Lacibula Bells

“Those who dance are considered insane by those who can’t hear the music.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche

*

A church bell tolled four. I paused writing in mid-sentence, threw on a jacket, locked Moorish doors and walked down a cobblestone alley.

A black Mercedes hearse covered with flowers waited outside a small church. Pueblo men stood with friends across the street. The bell was all. Black mourners escaped religion. Women and children scattered home.

Six men carried out a simple brown wooden casket.

He was forty and single.

They fed the hearse.

The bell ceased.

Flashing red lights, the village Guardia led the procession down a narrow winding road. 200 men followed the hearse. They crossed a small bridge above the Rio Guadalete River and past fourteen golden Aspen trees saying farewell by waving leaves.

Solemn men passed grazing sheep, horses, wildflowers and winter orange trees. They stopped at a small white church in a grove of palm trees. Pallbearers carried the casket past a black rusty gate and into a long white crypt zone. They slid it into an empty cement slot. The parish priest whispered final prayers.

Men paid their last respects and returned to cafes for sherry, thin sliced ham, coarse bread and conversations about the man who died alone.

Laughing, singing children played soccer or skipped rope in front of the main Grazalema church in the plaza. Heavy wooden doors were locked tighter than a coffin.

ART - A Memoir

Adventure, Risk, Transformation

Detergent Molecules

On Christmas Eve in 2001 I met a tall funny animated physicist at Relax, a vegetarian restaurant owned by two English girls in Ronda, an hour from Grazalema.

Alex worked with molecular structures in Liverpool creating simulated computer programs for a detergent company. He was paid to have fun.

“Every couple of years I shift around,” he said in a drunken state of mind. “Well this looks interesting, I say to myself. I’ll try this for a couple of years.”

His height over the world was frightening at first. His companion, another physicist from Germany was Silent Night.

I listened. When he knew I was a writer he said, “Well then I’ll give you something for your book. I’m from Canada, my family is from Hungary, I spent six years in Athens, Georgia, then in Germany and now I am in England. The cord connecting me to my past has been cut, severed. I’m just floating around having fun. I just end up in these most fascinating places. I don’t even know what I’m going to be doing two or three years from now. I just end up in a place doing my scientific work and they pay me. It’s amazing. I think I am becoming less left-brained over time. I will tell you something that happened to me recently. I discovered music. I discovered the drums. When you play the drums you cannot be analytical about it, you have to be the drum.”

He shouted in Relax. We stood at the end of the bar. Languages blended with music, laughter and colliding holiday glasses. He was in the spotlight letting it all out feeling free.

His friend had driven down from Frankfurt and they met in Barcelona for a three-week holiday. They hoped to go to Morocco. Alex was anxious. “My friend’s passport expires in six months and we don’t know if they will let him in. We want to go in at Ceuta, travel to Fez, Meknes, spend New Year’s eve in Marrakech, then go over the Atlas mountains, swing through the Sahara and back north.”

“What happens if you can’t get in?”

Laughing from a great height he threw out massive scientific hands with manicured nails.

“Then we’ll just go where we feel like it, following old roads, seeing where they go, like we did today through white villages named Benacoz and Arcos. We have no plans other than trying to get into Morocco. Neither of us has been there. We don’t know it.”

“I don’t know it either,” I said. “I’ve been traveling so long I’m a stranger to myself. Other. Before here I was there for +/- 64 days.”

“Really?” he said, combining a question with an exclamation. “What is it like? I really want to know.”

“It’s a fascinating place. It may shock you and your friend the first couple of days and then you adjust to the rhythm, dealing with the hustlers, how to see in the light. Eight hours seems like twenty-four. You are the director, audience and player on location.”

“Really?” 

“Yes, really. You’ll have amazing experiences there. The people are kind and hospitable.”

“I will tell them I am from Canada even though I spent six years in Georgia. It took me six years to figure out how the Americans think and it was very strange. They live in their own little world. They don’t see out. I would talk to them and the frequency passed right through their transparent selves.”

“I know what you mean about their frequency,” I said rolling a cigarette. “Only 30% of the population has a passport. Their knowledge of foreign cultures is slight to nonexistent. After 9/11 some Americans abroad learned to say, ‘I am Canadian or Australian in Arabic.’ Others learned world geography fast.”

“I’ll bet they did. How long have you been here?”

”All day. I jumped through a window of Fate and left the states of amnesia on September 1st. After two months in Morocco I moved to Cadiz for a month and then came to this area.”

He ordered another beer. He was a tall smart kid in a brave new world. His excitement was absurd, scary, hilarious and full of repressed energy. Grabbing his space he streamed words as people squeezed past to bathrooms.

