Fire

There is a fire burning. I have sensed it from afar for a long time. I am circling it, but still at a distance. I am drawn to it because I am cold; chilled through. I'm attracted to it with a force of absolute necessity; a force I can only compare to the kind of irresistible magnetism that occasionally exists between a man and a woman.

Sevilla is close, and it does have something, like the cute title I chose for this blog from the Sevillanas letra. But Jerez has what I am looking for.

I was right there, in it, the other night.

I saw Domingo Rubichi last summer several times, accompanying cante in the outdoor theatre. He comes from another place than I do - some different kind of universe that I don't understand but can feel. His playing is rooted to the ground. It is solid like something you can hang onto, because you need to. There is space in it - it is not rushed. It takes what is happening seriously and doesn't pretend to be cool or laugh things off. But Eva, I understand. She takes what I feel that only ever dares to come near the surface, and she brings it straight up and out, into the air. She wears it on her face and it comes out through her hands. And that is why the other Jerezanos listening yell out. Because they know this; they don't try to stifle the things that it is pointless to try to shut off. They are burning too and they are part of part of what I've come here for, just as are Eva and Domingo.

The woes of plantillas, suffering for art

Dumb question: When you look up at the row of hanging ham legs and ask your friend who is a waiter (at a different place) if he has ever cut ham before. Especially when he has served you ham and tomato sandwiches numerous times. I think "duh" means the same thing here. They have the Simpsons.

I am told that pain is just part of dancing. This still isn't something I should be dancing on. But I was told that this kind of problem may be what I have to deal with, and that it is very common. Antonio Canales, she said, his feet would echar sangre sometimes. And La Chunga... she dances barefoot. (I am not sure if I was mistaken about this but I think she said La Chunga has come there for help). She has very bad feet, said the fisioterapeuta. I do not have metatarsalphalangeal instabilidad, which it really seemed like I had, from the descriptions. I have been assigned treatments of electric currents in my toe joints every day for 10 days.

By the way, Antonio Canales is really famous and appeared in the movie Vengo (where La Paquera sings as well). English has no equivalent for echar and I've started to use it sometime in my head when I'm thinking in English. Give off, spew out, throw out, put, dish out ... kind of a catch-all.

I practiced the abanico (fan) and castanuelas mostly today and only did a bit of bulerias in my cute new "running" shoes - those sporty kind that are not for running, that everybody has and I could never fit until I found an Italian brand.

The wearing of plantillas (shoes things, inside your shoe) that are shaped to your foot is complicated. The shoes you put them in get stretched, and then if you feel like maybe using plantillas is not helping, your nice new shoes are sloppy. One foot is developing a bunion which is caused by tightness, and that kind of deformation can cause complications of the joint. Creating the exact problem they're supposed to be solving. So you're told to go find some shoes that are deeper. AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH! I just finished finding the two pairs of shoes in this city that fit. I have no ganas to order a second made to measure pair of shoes right now.
My feet are extremely concave - very high arches and little area supporting my weight. So I stopped off at the shoemaker's and his son at the front counter greeted me while he yelled out gruffly from behind, "they're still in fabrication!" I started telling the son what I needed (arch support) and why, and the father came up front. The son did another impatient reprimanding of his father. Wow, seems like time for father and son to go their separate ways! Tradition... is not always good.

It is good to be living with people who are also spending their time perfecting physical movements that create art. I believe this is my thing. I was never cut out for expressing myself academically with complicated arguments about esoteric stuff, neither was I a physics person.

I've tried several things to help Alicia: analgesic oil that I use on my feet, and a heating pad. Her arm was so stiff from playing all day yesterday that it was almost numb by the time she got home in the evening. She showed me an x-ray of her back, which looks like a snake. Her skeletal deformation makes it hard to have relaxed neck, shoulder and arm muscles. I have to admire her courage to become a pro with a limitation like that. A while back, they both told me what they suffer with. Marta's neck hurts, as do many violin or viola players', and her fingertips have callouses with black, hard parts in them.

I am attempting to find heating pads (a chemical kind that are little pouches). I believe that along with Arnica and analgesic oil or salve, they could take the place of muscle relaxant drugs. Keiko gave me several, courtesy of someone who brought them over from Japan, to survive the winter here. They have a peel-off paper with glue underneath, so they can stick to clothing. I stuck it to my neck and tied it on with a scarf and went out with Kathy that evening to the bar. It was amazing.

Dancing, friends and animal noises

Que día...
I feel like I am alive again. I went to practice at the studio for the first time in 3 weeks. I practiced a lot of castanets and danced in running shoes.
After that I went to replenish my supply of decent tea at an excellent tea store, which also sells a few select artisan and ecological wines and a couple of other things. I decided to have a glass of wine - even the glass itself was a cut above the rest. I picked up a thick book on experimental soundscapes (or something), which discussed the history of progressive music in Spain through the 20th century and had some fascinating articles, such as how the digital age has changed views of social organisation (or something). For example, the internet has proven on a grand scale spontaneous organisation without a leader, which will influence the thinking of at least those young enough to have their understanding of the world formed since the internet. They discussed some fascinating phenomenon - how geese fly in formation without following a leader, and when people in an auditorium want to clap in a certain rhythm, it emerges unified after a short time of disorganisation, without a leader.

