Timotchka

"It's a Boy! " ...





At 12.40, Timotchka erupted into the world, beginning the extra-uterine part of his life on Earth. Hail to the new-borns of this world! May them all be happy! 

Chris Patten / Paul Bowles

To understand the Islamic "Other"...

This is how it all begun, during the ritual reading of "Weekend FT" ... A scholar protests, attacking a point made previously by Chris Patten, also in the Financial Times, after a visit to Fez, that reading Paul Bowles is relevant for understanding contemporary terrorism..

The "Orientalist"-like exotic otherness of the souk in Fez..

That took me to re-reading Bowles's "The Spider's House"...

... and from there to re-visit Edward Said's texts on Orientalism and on the evident flaw of speaking about "West" and "Islam" as almost absolute categories.

Ludwig Deutsch's masterpiece of Orientalist painting...

... and I went back to Said's critics too and to some historical background research on the Independence struggle days against French colonial rule, in Algeria and Morocco ..

French Army against FNLA in the peculiar esthetics of comics books...

... besides, I wanted also to confirm from where Bowles was getting his insights for the Arab character in his novel (and that took me again to the Tangier chronicles).

Literary Renegades? They're mainstream now...

I took some notes and I got some photos about the books I handled during this particular quest. Everything is now ready for a blogtext. But the more I think about it, what each one of us has to say about "Islam" and the "West" is perhaps the most crucial statement of principles one is asked to do in this day and age. I lived near two active "fronts" of the confrontation, the Russian /Chechen and the Israel/Palestine ones. After what I witnessed, what I discussed and what I read, I do have a point of view. But a near-frivolous blogtext won't do. More time is needed. I suspect this post will remain a work in progress..

Will the Fez boy of Bowles's novel become a terrorist?

Fred Astaire

Decoding the signs of your dance partner...

Herr Ingenier's son, Hadrianus, was visiting, having flown from Heathrow Terminal 2 to daunting Barajas Terminal 4, and Malinka and I found ourselves having lunch by the pool. A small gathering, with passport-holders of different frontcover colours.

Now, I have bored to death the right Honourable Reader sometime ago with the importance of the COBRA factor. (COBRA, as it might be recalled, stemmed from the “Crossing the Ball Room” metaphor, that is, the courage to risk rejection). But what about the skills and tactics needed once you have a partner accepting to dance with you?

That was very much the core of a self-indulgent chat by the pool, in another of these lunches hosted and turned into gentle sybaritic events by Herr Ingenier’s charismatic drive and Garbo’s ironical no-nonsense good-sense.

How did it all started, the discussion about dancing technique, I mean? I guess serious historians will have a different view point, but this blogger’s humble view is that it begun when the edge of Asturiala’s skirt flickered with the breeze. On that very moment, when the soupçon of well drawn knees turned into a certainty, that ferormone-full attractive co-guest decided to throw at us that she would rather be a boy. Like she was prepared to get rid of the obvious gifts she had received from Nature in the name of the supposed advantages a man has in a man’s world. With a faux-naïve smile she inquired of the presents if they had never felt the same or the other way around. That’s when I said that on the very first summers of adolescent dancing, boys eager to grope their dancing partners envied them for their monopoly in conceding favours. (We are talking slow, body-to-body dances, to the music of Cat Stevens or similar, certainly not of metallic stuff or hip-hoppish tribal dancing). In our fifteen-years old self, contact through our clothes between respective erogenous zones was the very aim of dancing. And who had the power to go along or refuse it? The girls, and only them. We could be more or less daring, but macho tango-like strong tactics didn’t get you anywhere in those days when young ladies performed the role of timid gazelles ready to jump away at the first threatening move. We could play cunningly, affecting indifference to non-musical matters and holding our partner very loosely in the beginning of the dance. And then working from there, slowly and by stealth, probing the limits of our partner’s acquiescence. But we would invariably get to a point where an elbow or a forearm elegantly but firmly deployed in a certain awkward position would make unfruitful any further progress. Girls who wanted sheer physical thrills, on the other hand, would have only to welcome in their arms the acne-spotted boys and enjoy as much flesh-to-flesh pressure as they could sustain without falling on the floor. How sometimes we wished we were girls to have that power to be sluts!

