Composting

As of late, this Biscay Dossier has sat waiting with its ankle bouncing as the ball of the foot touches, no, grips the ground.

The necessity of new posts nearby, nearer than the back of my mind, but deferred. Geroratu. Left for later. Atrasado. Less often than I’d like. The ligaments in the back of the hand cede to the those below the knees, boots on the ground, pouring work into other things.

Compost. That’s the term. The process and the product called for in the composition of soil and word. Procrastination in it’s loveliest form.

There’s plenty of leftovers because I’m a bit desiccated at this point. Shriveling up and crumbling, with the wind I blow away from the hubbub and incessant Basque-ness. I get out to the huerta.

They call these little ladies margaritas.

La huerta is a word we just don’t seem to have within our disposal in English. Neither a ‘garden’ nor a ‘farm’, and ‘vegetable patch’ just doesn’t ring quite true for me either. Vegetable patch evokes the successful cultivation of carrots (why so difficult?). Vegetable patch, for me at least, evokes plastic dolls that pop out of the heads of cabbage and later must be recalled because they devoured little girls’ blond hair in the 90s and they ought to have been recalled even earlier than that because the damn things came out right around the same time as the movies Chuckie and Gremlins and I never trusted anything that could just pop out of the earth and start talking.

Anyway, la huerta. Not something we have in the States, though ours is to some degree a community garden, because the plot – okay, now there’s a working term, ‘plot’, vegetable plot, or perhaps farm plot because we have rabbits and a nameless resident cat even though neither of those came about by our doing – yes, so the plot is privately owned, mutually or shared among a collection of old village men, or at least they are now old men, having given their permission to a younger old man who just so happens to have the blessing of the powers that be to look both ways for trains and then cross the tracks.

Ura ona, good water.

In early April I thought, the grass has gone to seed and I ought to have gotten over there to weed a week ago. I hear the voice of my mother saying this to herself, echoing in me too and still, even she didn’t get as particular with the marking of intervals and regard for the exactitude and judgment of tasks timely based upon when weeds would go to seed or any other budding thing.

Things deferred because it’s never really clear when anything ought to begin. They tell you in the books and on the back of seed packets, what to do in one month or another season, as if we all friggin live in the same climate. Then again, nothing really could be more exact than ambiguity. Tomorrow ought to bring rain, and rain could mean waiting again or rain could mean we’ll all be in the shambles of the floods and the coming again; it will have everything to do with Jesus and nothing to do with man-made climate change.

He’s made it back, just last week, reborn from death and decay that evaporated into the sky. The guy of steam and Sun, the Son of God, he says to get going already and bury those red beans and plant the damn cucumbers through holes in the black plastic.

Sharpening the scythe.

We share the plot with Txigui, pronounced “chee-wee”: OMG, I know, the name though. Txigui de cojones, as I like to say, ‘got’dam Txigui’ (literally, ‘balls Txigui’: yes, those balls). Goombah, village doof, an idiot in actions; the guy’s in paro, unemployed like so many, and built a rabbit hutch to eat and sell. So, I relent a bit.

Idiocy earned from ample thoughtlessness, a title everybody’s earned at least once. For instance, our only shade tree worth resting under, a loquat (níspero in Spanish) pruned within an inch of it’s death in December, but for a purpose I just discovered last week.

Loquat leaves decay as slowly as pine needles. A pile of loquat branches will hide a construction site’s share of plastic wire casing. Oh yeah, at least 6 garbage bags worth of insulator sheaths, numberless redwhitegreenblueblackandyellow plastic bits all mixed in with the rabbit dung and leaching goodness gracious and who knows what other fun into the food for the soil.

Grilled vegetation

I could care less about that plastic getting into us; I’m a smoker, a drinker and a fan of cellophane wrapped goods with more shelf-life preservatives than actual foodstuff. My concern is for the mitosis of few-celled, the tiniest well-beings who donate their lives’ every calorie and second to unlock the contributions of sun, water and seeds.

I’m also slightly worried we could be legally implicated in Txigui’s dumbassery when he gets caught. The plastic problem in my compost will likely get fixed elsewhere, where the long arm of the law can reach, and I decide that too is best dealt with waiting it out. Before and after the harvest of copper, there’s always plastic. I find shards of a CD from 1990-something and the thin film that seals something like a container of sliced cheese or turkey lunch meat.