I had an unexpected call from Mika, who was in Sevilla. I got on a bici and went to meet her in Plaza Jesus de la Passion, where we had tea and she showed me her last big purchase before leaving for home - a flamenco dress made to measure. We both found it hard to believe she is leaving. I will miss her a lot. She has something that not a lot of people have...calmness, serenity, peace, it seems... along with an ability to do what she wants to do. A beautiful and confident person, but without pretensions. Like her, there are a few of my Jerez friends with whom the tension that has become normalized in my life stands out in stark relief. With whom if I allow it, there can exist comfortable silence in the conversation. It's as if there is no problem with just existing. I don't know if it's them or Jerez - probably both.
While I don't want her to leave, I am happy she is going home to dance there too. This is one person I am sure will bring something back with her of more value than what a few months intensive study or a bunch of cursillos with famous teachers will do, and am happy to think of my friend performing in tablaos in Japan.

My next experience of the night gave me reminiscences of China. Phoning to order essential things ... and feeling really stupid. In China it was the bottle of water. I'd call the number and say, "it's the foreign teacher", and that's all they needed to know. There was only one other female foreign teacher in Deyang and probably someone else delivered her water. This time it was the bombon of gaz (butano) which heats the stove and shower. I gave our address and then with great care, read out their phone number to them, as if it were ours. Alicia was in stitches listening to me, and took little time to point it out. When I finally got around to calling them to fix the problem, I nearly dialed our number, which she'd written on the fridge for me, and had a wavering voice trying not to laugh while reading it.

I then took advantage of my roommates' help with some sentences I'd constructed in various tenses and verbs, and the conversation somehow degenerated into, "what does a rooster say in English?" "Ki-kiri-ki!" is the Spanish version, and Alicia also demonstrated the French, which she learned while studying there and thinks is really funny. But WAY more funny, was the English. I totally cracked them up with "cock-a-doodle-doo". It brought the Flinstones to Marta's mind.
Then there was "be-e-eh" and "ba-a-ah", "guao-guao" (the g is almost not pronounced) and "woof" (our versions of which were very funny). "Oink" is practically the same: "oinc", and meow is the same. Quack is the same (probably without the k), and neither they nor I know what noise a platypus or an ornitorrinco makes, or if it is the same animal. They did have me stumped about baby chickens: theirs go, "piu...piu" (in a high voice, of course) and I don't know what ours do.
A mermaid is a sirenita (probably "little mermaid"), just in case you had to know.
Spanish does not have an "h" sound like ours. Their h is silent/non-aspirated, but their j and g both have a gutteral h sound. They got to practicing "hello" and "house", which they did with hilarity, making an exaggerated sighing sound and exhaling a lot. If they don't do that, they end up with a very scary gutteral "hello".

From the rooftop Sevilla looks all white and orange with a generous sprinkling of churches towering above, and some green here and there. The golondrinas have decided to come over from Africa. They're circling around me up here.

I spent the day like a tourist. Went into the back end of Santa Clara neighborhood on a bike, and decided to stop for a sherry at a bar.
Thermometers in different parts of the city registered between 22 and 26.5. The riverside cafes were full, music playing. I took my time between Puente San Telmo and Isabel II. Paradise. Now I am really living in paradise. Green water, blue sky, palm trees, a small motorboat drifting, the passengers sitting back, and Triana on the other side. It would have been too hot for Vancouver people to be wearing jeans.
I had intended to take the train to a random nearby town - I had an intense desire to get near some mountains. I decided to do more research, after going to the train station and being unsure of which one would have a return train on a Sunday.
In Plaza San Fransisco I stopped for a while on a ledge below an ornate building and looked down the road past the cathedral, and at the horses and carriages lined up under the shade. They only have beautiful, spirited horses, and I was taken by an intense desire to go riding and briefly wondered in vain how I could accomplish that. Little kids were using fallen oranges as soccer balls and dogs were fetching oranges. There are still some on the trees, but most have now blossomed and the smell is subtle but beautiful.

I made pancakes for the chicas this morning. I don't yet have any "tree syrup" (may have to make requests for some...) so made do with jam. I had difficulty explaining blueberries recently, as they don't exist here, and the same word is used for them as for cranberries. They call people turkeys here too when they are stupid, and in fact call the teenage years the "ages of turkey/being a turkey".

