Sanlúcar de Barrameda

Sanlúcar, July 2008

I arrive to the conference in a somewhat unusual fashion.  Let’s say I am bound to take every possible form of transportation before I can finally get there.  It begins with a quick and convenient metro ride to the Barajas Airport.  This is where I catch my plane to Jerez.  At the very last minute I notice that the gate I just spent half an hour walking to has been changed for one at the opposite end of the airport.  I start a frantic half-run to get there on time and take a mental note of the absolute idiocy of the signs that direct people to the gates.  At one point it reads that I have 9 minutes to get to the gate and no more than three steps later another sign claims I have 7.  They must have accounted for a brief and unexpected chat with someone or maybe a quick stop at the bathroom, ¿yo qué sé?  It could as well mean that at that particular point of the airport they recommended having an on-the-spot caña (beer) to recharge and make yourself less pissed off you have to walk another 7 minutes just to reach your gate!  

The pace that I imposed on my already tired legs must have given me away because a guy with a guitar on his back caught up with me and asked if I was going to Jerez as well.  He also looked disturbed, but having run out of breath, I could care less for a chit chat in the form of a friendly discharge of anger, especially that the guy spoke Andaluz, a form of Spanish I have yet to gain domain over.  Had I known he was going to help me out later on, maybe I would have made an effort, but instead I just continued walking.  

Soon I learned that the next bus to Sanlúcar was scheduled an hour and a half later, a chunk of time I could not spare considering it was already 5 p.m. and the conference was starting at 8:30.  The only option left (apart from hitchhiking) was to take a taxi.  I had 10 euros left in my wallet - not enough, and the one and only ATM was out of order.  I was trapped and as I walked trying to make myself calm down, the guitar guy spotted me and asked if I wanted to share a cab with him.  He seemed very organized.  He already knew there was another girl in the same situation so the three of us hopped in the cab and ended up paying 5 euros each (that much I did have).  Not only that, but also the bus to Sanlúcar (because the taxi only took us to the bus station) cost a sweet sum of 1.40 euros!  Too bad the Andaluz had to leave for Cádiz right away because it turned out he was a musician and I was secretly hoping for a private blues concert at the bus station.  

The little that I saw of Jerez made me realize I was no longer in Castilla, more specifically, no longer in Madrid.  The town seemed semi asleep (5 o’clock is technically the end of siesta) with only a few locals occupying their regular corner bars and some young girls and boys cruising pointlessly on their vespas.  The bus station was mostly frequented by the borderline alcoholic middle-aged men ("borderline" because they were still quite alert despite the obvious intoxication) who, at the sight of two young and apparently foreign girls, could not go on about their usual business, whatever that might be.  They stared at us with amazement and did not mind being completely overt about it.  Not that it surprised me, but sadly here it must have been the highlight of their day.

As I watched the landscape during the ride I suddenly found myself overtaken by its beauty.  The endless sunflower fields created an unprecedented view for me.  I wanted to ask the driver to stop for a moment so that I could take a picture at the very least.  Had I been less tired and not so pressed with time I could have felt tempted to walk the rest of the way.

Upon entering Sanlúcar I realized it was much bigger that I had expected and, immediately, I had a feeling it was not going to be an easy to find the Fundación where the conference was taking place.  It was an extremely good call on my part to ask the taxi driver how to get there.  Out of nowhere he found this older couple that offered to drop me off.  At least that is what I intuited from the man’s completely incomprehensible mumbling.  I had to have him repeat everything three times before I could give a response that I hoped worked for whatever he was trying to convey to me.  It was a curious ride around Sanlúcar in an antiquated car with a couple taken out of a 50s movie.  The town had a provincial air to it, but it was sprinkled with a few gems and my driver made sure to point them out to me.  

Little did I know of the prize that was awaiting me at the end of this tiring journey.  La Fundación de los Duques Medina Sidonia stood around the corner from the medieval church the old man presented to me so proudly.  I had no idea what it meant to be staying overnight under the same roof with the duchess.  It means being surrounded by meticulously maintained and cared for garden with hot pink flowers dripping from the corners of the chalet.  I even spent a few minutes contemplating that gorgeous tree, but could not prove it was not real.  It means walking into hallways and rooms furnished with wooden antiques and (I am assuming) original paintings, many of them of religious themes.  It means having breakfast in the presence of several generations of aristocracy glaring at you from the innumerable well preserved photographs hanging on all the four walls.  As I delighted myself with prime café con leche and una tostada I studied these people’s facial expressions and body language.  The men tended to pose with an elevated chin and a look that communicated self-confidence while the women looked stern and somewhat withdrawn next to their tidy children that exhibited no facial expression.  

