Spanish Summer 2012 v.1.

4,840 words

08-04-12

This has been the best Spanish summer ever! And our trip started out miserably enough: a six hour wait on a stuffy Air France plane, the flight eventuallly cancelled, and starting all over again in the morning. Poor Naomi, who had just gotten her license a few weeks before, had to drive us back and forth to the airport. But then our flights were fine, we got to Vigo on June 28, and walked into our apartment, findng everything in order. The weather was cool and foggy for the first week or so. I spent my time writing my dcimas and practicing my plastic water bottle drums. There was other, worse noise to deal with: the little Tandy supermarket located on the ground level directly beneath us was remodelling, and the drilling, sanding, pounding, and other unidentifliable racket was irritating. But we were happy, making our visits to the cousins and old friends, taking long walks, getting a taste of the annual town fiesta associated with the Virgen del Carmen, and stuffing our faces with mussels, sardines, octopus, ribs, paella, fine wines, and whatever we could get our hands on. I made sure to keep up with my exercises and to practice my drumming and singing, committing my poetic dialogue with Naomi to memory. Naomi and I had a very nice piece with a perfect theme: gratitude. Often my controversias (poetic dialogues) have been entertaining enough but essentially trivial or artificial arguments. This time we dropped the ersatz rivalry and focussed on sincere recitations regarding the phenomena and people we gave thanks to. I was very pleased that Naomi insisted on writing some of her dcimas herself. But let me not get ahead of my story. One highlight was a visit from our dear friend and long-time SFUSD colleague, Susana Baldwin. Susana is Spanish (with an American father, long story there)and grew up in Madrid, but she has spent many years living in San Franciscos Mission DIstrict. She arrived with her sister Diana, now living in Madrid after a long stay in California. We took several

day trips, including a visit to the hot springs near Ourense, a visit to Vigos Old Town for oysters, and a trip south to visit the wildly eclectic romanesque cathedral at Tui and take a quick trip into Portugal to check out Valena, an 18th century fortified town that commands the Rio Mio and is reached from Spain by a lovely one-lane iron bridge built by Louis Eiffel. For the most part we didnt do anything new but visitors always bring a fresh eye and their delight helped us to appreciate sights we had allowed ourselved to take for granted. We had several wonderful meals with cousins Vicente and Betty. The most fun was watching the European Soccer Cup game in which Spain slaughtered Italy 4-0. Vicente is very excitable and has an extensive vocabulary of colorful expressions which he displayed vigorously throughout the evening. We also enjoyed beautiful dinners with Merche and Manolo. We didnt just freeload either; we entertained several times in our apartment, which, while much smaller than the granite edifices high on the hills and owned by those two families, is right on the water and offers a stunning view of Vigo across the bay. Another highlight was the sumptuous luncheon prepared for us on July 16, my 59th birthday, by Marilyns cousin Roberto Coloret and his wife Elena. There were a dozen guests, all family. We ate razor clams, langistinos (large shrimp I guess) paella, fried potatoes, salad from their garden, a roasted meats platter (churrasco) that included ribs, chops, sauasages, chorizo, and I dont know what all else. Exquisite wines in unlabelled bottles (wine purchased in bulk and shared amognst several families) were produced, and when Elena served two fancy homemade cakes, out came the expresso and the liqueurs. I offered a few decimas that were well recieved, but the real entertaiment was provided by two diners who had an increasingly heated argument about the root causes of Spains extremely distressing financial woes. Veiled but unmistakeble references to Francoism were voiced and cooler heads managed to change the subject before things got downright nasty.

Robertos family shows some of the effects of la crisis. Like hundreds of thousands of small depositors he lost most of his life savings in a scandalous maneuver (los preferentes) by the local savings and loan institution, a situation which is now in court. Roberto also will soon be in court for participating in a peaceful demo at that financial institution. Of their four children, one is unemployed and another just announced that she is closing her small, classy, clothing store. They explained some of the effects of the crisis: unemployment at 24%, sales taxes raised to 21%, salaries cut, pensions cut, services cut, retirement age raised to 67, less vacation time, new copays on medicine, and on and on. And they are not out of the woods yet by any means. The crisis also brings political challenges; many of the autonomous regions are refusing to go along with the service cuts, and most of the miners are on strike, demonstrating frequently, sometimes peacefully and sometimes violently, armed with rocket launchers they craftily built themselves. One amusing bit of political theatre was a notorious incident involving Andrea Fabra, a congresswoman from the ruling right-wing PP party, and a young member of a powerful political dynasty in the Castelln region. When President Rajoy told the parliament that his newly announced cut to unemployement insurance was actually for the good of the jobless because it would encourage them to make extra efforts to find work, there was a murmer from the left opposition to the effect that the statement was an insult to the victims of the crisis. Andrea Fabra took the floor and said three words: que se jodan (F--- em). While she lamely argued later that she was referring to her political rivals, not the unemployed, as was percieved at the time, she was criticized from all sides and eventually had to apologize. I made a mental note: use this incident when the time is right. We made some improvements on the apartment too. We brought some very cute drawer pulls with us, and we had the kitchen cabinets, formerly a depressing dark brown, painted a pale yellow that lightens up the place and sets off the dark fish-shaped drawer pulls nicely. On our trip south we

