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

GODFATHER

I and II. What a feast at the New Beverly Theater in Los Angeles. Good, old-fashioned double feature at a reasonable price, with juicy inexpensive food and old-time atmosphere. Getting in at 7 pm and exiting at 2 am after enjoying two of the best classics in movie history. What a treat. Can't say enough about Pacino and his masterful performance, one of the top acting jobs in history. Keaton is magnificent, and so is Duval. Experiencing things like this makes it worthwhile to put up with some of the junky side of living here. And the NewBev, what a venue. It's like going back to my hometown theater 40 years ago. Back to the roots, when I began to love movies; well, not just watching movies, but actually GOING to the movies. Those long lines as a 6-year old, bundled up against the cold, 10 pesetas in the pocket to buy the ticket and candy at "Los Frailes". The smell of pop corn, roasted corn, gummy bears and potato chips; the buzz in the room prior to the lights' going dark; the silence as soon as the roaring lion, or the mountain, or the torch lady, or the broadcasting tower, or the island appeared; the magic slide into a fantasy world where home sadnesses and family squabbles dissipated into endless blue horizons, galloping horses, pirates and sea battles, Roman gladiators or duck soup. The innocence is not there anymore, but that inner light prevails to the point where I can almost return to that virginal state. And I love it. Thanks to masterpieces like Godfather and the unaffected purity of places like the New Beverly Theater. We even had an intermission after reel number 7. Beautiful end of the year.

LOS ANGELES SKID ROW

December 2013. Any day. 10 pm. Christmas lights, Art Walk, galleries and fun; hipster crowds packing hip restaurants in downtown LA. You ask the forces that (wanna) be in the city: urban developers, politicians, yuppies, up and coming financiers and techies, pretend artists and even some real ones, and you'll hear about how LA's downtown is booming; it's a new era; it's more and more like NY. Los Angeles is rebirthing, finally arriving as a first-rate, modern, urban (not suburbialized and parochially self-centered mid-American city). Cool. Yet, just one block off Main Street, across Los Angeles Street, one runs into a darkness and bleakness that seems to me a mixture of Soviet deprivation, Third World poverty and American social neglect. Tent "neighborhoods" on the sidewalks compete for space with rampant trash, meandering and sleeping men, small circles of either companions in disgrace or looting drunkards, depending on the perspective of the on-looker, rats venture boastfully on the dim streets and retreat back into their holes when cars approach. Never seen such misery in my life. Anywhere. It's something plucked out of a maddening future of inequity and glass walls separating the haves from the have nots. We don't need to travel across continents to offer development aid. Heck, all we gotta do is cross a city block. The contrast is dumbfounding: Main Street, fluid traffic, people dining outside restaurants, shinny lights hanging across the street, groups of young professionals laughing, catching up on the latest app and walking to the next trendy bar... One block over, lights go down, cars disappear-save the occasional vehicle lost in the wrong turn-small tents pop up like mushrooms on the sidewalks, men crawl next to crevices on the wall to spend the night, crap in all textures and volumes floods the pavement, trash containers bursting at the hinges, rats cross the streets like hurried petit-burgeoises on their way to the office, police cars drive by slowly or stand on corners watching that the misery does not become unruly... What's one to do? To think? To feel?

GRACIAS MANDELA

Muere Mandela. Hace años leí su biografía "Long Walk to Freedom". Puedo decir que fue un libro que me tocó profundamente. Tanto que para mí es la única persona que tengo como "modelo" o como "ídolo". No soy mitómano ni he tenido la fortuna de tener –o de imaginarme– muchos ejemplos a seguir. Sólo Mandela despertó en mi esa clase de admiración. Ser torturado, despreciado, pasarse en la cárcel 27 años de su vida y salir de ella con la capacidad de perdón, con el amor que ese hombre salió me pareció –me parece– abrumador. Se puede luchar por una causa y pasar tiempo en prisión. Se puede salir cambiado. Pero hacerlo de la manera que lo hizo este hombre, capaz de sentarse, dialogar y perdonar a los responsables de un régimen tan despótico y de su sufrimiento, y de asumir las riendas del país por responsabilidad cuando casi seguro lo que él quería era estar tranquilo...casi no hay palabras. Dice el dicho que "sólo los buenos mueren jóvenes". Afortunadamente, en este caso no fue cierto. Seguro que su vida tendrá sombras, como la de todos, pero la luz que proyectó durante buena parte de su otoño e invierno es magnífica y deja huella. No es poco. Thank you, Mr. Mandela.