I don’t know her name. She doesn’t know mine. She is in her 20s, has chestnut-brown eyes and hair, and uses to wear a ponytail. Every day since RENFE invited us to travelling for free,  as if they had to compensate us for something, I approached the counter to get a free ticket to my destination. I even didn’t need to ask for it. Sometimes it was as easy as to pick it and say “thank you”. Sometimes, a commuter with plenty of free time or no intention of getting to work asked her for a payment ticket and poured the purse’s content on the counter, among a noisy tinkle which made everyone expect the worst. When she saw me waiting at the end of the queue that recalcitrant stopper generated, always managed to incline herself so that I could see her and let my ticket slip through a providential crack, lending me a priceless hand. One day she even asked a commuter standing on the queue to give me the ticket, and I picked it up, followed by the envious looks of everyone waiting, who probably thought I was that girl’s intimate friend or even Mrs. RENFE herself.

It was some days since I had last talked to her. Now you have to pay for your ticket and I concentrate my efforts in validating it as soon as possible as well as preventing the free newspapers under my arm from interacting with my bag, or else everything would end up on the floor. But yesterday it was different.

I had just marked and was walking through the platform. The girl came to me and asked whether my destination was still the same.

“Yeah, dear.”

“Can you do something for me?”

“Sure.”

“Can you give it to the boy at the ticket office”? She passed me a little packet.

“Of course” -I said. I took it and looked at my hand out of the corner of my eye, not to look too curious, even though the content was easy to guess.

A Snickers. More precisely, half a Snickers.

A girl who does not know me and whom I do not know, chooses me -not someone she knows with the same destination I have- to give half a Snickers to a boy that I do not know and who does not know me either. Great.

A Snickers, as you can see in the pic, is a candy made of biscuit, chocolate, caramel and all those things as bad for cholesterol as good for the taste. The candy was clearly half eaten, and the wrapping was folded in order to cover the remaining part.

In fact, it was not a bad day start. You can call it at least original.

It did not know where to stick that envelope. In the end, I put it in my jacket pocket, hoping that morning heat wouldn’t fancy make hot chocolate out of it at half past seven in the morning.

I spent the whole journey thinking of that half-eaten snack recipient and his possible reactions.

Finally, I arrived at the station soon enough and approached the ticket office. The boy was in his 20s, had chestnut-brown eyes and hair, but no ponytail: just hair gel and a spiky look. He beared no resemblance to the girl, so I discarded they belonging to the same family, at least as first hypothesis. He jabbered a sleepy “Yeah?” and got ready to deliver some of the tickets he guarded.

“Your colleague in Gavà has given me this for you”

Had the expression “his face lightened” not been clear to me, yesterday I would have understood it completely. I must say am a compulsive observer. I notice the tiniest details and perform mental autopsies with them afterwards. Seeing the smile of the boy caused one of this quartering times. He was a normal young man to me, the kind you can bump into on the street without stopping to look at him twice, his greyness almost offensively stressed by his unwilling sleepy sight. However, the smile gave him an unexpected touch of life, turning him into an almost attractive, blazing boy.

The scene lasted few seconds. I left for work, leaving him happy with his half Snickers.

I went on lucubrating, of course. “Why me?” was one of the questions, but I soon cast it aside because it was not at all the most interesting.

- Are they international spies and there is a chip containing top secret information dealing with world security inside the package?

- Had the girl eaten half the Snickers, didn’t want more and felt like inviting a random colleague?

- Is it so boring at the ticket office they have to make up jokes or bets involving commuters?

- In view of the bookcrossing success, have there been organised Snickerscrossing nets that can be made extensive to other kinds of food?

- Will we soon be able to see people who have never met before give eachother half-consumed olive tins, or semi-dry-cured hams from the Iberian pig as a beginning of endless friendship? Got a restless imagination…

“Hi sweetie, how are you today?”

“Hi hun, I’m sleepy. And you?”