Around the swimming pool every male guest, with the brightness of nostalgia alighting their eyes, then recalled and demonstrated how girls in judo-like fashion seemed to go for it all, while in fact refusing everything.

I thought: the real achievement was to get more than just something while the girl thought she had not given away an inch. In fact, allowing her refusenik face to be saved while enjoying himself some modest victory.

Then someone remembered hardcore stuff. About a practical device apparently very popular in student’s house parties in Central Europe. One would slip a bottle of wine in one's trousers to give to the dancing partner the impression that she was really making a devastating impression... I am sorry.. I do apologize.. I might have gone too far this time.. But a blogger has a duty to report to the Right Honourable Reader what he has seen or heard without self-censorship or diluting embellishment. There was even a farce moment in the discussion just before we all realized that the bottle was supposed to be empty. Asturiala was sure that, once in dancing motion, the bottle would have fallen on the floor by its sheer weight, and no amount of tightly fastened belt under a buttoned up blazer could have prevented the (humiliating) catastrophe. Hadrianus had to explain in very general terms, with a certain amount of attention turned naturally to his lower parts, how his fellow students used to perform that particular trick..

Dancing, in those times, was indeed like being in the trenches of sexual warfare…

Saint Gregorius Magnum

The Four Fathers, Salamanca Cathedral

 

Sant'Iago

'Catedral Vieja', Salamanca

 

Keith Richards

Nostalgia for Keef-times...

Replace Mowgli image for that of 62-years old Keith ("Keef") Richards and you'll get the picture

Thanks to the HasselbaldPortraitist, this blogger of yours, together with his highly ballooned Malinka (38 weeks) had the occasion to peep into the mores of a peculiar Madrileña tribe, the Swinging Ibizians. With already close to perfect suntan, sexy good-looks and blasé smiles, many friends of Carlos Martorell had come to the book launch of his novel whose title one could translate as "Caged Memory" (an elegant and successful metaphor for the ravages of Alzheymer).

There was in the sobering comments of the writer about drug consumption in his heyday a "the-party-is-over" mood. Psychedelic summers in Ibiza, when the Stones (or at least Mick J.) were in town are now glorified memories, and the present there is treated with a slightly conservative and grumpy tone. In fact, what one cannot excuse is the Youth one can no longer claim. Harsh comment? Deserved one, I think, when there's a call for moderation directed to their children's generation which I find a bit patronizing, really... Something like "Do what I'm telling you now, Don't do what we have (eagerly) done when we were your age"... Survivors Syndrome, I know, I know.. but what moral legitimacy has a once upon a time happy consumer of chemical excesses to warn the current bright young things against going for it?

No surprise then that the favourite theme of gossip around the room was Keith Richards 's fall from a coconut tree. What on Earth was he doing on top of that tree? A matter of young enough to rock, young enough to coconut picking? There.. There you do have a true guru for the ex-60's flower people... No apologizing for bad behaviour, no Sir ... Sex and drugs and rock&roll.. You just keep on climbing those wretched trees.. Sometimes you fall down and you loose face... So what? ... Rock on..

Some articles on the British media were delightfully bitchy, like this one in "The Independent" : "Once admitted treating his body as a "human chemical laboratory", the veteran rocker Keith Richards has grown accustomed to the occasional unscheduled hospital visit. But in the latest scrape, spectacular even by his standards, he needed a brain scan after falling out of a coconut tree. "Keef", as the Rolling Stone guitarist is lovingly known, was holidaying at the luxurious Club Resort on Wakaya, Fiji, when he and fellow Stone Ronnie Wood decided to explore the same tree. The consequences were spectacular. Half-way up Richards - reformed heroin addict and one-time hellraiser - slipped and fell to the ground, severely banging his head in the process.The concussed musician, who will need no reminding that his band's hits have included "Tumbling Dice" and "Fool to Cry"...