Pavo frío. Cold turkey. Cold cuts. Cocidos pero no embutidos. Cooked but not cured, like the jamón of everybody’s dreams. Cured ham, hanging out, waiting for later.

Grapevine shanty

Last week I thought, the heat is coming down from on high, but only for a week at a time. June will have to be full of days where the skin is sheltered from the lowered, beating sky, warmth pulsing through an atmosphere of highest sights not so distant, penetrating and unrelenting. The compost is wet and drying up at a fraction of the speed that I think I have. Compost instructs. In the center of the pile, hot for teacher.

And I felt like a full-fledged adult the other day, taking care of the tilling and cooking soil, this little swath of dirt and turf and it’s well-caught little place in the sun of foreverafternoonlandia, leveling beds of rectangles next to the stream that has slept 10 generations and the stepping stones that need a kick back into place every fourth visit or so.

Yesterday I thought, today is not a garden day. Yesterday could have been if the rain had good and dried up a bit more from the morning, but there wasn’t enough sun in the afternoon to do that barometric deed. No luck, no chance.

Until further noticing.
Delayed until it catches the eye.
Creation put off.

This June, I think now, will be full of the mad hurry that slows me wildly once I get there, once I step foot in the overgrown otherworld and survey the prospects of what really is possible between gulps and chews. That is, what i can reasonably expect to accomplish after and before the need to eat and before and after the bottles emptied of water apt for human sipping.

When weeding and wedding oneself to the wait-til-later works, it looks like leaving plenty a flower for the bugs and the birds to enjoy. I know well enough to merely tinker in the less crucial mechanisms of the Living Machine. Nearly to seed, I’m more than done fighting the weed.

Bilboren grisak, Bilbao en gris, Bilbao in grey

Translation: Bilbao in grey reminds us of the transience carried off by time’s vortex; reminds us of the immortal that has had it’s start but will never have an end; reminds us of the eternal that has not yet began and will never finish. –Azorín

Now that it isn’t raining, I can write about the rain.

Supposedly Hemingway couldn’t write about Michigan until he made it to Paris.

I just went there, probably angered the gods and hexed myself by glancing all too soon towards that E.H., Ernesto the Besto, the one my gent calls Heuminghwey y su puta madre. I assume my chico doesn’t slant this way but I do wonder if certain grudges have been held (not to mention some basking in the reflected glory of said author’s residency here by many in the same camp) because Mr. H called a spade a spade and a Spain a Spain, to the likely chagrin of a few Basques, particularly those in Pamplona, Navarra (Iruñea, Nafarroa in Euskera) where Uncle Ernie got bulled.

Thoughts regarding precipitation: after a year in, every thought will regard precipitation and every thought will reflect the precipitation.

Water that falls from heaven and loving it. But even the most pluviphilous of them all too get tired of it, blowing in askance from the the sheer valley bend and over the low side towards the sea. Precip imminence eventually isn’t a good enough reason to change your beach plans.

When it doesn’t rain, it’s probably viento sur, the Southern Wind, and what it’ll make you feel is strange. Hospitals and law enforcement report an upsurge of incidents on par with the Full Moon phenomenon. Wind of the South picks up all the misery and coffee breaks and political sausagery (chorizo, slang for theft, to be exact) from the rest of the peninsula. But that’s Murphy’s law carried to the power of unfounded conspiracy, because the wind may come from everywhere and go nowhere. Kinda like scheisty politicians. Mostly, the ration of fresh air caravans in with the breeze that carries tuna and krill and blue whale spirits from the northwest.

Good morning to all the flying things and the shuffling things and the 1-gallon plastic shopping bag blown aloft in a perfect arch, gliding over the 10 story building flats.

Another puzzlement of mine, when the rain comes in sideways: how the heck is that laundry supposed to dry and how do these launderers not lose their marbles? Clue #3 to demonstrate that I’m obviously not from here is because I can’t figure out for the life of me how they know the wind comes from the single source when it barges through the grid of streets the right slight north and the left slight south. That kind of wind fills eyelids with fiberglass and long brunette hairs and you bow your head with palms pressing at the forehead and begin to pray for rain, please knock this devilry back down.

There’s one kind of rain that is, depending on your mental health quotient that day, the absolute best or worst of all. Sirimiri is an onomatopoeia, like many terms in Euskera, and it requires humor to stick it out without your sanity spilling out. Sirimiri is the primordial mist of a hundred billion drops, each one only a handful of molecules, coming down so very lightly and forming a near tissue paper-like sheet of water. Sirimiri, rain that does not drip but soaks right on through.

