Undécimo11

J.D. Salinger 1919-2010.  R.I.P.. 

A couple of quick notes on the author of 'The Catcher in the Rye.'  First of all, who has not read this book and wanted to travel to New York City?  Secondly, there was a time in my youth when I was simultaneously collecting pogie and a paycheque made out to one Holden Caulfield; part of my under-the-table job entailed pumping gas and people endlessly talking about the weather.  My one wish at that point in life was, like Holden, to move out West and get a job where one did not have to utter a single word.

Ok.  As for the latest in 'The Jesus Years,' this excerpt is lengthy so I will restrict my blog to photos of buskers and the Disneyesque dioramas within Valencia.  For shits and giggles, I've inserted hyperlinks throughout to be assumed by the more adventurous of lot.

My words will, hopefully, suffice with the rest.

Chapter 10:  Valencia.  Daily Fireworks of Noise.
 

I’ve made a promise to talk to my cactus more, to their betterment and mine.  I use the plural because of multiple of stalk or stem or whatever - for there be three of them shooting from dirt of pot, each different in length and name: José, Pepé, and Tall Sanchez.  Yes, Spanish I have made them.  Another gift from X in the slightly still within the time of good between us, before now inhabiting this bachelor apartment that be small and of absolutely no design conducive to pets within an urban environment. 

This obviously green cactus is my roommate and I be its lifeline.  And I relax with the knowledge that it is apparently very hard to kill a cactus - needs little of water and only slight measure of sun.  This plant, my roommate.  And if I am smart I present carbon dioxide and they give me oxygen: we converse, or I talk mostly.  Put a faith in plants and they will never ever let one down; they don’t speak Latin and they don’t overly care about my concerted effort to learn or inquire as to the names of my clients at work.

And here in my tiny bachelor with the windows open on a humid summer night, I give and get the feeling that names are a human emotion.  What plants appreciate is the effort.  And so I try.  I bend and sit on my bear-trap futon, and I lean forward and near for no real reason at all, for my roommate can hear everything from afar in this tiny bachelor of ours.  But, nonetheless, I lean - and then I say, “You would not believe the noise, man.  You’re standing there and you’re looking around and all squished up against thousands of moving people and waiting in this giant plaza …and it’s hot and you watch for the clock to strike two …and, man, it’s way hot, but hey hey listen to this - you gotta be there and hear this loudass shit.”  It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to affectionately stroke a cactus.  “Duardo reminded us to keep our mouths open when the whole shit house went up - Sorry, my words not his.  But, oh man, serious loud.  Loud.  Gotta save the ears.”  The boys sit there and take it.  And they have to, but I swear that a cactus can smile.  I truly do. 

And my apartment mouldings from around a nineteen-hundred-and-a-three: the six-inch baseboards steeped in egg white; simple cornices for beauty of the stare above.  I stand up and walk to the fridge, drink straight from the jug, and this is no real big deal, for my manner of slurp was never the problem to X.  My cactus agrees, believe me.  “Thick and thin, my friend.”  They’re smiling, and this no word of lie.  In my living room that is my bedroom that is my den, to the 3-in-the-AM tune of a street cleaner sweeping on by, we struggle with this question of what is loud and what is noise.  The Difference, according to my cactus Say.

Me, aware of how this sounds.

But as we left to catch the Metro into Valencia that Friday of March, I truly believed that I would not be counting a cactus as my best listener in life.  Yes, truly sad.  And truly different walking the streets of a Spanish, of a Torrent filled with children off from school because of Las Fallas.  The similar to our kids of home, but a confusion and a many stare to our lighter of skin and say of occasional English within their earshot; this was a suburb not of many tourist.

Passing a whitewashed building adorned to the extent of Jehovah Testimonio written in large letters across its façade, I stopped and asked and Duardo said si, and I smiled and thought of the Big Guy and people seemingly everywhere knocking on His gates, our doors.  X, I assumed, was accustomed to my far off giggle by now, then.  Duardo laughed with me, talking to both of us but somewhat oblivious to the fact that we other were communicating with him independently.  X and I were fluid in this without even trying: a gift that seemed to come naturally.  Yes, our secret. 

And I promise soon that I will let more of her talk to You.

