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.