bought a few new plates to mount on the walls, and we also framed and hung a few new posters and an elaborate quilt made for Natalia by our frend Karen Grady. On July 18 we started off on our annual trip south. We had hotel reservations in Madrid, where we met up with Susana and DIana for a tapas dinner and later a long walk through old and new neighborhoods of Madrid. We enjoyed the results of a titanic engineering project that reversed an ill-considered plan that years ago forced Madrids Manzanares RIver into an underground channel and put a ringroad or beltway, called the M 30, over ground. The river is now the center of a pleasant (if sterile) public space and the busy freeway is hidden under ground. We had a great breakfast in a very Madriddish bar and got back on the road, finally reaching Villanueva de Tapia (site of the annual dcimas festival which is my passion, the highlight of my year) around 8:00. I was absolutely delighted that the Puerto Ricans of Grupo Mapey were already there, and the Cubans arrived shortly after I did. Their delegation consistted of six excellent decimistas (but, unfortunately, no musicians), including some new blood: the fabulous and hilarious veteran Tomasita Quiala and the young Orismay Hernndez, winner of last years pie forzado contest, and a beautiful singer to boot. Marilyn had driven off to Mlaga to pick up Naomi, who joined us just as we were called to dinner. After dinner I was pretty tired and was getting ready for bed when Lola Cdoba, an extraordinary character I met last year and who deserves a detailed sidebar, showed up and casually persuaded me to come out to the poolside bar to hang out. In my usual clueless way I walked right into an ambush, an ambush of love, an act of homage that left me breathless. Lola Cdoba presented me with a humorous portrait that gave me a quixotic look, and then revealed a book she had prepared, with affectionate dcimas from my friends. Those

poets then read their dcimas aloud to me as I choked back tears. Lola had even included a fairly clever dcima I had written to her in praise of the festival, which gave me the opportunity to declaim without having to improvise. I had bought a very fine bottle of aged Cuban rum (Matusalm, for the cognocenti) and I ran to the room to get it and share it with my friends. The bottle, I must say, did not last long. The next day I practiced with Naomi, enjoyed lunch with the assembled poets, and rested. Marilyn and Naomi went off on an ill-defined errand and returned, to my utter amazement and delight, with Natalia, who was supposedly in New York. Marilyn explained that after all the dcima festival had been a tradition in our family for a decade now and that she had decided to fly Natalia in to see me perform. (Some of my readers may remember that last year I went to Tapia all by myself and then Marilyn and the girls arrived unannounced at the last minute to take part in the event.) The festival began that night with a pasacalles or parade, in which we played and sand as we wended our way down the main street of this little town (population 1,200), past the town hall to the central plaza. I had a hard time walking due to my new drums, a present from Jess Labrador, a noted sculptor who lives nearby. This pair of drums used two different sized plastic bottles painted on the inside and in general conformed to my original design. But the bass drum bottle was so long, it interfered with my right leg and I could not really walk and play. No matter, we sang in the Puerto RIcan plena style and reached the plaza right on time, 11:00 pm. The night ended around 5:00 a.m. The stage and plaza had been decorated by Mr. Labrador and they looked great.There were risers set up on either side of the plaza, and ropes decorated with little flags were affixed to the newly renovated belltower of the church, providing a novel visual stimulus as well as a pleasant susurration as the nighttime breeze vibrated the little flags. The stage was simple and elegant, the lighting effective and unobtrusive, and the sound design allowed for speakers thoughout the plaza, allowing for