In the busy station we moved in circles trying not to bump into, get in the way of an anxious young crowd.  Duardo bought tickets as X and I stood amongst the swirl of teens talking very fast as teens are need to do in any crack of the world.  But on the modern Metro, the smooth Metro the clean Metro, we sat together and stared out to meet the countryside.  Into my ear, a ping and then soft female voice from an overhead speaker: próxima parada this; próxima parada that.  The names of stops and I figured that much out from memory of pilot and flight into Spain, but the sound of recorded voice more the intrigue - and I glanced over to X and winced at the real that I had lost forever.  I looked back out within slight bob of window at the everywhere green of planted fields of irrigation, smiled and left that brief rural to espy a cinder block wall of disrepair splatter my eyes with a certain Mary leaf and legalization graffiti - fellow Stoners the world ‘round.  As with French, various of the Spanish language made sense to me - the every sixth or seventh word that people have been known to talk of understanding.

Próxima parada Jesús. That one I remember, for He was said with more of a spit or a hork.  At the Jesús station the doors opened, people got off, more got on, and we pulled away once again.  We had been underground for a spell by then, darkness and blur, followed by the artificial and the interruption.  And that voice of Spanish female: próxima parada Xàtiva, próxima parada Colón - and Duardo blinking his bifocals then standing up with a nod towards the door. To escalator, through mall, to chaos of street and heat, the wall-to-wall.  We were near the city centre, the Plaza del Ayuntamiento, and as we moved and hung on to the tour I noticed much of the signage doubled up on the writing - the more familiar Castilian on bottom, and the almost French flare of Valenciano above: I’d flown the Atlantic only to use the Alexandra Bridge to cross the eponymous river of my Ottawa over to our provincial neighbour, Hull - I was in a Quebec, amongst the splitting of another grey language hair.  Wonderful.  Confusion was almost a cover by that time, that close to two-in-the-afternoon as we made our way closer to the plaza and the thousands that politely elbowed a way towards its concrete centre accepting vistas from avenues lined with buildings grand, balconies in thought; dangles of red-and-yellow-striped flags for national, others with added bits of a blue for regional.

To this all, unsure if the look up was quite there to my new eyes.  A postcard I’d yet to send. 

I wobbled and had to bring my sight back down.  I corrected and felt a knock at my knees.  A small child brushed past and neared a busker of silvered head-to-toe, standing dead-still atop a box of similar colour - and toddler did drop one coin into hat set before said painted busker: what ensued was brief animation of life and then return of his freeze; the youngster was frightened, consoled only by the understanding parents waiting aback.  A smile across their face.  A sanity across mine for that brief while beside a park of large palms there to the right of my Canadian eyes.  Duardo had calmly taken X’s hand and leaned into her ear as he pointed to and fro, towards other frozen buskers of various design and pose scattered everywhere; artists waiting for prompts from tourists and locals - earning an existence off the former peseta and euro of new.  Living off tips.  I fell behind and paused to observe a talc-covered man squat motionless on an elevated toilet with pants down around his ankles, a dog-eared edition of Don Quixote in his hands; we stared at one another awhile, no worry to the grow of the crowd passing back and forth. I reached for a coin, a one or a two of European Union persuasion, and stepped forward.  “Is it worth it?” I asked, but Nothing.  I was the idiot speaking English to a mime in a sea of jostling Spaniards.  “Perdón, señor,” I proffered, avoiding a further of eye as I dropped my patronage into his pot.  And with such he began to wince, a great facial moan of the universal grunt that overtook his whole body and shook his knees.  His jowls flapped.  His lips a final quiver, and the encircled audience knew the rest.  A wonderful thirty seconds of time.  Money, performance, rest.  Applause that made me somewhat envious.  I smiled the nonetheless and blurred back into the masses, trying very hard to look native by wearing jeans and socks in 25 degree weather for the Francesca that had casually mentioned that only the tourists wore shorts in March.  Wonderful.

And my eyes and my ears.  Small bands from the various of neighbourhood Las Fallas clubs played competing songs from every half block over.  Long stretches of them ancient avenues spoke brief resemblances of Chicago School of architecture, Manhattan of Broadway and Columbus.  I looked down from this up and along wander and found myself standing before my very first falla: over-sized papier-mâché caricatures painted and arranged into diorama.  Huge, bigger than life three-dimensional cartoons.