“Wow, this is really amazing. Why is this place so interesting and so full of people?”

“There’s an excellent Spanish language course at Mondragon Palace. Students come to Ronda for intensive 3-4 month classes. The city has Roman and Arabic culture, the weather is good year round and the social scene is nonstop. Plenty of recreational drugs are available, for medicinal purposes only ha, ha. It’s a good place for people to hang out.”

He laughed. “Well I’d be interested in the medicinal properties of course. Do you live here?”

“I live, hike and write in a Sierra mountain pueblo twenty-five kilometers from here. It’s called Grazalema. It’s an old Berber village. The Romans passed through on their way to Seville. I’m here for two days to see friends for the holidays.”

“Really? I never heard of it. We drove around today to a lot of places, just following the road. It was really great. This is a wonderful place,” he said, looking over people talking and drinking in candlelight. “Hey, I’ll give you something for your book. Then I’ll be in it.”

“Ok.”

“You won’t believe it but I work with a multinational company in one of their Liverpool labs. I use computer programs to create and analyze various molecules in their detergent.”

“Detergent?”

“Detergent. This is how it works. Some molecules are attracted to dirt. They adhere to it. They seek it out. Others like water. So, I assemble all these various atoms and molecules and see what they do. I introduce them to the materials and see how they react.”

“Fascinating.”

“Yes, and I get paid to have fun. They pay me to create these experiments.”

“So, you’re an artist using technology to create a canvas of detergent by painting molecules.”

“Exactly.” His enthusiasm blasted over a hip-hop rap bass beat. “You can put that in your book.”

“Why not? Readers will find your story-truth enlightening. I used to work in a town where there was a nuclear reactor and I knew physicists. Some worked with nuclear fuel waste containment, others developed hydrogen fuel cells for alternative energy sources. I never met a physicist working with detergent.”

“Yeah it’s pretty cool. And now we’re here. Did you know that the world is made up of 98% helium and hydrogen? Well, the remaining particle of atoms, a very small part is life and inside these atoms a very small part of that is intelligence. The rest of the pyramid is garbage.”

He laughed forever. “The amazing thing is how many people don’t know it or get it. The natural law is for things to get messy. That’s why people clean, rearranging molecules in some form of order. They think they’re in control of it. They’re afraid of change. Death and chaos freaks them out. Things happen outside their control or the plans of the creator. It expands the evolutionary process.”

“That’s cool. I took a statistics class once and while I wasn’t very good in statistics I learned one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Any individual or system will do whatever is necessary to perpetuate and sustain itself.”

“That’s it,” yelled Alex. “That’s a pure definition of how the world works. That’s the exact answer.”

ART - A Memoir

Adventure, Risk, Transformation

Graz Work Shoes

Inland at 2,606 feet Grazalema men wore hard shoes.

They were a plain brown leather boot with four eyelets and rubber soles. Field shoes. Made for making a living in rocky fields, farming valleys and climbing mountains.

Shoes for taking care of livestock, cutting and clearing timber, shearing sheep, gathering olives, patrolling pastures and waterways, gathering stones from fields, building walls, gardening and working.

It was the same thing to them. To walk was to work. The shoes were not fancy.

Men standing around the Plaza de Espana on Sundays talking with friends in sparse January sun wore brown or black dress shoes. All dressed up and no place to go.

One man, a survivor of the Civil War in 1936 always wore a black beret. He taught music in a small musty dark basement room lined with empty cabinets and dusty band instruments.

His old spectacles had razor thin temples protecting hard squinty eyes and he never smiled. His gaze bore through you. He resembled a disciplined interrogation expert from Fascist Franco days. He was always dressed impeccably and wore black wing tips. There was a deep gash on the front of his right shoe where he’d met a rock.

Shoes were silent below tanned faces lined with life creases as the Penon Mountain loomed over them. Three men stood against the potable water trough staring at a white crucifix on a high mountain ridge. They talked about the weather, crops, families, politics, festivals, and pensions. Sparrows hunted for crumbs on cobblestone paths outside a cafe.

Across the plaza an old frail woman in black holding iron gratings for support sat in her open window peering up an empty street. She was a sabia, a wise woman empowered by grace and knowledge to perform magical acts.

Every day at dawn laborers gathered in the Plaza de Espana Cafe for coffee, sherry, bread, ham and conversation.

“I believe because I do believe,” a man said to no one in particular gripping his hot glass of espresso.

“Believe in what?” said one rubbing his hands against winter.

“When you snap your fingers they contain instants of time,” said another.

“You gotta believe we’re going to get through this winter,” said a sad man.

Mist was thick in the valley below the pueblo. A shepherd released sheep from a pen and drove them into a field of white boulders.