Rephrasing the old adage one might be too young to die but never too old to rock roll...

Carlos Martorell at the Madrid launching of his latest novel

Once I finish “La Memoria Enjaulada” I'll return to "Blue Eyed Charlie", as Carlos Martorell was known at the prime of his Ibiza days (which he has written about in his very cleverly titled first novel, "Requiem for Peter Pan" ) .

Audrey Hepburn

YLONGOs and Non-Governmental Spleen..

Almost perfect facial bone-structure...

Friday evening we all end up in the “Blue Bar”, a trendy spot where one can spend the “transición”, the difficult and ambiguous period between dinner-time and club-land. (The Right Honourable Reader has not failed to notice the irony of using the same term that in this country represents the transitional period between Franco’s regime and no-strings-attached-Democracy. Let us carry ourselves away at this splendid metaphor. Is the formality of a dinner, stiffed guests around a table, something resembling the conservative and authoritarian Franquista Spain? Is Western-style consumer-friendly Democracy a kind of everything-goes-night at an hip-hop & druggy stuff club? “La Transición” was then indeed something in between, similar to an informal but still subdued atmosphere of a post-dinner bar? End of metaphor).

The “Blue Bar” is where the thirtysomethings belonging to A+ and A sociological strata of Madrid happened to have installed their tent for the time being. For the nomadic life of the Golden “Treintañeros” today’s trendy spot where all caravans converge is just tomorrow’s abandoned outpost. How can this blogger of yours affirm the Caravanserai status for this particular bar? Easy, pizzy.. It passed the Duchess’s Son Test. If that particular Grande of Spain is there (hélas!.. as much treintañero as this blogger of yours..) the place can legitimately claim the “fashionable” label.

I had just asked a whisky from a safe brand (meaning that the risk of next morning’s hangover due to creative beverage manufacturing is relatively low). In a side wall, the glowing square of a TV plasma screen where one was unexpectedly met by the exquisite bone-structure of Ms Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s". Starting enjoying my drink, I remember that Audrey dear was at some point in her life a Goodwill Ambassador, on behalf of UNESCO, I think. A good example, I decide, of that peculiar hybrid of personal chic and non-governmental duties. In fact, I mumble to myself, my dinner companions are AudreyHepburns themselves. After the second gulp of iced and soda-ed Irish whiskey I make up my mind to blog about it.

Who was there at that pleasant off-Velazquez dinner who could be resolutely described as an YLONGO (Young Lady Of Non-Governmental Organization)? For reasons of sex,... sorry, of gender (one cannot be too sexually correct in these current times), I’ll have to exclude Brusskholm, the giant Viking with indeed some features of a PHD in Engineering. I’ll have to exclude MediumAndRare too. He manages “Marie-Henry Beyle”, a nice red and black restaurant, the one in fact where I proposed to Malinka. Off the list dear old Phyl too, the young architect working at the new wing of Prado Museum thanks to whom I got close to an original but perfect plan to rob “Las Meninas” through a hole on the floor. The fourth male guest whose perfect English also betrayed some non-Spaniard DNA was not into charity work, as far as I can remember. Let us consider now the female attendants to that outdoors warmnightish dinner of spleen. What about the Hostess, BlondeLou? Of course! She has almost completed her own self-process of audreyhepburnization. She still works for Government, although in those border-areas involved in aid to development and sustained cooperation where one never knows who is NGO and who’s GNGO (Governmental “Non-Governmental Organization”). She has the chic, the charm, the fashion sense of a very suitable marriage prospect plus the humanitarian instincts, the curiosity towards other cultures and the feminist drive that constitutes the proper mix of a good Audreyhepburnesque activist. What about BeatrixPotter? A financial adviser interested in expanding her clients’ fortunes cannot, by definition, enrol as charity worker... Or could she? An expert fund-raiser perhaps? Malinka, I also see as too tough to be an YLONGO. More likely to defend the cause of a polluting plant generating substantial employment than defending a environmentally-correct scheme with few jobs down the line. And that brings me to AlighieriMuse, the 100% YLONGO present at the dinner. Effortless elegance and MotherTeresian willingness to do good… perfect diction of difficult African family names… missionary humbleness with here and there sparks of toff frivolity.

