this time, hopefully
recently found this quote from sabino de arana y giori, the creator of basque nationalism at the end of the 19th century. i wonder what he would think of guiris+ learning it
i had had the sore throat more or less the whole day. and the cough came few days ago. the ear ache i think started early in the evening and just kept increasing as the night went on. it got excruciating and i just wanted to lie and moan and cry for the rest of time. i gave up on sleeping and went to put the tv on, telling myself that there would be nothing worth watching at that time. luckily i was mistaken and 'como ser john malkovich' was playing. small mercies. i don't own any pain killers so i lay hoping that my ear wasn't about to explode. i saw the nub of hash on the coffee table and thought, it's not mine, but, it has pain-killing properties, right? so i made myself a silly-looking little joint and smoked it slowly. watched till the end of the film and then went back to wallow in my bed. of course i started tripping out in a sort of hysterical tired nightmare. the pain didn't even go away. so i lay in my bed tripping out for fucking hours, everything hurting like hell. best of both worlds.
i enter the entrance of my building, and i have stepped into the building's 'new year's celebration'. i decide not to stay, say good evening to the six old ladies assembled around the table of ham and cheese, and head for the lift. there is a little creature already waiting for it, blonde bob hair and eyes like a frog. we enter together. she presses 8 and i press 4.
summoning my most un-child-predator voice: te vas a casa? (you going to your house?)
she looks up at me, skin like an embryo, her bottom-jaw slightly and wonderfully oversized: sí, pero después vuelvo, voy a hacer pis (yeah, but afterwards i'm going back down, i'm just going to piss*)
i laughed out loud and the lift stopped at level 4: hasta luego.
the same eyes: hasta luego.
*in spanish using the verb 'hacer pis' (to piss) is less strong than the english version. but this was the first time i had heard a five year old say it. as i laughed she looked at me with an unjudging and passionate gaze. she knew i was crazy and felt compassion.
y en esta ciudad, con el frío aumentando, me resulta a veces tan silenciosa. como si todo estuviera totalmente cubierta en hielo. y no puedo tocar nada. ando por la ciudad pero está cerrada. no es nada agradable saber que has jodido a alguien. estoy tan cansado.
in garazi, last night:
(me): hey, how are you?
(her): yeah, good. listen, i thought about it, and even though it really does suit me really fucking well, it is yours, so i've got to get that jacket back to you some time, but i'm heading off soon, so when's a good time?
(my brain): really? oh what wondrous dreams...
(my mouth): ah, how bout i give you my number, i'm not going anywhere over christmas or new years.
(her): good idea
(us): chatter chatter, giggle giggle...
(my brain): wow, this is the greatest night ever.
(me): cool, so i'll see you later then.
(brain): sigh of contentment.
design lesson 101 from the young america's foundation: underlining gets your point across better. Even and especially when your point is blunt and pseudo-fascist.
after this discussion on phrasal verbs i have decided to offer some alternatives for a few common english phrasal verbs. some are just appropriated verbs put into a new context, some are made up words.
1) to fit in - as in: i don't think i fit in here. i propose: to concorde.
e.g. i just don't feel as if i concorde here
2) to get along with (someone). my proposal: to sympatise*.
e.g. we just sympatised so quickly, it was amazing.
3) to fall in love. proposal: to phelange (pronounced as if it were french [that is, how i imagine it would sound if it were french])
e.g. oh, i just phelanged in an instant. like being hit by a wave as you checked for your clothes on the beach.
4) to stand up (to someone). proposal: to chest.
e.g. i was so proud to finally see her chest that fuck-knuckle boyrfriend of hers.
5) to give up (though in the specific example of something unpleasant that has dragged on for a long time, and finally, reluctantly, with a soul put grey, you give up on it. the giving up, however, can be in an active or passive sense). proposal: to elampse.
e.g. i) in the end i elampsed. i told him we either had to be together or we couldn't keep seeing each other.
e.g. ii) in the end i elampsed. i said we could continue as long as he wanted, even if he was never going to leave her.
