The following link will show you the list of the, apparently, top 40 songs on a radio station call the Forty here in Spain:

http://los40.com/lista40/

While interesting musical acts and groups do exist they are hidden from use in public, where almost everything is beholden to the whims and reigns of culturally irrelevant media companies. This botox-ed puppet show model for media production and consumption is generally the rule in globalized communities and the fundamental issue here has no cause rooted in Spain per se; however, being that I’m in Spain – what follows is merely my opinion and observation on the music here which is much more pervasively commercial, invasively demanding, and alarmingly accepted in public settings – even when the music seems geared towards nothing more than teenagers at best.

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 “Don’t you know Justin Beiber? Do you like the Muse? Why don’t you like Kesha? You’re American!”

<It really doesn’t matter who is and who isn’t ‘American’> Huckleberry thought. <Afterall, people from the United States don’t really define what it is to be American; that’s apparently the job of the rest of the world, instead.>

You see, the USA (while not actually receiving enough political criticism, both externally and internally) serves as a scapegoat/circus for Western Europeans (Who doesn’t like pointing fingers and laughing instead of taking responsibility and actually taking action, am I right?), Western Europeans who often have the gumption to call themselves Europeans as if Eastern Europeans didn’t exist. However, this is not the time to discuss double standards, this is strictly a time to discuss music because Huckleberry, if anything, is a musician.

Therefore, when people talk to him about REM, Ke$ha, Katy Perry, Pharrell, Metallica, Myley Cyrus, et cetera the most logical and sincere thing to say in response is that all of these things are “lame, cheap, fabricated for teenybopper bubblegum chewing adolescents, really-really out of date, super cheesy, uninteresting, and/or the result of talentless hacks.” However, western europeans are very sensitive about being out of date and one must always coat the truth with the red pill or the blue pill, and then a spoonfull of sugar. There also seems to exist a strange fascination with Bruce Springsteen. Don’t get me wrong, he probably puts on a good show, but Huckleberry nearly forgot The Boss existed until he came to Cáceres. One in every four cars that pass by are playing Metallica tunes. Its surreal. Further, the worst plastic atrocities to hit the (*cough*fan*) airwaves have been assailing him in stores, in schools, in bars, in cafes, in public events, in cars, on radios, and from that dude’s car as he drives by repeatedly.

Huckleberry arrived without any personal music, on purpose, to get a feel for what was really happening in the scene here – and how it was happening. It proved to be a profoundly rewarding psychological experiment. The music industry in The States has been dying a slow death for many a year and is much less powerful than it used to be. There were mass burnings, great thefts, rampant piracy, lawless streams of music and eventually a user-centric revolution. Coming out of that anarchy, new systems are being created to regulate and rule the consumption of music. Here, the old tyrrany remains unchecked. This numbing propaganda works on the mind like the good drug that it is. Huckleberry noticed a huge difference in his everyday life with only the a.) out of date b.) terrible, horrendous, inexcusable or c.) “do people really enjoy this?” music available. Any consumption of media is, in effect, on some level hypnosis. Now, when one cultivates their own hypnosis to shape their character, most people call that personal growth or even …education…but when the Choosers who do the Choosin’ are far from the reach of those receiving media, all of a sudden a Brave New Hypnosis runs amuck. Even worse than the idea of a conspiracy of control is the probable reality that these media are regulated by unmanned laws and systems that have little relation with the content. That, actually, isn’t really that bad, but what really gets Huckleberry’s buttons pushed to and fro is the lack of cultural anitbodies running around saying, “Is this what we really want?”

<This system could not possibly work without apathy,> he mused.<that and the vulnerablity of both collective and individual vanity facing the brute persuasion of capitalism.>

These things, one wonders, must be the result of the population’s desires and/or taciturn approval.

Or not. It’s hard to tell. Ignorance is not always bliss. Sometimes ignorance is highly unsatisfying. Sometimes its painful, in an unpleasant way. Where is the real verve in an ignorant life? Complacency and apathy send inspiration and creativity into exile. Quality is unmentionable.

Speaking of exile, Huckleberry is no authority (which should always go in the fine print) outside of that field which, sometime in the 1910’s joined latin in the museum of dead languages; yet, he wonders if going to Spain was an exercise in self castigation, exiled from something so delicious as a nice cup of joe or a well pulled espresso. What he thought was merely an addiction turned out after all to be a sincere appreciation for flavor. And ¡surprise! quality.