Graz neighbor

 

A Scottish visitor sitting outside the cafe shared a story. “I taught business linguistics in college, but I’m really an amateur botanist.”

He pointed up at the Penon. “When you climb up there, as you go higher you are going back in time. You are climbing through stages of life.”

He described rare flower species in the national park and their cycle of blooming seasons at different elevations.

Hearing the botanist reminded me of Jack, a geologist in Canada in 1984 as we passed huge gray boulders along Georgian Bay and he said, “If you imagine the Empire State building and put a dime on top, the dime corresponds to human’s time on earth and the structure is the planet, specifically those boulders. They are some of the oldest stones on the planet.” Rock on.

A woman at the table said, “At everyday level, physicists believe that the arrow of time always points in the direction of increasing disorder or entropy.” Someone asked her to explain.

“The second law of thermonuclear dynamics is really simple. An easy explanation is this. If you don’t clean a room, for example, it gets messy, things get moved around. So a person expends energy to clean it up. It’s about transferring energy.”

“Thanks for the insight,” I said to the woman as she negotiated a parking ticket outside her hotel.

“You’re welcome,” she said.

Two fit English hikers passed. “Let’s go and have a little explore,” said a white-haired man to his wife.

“I love you,” she said.

A team of eighteen jubilant British hikers armed with telescopic hiking poles, laminated topographical maps, spring water, binoculars, bird books, food, and esprit de corps left the pueblo for the Sierras.

I needed a new perspective and climbed high where views past Grazalema extended east over rolling rocky fields, tilled earth, rivers, thick cork valleys and distant mountains. Vision encompassed a tiny white pueblo and microscopic humans accompanied by their shadows exploring levels of experience. I focused binoculars in cardinal directions.

One man on his sparse plot of land cleared stones by hand, put them in a wheelbarrow and pushed his load uphill near his house. He dumped stones and returned to his field of laborious love.

A man in cold shade chopped at a thick tree.

Another man used his day clearing stones and hoeing a large area for winter planting.

Sitting on the mountain peak under sky windows my calm mind savored 360 degrees of clean pure light and air.

I danced in the mysterious beauty observing geological manifestations.

“Lunch is served on the terrace,” said an invisible waiter. The main course was water, meat, cheese, bread, two bananas, and an apple. Dessert was stripping off a sweatshirt to feel sun’s heat.

A fast screaming eagle shadow zoomed over me. Zap.

Down below men renovating homes in the shadow of old Roman ruins hammered their way as children ran, yelled and played in a desperate frenzy.

Eagles and vultures soared on currents. Cloud shadows creased the valley obscuring white homes. Twilight smoke curled from chimneys.

ART - A Memoir

Adventure, Risk, Transformation

Going To Graz

“Take a good look at me! 

I am an idiot, I am a clown, I am a faker.

Take a good look at me!

I am ugly, my face has no expression, I am little.

I am like all of you!”

-  Tristan Tzara

*

After a month in Cadiz I needed solitude for winter writing. Patricia opened a provincial map. She pointed out coastal towns. “Villages full of Germans this time of year. It depends on what you want.”

She highlighted areas and small towns north of Cadiz like Arcos de la Frontera, Bornos, Villamartin, and Prado del Ray.

She pointed to a village named Grazalema. It was in the Sierra National Park and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve with 146 species of birds, tracts of Pinsapar Fir and climbing opportunities. “This is also a beautiful area. One of my favorites but it will be cold there this winter.”

“Thanks for your help. I like the sound of Grazalema. I’ll live there for three months before returning to Morocco.”

“My pleasure. Good luck.”

One Romani said adios to another Romani. I carried my pack and word machine past the San Francisco cathedral where men fitted fragmented dolomite stones into puzzles.

Tanned people drank coffee or red wine watching muscular workers string plumb lines and hammer beat up rocks into passive submission. A priest in religious shadows fingered rosary beads waiting to hear sinners release imaginary guilt.

Hammer music faded as I traversed passages to a park where a bronze Spanish hero on horseback waving a sword dripping blood proclaimed freedom and a constitution in 1812.

Transatlantic shipping vessels with the word FAST loaded at a dock. The Canary Islands were two days away.

 A harbor billboard extolled CONSUME.

 Adjusting my antenna I heard Sonny Boy blowing his harp, “If you don’t help me darling I’m gonna have to find me somebody else.”

The COMES bus wound north passing olive and cork trees, crumbling stone homes disintegrating to earth, tilled soil and walled estates. Giant black steel bulls advertising local sherry guarded hills overlooking highways. Bulls, sheep and cows grazed in fields. Moorish castles hovered above old Roman roads.