“Me too. I fell asleep at once yesterday, and my mum has called be three times before I have been able to get up. This is a bloody job.”

“Sure is. Now that everyone has to pay, I haven’t got a moment of peace. An idiot has told me I’m hopeless.”

“Just tell me who he is and I’ll do him an injury. Noone will make my li’l flower upset.”

“You silly.”

“Had your breakfast?”

“No, but I’ve eaten half the Snickers you bought me yesterday. It’s delicious.”

“You are.”

“Want some?”

“‘course. I’ll eat the whole of you in a while.”

“I’m talking about the Snickers, you silly boy. Want the other half?”

“Of course, and you’ll send it by train, won’t you?”

“You never know… bye hun. Kisses.”

“Kisses sweetie. Call you back later. Bye.”

≡ Category: Lifetime | ≅ Leave a comment

Have I ever said that I dislike historical novels? It’s a very personal feature linked to the frustration of not having lived in the past nor being able to live in the future: I’m fed up with the tiny age range we are given to know facts first hand. I’d like to be able to admire the technological and scientific advances that will take place in the future as much as not to depend on what others (mainly the winners or, as a friend says, those who shout louder) have written about the past. Many historic facts we assume as Holy word are probably false. That’s why, when reading a historical novel, if I find something like: “Henry VIII scratched his beard calmly with one hand while bringing the other one close to his eyes to admire the rubied ring he was wearing and with a bitter smile said: “Go and decapitate Ann”", I can never manage to get engaged in the plot. I can’t help thinking that things were surely not like that, and therefore fantasy applied to real facts is not the least interesting for me. I’ll make an exception: Ken Follett’s The pillars of the earth, but must also admit I have not read part two not to spoil the good memory of the first one, which is more than probable.

The only thing I allow myself to read about past facts are history books that look fairly impartial (call it innocence!), and biographies. I love biographies. Of course you must also look for neutral writers, but nowadays quite good biographies can be found. And that of today’s review is one of them. Complete, realistic, quite neutral (uses to expound several possibilities to explain a fact), clear and unwilling to hide dark parts. In short: not suitable for mythomaniacs.

Since I cannot read all the biographies I find, I choose them by inspiration of the attraction I feel towards the described character. I had always thought Cary Grant was a great actor. I don’t believe that British actor’s good reputation is a tall tale; in fact I like many of them especially. And we can say Cary belonged to the old school: he began as acrobat in a travelling troupe in his homeland and still as an acrobat he flied to the States. It’s well known that he always cared to have a charming and elegant look, but perhaps he would not gone far in his career had Hitchcock not discovered that his eyes could transmit the darkness that also accompanied him in his whole life, from a childhood marked by a lost mother to whom he was always willing to come back.

The book gave me surprises in the shape of magnificent details that I didn’t know. Moreover, the author gives us a perfect vision of the cinema’s world in those years, from the big studies and their business to the parties beautiful people gave. Ambition, the courage to stay alone with his own decisions, homosexuality, immaturity, vanity… are many of the topics Marc Eliot deals with as far as this man is concerned, a man complex enough to be one of howard Hughes’ personal friends and at the same time so insecure that simply could not breathe out of his character.

Above all, there’s the feeling that Archibald Alexander Leach’s life was always like his first movies: in black and white. Cary Grant put in his hands the paint and the brush. And I still think he used them wonderfully.

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May

18
' '

A dues llengües i quatre mans, by Progula: Wilt with “botifarra”.