good distribution of the sound, although to be sure the sound was not really well managed the first night. Two video cameras were trained on the stage at all times, and qualified technicians mixed the images in real time, creating a visually arresting live feed that was broadcast over the internet and recorded as well. Needless to say I am anxious to see this material. I belive that the Trovo sin Traba (TST) organization will sell the recordings to help finance next years festival circuit. I say circuit because one of TSTs innovations has been to establish a Ruta del Trovo which takes the performers to stages in Almera, Caretgena, Murcia, and, next year, Ronda. A screen was set up beside the stage and a brief film was shown to honor a beloved local poet who had died a few months before. A plaque was presented to his family by the mayor (doa Encarna, of the United Left party, who has been mayor of Villanueva de Tapia for over a decade) and the show got underway. For once I felt secure about my performance, which was scheduled for that night, so rather than exhausting myself backstage obsessively practicing, or hanging out and guzzling beer with the other poets in their bullpen off to the side, or worst of all grimly recording everything with my own video equipment, I could actually sit in the audience with Marily and the girls and just enjoy the show with my family. About 2:00 am I was getting restless and after a local group finished their set I got up to walk around. Naomi dashed out to get me back to my seat. There was a video, she said, that I really ought to see. It was alread running by the time I sat down, and after a few titles I heard the Beatles I get by with a little help from my friends and saw an old black and white photograph that caused my mouth to literally drop in amazement: My dad, in his 30s, his mother, and baby ME in front of our old house on 35 Underwood Street. The pictures continued in chronological order, 20 or so, ending with shots of me at Villanueva. Then two humorous bits of film,

bloopers if you will, were projected: a sequence from 2004 showing a English-speaking Canary Islander with two small water bottles strapped to his waist, parodying my style and mocking my accent mercilessly, then a film from 2005 in which my drums fell apart on stage. The film closed with a single stanza from my first performance in the festival of 2003. Well, I was stunned, but then I was hustled up on stage and listened as the MC read a brief biography detailing how I got involved in the dcima business. I had sort of pre-loaded an all-purpose thank-you dcima, since Marilyn had hinted broadly that it might be a good idea since they might do something else that night. So I embraced the MC (the Cuban poet and actor Roche), said my piece, and began to walk off stage. But they headed me back...they were just getting started. Encarna, the mayor, carrying a fancy box, walked on first, followed by Roberto Silva and Luis Paz Papillo, the presidents, respectively, of the Puerto Rican and Cuban dcima societies), Gerardo el Carpintero (at 80 the dean of the local poets), and the sculptor Jess Labrador, who stood smiling slyly with an odd shaped and heavy package wrapped in paper perched on his shoulder. Encarna spoke for a while, praising especially my early efforts to publicize and record the festival. Roberto Silva followed, speaking in the kindest terms about me and my work, and expressed the hope that the homage would benefit my heaith. Papillo had more nice things to say and added a cute dcima, El Carpintero sang me a nice quintilla (a five line verse in a flameco melody) and Jess finally was able to unwrap his present to me: a sculpture that depicted me in the same guise as the drawing I mentioned earlier. The piece was made of stucco applied to a wire armature and was quite heavy and possibly delicate. I was relieved when he told me offstage that he would ship it to me when I got back to San Franscisco. At this point Marlyn and the girls were called to the stage. Marilyn had been filming the event but of course she had to abandon that chore, so I have no record of the rest of the event (until the professional video is

available). But as best as I can recall, Natalia then sang me a few dcimas that I had taught her long ago, and she was followed by Naomi, who wrote a two dcima piece that, despite a few errors of form, brought the house down, or at least got to me: En el aire me alzabas con pura adoracin como un astro en mocin en tus brazos volaba En tu suave voz cantabas rimas lindas y graciosas fueron lessiones valiosas en ligera poesa y alcanzaron que este da cante rimas armoniosas Es a mi y a muchos otros que enseaste este mundo tan potico y profundo que ilumina nuestros rostros. Es por eso que nosotros te vamo a reconocer por gran decimista ser y ser buen padre primero te digo cunto te quiero este bello anochecer . Did I plotz? Next, they joined togther and sang a duet version of a song in the earnest nueva cancin style of Mercedes Sosa, Si se muere el cantor with impeccable diction, intonation, and harmony, supported by the exquisite guitarist Paquillo, a true artist whom we spent some time with this summer. I took the song as a tribute to all the singers and poets of the world who apply their skills to addressing the critical issues of today. The song was an inspired choice since it brought the focus back to the group. I slipped back to my seat to see my daughters, beautiful young women with great skill and panache, who absolutely OWN that stage. Wow. You raised me up into the air with pure adoration like a planet in motion I flew in your arms In your soft voice you sang lovely, graceful rhymes these were valuable lessons in quick, light verse with the result that today I can sing harmonious stanzas Myself and many others learned from you about this world so poetical and profound that illuminates our faces. For that reason we are going to recognize you as a great decimista and above all a good father I tell you how much I love you on this beautiful evening.

