Carnival in Avenida España

This one is in Spanish -just as this is how it came out. Sorry for those non-Spanish speakers, I may translate it at some point.



Carnaval en la Avenida España, en Catia. Un maremagnum de gente, Yo, perdido en la multitud, aferrandome a la presencia en alguna parte de algun amigo. Bueno, no se si era de verdad mi amigo, o al menos no se en que medida era yo su amigo. Siento ahora que lo traicione de oscuras maneras (pero eso quizas es otra historia) y que, ademas, yo no tenia clara idea de que era ser amigo. Yo era solo: convencido de que estaba solo, de que el mundo era hostil, y de que yo por disposicion era muy incapaz de lidiar con el mundo. Recuerdo a algun ex-compañero del Ezpelosin, montado en una 'carroza', gritando al viento con una mano en alto sosteniendo una botella de ron (al menos creo que era una botella de ron. Esto paso hace casi cuarenta años y es dificil recuperar ahora exactammente que vi o escuche, o que me paso por la mente, apenas las sensaciones, que parecen ser mas perdurables que las percepciones o que lo que mi mente haya procesado de ellas en aquel momento). Yo buscaba en la multitud a aquella chica de la cual estaba enamorado solo, la princesa del salón que jamas se iba a fijar en mi (y que era seguramente una chica normal con pocos atributos de hada o de princesa pero no se lo digas a ese flavio ansioso, supersticioso, atormentado); la buscaba en la multitud aunque sabía con certeza que ella no podria estar alli -certeza sin fundamento otro que la vaga conciencia de que era estadisticamente muy, muy improbable que ella estuviera por alli. Mis amigos gritaban, pasaban comentarios acerca de las chicas en las 'floats', comentarios que no tenian doble sentido porque el unico sentido que tenian era sexual, lo que yo encontraba, a aquella edad, al mismo tiempo excitante y alarmante, atractivo y repugnante.

Quien sabe que habra sido de esos carnavales de Catia, seguramente dejaron de existir cuando deje de asistir a ellos. No como el gato de Schrödinger en la caja, sino mas bien en terminos de que el que yo dejara de ir era un reflejo de la decadencia terminal; yo era solo uno de muchos, yendo adonde me llevaba la corriente, a pesar de lo fuertemente que me sentia aparte y distinto a todo el mundo pero al mismo tiempo uno más. Ruido, luces, aguardiente. Peleas en las esquinas, en las que mis compañeros tomaban parte y que terminaban con la policia cargando a rolo entre la multitud. Me las arreglé de alguna manera, fuera instinto de preservación o simplemente cobardía, para no verme envuelto seriamente en ninguna de esas riñas.

Yo queria ir al otro extremo de la Av España, por alguna vaga supersticion de que 'ella' estaria alli o porque alguien habia murmurado que algo interesante estaba pasando alli -seguramente alguna carroza con chicas poco vestidas, que alguien habría mencionado, aunque eso en realidad no se veia en Catia. Asi que daba un rodeo por las calles laterales, por la Calle Colombia que tambien estaba bastante llena de gente, e incluso la Calle Peru -tengo un momento de duda al tratar de evocar los nombres de las calles. Veo las calles en los mapas de satelite de Google Earth, puedo acercarme hasta que veo los carros estacionados, y sin embargo no puedo recordar con claridad los nombres... es como si el tiempo y el espacio se desdoblaran, como si contuvieran pliegues y junturas de los cuales nunca habia sido consciente, y me muestren con una nitidez que inspira algo asi como temor atavico, aquel pasado fantasmal, aquellas partes insignificantes de mi vida que sin embargo me asaltan con significados que no entrevi en su momento. Algo que me hace girar la cabeza y desata una cantidad de síntomas incluso fisicos de ansiedad. Si es que el proceso se desarrolla de esa manera y no al revés, el que alguna reaccion química en mi interior, o el producto del fuerte resfriado que tengo desde hace cuatro o cinco dias, provoque ese asalto por parte de porciones de mi memoria que han yacido enterradas por tanto tiempo y atribuyen a recuerdos insustanciales y triviales de un pasado remoto con una significación que no tuvieron y no tienen.. quizas ....