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It was my biannual visit to the hairdresser’s. While I was waiting, they handed me a supposed to be glamourous magazine for fashionable women. These publications and I have never got on well. And the bloody bitch seemed to know: it definitely was overweight, even considering its thirty hundred pages: I had it on my thighs and they were beginning to go to sleep!. I counterattacked using the table under the mirror as a stand. The Laura who was staring at me had a funny wet look, but for once was determined to win the battle: I would leaf through it all, from beginning to end. And so I did. For some endless minutes an entire world passed before my eyes: perfums, supermodels, luxurious hotels, impossible but apparently very fashionable and expensive dresses, handbags, jewellery, shoes, cosmetics, perfumes, supermodels, luxurious hotels, impossible but apparently very fashionable and expensive dresses…I had never felt attacked by full-color images to such aggressive levels. Occasionally, an isolated accessory interview intended to hide the evil aim of the magazine: stun skirted staff so deeply that they had no choice but to buy something. Although perhaps the nature of that something was not clear at all. I came to think that maybe these magazines are supported by aspirin factories, because I turned the last page needing to swallow a whole tube of them.

The truth is that for the first time in my life, I had a complete look at one of those magazines. A milestone that, on the other hand, had the only consequence of making the arrival of my tiny restless hairdresser more desirable, waving a pair of scissors and a stylish comb in his ready-for-the-exorcism look.

But the man didn’t turn up, and then I remembered I was carrying in my bag a book I had purchased a while ago: A dues llengües i quatre mans (”Two-languaged and four-handed”). Yes, -virile- members of Progula: whithout knowing, I gave you a huge advantage, because in my zonked-by-commercials state of mind, I just began to read and started to feel better. Armies of hard penises and hungry vaginas surrounded me flowing happily out of the pages, all of them wrapped in such excessive humour that I couldn’t help bursting out laughing. The poor hairdresser did not understand my hatred glance when he finally appeared, thus preventing me from reading more.

Since that day, the book and I had a voracious sexual relationship, waiting for the slightest occasion for me to get it out of the bag and, alone at last, find eachother overwhelming in pleasure. I held it in my hands and it remained totally open and eager to give me everything: excellent bibliophilic sessions worthy of an episode of the work itself.

As for the book’s weaknesses -everything must be said- I have to mention some misspelling (or typographical errors) and a situation which I found a little recurrent, as it comes back in two stories. I will not say which one it is, not to disclose the plot. And as a curiosity, there is an emotion that many of the characters share: the thirst for revenge, which makes room for black humour in a handful of scenes.

There are many things I have liked of this book. Even the alternative use of Catalan and Spanish is virtually nil for us bilingual readers and it sometimes helps following the tales. The authors have a witty way of linking stories and characters, some of whom have carefully as well as succesfully chosen names.

Of course it is not a book for readers of all ages, not even for all adult readers. I bet more than a few people would take offence on behalf of their sensitivities, beliefs or convictions. I think that you always, but even more in this case, ought to read without any inhibitions or pretended innocence, ready to laugh at everything and everyone. I had sometimes the same mindless-fun feeling I had when reading Wilt, by Tom Sharpe, at 18. But this time, with a catalan touch. A Wilt… with beans and a gorgeous “botifarra”.

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May

9
' '

Gavà and the asparagus.

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My family, good friends, beloved walls and bundles of memories I fancy untying every now and then: I have many affections in Barcelona. Nevertheless, the first time I went there after a long period of time, I could hardly hold a smile. The city seemed to have grown. It looked enormous, a grey landscape painted in tar. The long streets I used to walk along easily had become endless paths and only the beauty of Art Nouveau buildings prevented me from getting suffocated by their heights. Must admit that size is something relative, at least as far as cities is concerned: I wouldn’t say this statement can be applied to every subject, so forget about it you men readers.

Now seriously, living outside Barcelona has made me enjoy what I could define as gifts apparently reserved to people in the past; healthy breadcrumbs of life that we like to see as a compensation for those who didn’t live in our technocrat and of course better times. I have the same sensation I had as a child, when I was in my grandparents’ hometown and they all knew eachother. Thinking of the movie, it might be said that surnames regain sense and sensibility. You can even hear Els de cal… (”the ones from …”) referring to a family members, followed by a nickname that makes you frolic in domestic pleasure. Walking among pines is now as possible as probable. I don’t need to raise my head in a harmful way to see the morning sky, nor to force my eyes to a grimace to see a little star in the evening.

