CHANGING EYES

Perspective. Look. Angle. Glasses. Funny how changes in them will affect our perception of something. We can look at the wheel, or at the spokes, even at the spaces between them. And we see something different depending on our focus. We can look at a woman with long blond hair and tight jeans or we can look at her defensive pose, in open contradiction with her fake smile. We can look at a city through the asphalt, the cement, the noise and the filth, or we can see the trees, the plants, the bushes, the colorful flowers bursting through the cracks on cement walls and decrepit narrow hill streets. We can look at the cold outside in the streets, or we can focus on the warmth of our dreams, our books inside. We can dread the grey clouds or we can smile at the blue chunks opening through.

Times are changing here. I will be gone from Manzanita in a couple of days. Sadly so. I love this place. Pete Seeger died yesterday, the great singer-warrior for causes. Thank you Mr. Seeger. I shall overcome too, for this is also my land.

NOTES FROM "LA MADRIGUERA"

A madriguera is a den, a cave, a hideout or it could be something like a nest, not necessarily for birds, a cuddling place where mammals, take a bear, go to hibernate.

And here is where I am, in my madriguera. Not for long, since I am moving out due to the end of my sublease and the return of my sublessor. I will miss this place, especially moments like this one, when I can look outside the crappy old, glassed-door and see the little hummingbird batting its wings, or the sun buttering up the side of the house. But c'est la vie. I will find another cool Madriguera. Promise.

Other than that, I am just loving it, and I don't need a big mac for that. Quite the contrary. There is a story brewing and it's shaping up pretty good. Things would be close to platinum grade if my neighbor conducted his phone business inside the house instead of hogging the common driveway's air space with his honky-tonk conversations. But he is who he is. Live and let live. Listen and let listen...or whatever. He's got a cool dog and he himself (neighbor, not dog) is a decent fellow, aside from his driveway over-phoning. So I'll move forward and up, and let it go.

I watched "Prisoners" the other night, with Gyllenhaal and Jackman. Great movie. One of the best picture I've seen all season, perhaps with 12 Years a Slave. Great script, characters, cinematography... Right on. The Oscars will go to Gravity (are they really making enough money to pay for all the marketing campaign? Geez) and 12 Years. Wolf will get something too (DiCap is excellent and so is Hill). I hope American Hustle doesn't run with it; it was good but not great. I know J. Lawrence is America's current darling but her NJ neglected-bitch wife performance is not convincing to me. Bale is awesome though. His does. I could say more about more, but I won't. Oh wait: I'll say that All is Lost is an excellent film and Redford is very good. It won't get Awards because the geezers and geezerettes that vote in this thing won't have seen it out of thematic fear. Yes, it is unnerving, but it's a movie. And it's good.

And one last note to customer service agents in the banking industry and others (including waitresses), in Spain and around the world. Customer service means that the agent/waitress is supposed to serve the customer, not the other way around. If that cramps your style, you should find another line of work.

That's all for now from the Madriguera.

A ROMANI MAN in LOS FELIZ

A few days ago I was sauntering around Los Feliz at sunset time, listening to Onda Cero radio on my iPod when a man sitting outside a donut store on Franklin and Hillhurst said something to me as I passed by. I had my earphones on so I didn't hear what he said but I stopped, took one of them out and asked him "what was it"? He wanted to know if I am from Brooklyn because I was wearing my brown (Brooklyn) T-shirt. I told him I had lived there. He was an old man with gray hair and dressed in a well-worn suit. His olive face framed two kind and mischievous hazelnut eyes. He asked me where I was from originally and I told him. He said he was Romani, born in Brooklyn. He started telling baseball stories of his beloved Brooklyn–hence his interest–Dodgers and we hit it off. He was well spoken, cultured and keen on talking. I gently refused his offer of a free palm reading (future will happen and I prefer not to be pressured to make all the right decisions or to accept resignedly an allegedly unbending unpleasant destiny) but he went on talking. Clearly he had found a good conversation companion and was happy to forsake his seer instinct for a while. He did inquire a few times if I was a teacher or a doctor, whose look or energy apparently I emanate, but other than that he was mostly interested in talking history and sharing his family and group stories. The afternoon light was beginning to acquire that orange Los Angeles hue and the air was balmy. A woman inside the donut store looked out into the horizon across the glass while her hands played distractedly with a phone; her eyes grazed my face through the glass like a cat's attention, appearing to be there but not really; I was clearly invisible to her. But not to Tomas, the old Romani man. He politely asked me if I had time to hear a story and I said yes. I had some work to do back at home, besides my entire life to sort out, but perhaps this was part of that untangling process, I thought: the situation, the place, the time seemed to beckon me to stay, so I sat down with a smile on my face and prepared to listen. For the next half hour Tomas took me on an endearing trip with an old Romani fable passed down, he said, from generation to generation, a moving fairy tale full of ingenuity and humor that seemed to contain, among the golden elements of traditional tales (kings and princesses, weddings and unconditional love), new moral quandaries and a foresight into the creation myth of the Romani people, or at least of their wandering ways. I am not going to tell the story for Tomas wants to write a book of them (he has more, he said). Indeed he asked me to write them for him, and I may very well do. I'll keep you posted. But what a great way to end my afternoon walk it was.

REYES/KINGS DAY

January 6th is the Epiphany, Kings Day in Spain. It's my favorite day of the Christmas season, and the last. I have beautiful memories of when I was a child, even though I never received what I had asked for in my letter. That always puzzled me: can't they read, these Kings? I would wonder. But I am a good sport and always ended up loving what I did get. Being here, in Los Angeles, alone, I wasn't sure if the Kings would come this far. Price of oil is high and their camels may need extra water to cross oceans and continents. I worried. Unnecessarily so, it turns out: the Kings arrived punctually, leaving their gifts by the raggedy shoes I left near the window, as tradition requests: three beautiful books, leather-bound Conan Doyle, illustrated Shakespeare and soft-covered Koertge, a sweet pencil and a DVD-pack with some of my beloved Westerns and a juicy special edition of Jaws. This time they nailed it, them Kings! So many years have passed and I finally got all I wanted and more (as some things are too personal to share here). It is never too late to be a child, and THAT is the best gift. Isn't life grand?

FUTEBOL

Domingo 10 de la mañana. Se juntan padres de niños de la escuela Franklin y un servidor, que no soy padre pero podría serlo. Correteamos un poco dirigidos por el entrenador, un irlandés sacado del troquel de arquetipos, y echamos una partidillo. Una pachanga en el sentido más esencial de la palabra. Pocos conocen este deporte así que el nivel es altamente mejorable. Si añadimos las inclemencias físicas de la mayoría, el espectáculo desde fuera debe ser para descojonarse y no parar. Pero hago un poco de deporte, corro y, de vez en cuando me sale alguna jugadita con pase entre lineas que llega a su destinatario; otros no llegan bien porque el receptor ni olió la posibilidad del pase, inició el desmarque quedándose clavado, o yo envié una castaña infumable. Pero está bien. Ando en período de recuperación física (espalda, piernas, uñas y cejas) así que piano, piano voy entrando en forma. Mi único deseo es que no haya lesionados. Por lo demás, este domingo ilumina mis mañanas. Y eso que hoy hay derby en Anoeta. Veré la segunda parte, porque lo primero es lo primero. Aupa Real.

HOOOOOLAAAAA