Dark Taxi Ride

I had to go way up on the hill to have an appointment with the Rhumatologist. It was scheduled for 6, well into the Spanish winter evening. My downstairs neighbor Alfredo came along as a translator. When it comes to money and health I need the information to be pretty concrete.

It was a weird dark ride. It was raining and the taxi driver was playing sitar music on the stereo and he had a plastic Jesus and a plastic Buddha stuck to the dash board. Alfredo kept visiting these extremely dark topics, topics that seemingly affect both of us. But it just wasn't the right time. We wound up through the Eixample and into Sarria. For much of the trip it was bumper to bumper traffic. Lots of time to hear just about how bad things could be. I couldn't get my leg comfortable. I appreciated the company and the help but I eventually asked him to please change the subject.

Finally we arrived at the office. We waited a for a while and I kept pretending to read Hola, sort of a Spanish "People" magazine but Alfredo kept getting back to bleakness. Eventually the Rhumatologist saw us. He just kept banging away in Spanish. OK, OK I know it's my fault I live in Spain, but he he wouldn't slow down and he wouldn't back up. It was 90% techno jargon that seemed to have a lot to do with my future.

On the way back Alfredo continued with his devil's advocacy. I occasionally closed my eyes and just wished I was in another place. A place where people spoke English, were nicely taciturn and didn't make everything an emotional upheaval out of cultural necessity. A place where my leg didn't hurt. I wanted a pine log on the fire, a dog on my lap and a slightly warm beer. OK put Zoe at my feet drawing pictures of raccoons and you have version of heaven.

Saturday morning at the biblioteca

Zoe and I go to the library either Friday night after school or on Saturday mornings. I like Saturday mornings because we can hang out for hours. She automatically goes to the kids section and I go grab a stack of magazines, the more trivial the better. Currently I seem to be attracted by mountain bike rags featuring 5,000 euro uberbicis made out of endangered bald eagle feathers and compressed hydrogen. Anyway I take my pile and join Zoo Zoo at one of the kiddy tables. Zoe has thing for this series called, "El Cuerpo Humano." She's always been interested in cartilage, why I dunno, but it just won't go away, but this Saturday she was fascinated by the immune system. Oh boy... Dads going to be a science project. For some reason white corpuscles are her favorites. I guess it's because they are cute, doughy and kind of cuddly.

She usually picks out a couple of books and a DVD or 2. Me I go for the DVDs and the CDs. I got Marc Ribot for the 4th time and "In the Name of the Father" or more accurately "En el Nombre Del Padre." OK I'm a real bookworm but let's face it the chances of me reading Catalan are slim to non-existent.

On the way home we stopped in a farmacia for some of the many things I am taking. The nice pharmacist was at the mercy of his brother's reorganization of the goods and couldn't at first find what I needed. I find that Catalans can get strangely fastidious over minutia but can live with a telephone cable hanging in front of their window for years. Maybe it's a subconcious reaction to the cable hanging in front the guy's brother's window that caused him to move all the boxes around. But he eventually found the right cubby hole.

The big news is what was on the counter. There was a display in happy kiddie colors from a major manufacturer of rubbers. The gadget, all wrapped up like it was a novelty candy like pop rocks or warheads, is a disposable vibrator kind of thingy. Apparently it's designed to be inserted where the sun don't shine and is guaranteed to last for 20 minutes. Jeez, twenty minutes! Comes with happy candy colored lube in a festive applicator. Imagine the research that went into this product. Can you imagine the focus group? Zoe was very interested. I told her it was a new kind of yo yo. She didn't buy it.

A short errand

I've been trying to get out more. My pal Lucy has me drinking homemade kefir. It's another cultured lactose thang sort of like yogurt. Anyway it has these chunky bits called grains that you are supposed to filter out and reuse to make more kefir. You need a medium fine strainer. So off I go to the tienda para everything you need including magnets and dog leashes. It's 2 blocks down the street so it will be a challenge. I shuffle along as all the fit and handsome people point and make comments about the poor guy struck down way too young by a vicious case of an overly aggressive immune system. I have now added a cane to my ensemble.

I make it to the shop and enter the closet like space. There is really a huge amount of stuff tucked inside. Pots, pans, knives, pasta machines, hedge clippers, toilet paper roll holders, decorative figurines and motor oil. Mr. Tienda is reading the newspaper. Mrs. Tienda greets me and ask me what I need. Wisely I had looked up the name for strainer in the dictionary before my departure. "Nesecito uno colado pequino y fino, por favor." "Si", she points to the wall behind her which has at least 50 different types of strainers. "Es para kefir, metalico es una problema, tiene plasticos?" Like she is going to know about kefir... Jamon si, kefir or kambucha forgetaboutit. Mr. Tienda looks up from his paper. "Abajo" there under a pile of swim fins are a few dusty lime green numbers. I acknowledge a successful search and say I'll take it. She wraps the strainer in beautifully printed paper and hands it to me. "Quando questa?" Back behind his paper Mr. Tienda says, "Uno euro" to his wife. Following protocol she tells me, "uno euro." I give a euro and take my new lime green strainer and hobble home slighter better for the experience.