Men manipulated shovels, small dump trucks, cement mixers, wheelbarrows, chisels and hammers. They heaved, hauled and sweated as homes and businesses consumed fields. They attached stones to existing structures. Roman stonewalls married Moorish stonewalls.

Adults were big kids assembling life projects to authenticate their being.

Bread, water, lentil soup, ham, cheese and olives dressed mid-day tables with a siesta for dessert.

Yangon, 2015

In Algodonales I negotiated a ride past Zahara de la Sierra into rising mountains. The abandoned castle sat on a pinnacle above fields and three lakes.

The Almohads, a strict Berber sect from Morocco, built Zahara in the 8th century. It fell to Castilian prince Fernando de Antequera in 1407 and was recaptured in a night raid in 1481 by Abu-al-Hasan from Granada.

Spanish anarchists, bandits and literary outlaws in exile used it as a hideout in the 19th century.

The high vertical mountain pass at 1300 meters was Puerto de los Palomas or Dove Pass. Doves did not live there. Egyptian vultures ruled skies.

The narrow hairpin mountain road wove through clouds, rain and snow as plateaus, rivers, lakes and forests disappeared in fog. A disembodied spirit floated.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Yangon, 2015

Omar's Daughter

Omar remembered his daughter in Cadiz.

Faith worked at Mandarin Duck selling paper and writing instruments. She practiced a calm stationary way.

“May I help you,” she said one morning, greeting a bearded forcestero. Their eyes connected loneliness minus words. She averted her eyes. He was looking for pain free intimacy and ink.

“I’d like a refill for this,” he said, unscrewing a purple cloud-writing instrument with a white peak.

Recognizing the Swiss rollerball writing tool she opened a cabinet filled with boxes of cartridges.

“Fine or medium?”

“Hmm, lets try both.”

“One box of each?” she said.

“Yes please. I don’t want to run dry in the middle of a simple true sentence.”

“I agree. There’s nothing more challenging than running empty while taking a line for a walk,” she said.

“Isn’t that the truth? Why run when you can walk? Are you a writer?”

“Isn’t everyone? I love writing, sketching, painting, drawing, watercolors moistly,” she said.

“Moistly?”

“I wet the paper first. It saturate colors with natural vibrancy,” she said.

“With tears of joy or tears of sadness?”

“Depends on the sensation and the intensity of my feeling. What’s the difference? Tears are still tears in the rain. The heart is a lonely courageous hunter.”

I twirled a peacock feather. Remembering Omar’s Mont Blanc 149 piston-fountain pen, I said, “I also need a bottle of ink.”

“We have Black, Midnight Blue, and Cornflower Silk Red. British Racing Green just came in.”

“Racing Green. Sounds fast. Let’s try it.” Omar would be pleased with this expedient color.

I switched subjects to seduce her with my silver tongue.

“Are you free after work? Perhaps we might have a drink and some tapas? Perhaps a little mango tango?”

“I have other plans. I am not sexually repressed. I am liberated. I have a secret blind lover. He peels my skin to enjoy the fruit. Here you are,” handing me cartridge boxes and a bottle of green ink with a white mountain.

I paid with a handful of tears and a rose thorn. My ink stained fingers touched fine and extra fine points of light.

Faith and her extramarital merchandise were thin and beautiful. She was curious.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” she said. “How old are you?”

“Older than yesterday and younger than tomorrow.”

“I see.”

“It was nice meeting you,” I said. “By the way, have you seen the film, Pan’s Labyrinth, from 2006, written and directed by Guillermo Del Toro?”

“Are you crazy or what? 2006 is five years from now. How could you know about it?”

“I live in the future. It’s about your Civil War from 1936-1939, repression and a young girl’s fantasy. It’s a beautiful film on many levels. It reminded me of Alice in Wonderland.”

“Wow,” she said, “I loved that film, especially when Alice meets the Mad Hatter. Poor rabbit, always in a hurry, looking at his watch.”

“Funny you should mention time. A watch plays a small yet significant role in the Pan film.”

“Really? How ironic. I’ll see it in the future.”

“Yes you will. The future memory will inspire your spirit, art and life.”

I pulled out my Swizz Whizz Army stainless steel water resistant Victoria Abnoxious pocket watch, laughing.

“My, look at the tick-tock. Got to walk. Thanks for the ink. Create with passion.” I disappeared.

Faith sang a lonely echo. “Thanks. Enjoy your word pearls. Safe travels.”

Sitting on a park bench under a Banyan tree I fed cartridges into a mirror, clicked off the safety and turned a page.

It was a musical manifesto with a touch of razzamatazz jazz featuring Coltrane, Miles, Monk, Mingus and Getz to the verb.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Burma, 2015