Staying at the Fundación also means stumbling across the tiny figure of the duchess herself (as I happened to stay on the same floor as her) and being unable to leave her as the entire four feet or so and eighty pounds of her are made up of pure charisma.  Every chance she gets she proclaims she is 70 years old as if that was the only reason she can always get her way and as if the only thing she could ever want is to be left alone when she reaches for yet another cigarette.  She never wastes a word when speaking; her sentences are sharp and decisive and no one ever thinks about challenging her.  I was stopped short when I tried to reply to her with something contrary to what she was saying.  She stated that she came prepared for the dinner wearing a jacket so that she would not catch pneumonia when smoking out in the balcony.  And then she added that smoking has been proven to prevent the Alzheimer’s disease.  I replied that it still will affect her respiration.  To that, Liliane replied that Isabel could take me no problem walking up the stairs at the Tribunal metro station (which has about 5 high escalators that do tend to put you out of breath).  I glanced over at the feeble, but still full of vitality duchess and though I wanted to doubt it, I had to agree she would have left me behind be it a race up the stairs or whatever other race really.  

Isabel made quite an impression on me during Eduardo Subirats’ conference.  Although he was the star that night, one could not deny that the duchess’ presence and direction over the event made it into a reunion of the entire town.  As I entered the conference hall two things caught my attention: the number of people and the incredibly huge painting of, ¡OJO!, a crucified Christ right above where the duchess and Eduardo were sitting.  I thought to myself: this is too good to be true!  Maybe the local bishop has come as well?  I will explain in a second why I reacted the way I did.

Looking around the audience, there was a little bit of everything; a potpourri as my landlady here tends to describe the Malasaña barrio we live in.  You had the devout graying regular church-goers (who, after seeing a painting of Christ decided they were in the right place) and the typical female gossip circles with the indispensable colorful fans to occupy their hands and mind, I suppose.  Then there were the simply curious with their cameras and even notepads.  There were also the refined wearing their finest clothes to a cultural happening.  Finally, there were also the town nobodies that must have heard someone mention the duchess was throwing something big at the palace and there was free manzanilla involved as well.  This potpourri turned out to be the ideal audience, nonetheless.  Except for a few isolated shameful moments (a woman asking Eduardo: what about the Asian giant? Why did he only mention Allah and not the Buddha?  Allah was brought up on the margin, as Eduardo happened to use the word Ojalá, which in Arabic is an invocation to Allah), they seemed to be genuinely interested and stayed until the very end.

The duchess set the mood right from the start by briefly stating her respect and admiration for Eduardo’s scholarship in the fields of philosophy and literature and by remarking it is a huge shame his books are not easily accessible.  I suppose Eduardo’s publishers will be getting a letter of complaint quite soon.  As she enumerated the books that Eduardo published, I got a feeling that, aside from a select few, the rest of the audience felt lost, but still curious.  From what I noticed, only 4 people fled the scene early, probably because they had a dinner to attend.  The rest did not dare to leave a mass presided by the duchess herself until the final blessing (¿manzanilla?).  However, it must be noted that a mass it was not.  Eduardo set the record straight right away by declaring how much he hates conferences composed of a mere reading of a text.  He was solely prepared to improvise.  At that moment I was so infinitely grateful I had been invited to participate in this conference.  What could be better than hearing your advisor, professor and mentor speak from the heart in front of a random combination of people?

He admitted from the beginning that the story he wants to tell is somewhat autobiographical, but for the purposes of this exposition, he named his protagonist “Juan Sintierra” after Goytisolo and Blanco White.  The title of the conference was provocative: “Un pasado sin futuro.  Un futuro sin pasado” ("A Past Without Future.  A Future Without Past").  I think, on a personal level, we all have experienced a similar feeling.  I, for starters, constantly find myself struggling with the past and the future, constantly trying to reconcile the two.  It was certainly comforting to hear that my professor faces similar dilemmas.  