And the finishing touch: this kind of life is not boring at all. Excluding the free gimkanas we had as a present during the AVE works and the real-estate trouble with the city council, we can enjoy modern-featured museums as the prehistoric mines, and people still have the guts to dedicate their time and efforts to making beautiful things. The asparagus’ fair is a good example of that.

Gavà’s asparagus production is a symbol of the city, and it gets a yearly homage based on a sample of local commerce, cooking and what we call paneres (paintings and sculptures made using seeds, vegetables and the asparagus themselves). This year the fair has lasted for the whole first weekend of May. The paneres always catch my attention. You can see 54 pics at the end of this post. Patuquitu came with us this time, you’ll be able to see him watching the sculptures in yellow astonishment.

At the end of the visit, we realized they had installed a digital guestbook: a huge temptation. Somebody I know well had the idea of looking for this blog in the web, and there was the first page of Prosopopoeia in its catalan version, temporarily linked to 55th Gavà’s Asparagus Fair. The photo I include -the last of the set you can see below- is a priceless witness of that perfect moment.

 

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May

4
' '

Bio… logical? mothers.

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Maternity is a curious thing. It begins with a more or less entertaining moment, and after nine months of abdominal widening and fluid exchange, it ends with an dilated sphincter or a cut in the belly, which lightens a physical temporary weight and provides a spiritual everlasting one.

Generally, the process itself gives the patient subject a predisposition to improve the moral and cultural quality of the species, personified in the individual who has just shown its little head.

The problem is that us children soon begin to contribute with unforeseen difficulties. Mothers have to be affectionate without stressing us with overwhelming love, foment culture without making it boring, drying our snots without making our noses hurt and show a calm attitude which not always matches their inner mood not to makes us upset.

I cannot complain. My mother has always respected my decisions. We seldom see eachother, so I reckon every time we do she is able to discover one more little wrinkle on my face and in spite of it she has never acted as a victim nor complained. Seeing her eyes twinkle with joy every time we met is enough for me. At her age, she has skipped the technological-generational gap: she’s the master of ADSL, sends heaps of emails and is toying with the idea of a start with Power Point. And the best thing of all: I realize that the world has never been more hostile when I have looked at it through her advice.

After all these years I have reached the conclusion that the physical process of maternity is definitely overvalued. Maternity is an attitude, not some kind of life degree mothers obtain at childbirth and give them every kind of rights. Laughing with the children is not leading them to a superficial life, loving them is not making them hate the outside world in order to have them tied with some invisible emotional shackles. Being strict is not preventing them to fly, not even preventing them from making mistakes, but being comprehensive is not allowing them have always their own way.

In short, they have to struggle to make sure we are the best without being noticed and without forcing us to pay a toll for it.

Us children have the responsibility of being able to look at ourselves in the mirror and see if what we have received has done us good or not, if we have sad or happy moments, good tendencies or not, what the reason is, and be able to judge.

How could I tell you? Let’s say, as a supposedly exaggerated example, that your biological mother says she loves you very much. Let’s imagine that once you are grown-up you realize she has not made you really responsible for your environment, hence your being “idontcareadamped” for life, or she has made you too responsible and you live in a permanent anguish you cannot get rid of. Let’s imagine that on the fifth floor lives a lady who knows you since you were a child, who has always given you affection and has been permanently aware of your achievements at school, lended you her books and encyclopaedias and given you good advice; who has wanted you to be happy and generous, teaching you that peace of mind will make you free and who has said goodbye to you with a smile as you have easily thought of a tear rolling down her face as soon as you have turned your back.

In this case, it’s clear to me: be nice and have respect for your biological mother, but if you have a mother’s day present, you must definitely give it to the lady on the fifth floor.

I am lucky that my mother and the lady on the fifth floor are the same person.

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May

2
' '

Joineds’ world.