Regresar a casa es algo que tengo que reconstruir mas laboriosamente: no tengo el mas minimo recuerdo de ello. Tengo recuerdos un poco mas recientes (de los dieciocho, diecinueve años de edad mas bien que los quince o dieciséis) de regresar a casa en medio de la noche, con la policia deteniendome para pedirme la cedula de identidad. constancia de trabajo, 'los papeles'. De aquella otra etapa más temprana, no conservo recuerdo alguno del camino de regreso a casa. Solo del vagabundeo solitario por las calles alternas, en las que habia a veces alguna celebracion aislada pero que eran mucho mas solitarias, dilapidadas, envueltas en una bruma de misterio para mi que en realidad seguramente solo estaba compuesta de sordidez. Como cuando alguien me dijo que habia una casa de prostitución cerca de la Plaza de Catia, lo que me picó la curiosidad, aún si yo apenas tenia la mas vaga idea de qué era una casa de prostitución. Cuando pasaba por alli atisbaba por aquel pasillo con luz roja mortecina y escaleras de cemento a ver si podia capturar alguna imagen de esa esencia de maldad y pecado que era al mismo tiempo atractiva de una manera prohibida pero casi como romántica. Quiza era una temprana expresión de esa ansia por encontrarle un significado ulterior a la vida una vez que dios había muerto, esta coleccion de absurdos en que nos encontramos, sometidos a la prision de la carne y la existencia y su misterio...

vignettes of long ago and far away..

31-08-06 5:43 PM

When I go to the kitchen on an afternoon like this to fix myself a coffee, perhaps it is not coffee I'm after, but rather the complex mix of memories and fantasies from my past, those afternoons spent playing guitar or reading or writing or drawing in the 'azotea', the flat terrace roof in our poor broken house in Catia, in West Caracas, facing the Avila mountain ini the distance, the blue-blue sky above with shreds of clouds, the Whitby glassworks shop across the road -Whitby? Did they know? I certainly didn't until many years after, by then having been to Whitby many times for the gothic festival, when looking at an old photograph in which my father and my sister are getting into his '76 white Chevy Nova parked in front of it, that I realised that was the name of that place, the source of those grinding noises which were part of the afternoon, like the giggles and screams of the girls coming out of the commercial high school nearby, or the buzzing of the planes far above, or the smell of that coffee, the memory of which compels me now to go to the kitchen, not the dark kitchen downstairs, with high walls covered in soot from two thirds up, or the one upstairs, bathed in sunlight, in my grandad's quarters which would eventually be mine, but that which I share in this horrid little North London flat with people who have no conception about the meaning of the expression 'washing up'.

So I make myself a cup of coffee from the espresso machine and climb upstairs, my knee hurting on every step and sometimes forcing me to climb only on one leg, hopping on my left leg up and trying to keep my right leg straight without taking the weight of the body. Much, as I now recall, as was the case with my grandad, with him dragging his bad leg as he climbed the steps, grumbling and ranting about my father much as I now go on about my flatmates, their lack of consideration and co-operation, the same themes echoed in such different settings a third of a century on.

I didn't have a espresso machine then, people didn't have such things in their houses then. Of course, I didn't have many things that I now have and take for granted, like the computer I type this in, the instant connection by voice or word with people half way across the world. I had a sauce pan boiling water and a cloth coffee colander, what n these parts is called a 'sock', name which I find curiously disgusting for some reason that I haven't stopped to find out. After my mother's fashion, we used to put the sugar in the water to boil, we claimed that made the coffee taste sweeter with less sugar. Who knows, it might even be true. Then I would go back to the azotea, to look at the people passing by on Avenida El Cristo, the church at the top of the hill, the electricity sub-station a bit further up the road, the Portuguese corner shop -the one that still had on its wall after many years and attempts to erase it, a grafitto that originally had read 'Viva Romulo' (center-right president in the early sixties, universally hated) and which the local wits had changed to 'Niña Romulo' (niña meaning young girl).