Edu in the restaurant

In addition to yesterday's morning meeting I again descended the stairs of pain to go lunch with my buddy Alan. We went to the restaurant on the other side my front door. It's called Ca' Nuri, which pretty much means Nuri's joint. Over the August break they completely gutted the place and gave it the full BCN modo makeover. It's a nice place.

So Alan and I discussed relationships, how to be an artist and how to get into more trouble going to even more weird places with a camera. It was lovely.

Now here's the real story. Sitting next to us was Edu. Edu is probably 60 and owns a nice cafeteria (coffee shop) on the other side of street. He's an interesting guy, he has a grey pony tail and makes a good cup of coffee. Edu says he makes the best cup in all of Barcelona. OK, why not.

Alan wanders off to the servicios and although we really don't each other I strike up a conversation with Edu. So he tells me about his house in Horta (another neighborhood) and how it's on a quiet street and how the birds sing in the morning and how he can see the mountains and the sea if goes up on the roof and looks between the heating vent and crack in the wall... and then he says that this week I should come with him to his house and he'll fix me lunch because he's a great cook.

OK there it is again. That Spanish thing. "Hey how you doing?" turns into a invitation for a home cooked meal from some guy that you have bought a few cups of coffee from. Damn. What a country.

One Word... Joselito

So today I had my first meeting away from the casa since I got home. OK it was just at the corner of the street at the resturante called "Tapasbar" which of course does not serve tapas. Considering my pathetic Tim Conway old man walk I thought I'd get there early, find a chair and do the FDR thing. You know be regally seated as the other meetings participants arrive. But as it turned out my new friends arrived even earlier and were seated right in the window I would have to pass directly by. I didn't know what they looked like but I could tell from their wild gesticulating hands and smiles that they knew who I was. Damn... what a cartoon. I kept right on going around the corner to the health food shop, picked up my pal Lucy's recommended vitaminas and garlic capsules, 2 jugs of zumo de manzana and headed back to the resturante. Yep it was them. I sat down and regaled them with tales of the Saharawi, dysentery and camel humps.

Before we got down to business for some reason we started talking about Ham. Well in Spain just about before you do anything you usually eat ham and if have none to eat you talk about it. Word. Joselito. The Jamon of Jamon. Remember it.

Visits

Yesterday 2 friends stopped by. Well 3 friends were going to but one had a cold and wisely thought that with the immune system suppression rat poison I'm taking it might be such a good idea if he dropped in. Probably so.

Visitor 1 was the Dutch Flamenco Maestro Evert. Evert and I are in the midst of a budding friendship. He's wandered a long way off his musical path and wants to return. Me, I'll honk on my harmonica at the slightest sign of protest. Over a cup of coffee we finally hatched a plan. The goal: busking on Saturday mornings with our kids. Note: busking is performing on the street. We will learn 3 songs. One will be "Way Down Yonder in the Minor Key" by Woody Guthrie. Another will be "Niama" John Coltrane. Kind of a diverse rep, no? Another might be this song I wrote this summer. The kids pass the hat. Evert and I keep the cash.

Simple. Doable. Done.

Visitor 2 was the indomitable new Lucy. What ever she is taking I'll take 2. Over botifarras, peppers and potatoes we engineered a possible future for the Saharawi project.

Good friends. God bless them.

Conflict

I guess we have preconceived notions about what it might be like if we get sick. How people will react. How we will react. Will we be John Wayne toughing it out, step by step, on his way back in a navy hospital so he can return to fight evil? Emotionally and spiritually supported by his wife looking on with a slightly worried, affirmative, beatific smile.

Will tawdry problems go away? Will troubled relationships heal themselves in the face of a larger, more profound issue? Will we be better people because of this? Will connections deepen?

Well as in everything else it's not a black and white answer. Friends and family have come out of the wood work to offer so much. Twice daily calls from my parents. Bi-weekly calls from my brother. Visits from friends. Soup from neighbors. Cards. Presents. Flowers. Amazing acts of kindness. People acting out of love and compassion. Humanity at it's best.

An what about effects on the patient? Well I have been amazingly optimistic and positive. It's not something I have had to rise to, it's just there. I guess John Wayne is not a bad model.

But do the big, big unresolved problems go away. I don't think so. I know that there are other, new pressures that are added to mix. More work. More demands. More pain. More insecurity. More fear.

Domestic conflicts have unfortunately not gone away and intersection of the emotional and physical is magnified by the situation. A angry remark can completely negate the John Wayne effect, turning a stand up model patient into, well something else. It seems that in being ill everything becomes clearer. Angels appear. But unfortunately the other guy too.

The truth is: the truth is the truth.