“Aqui.  Aqui.  Onray!”  I squinted in the high afternoon sun and tried to place the sound with a face in the many.  “Onray!”  Duardo was on the other side of circled barriers surround the falla, both arms waving at me.  I sauntered my way around, never the once leaving my eyes off the twenty-foot robed Moses displaying two large tablets of scribble in his outstretched arms – three snivelling vultures looking on from their perch above; an old man toting a very concerned set of eyebrows taking up the backdrop as large-breasted women of gradual undress knelt at the feet of tableau.  “This is fucking wonderful, Duardo.  Amazing.”  I was ignoring X, thankful for the possession of fabulous excuse.  I was Too excited to recognize her at my feet; I was just Too enthralled in the whole mystique to tear myself away and perform the necessary mundane: situations such as this arise quite often in others when confronted with the biblical of Jerusalem or the art of Florence.  Perhaps I was clinical.  Perhaps Duardo, being of the Old World, would understand.  Or fall for it. 

“Hey, what were you yelling at me - before, when I was away?”  Evidently, he had been saying ‘here, over here, Henry.’  Something simple.

We milled about the scene before us some more.  We mentioned on the heat, the different myths behind Fallas, what a This word meant what a That word meant.  I milked the enthusiasm I truly felt for real, believed Duardo that the Plague was the true cause behind this specific Spanish festival dedicated to Saint Joseph to which I refer to.  Not the rats nor their fleas that own the ultimate blame for that mass death, but the commemoration of the bonfire burning of furniture to eradicate the unknown enemy at medieval time the real reason behind this show.  The didactic falla before us, as well the many others in that grand of Valencia and surround, to be set atorch on the late night of Tuesday the 19th.  Celebration.  The pageantry and satire political in nature; religious; ultimately moral.  What one learns in the history of a high school but a beginning.

And our Canada Day merely that - just a day, a single solitary to take off work and drink two four maybe more.

I felt a profound thirst that Friday, 15th of March, year of our Lord 2002.  A need to experience all the more with others caused me to blink my lashes at X - a sly batting of, to be more proper, to grease my sudden attempt to turn that All into something more.  Straight-smiled I was, by her. 

We continued to speak without actually doing it, hid amongst the revelry of mental notes that once embraced one another for purposes of learning and love …not just this avoidance; and we were then possibly beyond saying sorry or using the erasing of borders to enhance the little that may or may not have been left kicking around.  The power of an actor and actress, together in scene.  We could see the intent, others saw love and ease.

To this drama the main falla became the backdrop, one commissioned by the city for ten of thousands of euros and not belonging to any of the clubs, which must save and collect dues all year long to afford an artist of their own.  I gave some space to my fellow actor, did not upstage her lean against the barrier, let her play the ruse directly into the giant eyes of a golden pharaoh replete with stripes of azure added to headdress.  Behind, a three-storey tower of arches and tiny turbaned figures running amok in its corridors; two looming Romanesque warriors battled atop the grand pedestal - one a tiger’s head for helmet; the other holding a shield baring a euro, its free hand poised with sword ready to strike the loser crouched below.  I could be making all of this up, but either way my history is shaky.  My mind was wondering where I fit within the surreal; and I do believe that I have forgotten my exact say to Duardo - something to the extent of ‘what time is it?’  I suppose it wasn’t quite that magical and perhaps I am waxing the past a shade lyrical but the fibre of the scene remains - Duardo was our guide but our believing audience. 

“Tonight this all gonna be finished.  That big crane holding top guy with the big knife will be gone and all the fallas all over have to be finished.  We show ours tonight in Torrent, and after the planta everything gonna be done.  Top shape.”  Yet another word - this planta, this final overnight erecting that crammed these crazy sweet Spaniards closer and closer into the mosh pit of my existence with X.

And, eventually, every actor loses his lines out of necessity, forgets that he is acting.  Relaxes.