All that took place on Friday. Saturday Naomi and I performed our gratitude controversia. We were well prepared and I was nervous but confident. During the performance I experienced a Parkinson symtom: I felt my hands turn to dough, floppy and unresponsive. Basically I could not play. I kept at it, though, and we finished the set. We got some very enthusiastic, even tearful congratulations from the audience, although the other poets were reticent. I felt terrible but Marilyn assured me that it was actually one of my better bits. When I heard a recording I felt better: the drums were ampified at so low a volume that my mushy playing was scarely audible. Bad sound had saved the day. Sunday I did another set. First I recited a sentimental three stanza piece praising Andalucia and Galicia and identifying Marilyn as the perfect combination of those two regions (since her parents hail from those two far distant corners of Spain). Then I sang a glosa, a 17th century form that uses a quatrain followed by four decimas, which inexplicably had never before been used at the festival. Again, my hands went mushy on me, but I did not get rattled and just concentrated on transmitting the emotional and thematic content of my piece. It went much better. Naomi had left for Mlaga, but Nalalia had written a beautiful dcima about Andaluca and performed it a capella in the mournful Spanish melody style, a subgenre of punto cubano. She tore it upNatalia is really a performer. While I cant critique the overall effect of the festival I can report that the consensus was that this 12th edition, despite the severe economic pressures that almost led to the cancellation of the project, was among the best. The key, I believe, was good programming. The heart of the festival is not in the set pieces by the groups that represent each region or counry, it is in the cruces or mash-ups that pit, for example, a sunburned Cuban guajiro and his guitar-driven dcimas with a sly Andalusian singing five-line quintillas a capella. The matches were thoughfully planned, and the unique challenges of each pair of poets created a lot of interest. Another success was the presence of new talent from Cuba, especially the

incomparable and irresistable Tomasita, who has a huge personality that radiates charm and good humor. The organization and the presnce of the new TST organization was very important in leeking the festival alive. By organizing a concert series they were able to spread the costs of the event amongst various municipalities and private donors. The down side of the high powered Cuban delegation was that since they had no musicians, the Puerto Ricans had to play for an unacceptably long time. No union on earth would allow its members to be overworked like these guys were. And the Puerto Ricans are the first to admit that, while they do a good job playing the Cuban styles of accompaniment, Cuban experts with the correct instrumentation would be a better solution. Finally I must say that we miss the old days when we could expect to see a wide range of countries represented: Panam, Mxico, Argentina, Venezuela, and Chile, to name a few we have come to love, have very strong dcima traditions. We can only hope that conditions will soon improve enough overall to allow these countries to participate again. To those who wonder how in the hell I rate an invitation when world-class poets from South America are not invited, the answer is simple: I work cheap. Since I am in Spain anyway, I do not require airfare. We took our time on Monday morning, staying for a last lunch with the guys before leaving for Granada where we reunited with Naomi. Ill spare you the details of Granada, but we enjoyed seeing our friends, eating at our favorite restaurants, and visiting a few spots of historic interest. Thursday we drove to Alhama de Almeria, home town of my late father-inlaw. We had quickie visits with the cousins there, and made our way to our little hotel in Mojcar, a beach town in Almera, where we had a cute little hotel near the beach. We spent time with a family who had put up Naomi for a while, then went to see a flamenco performance at a

chiringuito (outdoor seaside restaurant) featuring the ubiquitous Paquillo. This was in the town of Palmerola, famous for an incident in the 1960s when a U.S. Air FOrce plane jettisoned two H-bombs into the ocean near the shoreline. The next day we swam in the sea (at Mojcar, NOT Palmerola) for a few minutes of perfect bathing: warm, clean water, just enough wave action to be interesting, Then we left Naomi with a friend and headed north via Portugal, using secondary roads dictated to us by the almighty Garmin, a GPS device that was like a pushy yenta that dispensed navigational advice throughout the trip. Friday we had more serious visits and Saturday night we had another concert in Las Norias, a suburb of El Ejido, a town in Almera famous for an anti-immigrant pogrom a few years ago. I sang a modified one-man version of the piece I sang with Naomi. I had decided to leave my new drums in Tapia, since they were hard for me to play and in any case there was no room in the car. So I accompanied myself with the claves only, and when that was hard to handle I stopped playing them for a while to concentrate on my stanzas (and to free my hands up fpr the expressive gestures that help get a poem across to the audience). I felt good about my performance, and Natalia wrote and performed new dcimas with a provocative radical political tone, accompanied by Paquillo the flamenco guitarist playing buleras to Natalias punto cubano, a novel combination. It was fantastic to see my dcima friends again, and I was espcially glad to see my friend and mentor Alexis Daz Pimienta again after several years. The event was excellent and ended early (2:00 a.m.) we said our goodbyes, made our way to our modest little hotel El Eden a few minutes away. Sunday we had a good breakfast, cringed as we heard some Guardia Civil officers shout Viva Espaa, viva Franco, and drove to Mlaga with Natalia. On the way we stopped at the caves of Nerja,