At a moment when you discover the bare truth about your homeland and you get faced with all the atrocities that take place right in front of you, what do you do?  Do you run away in search of a better land and a better reality?  Can reality ever be better?  Or do you begin anew with a more cautious eye?  What does take place without any doubt is that you become agitated, shaken, upset and confused to a point that, in order to gain distance, you leave.  You begin your quest for the truth and there are many disappointments that surface at that moment.  You find out that the human nature takes pleasure in destruction.  It might be a guilty pleasure, but still a pleasure.  We think that only by destroying we are able to create something new.  Well, the same thing happens in nature.  Take a volcano, for example, with its unpredictable and life consuming eruptions.  As it spills its lava, entire villages, cultures, civilizations, and vegetation get devoured under its boiling temperature.  However, after that comes the rebirth.  The post volcanic soil happens to be extremely fertile and the life that gets born on it has an advantage of growing and blossoming to its fullest potential.  This begs the question; if the human race mimics the nature by wiping out civilizations, does it hope to create something more developed and more advantageous?  Or does it destroy for pure enjoyment and out of sheer brutality?

The idea of destruction brought Eduardo to the topic of Colonialism where discoveries meant wiping out whatever happened to exist in these territories.  All this, of course, was done in a missionary spirit, the grand conversion.  It was far from a natural way of dying or perishing of civilizations in Latin America, for example.  The project guided by the cross had as its goal to erase the past and the memory and inscribe a new history on this tabula rasa.  Salvation was the promise that was supposed to make it all worthwhile.  Have we managed yet to comprehend the scope of this infinitely cruel and hateful enterprise?

I glance up at the enormous painting of the Christ and I feel nauseous about how terribly wrong the people went about fulfilling God’s plan, granted there was one.  The Inquisition, the persecutions, the missionary escapades…  What have we done?  As my friend stated correctly, I believe, people will always find a way to f*** it all up.  We get so inventive with our quests!  If we were only this aggressive about preventing the wrong from happening, maybe we would not have to play the role of floor sweepers.  

Returning to the idea of destruction, it provoked me to think about self-destruction that seems to be the illness of this era.  Why do people feel this undeniable lure towards hurting themselves?  Is it that we are surrounded and, therefore, immune to destruction that we take pleasure in creating problems for ourselves we have to rid ourselves of the past?  What I realized from the story about Juan Sintierra is that you abandon not into oblivion, but into remembrance.  You learn to acquire distance, but not the kind that makes you no longer a part of the mess you left behind.  You are bound, at that point, to take responsibility and serve as a visionary to all the blinded fools that choose comfort over distress and speak only when being dictated to.  

I had a chance to look at two visionaries sitting side by side and the energy that their presence created could be felt throughout the conference.  I was completely stunned when later on, at a dinner that I was invited too as well, a man at the table that introduced himself as a doctor (medical, I assume) asked the following question: what is the role of philosopher in a society?  I turned my sight to the two visionaries that sat at the head of the table and I thought that any other question would not be as impertinent as this one.  Philosophers, my dear doctor, and not just any philosophers, but of the caliber of Eduardo and Isabel are the only truth tellers in this machinery we call humanity.  If the humanity is to resemble a perfect machine, well then the philosophers are those that examine the machine from the outside and demonstrate its flaws.  They are the engineers that overlook this machine and were it not for them we could just as well call ourselves geese.  They are the very few brave ones with open eyes and ears who simply cannot follow the leader while everyone else does it with indifference and relief that their brains were taken off duty.

After the conference everybody rushed out to the garden for a glass or two (or three) of complimentary manzanilla.  Doña Isabel chooses her chit-chat circles very carefully.  She stands clear of a circle of women gossipers that shamelessly approach her asking, "Where to now?"  The duchess barely pays any attention to them and only throws a word on the pass by, “Home”.  That will definitely have them talking for the next couple of days. 

As I get ready to retreat to my chambers (smiley face), I take one last look around me and cannot help but feel extremely fortunate for having been part of something as special and extraordinary as this.  Although places with breathtaking views and complex histories can leave a permanent imprint on your soul, it is people that have the power of changing you forever.  I cannot deny that some change took place in me that night amidst all these strangers and thanks to the duchess and my advisor.  The past and the present suddenly fused into one and all that came before and after happened now. 

A few years after the conference, I learned about the duchess' passing.  Her tiny figure suddenly stood in front of me with her inquisitive eyes curiously peering into my soul.  That look is what makes me hope that what she saw, what she deduced about me then wasn't disappointing and that it wouldn't be disappointing now either. 