This has been a recurring theme in the T.A.O.H.G. Nonetheless, until it is documented with precision it seems you, Dear Readers, will never be free of his self-coddling and intolerance-reinforcing observations. So, would you like to know once and for all just what the coffee experience is like here?

Yes? Wonderful! I’m sure he’d be delighted to share. Huckleberry, would you kindly share with us just what the experience is like?

Emotionlessly he says,”Come witness for youself.” and heads straight for the door. I don’t have time or an option to react. This is his ball game, apparently. Picking up my journal and sweater I rush to catch up with him as he leaves the flat. Wordlessly, Huckleberry leads me to a neighborhood café-bar. We enter. We order. We observe. Then he speaks in such rapid succession it is honestly hard to keep my narrative pen going.

“There, see now, there – he’s grinding the beans in that hopper. He’s letting it grind beans for a minute straight, that’s normal. Just in case someone else comes in to order espresso during the next ten minutes.

What you see before you as a frosted baton is actually the steamwand. Cleanliness isn’t an issue.

Lukewarm milk has been sitting out all morning, and while he pulls (goops) what will eventually be our coffee he might yep there he goes – just pouring in a random amount of milk so that, combined with the leftovers (approx. 9 ounces) of the last batch of milk he cooked, there will be enough milk to pour several latte’s in a row.

Meanwhile the untamped masterpiece travels in the cold, counter laying vessel over to the aged grouphead. It quickly gurgles forth a runny bubblebath of nonsense and then finishes up with about 3 seconds of watery who knows what.

The milk in the pitcher is probably still warm, but he’ll scorch it just in case. How does he perform this for us? By swirling the pitcher’s bottom around like he was mixing cream. By moving the pitcher mindlessly up and down making sure to “hit all the spots”. By sticking the steam wand into the bottom of the barrel, setting the pitcher on the espresso machine and walking away to tend to several customers while the full blast hot air vaporizes whatever remnants or potential of delicious may have once inhabited such bovine blessings. Sometimes they simulate an attempt to clean the pitcher walls with the vaporizer. Yes, these are all acceptable forms of steaming milk here, and standard. Unquestioned. Today it looks like he is choosing to swirl the pitcher around. We’re lucky.

All awhile, the preground espresso fines have already given up the ghost of their gases and oxidized all of their potential; put simply, from a compositional point of view those grounds are an entirely new entity. This new id-entity should not be served, and luckily, being the very carcass of utility-or-PotentialPleasure, most likely a quick death spared them the horror of being audience to the abuse of their brethren under the open fire of these automated groupheads.

Tell you one thing kid, that medicine’s’gonna hurt goin’ down.”

The waiter sets down the espresso in front of us on the bar and pours the milk in as I watch aghast. Huckleberry seems uncomfortably numb. After 9 months he’s seen too much to react; but his body knows better and demonstrates resilience against the happenings of this bad juju, this strange brew.

Huckleberry continues and warns, “Remember, this isn’t coffee. This is medicine. This is a habit. This is an excuse to leave work. This is an excuse to have melodramatic conversations about what What’sHerFace was wearing at the bar last night.”

All of this was said in an ironic tone, and suddenly I felt images of A Clockwork Orange seep into the theater of my brain. I felt imprisoned by my surroundings as I tasted the coffee and was attacked by the foul words of Huckleberry’s assessment of this coffee experience.

“Give it a good moment or two. Look at that cup. Take in the color. Breathe easily in through the nose two or three times making sure to exhale naturally. What do you smell?”

Chemicals. In summary, pure chemicals. Any aroma you might put under the umbrella of “Chemicals” was what I was getting. At this moment, to our left, four massive plastic bags full of potato chips were dropped off. Nothing like a plate of free potato chips with your beer, I guess. People get excited about them here, and say things like “Ooh! these ones are homemade!”. The world is a strange place. After getting distracted by this portentious omen, I was pulled back into the A Clockwork Orange re-“habilitation” scene by Huckleberry’s voice.

“Now take your first sip. On the first sip, don’t try to taste anything. Just let it go. Now take your second sip. Now, what do you get? What does it taste like? What is the mouth feel? Most importantly, how do you feel?”