There was a large aloe vera or related plant on a square, large, home-made concrete pot in the minuscule inner yard. It wasn't a yard, just the corridor in the house, but had no roof on it so it was open to the sun and rain, like a miniature version of a Spanish house's patio. My grandad had built the stairway, as he had also the plant pot and much else in the house. I don't know what planning permission regulations were like in Caracas in those days but they must have been pretty lax. There had been a back yard, which had been paved and built over and had become the junk room, where my grandad had the remainder of some hardware shop he'd had in the thirties or forties and we all dumped stuff that no longer worked or was wanted. As a child I used to climb on overturned beds and furniture to explore the drawers full of screws and bolts, of buttons and instruments whose purpose was wholly unknown to me. There were clouds of dust, the whole set up was dangerous and unstable, there probably were rats in there although I don't remember ever seeing one.. From that back-yard turned storage room you could climb to the flat roof, which I did regularly when I had an argument with my father -although 'argument' is the wrong word. I never ever uttered a word during those 'arguments', it always was his show, a loud, aggressive one where he would threaten to kill us (but he never touched us, he only smacked me twice during my childhood, both with good reason) and proclaim that we were not human and had no feelings. Up there in the roof behind the water tank I would read Gil Blas de Santillana or Knut Hamsun and wait, while he shouted from down there for me to come down, he'd teach me a good lesson.

We were such a strange family. At some point I realised we weren't like my friends' families. My mum and dad didn't sleep in the same room; my sister slept with my mum and I slept in my dad's room. It was an arrangement which I hated. In the night, when he came back very late, reeking of booze and clumsily blundering around, he would wake me up to tell me stories of the war ('seven years and three months, they took me at 16 to go fight that stupid war...') or the rather violent, misogynistic life that the males of the family seemed to live in the Italy he was growing up in the thirties. He had some story of having travelled a long distance to go see Jorge Negrete, Mexican film star of the day, and heckling him when they found out that this macho Mexican cowboy hero was, apparently, effeminate and gay. About an uncle being stabbed to death at a village fair (no-one in the family seems to be able to recall this or know about it). About the Nazis retreating and a girl being allegedly raped by a group of them, and these being hunted 'like rats' and killed by the locals. About a platoon mate of his declaring, in a clearing in the forest, that he wanted to see what was inside a hand grenade and proceeding to take one apart, while his mates ran in all directions, followed by the explosion and raining of body parts... All those terrifying stories, in the twilight of the room with my father reeking of booze sitting on the bed and suddenly stopping mid-stream and declaring that we didn't understand, we had no feelings...

The outside world seemed such a hostile, incomprehensible place...

ripples

the dream was a very long one, I woke up several times. In it I was locked away in a house in Caracas with my childhood friend E., who still looked pretty much the same as when we were 15 and he was the heartthrob of all the girls and I was the plain sidekick. I even remember the custard colour shirt he was wearing as one of the ones he used to have then. He started by being very friendly, then slowly he started acting and talking in a demented, threatening fashion, increasingly so, with me more and more nervous as he got more agitated. At some point he put a knife to my throat and said 'Are you scared,then? You don't want to play with knives? Here's yours.... ' and produced another equally scary blade which he handed to me while sweeping the air with his, and pointing it to me with little stabbing movements.

I managed to get out of the house but he was after me. In some improbable way I ran into some neighbours and explained the situation, they then set E. up, trapped him and called the police, he absolutely foaming at the mouth, me relieved but still scared -and now almost fully aware that this wasn't real life, but at the same time incapable of breaking through the mist of the dream...

