subordination to randomness but complete insubordination to habitual influences." but probably my preoccupations are primarily artistic, regardless of the strike and the vendetta of the shoes and the handbag, at least they were on that day, and in spite of the fact that i didn't even make it to the art exhibit.

we did, however, have every intention of going, and i would have picked up my companion earlier had it not been for the special treatment that the both of us were getting at where we were waiting for the other to arrive. in the end, i went in her direction because she was on our way to the exhibit; but because she was in her direction with someone else it was all too easy for the three of us to submit ourselves to unconscious desire. or conscious desire: to go around the corner in the opposite direction of the exhibit, to go to little italy for a beer. or it might have been the spring and the orange blossoms and the friday evening chance of finding something more than just staring at the beard (although that story still needed to be told).

and i would have left my companions earlier except that she joined us, another one, and still with her bags from the trip. who were we not to wait to let her catch up -- and then to help her with her things through the menacing streets of the center? so later we passed through the throngs doing their holy week shopping around the plaza del salvador, and through the crowds starting to gather at the bars in arenal; and we passed then down reyes catolicos just a block from that section of bailen from which are visible both the hotel londres and the hostal paris, those comically crude references to the most famous cities of the most famous traditions of european wandering.

but what do we care? we pass them, but not directly (although i will hours later on a kind of a way home). and we continue across the the isabel segunda bridge to the lighthouse, driven by unconscious desire. the view, and the fragrance of the orange blossoms, and the memory of holy thursdays past. it's not so bad that night, the one of them says. and the latecomer agrees. it's something undeniably mystical, and it will move you if you're willing to be moved, they say. and then i start to wonder about the positioning of the important parishes of the city, the ley lines of seville, and a probably only legendary story about a tunnel connecting the church of santa ana in triana to the torre de oro across the river brings back fond memories of the vatican caves by gide. but then we're at the lighthouse, and although none of our group would ever cross themselves across from where the inquisition once had its local center of operations, many of the local residents do. because exactly opposite the lighthouse, and crowning the public market where once upon a time not so long ago the defenders of the faith would have tortured and killed the witches and the gypsies and the faggot hookers who today might have been our friends stands the capilla de la virgen del carmen, one of the four religious structures in the city designed by you know who.

PROCESS; or, HOW TO MAKE THE MOST

the orange blossoms are blooming, and for four days now a delicious smelling veil over the low hanging stink of shit. a briefly intoxicating respite before the impending april shit storm. drink it in and forget that they're coming. even the yearly saga of christmas is just a distraction from the demands of the holidays of spring, and in the second week of january the city is already a well of inquietude, and not for remorse over already ruined resolutions but for the universal apprehension of holy week and the feria. the mushrooms on sunday afternoons in winter are giant balloons of anxiety. and now, already the third week of march and the fifth of lent 2012, it's get your work done or wait until may. but that doesn't always go as well as it might, because so much attention on wailing and wardrobes in this case isn't necessarily conducive to inspiration. and so...the march. and so march is forced.

but to work nonetheless. and up at...twelve-thirty, with every intention of starting -- starting with the intention to finish -- and making it brilliant.

but just like the night before, there are other things that come to mind, things that, if they don't necessarily need doing, might as well be done now. (there were already so many of them on the list the night before that it was impossible to sleep until six -- at which point they still hadn't all been done.)

for example, the floor will always need sweeping -- again. (and the mop seems to do more harm than good.)

the coffee is cold, and more needs making. and which of the cakes goes best with the coffee? one at least will need a glaze that will need to be matched with sparkling wines. so make another cake. but in the time that takes, another percolator of coffee will be cold.

with fresh cake and fresh coffee and clean floors, it should be possible to write. but the thing is that there are also facts that need checking, and on the way to the room where the wifi signal is stronger there's a mirror and there are other things to check.

tweeze nipples.

...sweep the floor.

it's impossible to concentrate after so much coffee. or after so much cake.

go running.

go to the store, because it's about to close and there is as little ready to eat in the kitchen as there was in the shower (besides cake).

writing is work. buy ingredients for a more challenging cake.

crumbs. sweep the floor.

do not make another percolator of coffee.

forcing it now is just going to make it turn out poorly.

if it's going to turn out poorly anyway, it might as well turn out poorly after some sleep. and there's more coffee after some sleep.

ice ankles.

notice the crumbs that are only visible in the natural morning light and sweep the floor.

more coffee.

it might turn out to be a crap article, but it's going to be a hell of a brunch.