Muscles memorize where the puddlings tend to gather. In various levels of consciousness art thou learnt in the best of lessons: watch your back. I wonder if crime is reduced simply by downpours. Too much hassle José.

The convicts and I’ve decided to buy decent boots and shoes from here on out so the seeping doesn’t get into the core, past tolerance’s electrified fence. That’s how the water gets to your head, through wet socks. Wool is conduit enough but cotton is the quick stick intravenous way to ruin your gatdamned mood, and your maldito dia as well.

Investments in footwear must be compensated somewhere; crappy umbrellas have been lifted from the the kinfolk, yes. But don’t you dare feel guilty about it or do something silly like go and buy an umbrella. Your turn to ride the pay-it-forward merry-go-round will end with your paraguas, for-waters, on the other side of the closing train doors.

Pete limberly hops over them puddles when necessary – when? – always as it’s absolutely necessary. Little macho coursing with adolescence, sure, whatever, but Petey sure hates his little booty to touch the chill and damp when he’s gotta do his thing.

Puddles like windexed coffee table glass, clean and static suspending underneath mudprints of boots and paws, giving away no reflection of the open midnight sky.

Damp schnauzer in a red rain jacket and her human wants know and outright asks, “hey you, why you have your dog out at this time in the dark and humid chill?” They are out there too, you think, but they just have to say something. Let the cup overflow, liquids seeking the low points.

Meat Your Fabricator, Get To Know Your Retailer

The baby boy God is incarnate and carnaval is soon upon us.

A month ago, The Three Kings had come and gone. Flanked by the 15 summer sycamores and their draperies of blue LED lights, pressed and huddled wizards and plainclothes sway in the deflected typhoon breeze. Showing us the way to towards the savior they’ve gone to meet 2014 times now. They signaled the forward march and emphasized everybody’s favorite cliché – it’s the journey, not the destination, that really matters. Just so happens that the journey crawls through the shopping district. Economic crises aside, the dawn breaks dripping with hope, and we shop. We’re all tired and totally over the realizing of the reason for the season, we just want to know the legislated dates.

Bilbao’s Arriaga Theater

Four times my location has situated me on this side of the Atlantic for the arrival of these three magicians turned monarchs. Maybe it’s the other way around; kids these days gotta have a multitude of transferable skills. Jack and Jill went up the hill and came back down, seeking internships in all trades.

It’s snowed after an 8 year pause on the flat, swooping inner south. The Cantabrian has licked the ash of dumpster fires, coming over the sea wall, nearly France. It’s been a few years of asphalt and evergreens, a few years held close in a tight fist, and still more pushing towards a few kilometers shy of Algeria. Here, like home, a few clicks past democracy.

I find myself wondering how they managed to keep the Mediterranean carefreefall out of their sand. The old lady we got says, vaya, vaya, aqui no hay playa = ‘right, right, here there’s no beach in sight.’ That’s as far from the truth as I am from the Cantábrico‘s lappings and floatsam. 9 miles is 20 kilometers is a hop on the train is a day’s walk. Once there, the closer you get to naked is correlated with how likely you are to build castles with buckets, excavating an anthropology of nicotine and polymers with each dig.

These lengths from home have been sunned and sullied and shadowed. Distance is a thing I would measure in time and space, neural reconfiguration and cellular regeneration. It’s a simple enough Ameri-utilitarian sequence of events that made this the destination and glue and detonator of an otherwise uncertain and unconvinced homebody. A girl that don’t know, don’t care at times. But she, me, sloughs the old bits off and hopes the whispers of both good and evil can someday reanimate with breath and clay.

Nearing six times around the sun is almost unthinkable for the fledgling realist I was, but I think I’m getting close enough to assimilation, at home and abroad. Prudence most certainly allows revisions to that long list of to-dos and hallowed values. Heretofore, an addendum – No expenses spared on imports: fermented grain, roasted beans, and cured leaves.

Primordial flesh, don’t eat on Tuesday what you’ll burn on Wednesday. The best damn advice I’ve never been pious enough to follow: submit thyself to the throngs-a-raving during the first and last lunar cycles of the price point reaping.

Meat your fabricator, get to know your retailer. Follow in the footsteps of the freelancing sages, see the deity made carnal.