Duardo turned to me and called a Babe Ruth shot out towards a black-handed clock built onto the side of bank - it was almost 2 when I removed my flannel and waved him towards my makeshift cape: “Come on, darlings, let us assemble.  We shan’t miss this.  Hmm?”  Duardo thrust two index fingers above his balding head, bent his knees before knocking over at least three people taking his run at me; I hugged him and grabbed him and buried his head in my chest, far more than enough time to stare X in the eye.  A double wink I did do.

“Henry, stop fucking punching him for a sec.”  X held up our disposable camera and clicked a couple fast ones - stole my soul and made me a tourist by proxy.  I smiled out of laughter and love for feeling someone close and warm for a spell of moment longer than a cordial greeting.  It was quite possibly sick, and was not my thought or intention as I pulled my long-sleeve off in the warm Spanish sun of five minutes before mascleta of sound, but there I was with Duardo in a submission hold.  And he’s bigger than me, but I kept my grip and remained grinning into the cheap lens that was no longer open; X pulled away, tilted her head and circled a lone left finger around her side temple.

Yes, I frowned to her, and let go, gave Duardo a soft shot to the ribs.  “Did you get it all, baby?  You didn’t miss my glory, did ya?”  I sounded quite Southern, almost charming.

“Oh no, stud, you are preserved well up to and beyond development.  Can we pick a nice spot to watch the fireworks now?  Can we, huh?  Duardo, save me from this man.  Come here and I will give you a real hug.  Come here.  No - I’m coming to you.”  And all of this through a crowd and over the heads of ten feet away.  A fun of sorts, but definitely the difference between lovers and the remaining of friends.  Acting.

“Onray, remember to open your mouth.  Like this, see?  Remember.”  Yeah yeah, Durado.  We assembled in front of some chain store seller of bread and coffee - for they do very well exist even in Europe - and awaited the Grand to happen.  To our right was city hall and the supreme balcony we had witnessed on television; the dresses of big and little were out once the more and of course the suits short and tall and now, then, everyone waltzed and waited.  Across the plaza, all around and beyond, the various balconies crowded, protected with overhead netting.  Hey, Duardo, I asked, and they were for possible fallout from the eventual downward of fireworks.  The return of empty.  Yes, I said, and did he know that apparently falling bullets occasionally kill.  A friend, I called him big and hairy Bambino at that time, once related to me that when he was going to S.M.U. in Texas he saw 4th of July signs printed with just such a reminder.  Duardo seemed genuinely fascinated by that tidbit of mine, thirty-odd seconds before the strike of match to set in motion what I am about to say.

And here: a couple of minor testers sent aloft to check for wind direction.  Then: Boom. 

My ears plugged all by their little selves and my mouth did lapse ajar.  There was smoke from explosion of rapid succession.  There was noise from the traca firing its way through a preordained overhead maze, its petardos spaced and left to dangle with the olives by an imaginary roadside.  People held up camcorders, hairy arms raised cell phones listening on the line from wherever part of the connected globe.  Fantastic.  The train gradually began to leave the station; I closed my mouth and tempted fate, tasted sound through my nostrils, realized smoke lingering on my fingertips.  I squinted to let in the light blonde highlights that our Betty of High School Bar and Grill had streaked into the auburn of X prior to trip - they the best of friends by then, now.

Waited the view of spectacle, briefed upon round ass of X leaned forward and ripe.

El tren continued its chug chug up to speed before my very ears.  I alternated the opening and closing of mouth, feeling no real pain but occasionally wary and respectful of experience passed down from locals.  With teeth clenched my skull absorbed and transmitted down spine; an inviting mouth swallowed and breathed more the normal: both were wonderful, and the eyes agreed beyond any Parliament Hill Canada Day celebration - I was forgetful and unpatriotic the entire spell.  To them ears within cacophony and excitement, an embrace of the escape - I was a denizen of a round world, only slightly pained.  My toes were wet within Nikes; the heat working its magic inside boxers hidden by denim pants descendent of a man proven smart and made rich by the simple rush for San Francisco gold.

Four, five minutes.  My sight drifted away from the source and succumbed to panoramic of multiple avenue: The main falla towered in front of us behind the wall of security barriers; the lines of buildings stone-white with deference to sun and the reflection of heat.  To this all the continuity of boom boom and its deafening song that lured bank robbers to plan around it, jack hammers at the ready and richly successful that one day just off the plaza a few years back.  This was true, Duardo told, and I could believe once in the midst.  Not watching on TV.