We had, AlighieriMuse and me, a serious debate about this all-expanding business of NGO activity. Large morsels of Governmental responsibilities are now out-sourced to charities (.. and why do you think Hamas and other Islamists win elections?..) or to NGOs. The old proverb about teaching an aborigene how to fish rather than granting him a fish comes to everybody’s minds. We cannot ignore tragic primary needs though. And so YLONGOS will have a bright future for many years to come.. But still.. How many of them aren’t secretly dreaming of breakfasting at Tiffany’s?

Albert of Saxe-Coburg Gotha

Palacio de Cristal, Parque del Retiro

Victoria Battenberg

The Cristal Palace of the Parque del Retiro (glass surfaces covered by reflecting material)

 

César Jiménez

"Viva la Muerte ? "

Nureyev took me once more to Las Ventas, for one of the bullfights of the 30-days-30 long Feria de San Isidro. His generosity with his season tickets is legendary and one of the few possibilities for this blogger of yours to indulge in his under-cover facet as aficionado. The Right Honourable Reader has to bear in mind that it's more difficult to get a ticket to the neo-Moorish bullfight arena of Madrid when, say, El Juli is performing than to acquire an entry to Central Court in Wimbledon when Federer is trashing some poor guy.

Last Sunday everyone in Las Ventas did what is expected of them in a day of Corrida. The general public was eager to have convincing Toros and the experts of " Sector 7" were as ruthless as usual (starting a pateada just as a dissuasive strike to prevent the oreja that seemed quite probable was a particularly nasty trick). The amphitheatre officers, in red scarves that one can see in Pamplona or in a Pioneers demonstration in Red Square, engaged in histrionics to prevent people from abandoning the corrida during the last animal's turn before its death is certain. The weather helped too. Hot as an Andalusian field, without any of the irritating showers or grey ski that are as regular features in San Isidro as near-tropical rainstorms are in the lawns of Wimbledon. The bulls themselves conformed to current expectations about their bravery, meaning that if one in six is brave enough everybody feels quite happy, thank you. The picadores were booed, but that's part of the script too. The matadores tried their best, and sometimes that best is very close to boredom. But sometimes, o sometimes!, dear Right Hounorable Reader, their best is very close to an almost mystical epiphany.

Last week a bullfighter from Madrid, César Jiménez, was determined to be triumphant in San Isidro and he did managed it. He really went for it. Very close to a fatal accident, which would have happened if the horn of the bull that near-touched his body during the choreography had just deviated a few more inches.

Afterwards Jimenez justified in an interview his temerity: " Teñi­a que hacerlo, uno viene a Madrid dispuesto a todo y si la gente no ve que estas dispuesto a morir esto no téndria sentido". (I had to do it, one comes to Madrid ready for everything.. and if people there do not see that you're ready to die all this would make no sense).

Risking life for ephemeral Glory - Hemingwayesque stuff indeed...

Stephen King

A menacing structure in a placid street

 

Albertino de Figueiredo

Moral dilemmas....

A very successful local entrepreneur whom I've met half a dozen times in the last two years, a man of substance and with a record of philanthropic deeds, is arrested following an investigation by the fiscal authorities. Front page news at the Financial Times (not to mention Spanish media). Horror stories of pyramidal schemes, billions of Euros in capital letters, hundreds of thousands of small investors who might have fallen for a junk brass Eldorado. A journalist from a news agency chats about reactions from people to the event. He asks me: "Can I quote you on that?". (And he was referring to the sense of stunned shock I and many others have felt). I think for a second and I tell him: "I would rather you don't". The phone conversation ends. Then, my moral dilemma starts.