A Witold Gombrowicz Unsent Contest Entry

There  was a contest once organized by followers of Ferdydurke asking the following question: "How, for example, does the question of our manhood present itself?"  I labored on the issue at hand for several days and then abandoned it after getting discouraged by a man, my man at the time who made me feel guilty for having put my hands into something that was rather banal.  Well, banal or not, I just happened to stumble across it and am resuscitating it because it brought a smile to my face and maybe it will do the same to those that happen to read Polish.  And those familiar with Gombrowicz's work will hopefully find some of him here, as that was the primary goal, however challenging to reach. 

1.„Jak, na przykład, przedstawia się sprawa naszej męskości?”

List do mężczyzny:

Drogi mężczyzno ty!

Piszę do Ciebie, bo jak tu nie pisać gdy materiału dostarczasz mi tyle i ciągle?  Przyglądam ja Ci się z boku przyrównując Twoje pojęcie męskości z Twoją męskością, którą na codzień uprawiasz i rozbieżności tych dwóch zjawisk nie jestem w stanie zrozumieć.  Bo gdy Ty mnie ostrzegasz przed moją uległością i gdy pragniesz by ostrzej do Ciebie się zabierać i ja, powiedzmy sobie, gdy tak nagle na Ciebie naskoczę całą tą moją kobiecą sobą i siłą matki rodzicielki i wolą i intuicją, to czemu Ty, mój drogi, uskakujesz ode mnie niczym prądem porażony?  Czemu Ty nie z dumą na mnie spojrzysz, że ja taką odwagą Cię uraczyć potrafiłam, tylko w zamian, najeżasz się i stroszysz?  Chciałeś przecież by do Ciebie bardziej po męsku.  To czemuż gdy męskość Twa w twarz zarobiła od mojej to Ty do mnie doskakujesz?  Przecież ja kobietą jestem i męskość moja Twojej zagrażać nie powinna.

Powtarzasz mi i zaznaczasz, że znajomość nasza platoniczną jest i żebym ja czasem nie wyobrażała sobie Bóg wie co.  Żebym ja nie wyolbrzymiała przywiązania naszego cielesnego i tymże nie próbowała ukrócić wolności Twojej tak pieczołowicie strzeżonej.  A gdy drogę Twą zdarzy się przeciąć dama o nietypowych wdziękach, kocich ruchach i polotnym spojrzeniu to cóż że Tobie nagle język plątać się zaczyna i że zapominasz na czas jakiś o mym istnieniu?  Przecież piękno z zewnątrz tak oto narzucone należy obdarzyć podziwem, rozpoznać!  Oburzenie moje wtedy, w Twym mniemaniu, wypływa z głęboko utajonego uczucia niedowartościowania.  Jest ono zupełnie bezpodstawne, bo jakże mnie złość ponieść może jak Ty mnie sobie obrałeś a nie tamtą?  Zrozumiałe, ja się cieszyć powinnam, że bok Twój dane mi jest dekorować choć Ty wielbicielem wszelakich ozdób, zdaje się, nie jesteś.  Inaczej sprawy się mają gdy to ja mężczyznę jakiegoś kontem oka obrzucę i jego przystojności w duszy oddam pokłon.  Wtedy bójcie się niebiosa, obraza stanu!

Zdarza się, owszem, że świat mój nabiera nagle ciemnych barw na dzień lub dwa i ślad zanika po dotychczasowej nagminnej dobroci, szczodrości, posłuszności mej.  Ty zamiast usunąć się z planu, dać nagromadzonej furii znaleść upust, prosisz się wręcz o to jadło komentarzami typu, życie sobie komplikuję, że my kobiety jakieś schizy mamy, hormony, fazę księżyca nie tą, fochy, nie dorobione mamy pod czaszką.  A gdy Ty dzikość dowolnie uprawiasz, a ja drobię przy Tobie na paluszkach, na opuszkach i chucham i głaszczę i ulizuję to nikt nie docieka czy to pod normalność do końca podchodzi.  Prawda, u mnie hormony, księżyce, czyli, jak by nie patrzeć, czynniki zewnętrzne burzą mój spokój.  U Ciebie?  Krzywe spojrzenie w pracy, zajechana droga, siniak, nadmiar lub brak piwa, nuda, głupia piosenka na radiu itp. itd.  Nie ważne, że dzikość w nas drzemie mocniej czy słabiej.  Ważne dzikość z człowiekiem nie mylić.