And show over; I returned to familiar ass of X.  I clapped and cheered with the rest of immense throng, yelled in my best Esperanto.  The three of us turned inward to face one another, to share a smile before the rush of leaving crowd lifted us from our feet and carried us off in the direction of away - but yes, fairly politely taken to the side streets of Europe we were.  Magnificent to actually be far from new and into old; X aimed our camera and I snarled the most ferocious - she took my picture, sneered and stuffed it back into her purse.  Duardo didn’t care, and neither did she for appearance.  I walked my Nikes over the cobblestone and kept it to myself: me the terrible tourist and hatred of cameras.

We were amongst a very slow moving force, just space enough to be.  “Onray, what you think?  That my first one in Valencia in a many year.”  He said the name of my ex, asked the same of her and received a grin and a hug big enough for the three of us; I rushed over and joined in and made it as real as I could in front of the pause of people framing a rather old chap in fedora of certain colour, he the one dancing a roaming song hand in hand with a fairly liberated marionette of the female persuasion attached to his self-shined shoes.  The entire set of eyes fairly dark of white skin, paying heed to an annual festival of buskers that I generally avoided at home.

 We stopped and fed ourselves on a fountain from two small boys made of clay and bent careless enough to spill their created chores; X walked over and split the spectators, threw some change into an open guitar case already half full of bills and various of metal debased and shaped to size.  This was maybe could have been our Ottawa and the first time that I walked down Elgin Street with her, my X; an inner city situation and an always spare quarter loonie twoonie in her pocket or purse.  Me of the occasional alms.  And me before, there in Spain, and still also now - a bartender mostly for tips.

Just a thought that passed me by on one of those days when community comes together; she looked very pretty knelt over in tight jeans with a small flesh fist lightly clenched, then unclenched for drop and jingle of change given.  I viewed her outline in perspective of a former sniff of her nape, feel of her offered thigh run down my outer rib.  I tempted and tried to put an exact date and maybe time on the taste of the last touch to my lips delivered without platitude: “It wasn’t all bad,” she would future say in last ever written print upon paper for me.  And I failed to find and then lost myself in a loose stone small enough to be picked and kicked down a European street lined with stores and names that I will never ever remember; a church of limestone did present itself and a score of wimpy Vespas did park themselves diagonally out its front courtyard - Duardo told me there be a dividing difference between these scooters and the larger ‘motos’ I may see, but that demarcation of cubic centimetres definitely eludes me now.

Useless, maybe.  But we kept on a-shuffling past the strata of churro vendors, the similar to beaver tails of my Ottawa: the also deep-fried pastry with an added twist of sugar or cinnamon or chocolate.  Duardo said these are particularly good when one be half-snapped on rum - and I believed, but for that time being we passed on the snack and kept to moving with the slow street of a scorching sun overhead.  I mentioned travelling our somehow way over to my friendly giant Gulliver - and Duardo laughed.  “Man, if you wanna walk all that way you can, but it very very far that way.  We go maybe later on and not now?”  Si, I said to straight smile from my listening ex.  Yes, and so maybe later on we could meet that something strange seen from the sky of a plane travelling from Paris to that there of Spanish domain.  No big deal to suggest once the more.

Then.  “Hen, must you be like this?  Let’s …can we do this or …just let it go.”  That was maybe alright, baby, I thought without a say.  I was merely curious and within the style of Me.

I found another loose stone.  European, I believed.

And we did not fight and we wandered and I think saw or passed at least one more church and we caught the Metro south, back to Torrent, the last stop of whole entire line.  We were tired.  I apologize for missing any of the in-between and the speckle of minutiae but this was me slumped under a comfy sky in Spain, Frances and her big smile in gradual state of impress with our peculiar vacation upon her terrace; she stopping only to whisper and spray-squirt a series of leafy plants with those forgotten Latin names.      

And this be me pausing, considering taking a break from You.

Before continuing that night where we were met their friends and family and occupied the falla clubhouse: the casalet - to speak in the proper; when were challenged to do the wake-up call, the desperta.

But this is where I maybe take a brief rest from You.  Maybe have a different headache.