I sip. I understand his words. It wasn’t about not tasting anything, there simply isn’t anything to taste. The discharge of flavor remains, however, as a metallic bitterness whose sharpness enhances – so to speak – enhances the mouth feel.

The mouth feel was, disturbing. Imagine a cat licking your hand. Good. Now imagine opening your mouth and going tongue to tongue with a cat. No, you can’t avoid it. Now that the idea is there you’ll never forget it and you might as well just go ahead and imagine. There you go .. that’s the mouthfeel of coffee here. Oh yeah, undertones of over oxidized red apples. Then, once you’re done playing tonsil hockey with a kitty, you get the finish. How did I feel? Deceived, captive, uneasy.

“Are you in the Finish yet? Can you feel the dentist’s X-Ray image paper clutching your cheeks to your teeth? Do you feel like you’ve cleaned your mouth with ripped cardboard?”

After giving up on his intense non-point focused wide-eyed interrogation, his composure relaxes, he pays for the coffee and leaves without further comments.

On the T.V., one hears gunfire. I looks over my shoulder. A deer hunting program.

I look back at the coffee. As the narrator, I’ve always thought that I had a pretty good idea of what Huckleberry was up to, what he was thinking. This was a humbling experience. Being abroad seemed thrilling, exciting, and revelatory but it doesn’t appear to be entirely fun and JENGA. Writing about someone’s travel experience, being their voice-on-blog is one thing: living what they live is another.

To top it off, the top of the charts (CUARENTA radio station) hails down in merciless chunks from the heavens. It’s this crappy Swedish group called Avicii…”Hey Brother“. Well, after the previous song, “Bailando” by Enrique Iglesias – what more can you expect? People make mistakes. So does humanity.

This narrator has had enough, here. Time to go check up on Huckleberry and prepare the next chapter in T.A.O Hucklberry Grimm. I have a few questions about where this blog is going, and I have a hunch that Huck has answers for me.

Huckleberry learns a lot while travelling, and one of those things he learns more and more of, are the things he learns when travelling. A new friend asked him, “What have you learned this year? How have you grown?” A beautiful question, from a beautiful girl. Since that he’s been thinking about the girl with her wonders and wonderments. What had he learned, thus far? In the moment, he told her that he had learned to be good friends with people he otherwise might never befriend. This is, without a doubt, the truth.

What else? Ah! Of course, our favourite four letter word: a “list”. Huckleberry has never, ever, not once, not even upon a whim tackled the art of list making. The very sound of the word hisses like the devil in his innocently unsystematic conciousness. Lissssttsssssss. What an irritating noise! You can just hear it going on and on forever and ever in futile delusions of productivity.

Huck was in luck, as we shall see shortly, for his generation is highly adept in making L!$*$. The throng of blogs, newspapers, twit clicks, facebook hits, and seen it 2 “Reddit-years”-ago-ups sit on his research table. He eyes them over. He fingers through them. He gets his nose right up in there and tests the waters with his toes wondering if facing this challenge, triumphing/failing, and then growing will go over well. In his research he found a great ponderous volume of L!$*$, but he found the listed tirades rants and ostentatious triumph-fests to be lacking in details as to how these things get accomplished. Here’s what he produced.

1. It’s hot. Streets where even shadows fall vertically, hugging the city walls in admirable effort. It’s cold. The apartement flat is always, always an ice box. In this moment, Huckleberry learned secret handshake number 45. How did he do it? With ice cubes swimmin in Rosso vermouth, fresh squeezed orange juice, and a smirk of angostura bitters.

2. These extreme dry heats to damp frisky-chillies between the day’s in’s and out’s helped catch a fever for young Huckleberry. He learned how to teach on his feet without passing out in a little old town called, Trujillo. Risk serious head injury in a classroom: check. How? Using his mild fever-induced amnesia to his advantage: ok kids, Who am I? Where do I come from? Kids say the darndest things. Other games like, “describe my dream woman” always go over well. According to nearly every class, Huckleberry’s dream woman is a “Typical Spanish Woman.” Huh. Well I’ll be. I wonder if our jury is biased. That, or the verdicts are reached by..personal interests.