shadows on the wardrobe

SILVER BEADS AND MONSTERS 02-06-06

There were insects lurking beneath. It was a disgusting thought and I had to open my eyes. In the darkness I could still se the vile forms of their bodies, their alien heads poking forward with antennae -one of them would turn in my direction and point those antennae towards me. I wanted to scream. That wasn't an option as I was sharing the room with my father, whose snoring I suddenly became aware of, coming from the other end of the room. This also made me aware of a faint smell of alcohol and something else I couldn't identify or describe and which I would come across only many years later. This did, actually, have the effect of making the apparition vanish in the almost complete darkness of the room. Whose idea was it that I should share the room with my father? I suppose it was inevitable that I should, given that my mother would not share the room with him and I was a bit too grown to be in my mother's bedroom. My sister did. It was a logical arrangement in the circumstance, as much as could be expected in my dysfunctional family. But also one which I found weird, didn't correspond to the family models I'd known -all of them from the television and the press, since I seldom went to my school mates' houses and knew nothing of their family life and the rest of my family seemed to be nearly as dysfunctional as mine.

Now it was pitch black, or nearly so. As I drifted again towards sleep, the amassed mist of darkness that covered everything started to take shape again. I closed my eyes tight but this only made the spectres take form more clearly and swiftly..

I had a pocket torch, a tiny little thing.... whose shape I cannot recall, or how it came to my possesion.. as far as I know there didn't exist batteries small enough for such a gadget in those days, perhaps memory deceives me -which is not unlikely, we construct our memories from the prime matter of our past, but add much to it and change and take much away. I hid under the blanket and lit the torch. I had an issue of Life Magazine. I stared at the pictures of Marilyn Monroe. She was a bit fat and rather old but there was something very attractive about her, something that made me long for things unknown. There also were some pictures of someone on a limousine, with a woman in a funny hat next to him, waving, then collapsing, in what seemed to be frames from a movie. All echoes of a distant, unreal world that has few resonances in my life, other than those ghost-like images in a magazine, useful to exorcise those other, closer, terrifying manifestations of the void awaiting.

some childhood battlefields

Today the yard was, again, the sea; Soldie Wilson scanned from the top of the cliff. Or the bedroom window, as it could occasionally need to be. The boy stood there, contemplating the imposing sight of the innumerable war ships towards the horizon, towards battle in all certainty, the battle of uncertain result against the fierce and ruthless Kitschelandian. He knew as he saw all this that there would be no super-heroes that would come to the rescue of the allied troops, not this time: they'd be engaged in other business in outer space, maybe, or in any case outside of this scene, maybe even not existing today.

The rumble of cannon fire in the horizon, Soldie turns around and rides towards his cabin. Bombs thrown by the Kitsches' war planes above whistle as they fall towards the ground nearby but he doesn't pay much attention; it is getting late, almost dark and the battle must be suspended and he must disappear into nothingness as they're calling for dinner and the planes, the ships and soldiers, the action figures and the dolls have to be put away. Tomorrow will be another day, another sunny morning good for the yard becoming the sea and maybe for a super-heroe to save the allied troops from disaster.

Miraflores and the setting sun (12 Jan 2004)

I have seen fairies. Without recognising what it was that I was seeing, as we often do. One afternoon on Avenida Sucre, on ,my way to the conservatoire in Santa Capilla, the sun low on the horizon, in front of me the white walls of Miraflores where the President of the Republic, whoever it may have been then, woud have presided over the roller coaster of trying to govern our tropical madhouse of a country. The guards, military police, the turrets with machine guns at the ready. The ever-gridlocked, snarled up traffic, the horns hooting, the flashes of temper, steam rising from the cars' bonnets. Traffic cops trying to direct the traffic, as ungovernable as the rest of the country, along the six lanes of gridlock on Avenida Sucre. And then, on the last bend as you could see the sun setting on the right (is this correct, or is memory deceiving me once again?) there she was. Normal eighteen, nineteen year old girl, somewhat hippie-fashion, brown hair floating in the breeze. And she smiled at me and I tried to smile back, shy person that I was, that I still am although I have learnt to deal with it to an extent over the years. Never saw her wings, never saw the minute tracery of burning stars after her feet in her wake. Just turned around and, in that expanse of nothing by the wall of the Presidential Palace, she was gone. Disappeared. Perhaps she suddenly realised she was in the wrong part of the world for elves or fairies, the South American Caribbean is a land of a different kind of magic.