Was I right in running away from controversy? Was it elegant to show myself eager to keep my distances? Isn't any man innocent until proved guilty? I have sensed a bitter taste since then, almost of cowardly behavior. I should have said : "Yes, you can quote me on that. I'm stunned at what happened. I am shocked. We are not talking about a dodgy character here whom one could have suspected that something might have been wrong with his business dealings. No, what we saw when meeting him was a rather modest looking septuagenarian with a incredible energy". So, in a way, by demanding off-record status, I failed a moral test. What would the Right Honourable Reader have done if in my shoes?

David Fromkin

"1922" was a crucial historical "nodule" ...

There’s too much information out there. Better to stick to a few areas, and among them to a few themes, and then, alright, be thorough, be deep.

Malinka liked my “nodules” concept for a crash course on world history and wants me to elaborate on that. I longed for a similar request from the Right Honourable Reader but to no avail.

To acquire historical knowledge from A to Z is rather tiresome if not physically impossible (considering the average life expectancy of the Homo sapiens). Instead of starting with the Neanderthal, progressing to Oriental and Classical Antiquity, and from there to the European heirs of Rome until this day and age of evil-axis metaphors and near-non-Nonproliferators an alternative methodology might be on order. Less time-consuming and, intellectually-speaking, much more rewarding.

All bores quote themselves and I will have to conform with norm: “I believe in a kind of 'quanta' or Darwinian evolutionary History. More important than a slow chronological flux are some crucial "nodules". I mean by that historical short periods which have critical mass of data, revolutionary energy and political "pathos" (either drama or tragic-comedy) enough to carry us - in a quantum-like leap - into new times.”


I have also bored stiff the Right Honourable Reader enough times already with some of my favourite A-list “nodules”. A good example is the Russian Revolution one, which I could label, to simplify, “1917”. If one tries hard to understand “1917” almost every single political development in XX Century, from Marx to Fukuyama, becomes intelligible. Worth some studying then.


What other “nodules” in the Rosary of History are worth a particular investment, bearing in mind one’s scarce resources of Time, Intelligence and energy? As it is impossible to achieve wisdom on every significant crossroad of the History of men, each one of us chooses personally a couple of “nodules” to occupy his free moments of an otherwise full-agenda hyper-busy day-to-day life.

Those choices are sometimes dictated by professional interest. When I was trying to figure out, while watching successive sunsets in Jaffa, what was the Israeli-Arab conflict all about, I had to concentrate in “1922” (the Versailles arrangement for a semi post-colonial Middle East). For that Professor Fromkin's book (depicted above) was outstanding. I obviously had also to dive into “1948-69-73" and in “1956” too (yes, the demise of British Imperial Power in Suez is a nodule worth studying.. ).

Some times our choices are just guided by our patriotic personal inclinations. A Christian, in a way, is always returning to the nodule “1 to 33 A.D.”.. A French nostalgic of Napoleonic Imperial Grandeur to “1812” – and to achieve full understanding of Waterloo he will have to end up, as all Frenchmen do, in “1789”.. In the westernmost Peninsula of Europe where I was born, “1492” and “1500, plus or minus a couple of decades” are still obsessively revisited.

Some choices for “nodular” historical research are biography-led, though. As I blogged about recently (boring self-quoting activity again): “In each “nodule” there are illuminating biographical case-studies. Among these particular revealing biographies, as code-breakers to certain periods of history, I’ve always had a fascination for gentlemen who incurred in many risks to protect their individual freedoms and beliefs (…) “ . What produces a Free Spirit? What is so precious about Individual Freedom that turns the rise of Freedom in Society into an almost secondary phenomenon? What makes one admire an atheist among a bigot religious society, or a believer in an atheistic regime, more than the glorious struggle of the Masses? Why would one rather fall for Casanova than for Marx? Why will one always tend to prefer Pasternak to Gorky? And what contributes more to the loosen up of strict hypocritical sexual morals, a rebellious serial seducer like Lord Rochester or the Kinsley Report?

- Will this do, Madam?