3. This year, above all years (chronically), he learned to cook with whatever the hell he had at his disposal. An oven? Nope! Gas top stove? Nope! How did he learn, and grow? He learned how to smooth talk, flirt, and chat up the electric stove getting it to join in on the fun, heating up the evenings. Food is expensive, and it goes bad. How did he learn to avoid potential bank account damages? Cooking with whatever he had left over. Its the most dangerous of aleatoric games. What’s in the fridge now, you ask? Well, presently we can cook you a dish with the following: olive oil, a smidgen of balsamic vinegar, white wine, oregano, feta cheese, sprouted lentils and spinach. Slow and low, my friends, until a creamy and herbalicious dinner appears in the cazuela. That is the art of Ceramic Cazuela cooking. (Which, by the way, is highly satisfying.)

4. He learned how to stomach a shitty shandy beer. How, you ask? Here they mix Lemon Fanta and lightly fermented barley juice into something called a “Clear.” How do you stomach it? Perhaps I failed to mention before, but it gets really hot here and you will drink just about anything that’s cold for the body and alcoholic for the mind in hopes that both will, if for a moment, forget the tyrranical Telluh Tubby baby in the sky, assailing you with heated radiation in a naked fury.

5. Learning to be assertive, truly assertive, was a good lesson. Who knows if anywhere but Spain would be so good at putting Huck to the test on this one. This item, Dear Readers, will go without excessive detail; however, after the events of last year, Huckleberry didn’t necessarilly arrive to Spain with patience in reserve for those that would try to take advantage of him be it intellectually, emotionally, physically, or socially. Needless to say, here – in Spain – Huck learned to swing that hammer and let it fall appropriately.

6. Learning to accept Spanish hospitality and generosity, on the other hand, was easy. How did he do it? I’ll tell you what, sit down – eat this ham – drink this beer – and don’t think twice. I don’t want to hear a Thank You or whatever or blablabla, just enjoy yourself and that’s good enough, ya hear? Moving on.

7. He learned to strum chords and sing songs by people like Bob Dylan, Dave Matthews, David Bowie, The Wood Brothers, The Drunk Irish Peoples’ Front, Cesar Chico, Some Crappy 80’s Spanish Bands, Joan Baez, Gotye, That Dear Delilah Something or Other Song, Coldplay and the list goes on. How did he do it? By putting his ego and pride aside, shutting the F&%$ up, and learning something new mainly for the benefit of others. Fun stuff.

8. He learned to fix the zipper for his fly, on the fly, because one night wwoooooaaaah sorry, too many details. How did he do it? Patience. Patience, my friends.

9. He learned to put himself in vacuum so as to absorb everything he could from this new environment. How? For the first 5 months: No computer-laptop-brain sucking machine, no iPod, no TV, no Radio, no old books, no manuscripts of music to read, no Gringo food, no Gringo drinks, no Gringo Gringosities (what a beautiful word, “It was a complete gringosity!”), no cell phone internet, and generally as few crutches as possible. Eventually, the vacuum did the trick and Huckleberry decided to buy a small laptop so he could start the next project on his bucket list: Learning the Art of Writing. He then took advantage of every Famliy-Catch-Up-Newsletter-Blog-Entry as a means to practice a different element of writing. In the end, once a musician always a musician, and the end result looks to be very much like a book of musical etudes written on digital wordpress staves and sounded by those profoundly articulate instruments, the imaginations of readers.

The list went on, but due to my narrative limitations we’ll have to move on, Dear Readers for at this moment Huckleberry is in Salamanca, España and the time is Easter Week.

Easter week may be one of the most iconic events of Spain. In fact, Icons (Saints, Virgins, and Messaih’s alike) can be seen strutting their stuff all week long with beds of flowers at their feet and incense swinging behind their step. The processions can be haunting and beautiful, and at other times noisy and uninspirational. It depends entirely on the crowd.

It is a time of year when many Spaniards go home for a week or two, wherever that may be, and a time of year when resident aliens like Huckleberry normally go travelling. Huckleberry decided to make some plans for Salamanca, Zamora, and La Coruña after deciding that time was too short to visit France. Then, after booking the Salamanca trip, he decided to nix the other plans as well because deep down he really just wanted to relax for a bit and simply enjoy La Semana Santa at home in Cáceres. Travelling isn’t his priority here, anyway. Travelling to Salamanca would be more than enough viaje for him this week.