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Writing this post has made me think about the origin of it all. Maybe I had been influenced by Mary Carmen y sus muñecos (Mary Carmen and her puppets, we could say). I still remember sweet Rodolfo, who would now perish under the rage of offended gay armies, or Nikol, who wouldn’t survive in a world overwhelming with bitter feminism. My dolls came to rational life some 30 years ago, just when a Laura made by Toyse I got as a present started expressing herself fearlessly. Other dolls took advantage of her mediatic success and began to talk as well.

Dolls and cuddly toys who share home with humans are called in my world acoblats (joineds). They’ve got diverse personalities but something in common: they’re an absolute disgrace as far as writing is concerned. I have not succeeded in improving their spelling, it’s the way they are and it’s the way I accept them. In their easy-going manners, they have refused to do any writing for this blog unless they’re properly introduced to readers, so there we go:

My Laura

I got a Lesly (Nancy’s little sister) as a First Communion’s present. I found the poor thing of very little interest and had to shed heaps of tears to get this Laura, who in my family’s sight was as tiny as boring.

Maybe intending to show her buyers up, is my Laura has proved to have an overpowering personality, thus making everyone in the family love her dearly. She’s got particularly clear ideas too, although some of them are of that radical nature I won’t let her express them in this blog as the last thing I want is to cross large sectors of the society.

I had lost hope of being able to find another Laura, as she definitely was a discontinued doll. But thanks to two girls, one from Girona and another one from Tenerife (and of course thanks to the Net) my collection is now complete. You can see some of them here. I also ordered a nice boyfriend, Toño, for my favourite Laura. The boy, in her own words, “ze padeze al Pol Niuman” (”lookz lighk Pall Nooman”) and they get on extremely well because the poor guy is as docile as can be.

I reckon at this time most of you readers have decided mine is a clear case of mental disesase. Well, It’s ok for me, as few mental diseases are as harmless as this one.

Patucus (according to themselves, “Patu-qs”)

This character, commercially known as Flat Eric, appeared for the first time on TV in a jeans commercial. Some time after Ualaub (don’t panic, it’s a nickname) bought one for herself and decided she would call him Patucu from then on. More of the kind followed, and now we have 4 middle-sized patucus and 3 small ones.

Unlike Laura, patucus are sweet and friendly, although they can become little bastards for a while if provoked. They love animals and rocking babies, and middle-sized ones are terribly afraid of flying, but it’s something they would never admit. They’re crazy about milk, wine and all kinds of spirits. Oddly, patucus talk using sounds but they don’t open their mouths to make up words, which makes it hard to understand them at the beginning. After the first shock, difficulty lessens.

Whity and Sami

These two cuddly toys are a recent incorporation. As a matter of fact, they’re not mine, but the little girls’.

Whity is very much a woman in every traditional meaning of the word. She is coquettish, delicate and secretly (or not) in love with Gesche’s boyfriend (Gesche is another nickname, spot on!). Every now and then she tries hard to get pleasure from a slightly smaller teddy named Alfi but does not always succeed, hence her not being completely satisfied.

Sami the dolphin (”Thami”, he says) is desperatingly quiet. Whity’s hate for him is specially intense because since his arrival he has been torturing her with his philosophical remarks and ideas about the world. He even is supposed to own a company where hundreds of dolphins gather to think and improve the society. Don’t ask me how, but our Sami is ever-existing and an unspeakable jinx. According to himself, he had something to do with dinosaurs extinction, tsunamis and the Titanic tragedy, among many other things. It’s important to note that he never does anything bad on purpose nor loses his smile. In fact he always says he just wants people to be happy.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, long before some TV programmes started broadcasting ferocious satyres about marriage, Whity and Sami were having their own show at home.

Well, that’s the lot. It’s a long time since the joineds first made us laugh. Now they will be able to do it for the outside world. I don’t know when they’re going to turn up and write. They have now an open window to peep whenever they feel like to. I owed them so.

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