In Marta's hometown of Segovia, they had running of the bulls whenever there was a fiesta in her neighborhood. Neither her nor Alicia think highly of bullfighting, though it was a quite normal event for Marta in her childhood. Alicia went once to tell her children someday that she went with her parents, but both her and her mother cried. Marta explained that one time it went very badly. All the bulls run towards an enclosure, where the gates are closed and they are all safely inside. But one time they split off, and didn't get there at the same time, so the gate couldn't be closed. Then the ones that have arrived run out again. One bull jumped off a bridge, others were loose in the city. The purpose is to eat them, for the celebration. In this way, killing them is not such a bad thing. They would traditionally make a huge stew, or bull meat with sauce or something. But after mad cow disease, she is not sure whether they've returned to eating the meat at the end. Neither of the girls knew whether there was truth to the accompanying cruelty to horses that is said to happen in the big bullfights. Their dislike of bullfighting has more to do with personal distaste than the politics of animal rights that has seeped into Spain, but is not at all apparent here.
Rabbit as a meat is quite common here, they tell me, and Alicia listed several ways she likes to eat it. In her town, it isn't uncommon for people to kill pigs themselves and she described having witnessed this, including taking its blood first, to make morcilla, a black sausage. They use all the parts of it as food here, and Alicia explained about pig's face, which I was surprised to hear sounds exactly like they do it in China (the entire face, flattened and cured). Here it is sold together with the trotters and I think she said the tail.

Juana beats any rock singer who has illusions of being tough or heavy - AND she wears a white dress.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz-odMU7pLc
This is all I have to say today. Please watch. She is the Aunt of Antonio, who I studied with last summer.

Day in the life of Ana of Sevilla (hmmm... a bit grandiose of a name..sorry)

Eat tea and coffee both, and oats with bananas. Consider having bread and peanut butter too, but go to Osteopath. Wander through the neighborhood and buy some fish at the Feria Street Mercado. Dorado. The pescadero cleans it for me, as it is whole, of course.
I get fish guts on my shirt trying to clean the rest of the guts that he left, while it is in the frying pan. I do not really do it a la plancha like he suggests. I fry onions and stuff and semi-poach it. There are scales left too, there always are. fish guts - revoltando...? I ask my roommates.
I hang my clothes on the rooftop. I eat tons of honey from the sierras. I take the riverside to get way out into the subburbs to get my hair cut by Marie Carmen's sister and they plancha my hair just like I was supposed to plancha the fish. I don't think the haircut was a success... will have to see. I come across the sevici bikes way out there along paseo de somebodyorother and decide to take one home because it's getting dark. I stop in a Latin supermarket before that and step into a casual circle of three guys hanging out in there. I look to see if they have any pre-made tortillas like they have on commercial drive or any hot salsa. All they have is tons of corn flour and other strange corn products and meat and whatnot. I feel like an outsider here together with them, but they probably don't feel that way about me.
Anyways I get back and try to make potatoes for dinner cause my dad sent an e-mail reminding me to drink green beer or green wine. I guess the only green thing I eat is olives and olive oil. Eat dinner with Marta and tell her about my pancake disaster and about Irish people drinking green beer.
Then I hermit in my room as they go out to plan a trip with their friends.

Alicia comes from a pequeño pueblo near Granada. Every little pueblo has a few of their own words that no one else in Spain understands, but apparently Alicia's pueblo has more like a hundred. Alicia would have done fine as an actress as well, I believe. I normally don't think of girls of twenty-two being "characters" but she already is. She's really a cute and pretty girl but mischevious. Even Marta has trouble understanding her when she speaks in her pueblo tongue. She conjured an old person from the village pretty well, showing how they don't know anybody's name, and would ask, "Antonio who?" to which the answer would be, "the son of the good looking sister of the baker", "Oh, him...!"
Or the bar called "C'e Caballo" (It's probably not written that way on the front, it's just what people call it). "C'e" is the way they contract "casa de". This guy's real name is Carlos but everyone knows him as "horse" (caballo).
Flamenco is fully of nicknames, but I suppose in any little town you'll find them. Some guy has the name of "espanta-coche" (coche meaning car). Espantar is a word I just learned and didn't recognise it, so she demonstrated shoe-ing birds away, "if there are a bunch of palomas here and I do like this... or espanta-pajaros like they have in the countryside", and she stood with arms straight out like a scarecrow. That just made me more confused, "scare-car?!" I said. "Yeah..." One can only surmise how a guy came to have the name "scare-car" (probably closer to "shoe-car" like "shoe-ing" it away.)

The bands practicing in some nearby street for Semana Santa were coming through the open window. Marta explained that her first year here, her sister visited for that week, and one day went out with a list of places to stop and see different processions. They went out the door wearing jeans and running shoes and immediately realised they were extremely out of place. Everyone was dressed in flamenco dresses and suits, extremely high heels. Marta and Alicia both shook their heads and said, "that's Sevillanos".

The fabric shops on my stroll through the center were filled with hordes of women ordering dresses or buying fabric. They are called flamenco dresses but are worn by all the women here, and probably by many people who don't know much about the kind of flamenco I'm interested in. This kind of dress has the characteristic ruffles of dancer's dresses but the function is rather different, and the look a high fashion, stylized version of what dancers traditionally wear. They are always hip-hugging to the point of making it difficult to walk, and they always have multiple layers of ruffles on the bottom, as do the sleeves. Along with the dress, a shawl, flowers in the hair, and big earrings are usually worn. But aside from this, the styles vary widely. Some are nearly hippy-ish looking, although a hippy dress of this style is pretty much an oxymoron. In general, they look like cakes. It would be cool to wear one once, I suppose.