On the bus, he looked stage left and saw the most beautiful metaphor just hanging over the landscape. Out the right window was the land and sky of northern Cáceres with green mountain sides and river valleys. Superimposed on that reality, was the view out the left window. On this one window panel Huckleberry could watch two opposing horizons pass simultaneously in the same plane of view. A marvel. Like experiencing time. So many reflections plastered to our absorbent minds. The road to Salamanca from Cáceres unraveled like a yo-yo along the ground. Do you remember playing with Yo-Yo’s as a child? Do you remember watching them bounce and roll as they traversed apparently flat black tops and porous cements? Like a wizard who takes a clock’s pendulum and creates joints in the limb causing the moment to displace while preserving motion. A marvel. Time and Place were on their way out, on the window to the right, in the ALSA bus headed in an opposing direction to the aforementioned heroes.

He got off the bus. Extremadura gets a lot of shit for being in the middle of nowhere, but the landscape surrounding the universtiy town of Salamanca was nothing to write home about, so Huckleberry decided not to jot anything down in his 80 sheet Wexford ruled composition book. Just move on and as Thompson once wrote, “ignore the nightmare in the bathroom”. The best advice often comes from the strange places.

The walk from the bus station to the Plaza Mayor was a piece of cake. The beer not so much. In no plaza, should a beer cost 3.5 euros. Unpardonable. The plaza was gorgeous, though. Paintings of famous Spanish men hovered over the tops of the arches. There didn’t seem to be any women, but there were also plenty of empty slots so – perhaps the future holds other portraits in store.

The relaxing glass of beer in Plaza Mayor allowed Huck some long overdue people watching. Immediately Huck spied one of the most “telling” images about Spanish culture. A mother in high heels playing soccer with her kid while friends and family continue drinking or eating whatever happens to be set at their table. These mothers are dedicated, and heels don’t seem to be an issue when passing on this extrememly Spanish heritage – Soccer.

Wherever families go, you can bet your bottom that a soccer ball goes as well. Forget pets, bring on the domesticated Soccer ball. It’s generally accepted to allow kids play with a soccer ball downtown in the streets or in the plazas. Huck liked this.

Next to High-Heeled-Soccer-Playing-Mama, there was another sight typical to Spain. Groups of no less than 4 students from abroad sticking out like the devil at a baptism. Parachuting into the plaza with maps the size of Big Ben and backpacks which are best described as inside-out versions of Mary Poppins’ purse. Sometimes, Spain is at the mercy of two relentless and merciless groups: “Forever Young” party hard Spaniards, and “We’re only here to party” foreigners. Spain is a great place to party, but let’s all have a bit more respect for this wonderful place, shall we? Then, who knows, things might turn around for this country.

While people watching, Huckleberry was reminded of how lucky he was to be in Cáceres. Salamanca was beautiful, gorgeous, historically rich, ornate, visually stunning but also very touristy, overrun by foreigners, and all at once liberated and oppressed by the university atmosphere. All things considered, it was a thousand times more interesting than Madrid and walking around Salamanca one gets an idea of what Old Spain may have looked like before monstrosities like Madrid took their current form and colour. Further, Salamanca seemed to be full of cultural happenings, goings-ons, and shin digs. It must be an exciting place to be for the university crowd and Salamanca is known to have quite the night life.

Something else that stuck out in the plaza, were the first tie dye clothes he had seen yet on his journey. Crazy. He also saw an old Spanish man sit down to chat with two beautiful blond girls no older than 20; this, however, was not so surprising.

When one looks up from a terrace seat in the plaza, they see the celestial clouds framed by the meticulously detailed buildings. From his seat, it wasn’t so much a square frame, but a rhombus. The red stone of the barroque buildings played well with the far blue winking time to time behind wispy coquettish grins.

Suddenly a window opens from one of the balconies and table crumbs shoot out onto the ground from two stories up. Huckleberry unlocks his trance and sees an old woman shaking out the table cloth. La Comida of Siesta must be wrapping up around the city. Maybe he’d start heading towards his hostal and check in.

He unlocked the door downstairs at his apartment building, and then looked across the street. Maybe, maybe he’d grab a caña and a pincho before unloading his backpack full of souvenirs.

