Cadiz Life

After moving through Moroccan dust, chaos, beauty and impermanence since September, Cadiz was a perfect base for hunting and gathering stories and images.

My second-floor room in a neighborhood of abandoned warehouses overlooked a 200-year-old intersection. A wrought iron balcony faced a narrow cobblestone street. Benjumeda Street extended past shops, churches and plazas.

I was a translucent blue monarch butterfly gathering wing heat for future flight. Inside, outside and all around I wandered Cadiz.

I freelanced for the Bureau of Wandering Ghosts.

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Outside Plaza de Las Flower stalls shoppers pulled provisions home in wheeled shopping carts. Women pushed wheelchairs filled with groceries and cement uphill in their utilitarian universe. Their rolling world was hard rubber spinning in a galaxy. Wheelchairs indicated an invalid family member sat at home in a rocking chair watching game shows and talking heads. Waiting for the goods.

Exploring visual epiphanies, I opened my aperture to f/2.8. Write with light. In exile with silence, cunning, humor and curiosity I discovered Sunday flea market images: old photos, stamps, phonographs, typewriters, dolls, tools, locks, religious paintings, seafood, books, discarded clothing, toys, glass, buttons, broken phones, watches, faces, hands and lottery tickets.

Bar slot machine games called the Wheel of Fortune flashed lights as men drank cheap sherry and pumped 100 peseta coins into hungry devices. Unemployed men and women prowled streets, corners and shops selling lottery tickets called ONCE.

The Champion grocery store across from the old market sold sixteen different lottery tickets. A city this old believing in a religious hereafter had a gambling addiction. Pay now and pray later. Poor people needed all the hope money could buy.

Hope was broke.

I exposed streets, parks, cathedrals and beaches with sun-greased white haired ladies knitting and playing bingo and children dressed in gaudy black and red sashes for religious festivals. Men cut fish, hands held creased maps or thick Cuban cigars, children grasped parental fingers.

Tourists gripped each other in lost wild desperation. Lovers slept in sunlight. Men hammered stones as pigeons fought over bread scraps. Obscure dark faces in doorways greeted neighbors. A crescent moon floated between television aerials.

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Juxtapositions of hammers and crucifixes rested on red fabric. Brown nuns supporting their habit passed brass Moorish door knockers as historical debris laughed before and after Chris Colon sailed west.

I wandered the city carrying a Moleskine and piston driven fountain pen spilling Midnight Blue ink.

Businesses had signs reading, “This establishment has a book for claims and complaints.”

In a cafe I ordered a meal of nouns and verbs with a side order of flat dirty realistic cardboard character development.

“Hold the adverbs,” I told the waitress.

I scribbled seven serious mystical mischievous words. Seeing this a man behind the bar whispered to a woman. They began cleaning. They hauled out crates of empty bottles, swept and mopped the floor with determination, efficiency and fear suspecting I was from the CLEAN authorities.

Fear is a great motivator.

Kitchen women suffered a panic attack. Jabbering like irate birds they scrubbed gleaming appliances with profound intention and motivation. They feared they’d be closed down for an imperfection in their life.

After fresh tomatoes I spread my wings.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

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