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...