Monday, December 06, 2010

taking over

I think it was my childhood friend E, although at times he looked like B., my German high school mate, who I had met and invited to my house. I was waking up that . They were cleaning the house, one room at a time, but with every room they cleaned there appeared two or three sisters or brothers of my friend's who would take over the room. Nobody could tell me where my granddad or my mum were and I was concerned as they had been poorly. There were girls and boys of all ages coming in and out of those rooms and milling all around the house now. I caught a glimpse of a boy sitting on a bed in one of the rooms, clumsily trying to play one of my guitars.

I went to my room and my book case and bed-side table (and their contents) weren't there; instead there were some buckets and mops. So I went to my friend and loudly complained and he started to speak before I'd finished, me in loud voices, he in soft tones. Where were my books and the contents of my bed-side table? My laptop was there and all my books and music, where were they. 'Calma', he replied; nothing's lost, we're just cleaning them and pruning the things you don't need. What? shouted I, 'you're not to decide what I need or don't need! I want my stuff back now!'. He looked to me with a smile, the sort of smile that you would direct towards somebody who is ill and perhaps a little mad and doesn't quite make sense. Then I saw the two twelve year old girls carrying bundles of my books out to the yard. I told myself I had to be dreaming, this just could not be happening. And he said, as if he'd been able to hear me 'of course it is not happening to you there where you are, but there are many of you in the universe and this is happening for real to some of you and the pain will resonate in you, I hope…'

That's when I woke up, covered in sweat and breathing noisily, the silence in my room like an overstretched bow string..

Wednesday, December 01, 2010

There was a celebration. It was a sort of very small pub/restaurant. It was the 200th anniversary of the place and they would be giving away food that was supposed to be fantastic. I'd driven a long way to get there… there was a crowd and people were clutching their passports. Many had pints of beer which one was supposed to be able to order from the bar. I went over to the bar and the girl behind the counter gave me some mumbling explanation about why she couldn't give me a beer and that her colleague would -at which point she left, but there was no-one else behind the counter.

I thought that it was a little pointless to stay at the bar, clutching my passport like the rest, when it could be hours before the food was served or given out. So I went in the other room and sat down. I was very thirsty and there was no-one at the bar. I think I was beginning to say this to the girl sitting next to me but she was pointedly looking away so I stopped talking and reclined on the kind of sofa. This guy from the Dev in London walked past and said hello. Well, I think he was from the Dev. Anyway, I said hello back. It was getting very warm and I took the outer one of the two t-shirts I was wearing but then I realised that the inner one had some ridiculous design and drawings on and I was a little embarrassed so swapped the two -and thought I better leave the other one and my bag in the boot of the car. Came out and pressed the car remote but -it was the wrong car. It was over there, past the street with trees and to the left, perhaps a mile or so. So there I headed..

.. couldn't find it. Ended up taking a mini-bus but this was going the wrong way, up the hill into a barrio and I was getting more and more nervous as I had no idea where I was. At some point I saw a tube station sign, the blue and red London Underground roundel, so I asked the driver to stop and paid -with a ten bolivar note, the driver gave me another ten bolivar note back, albeit a more crumpled one. I walked towards the station and saw that… it was only a tube sign but there was no station. How could there be, this was not London. So I stood there looking down to the valley and the mountains in the distance wondering how I would get out of that place..

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Downstairs again and again

We went downstairs when we heard the noise of the train arriving. It was my old house in Catia, this was just not possible. There was a train line running through it and a platform In the corridor. We knew what was to happen next, all of this had happened before. The Nazis and their demon masters would get off the train and round up the people in the lower floor of the house and take them away. We would not be caught, or at least we never had been caught in al, the innumerable times this had happened before, but you never knew whether a small kink in the fabric of reality, if reality this was indeed, would change this. What could be worse, to be forever trapped in this absurd cycle or to break it to find ourselves in the hands of our enemies?

There were shouts downstairs, doors being kicked in. I went upstairs trying to keep a low profile, whispered to B to keep her head down and not make any noise. She didn't seem to be aware or remember the many times we'd been through this, or perhaps it was all just weariness...

Closer boot steps. Maybe this time they would come upstairs. Where to to, there was the roof but that offered no protection. There would surely soon be helicopters above us. I looked at her, she was looking at me biting her lip, anxious. An alarm siren broke out somewhere....