*both spanish and french have a verb similar to our 'sympathise' meaning something like 'to get along' with. we made it into sympathy. which is generally an annoying verb. i have complained about this before.
so being here in navarra has done strange things to my thoughts on nation. the last time i was in australia, i had no sympathy left for any idea of australian nationalism. i certainly wouldn't describe myself as patriotic. and indeed when i was in ireland had a weird conversartion about why i couldn't possibly say that i was proud to be australian. the whole patriotism thing has always seemed sullied for me ever since i figured out that being a descendent of the first fleet [what's more, as a lieutennant in the army, not a bread-thief] maybe wasn't something to be so proud of [sorry grandma, i'm just not]. i sort of felt like i could see the lines of violences flowing back and forth. me and invasion, invasion and me. and it was always reinforced every time i had a family lunch. as my family sat around worrying about things. i knew that the racism seemed kind of benign because they still felt they had spatial ownership over the shire. the spatial politics of niceness. one ethnic neighbor is almost a lovely idea. sometimes they have all sorts of wonderful tea or strange sausages. a street full is a gang-in-waiting. this whole thing just made me sick, partly becaus ei could neverfigure out of a way to relate to it as anything other than a white managerially empowered citizen. i was the nice one. it's ok, you can come in, i say so.
so it was strange when i arrived in pamplona, which is a site of contestation between two strong nationalisms [and then a nuch of other kinds of regionalisms; ranging from the micro of pueblo self management and autonomous community differentiation to the macro-regionalism of the 'eu identity'). spanish nationalism clearly has it's lines of violence there for all to see. 40 years of violence and repression, both political and cultural, all in the name of national unity. and whilst franco's old falange is pretty marginalised nowadays, the partido popular [similar to the australian liberal party] is always going on about the disintegration of spain, the irrevocable unity of it [despite the obvious and long-standing divisions within it], and then when it gets bored with that starts talking about why gays shouldn't get married and the catholic religion should be compulsory in schools and super-subsidized by the state and all that other random shit. and in pamplona, you notice that any poster that looks kind of interesting, or talks about things like solidarity or women or you know, other commie shit, is either completely in basque (euskara) or at least in castellano (be careful who you call it spanish to) and euskara. the appeal of basque nationalism [for someone like me] is seductive. the cool looking kids at my uni [as opposed to the bizarro yuppie kids at the pseudo-fascist scary opus dei uni down the road] are often called borrokas, which comes from the basque word to struggle, fight. and as several spaniards have pointed out to me this year, my hair, my new piercing, is very borroka right now. and i did that with some level of intention - and corporal privilege, as my viet-oz friend kim pointed out to me once, not all of us can pass as locals. watching a rally in madrid on the weekend, we got sort of excited at the sight of the basque flag.
all this stuff, as well as having to do with a kind of exoticisation of basqueness which i still haven't really reconciled, was brought into relief by the stuff in cronulla. the nation suddenly seemed ugly again. my nation. i went to the bathroom in one of the bars in the old town and on the door was scrawled: gitanos, moros, txibatos! erne ibili [gypsies, moroccans, squealers (grass in the bill lingo) watch yourselves]*. and i get a glimpse of home in another people's home. the reflection of nation.
*this is actually basque, more or less. erne ibili, according to my dictionary, translates as andar con cuidado in castellano, which literally, would be walk with care, or walk carefully. above is my guess at the most equivalent translation.
now i've done this a couple of times before with limited success, but here's another. new year's eve in pamplona the whole world dresses us in costumes. what should i go as?
the only 'bear in mind' is that i am in spain, not all random cultural references will be understood. and it's ok to be explaining who you are all night. but then if you have to explain who that is, and what the programme they are from is, and the comic that the idea originally came from...
but neither can i make myself do anything productive. so i came outside to use the net. just saw a segment on one of the local comedy dicussion type shows. they made fun of us the same way they made fun of arnold schwarzenegger and the us yesterday for keeping the death penalty. for me though it felt too close to be laughing about.
alba
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