limestone caverns that were continuously inhabited for millenia before the entrance was covered up and forgotten until the 1950s, when a few sxhoolboys discovered a way in and were shocked to find human skeletons (from the Bronze Age, it turned out) neatly arranged inside. As is common in these stories, nobody would believe the children. I am glad to say that it was their teachers who finally decided to see for themselves, leading to important discoveries that included cave paintings that unfortunately are not open to the public. Anyway the visit was very interesting and we had a nice lunch on the patio outside, with a magnificent view of the Mediterranean coast glistening below us. Then, refreshed, we stuffed ourselves into our little red VW Polo and reached Mlaga by 6:00. We stayed in a lovely hotel (Hotel Picasso, named after Malagas most famous son). We walked a few blocks to the beach, but found the water so full of trash that we walked back and bathed in the pool, where we observed dozens of parrots in a fig tree, We had a simple dinner while watching Spain lose an Olympic soccer game. In the morning we dropped Natalia off at the airport for her trip back to San Francisco, then went northwesr through Badajoz province, slipping into the Alentejo region of Portugal almost withut realizing it; no custims, check, no guards, no passport controls. We often speed through Portugal without really stopping to look around. This time was different. Marilyn has found us a most unusual hotel at a bargain rate: a fully restored small fortress that had once belonged to the Knights Templar. We had a sumptious feast of a meal in a fancy restaurant nearby where we ate mountainous platefuls of roast kid, the specialty of the house (and apparently of every restaurant in the town of Condeixa Nova). It was delicious. Monday we bought some exquisite local ceramics and vsited an extensive

Roman ruined town at Conmbriga, notable for its mosaic floors. From there we drove north to Coimbra, where we saw the university, which had moved there from Lisbon in 1350 and is still in full use. What we saw there was absolutely magnificant and altogehter unexpected. The high point was the library, which some guidebooks declare to be the worlds most beautiful library, although the reading room at El Escorial has got to be in the running. We were intrigued when a young student came in, consulted with the librarian, used a ladder to reach a shelf at least 10 feet off the floor, and walked out with a crumbling ancient volume in her bare hands, withour so much as a plastic bag. We were exhausted by then but Marilyn insisted on one more stop in Portugal; we had to buy a bedspread in Valena, apparently the drygoods capital of the whole solar system. It was a quick visit, I must admit: the automatic parking system refused to charge us. We got home before nightfall. Our last week in Moaa has been like the first: eating great meals, visits with family, a beautiful trip to the peerless beaches of Nerja and Barra (clothing optional) which we encounted at low tide for the first time. we also paid a visit to the Parkinson ASsociation in Bueu, a town some 20 minutes from Moaa. The association provides comprehensive services to its members and the workers there were very helpful to me, giving me books ad answering questions that have long puzzled me. The weather has gone cold and rainy again, and right now a thick fog has casued Vigo to disappear utterly (not necessarily a bad thing). We remain serenely happy. This has been the best summer ever, a sort of second honeymoon, since we are without our children for the first time ever. EPILOGUE 8/14/2012 We have now been home a week. Our suitcases, lost in limbo for several days, are unpacked and put away. Marilyns mother Aurita is back with us and school has begun for the teachers. I helped Marilyn ready her new

room at Buena VIsta, where she has returned after some seven years at Hoover. Natalia has a lob at the Buena VIsta (BV) childcare, and another job as a paraprofessional at Bryant Schhool, which is located where BV used to be. One of the new teachers there is a girl who was Natalias classmate in Kindergarten. Amazing to me, how things turn out. I made a slideshow to illustrate the summer trip. Please check it out on YouTube: http://youtu.be/Le62stGwBm8 Best wishes to all and thanks for your interest in our experience.