Saturday, July 17, 2010

morning fog

flavio se levantó finalmente, eventualmente, despues que la alarma habia sonado cinco veces y cinco veces habia apretado el botón de snooze -que ahora es solo un botón virtual en la pantalla del teléfono móvil asi que uno tantea sin abrir los ojos pero tambien sin encontrar el botón por un buen rato hasta darse por vencido y abrir los ojos para poder ganarse esa tregua de ocho minutos durante la cual sueña y todo, con la interfaz del iphone que se convierte en enormes cubos de algo asi como espuma de anime o styrofoam con la que uno tiene que luchar y abrirse paso a través de ella para lograr que el mundo se ajuste un poquitico a lo que uno, pero apenas aquello se resuelve suena la alarma otra vez y tantea uno esperando encontrar el fulano botón virtual pintado en la pantalla del fulano teléfono pero uno sabe que solo le está haciendo cosquillas virtuales en la nariz a una Mora virtual de dieciocho años,el fantasma de su amor lejano que abre los ojos cada vez que la pantalla se enciende. Y no consigue apagar la alarma. Ok, es un juguete demasiado caro para estrellarlo contra la pared, asi que no hay vuelta: hay que abrir los ojos -ah, el botón está justo encima de la nariz. Otros ocho minutos de tregua durante la cual uno flota corriente abajo y se encuentra caminando por una playa rocosa y gris, con olas estrellándose contra las piedras en apoteosis de espuma, y de pronto se encuentra uno un juego de ajedrez en la playa. Huy, esto no me gusta, quizá es hora de levantarme....

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

in the car

I was driving through from Plaza Catia towards La Cortada, there was to be this party at my sister's friend's -after all these years. People looked at me as I drove by. Couldn't remember the address. This place has changed a lot since I last was here, all those years ago. I no longer know my way around.

Now I'm walking towards the house and I realise I've left my expensive mobile phone on the dashboard of the car. Bad move -anywhere, but especially in an area like this. I must find the car. I left it back there that way.. I think. I have to walk through a group of young men who look at me with suspicion and derision. I mumble 'con permiso...' as I make my way through them. One gives way and I get through. Phew. I don't recognise these streets, this is not where I should be..

Ah, there's my sister waving at me and beckoning. That is the house, then; not at all where I remembered it. She goes in and I go after her. There's no party yet. Going to shower and change for the party.. then I remember I've left that expensive fancy phone in the car. I look out the door just in case the car was in sight -find myself locked out. I'm in my underwear. What to do. I decide to look for the car. Now people do look at me. The car was along this row.. oh, ok, maybe it wasn't. Only then I realise the precariousness of my situation. I no longer know how to get back to the house or back home, don't know where my car is, am standing in the middle of the street with only my underwear on, with no ID documents or means to prove who I am.

Mercifully, then I hear the pips of the BBC Radio announcing it is 6:00 am....

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

departures

I was due to take the boat. I told her I had to go; I would be late otherwise and stuck here, I needed to be back.

I dreaded having to go through the customs bit, I always got stopped and sometimes would miss the boat because of this. I looked for my watch but I didn't have any. It was nice where I was, though, at the top of the hill. It had changed. On the way down on the old dry brook bank, there were now stairways, water features, escalators going down in different directions and the walk down the hill towards the port became a sort of shopping centre with artisan's workshops and many nooks and crannies. You had to go through many of these on your way down. It felt like it could be very easy to get lost but somehow I managed to make it down to the port. I queued for ages, looking at the dark green water in the lock where the boat was held, its open upper deck, the people milling around and getting on board. People were still coming out from the underground connection tunnel, which also led to the dilapidated alleys at the back of the bottom of the shopping centre down the mountain. Nice trees in them, lots of litter around and the feeling that something (or, rather, something) lurked behind the corners. Go back to the port, which is not really such but just a dock with the one ship in it, enclosed for now in a dock, frothing brown waters rocking it, people in uniform walking on the deck with clipboards, noises of machinery coming from unseen places. Where is my passport, where are my keys… I steel myself and walk towards the starkly lit complex of perspex cabins...

Saturday, February 06, 2010

dials

As soon as you wake up. You were thinking -it must have been the intervention of so and so, it is so clear. But one second after you don't remember what the intervention was about or on which or which was the agent of that intervention that was so necessary. You drift back into sleep and look for the answer, which you can find if you find the right tuning in the sleek black machine like a bedside clock or a cd player, with a blue led display, the numbers in which have clearly a significance but you do not know how to read, but twiddle the dials, see the numbers change and hope they will come up with the right answer.

In the meantime, there is also the drip-drip from the hole in the ceiling. Or indeed the roof; there is no ceiling in this room. This is supposed to be my room, I'm coming back to it after many years and it is at the same time familiar and strange. My things are all here but I don't recognise them. Is this thing with blue led dials supposed to be my computer? Where is my guitar? But I know my guitar is back in London, can it exist in two places at the same time? I know it is supposed to be here somewhere.

The rain outside, washing down leaves that end up blocking the drain. Splashes of brown and green and wet. Splash, splash, green, wet.

Monday, January 18, 2010

more on vanishing dreams

I wake up, reach the alarm clock and put the noise out. This time I'm happy, the dream was positive. It wasn't a twisted reflection of my distant past, my dysfunctional family or my crumbling house in Catia, the raving lunatic asylum that was my secondary school or any of the other ghosts from the past that often come out to play their distorted games in the still of the night. It was a dream about future and hope and confidence. And I still..

No, I don't. In the time it took me to think or, rather, to feel that, the dream has vanished like mist in a sunny morning. I can no longer remember anything about it except that positive feeling. So I sigh, stretch, struggle a bit to get up and get on with my waking life, hoping maybe tomorrow I may get a glimpse of what it was about.