So I continued my climbing up the hill to Avenida Urdaneta towards Santa Capilla, starstruck, pierced with a bittersweet arrow of longing for something i had never seen or known, somebody who probably did not exist, a vision from another world or from a dream, deaf to the noise of traffic, the whistle of the traffic cops, the radios in the cars blasting out salsa while stuck in the jam, blind to the Palace military guard looking at me quizzically, the lights changing now green, now amber, now red, the people beginning to pour out of the office blocks invading the streets, the shoe shines at the corner of Carmelitas offering their service to the passers by (but not to me, with my long hair, torn jeans and boots falling to bits), the street vendors peddling trinkets or voicing 'El Mundoooo' but it was not the 'world' that they were offering but just an evening newspaper instead...

the surf (june 2005)

What is it we are, I used to ask myself, sitting on the sand, hearing the white noise of the waves, the crunching steps, the shouts in the distance melting in the mushy white noise. The uncomfortable feeling of the sand in between your toes, under your swimming trunks, the being alone there wondering what I was and what I was doing in the world, while screaming families playing beach volleyball, a couple laid out a picnic nearby, the girl of my dreams (what dreams you could have at that age of a girl older than you) walked by in the mid distance, her long brown hair thrown around in the wind -and then she would squawk, shout in a shrill penetrating voice to her boyfriend and add to the crunchy aural background, as well as to the general feeling that life was slightly pointless -as well as too short. All the answers to the questions that mattered were hidden from us. And all the girls that I could possibly like would forever love me as a friend and tell me their exploits with boys and ask me for advice. I could clearly see that future laid in front of me then, so early, and I knew it would be true and rued it even then.

I could see my mum, who couldn't swim, floating on an enormous black tyre tube, a rare moment of calm and absence of stress in her lonely crumbling life. My sister was playing with a bucket and spade, covered in wet sand, in her synthetic looking pink swimsuit. My dad wasn't in sight, he was away at the bar, playing dominoes with his chums, in the midst of many bottles of beer, shouting and slamming the pieces down, the hoarse laughter filling the room -how I hated that. There was something about those men and women that repelled me so thoroughly, that seemed intrinsically wrong and dirty about them and which felt menacing to a shy thirteen year old who was finding out he didn't believe in God and the essential justice of the universe, but who desperately needed answers and reassurances to cling on to, needed explanations for his dysfunctional family, his dysfunctional environment, city and country....

I used to fold up bits of card, cut out a bilaterally symmetric little human figure with a cape, draw its face and Superman costume and give it a name, a soul and a personality, as we do to our toys and perhaps to our pets who we think we know but with whom there is the chasm of the essential difference in how we process the world. I had a few with me nearly at all times but not that piercingly bright midday at the beach, alone on the sand while around me all went around the business of having fun on a day out. I dug in the sand with a stick, half-blinded by the sunlight, made myself small and invisible. My father walked past without looking at me, went in the water and swam in long arm movements far, far into the sea. Maybe he wouldn't return, maybe he'd disappear. What would we do? He wouldn't shout at us again, but also we wouldn't have money to buy food and things (I don't think I had, even then, a clear idea of the correspondence between work and money and the things we had). He was drunk, I knew; he should not be swimming so far out into the sea, far past the buoys.

Soon he would come out and shout and wave at us in his foreign Italian way, to gather our things and go to the car, that boiling box of metal with plastic upholstery that would burn the textured pattern, imprint onto our skin. He would shout at us a couple of times. We had no feelings, we did not understand him or care for him. Fuck you, I might as well drive off that cliff, I might well do that. Then my mum would implore, please Pascual don't do that. We would remain silent, my sister and I. Only now I realise that every week-end we went to the beach I was convinced we would not make it back, something dreadful like a stupid car accident would happen or our father would flip and really drive off the cliff. None of these things ever happened, but they loomed large in my mind and probably my sister's -although I have come to learn that she has very different memories of those days of which my own seem to be so glum, for me a tale of quiet despair and of the universe going wrong under the blue, blue Caribbean sky...