Sitting down at El Fogon out the door through the zebra crossing to grandma Maria-Jesus’s Fogon we go, Huck got a caña and a pincho of potato salad. It was nice to be back in a place where this only costed 1.5 euros.

While he basked in the afternoon sun he thought about his trip to Salamanca. Then he looked at his shoes and saw that on each foot there inscribed were the words, “日本へ”. He smiled, and reflected on the plans he had for the rest of La Semana Santa here in Spain. Wednesday – the Cristo Negro procession at 1 in the morning as silence passes through the Parte Antigua. Thursday – to be lost in Reverie. Friday – A full day of food and drink among good friends in the countryside of Extremadura. Saturday – practice writing. Sunday-prepare classes. The beer in the sun post travel was extremely refreshing. Cañas, or 5 ounce beers, made a midday refresher easy without the burden of having to buy a full pint. Here, it’s also socially acceptable to drink them from noon onwards. Spain for the win.

Something else that can be found in Spain: creamy, stinky cheese spread on a piece of bread all sprinkled with a proper dusting of cinnamon on top. Creamy cheese and cinnamon: an extremely delicious surprise.

Friday, Hucklberry was in for another delicious surprise: his first chance to eat REAL paella. Not the Paella you see on television or in the restaurants. The paella of Valencia. The ingredients are primarily Rabbit, Chicken, Grean beans, (sometimes a white bean) and Bomba rice. No shrimp, no shellfish, no tonterías ni porquerías. Huck’s friend Rafa spent 8 years studying to become a dentist in Valencia and there he learned the art of preparing legitamite Paella. God was it good. The Bomba arroz is essential, because it absorbs more water than other types of rice without breaking apart and the texture of this cooked rice seems to make all the difference between a commercial paella and the real deal; that, and the mix of rabbit and chicken greases that make the rice oh so sticky.

Apart from the rrriquísima paella, homemade wine (Pitarra), cold beer, pinchos, iberian ham, olives, clams, Spanish Tortillas (oof, I will be making these for the rest of my life), and other digestibles – the day out at the Chalet near Montanchez was blessed with merry weather and merrier company. A few married couples and their kids were Huck’s companions for the day and he did his best to take part in their lightning speed conversations. His spanish has definitely improved, but keeping up with three simultaneous criss-crossing conversations still bakes up a nice humble pie for Huckleberry. Best to eat it with gratitude. This was really what Huck needed: a change of air, to be out of the city (even though Cáceres is a small town, it has the feel of a city – a curious place), to be among friends and leisure.

While sipping his whisky on the rocks and looking up into the 88 degree dry sky, he counted his luck and made an attempt to keep some of the moment for his memory bank.

-Little yellow flowers which little girls once called, “Bunnies”

-Strong smelling purple flowers used to make closets smell fresh

-Rain and lightning shelters made out of giant stones for farmers, pastors, and passersby

-Near blind labrador retreivers and their sloppy smiles

-Acorns on the ground giving up their moisture so that the dehesa retains a modicum of humidity beneath the surface before summer inundates it with heat waves

-Vibrant moss fighting with everything it’s got

-Kids throwing pond weeds at each other with wicked laughter

-The encina and oliva flowering away

Looking up, and grabbing his sweater for his brief pre-sleep walk through La Parte Antigua, he saw her there – observant. It was a beautiful day, and in a blink came night’s fall. At noon, it was in the 80’s, now, having arrived home at 10 o’clock it was a bit chilly. Just another spring day in Spain. Not just another moon, however; she seemed more attentive than usual.

In fact, this full moon seemed to last several nights long this easter week, and the view from La Parte Antigua towards this beacon was pure enchantment; it’s appearance above the medieval rooftops, abrupt and pleasureable.

 

 

 

No one is Jack Kerouac the Original Itinerant,  wayfarer. Not even Jacky Boy himself. Because of this Huckleberry found himself perpetuating the progression of impredictables in hopes of luring the path to the tips of his ambulating digits. Suckering in, convincing the unknown to take a chance and cede trail to Huckleberry was a precarious engagement. There were great risks involved: sudden aleatoric leaps, unrequested bouts of shoobie doop boo dop vocalizations, mischieviously only offering two examples leaving you just itching to have the form rounded out properly.

Yes, biscuit business, fluffy warm butter melting biscuit business for all roads to fall in hazardous line before his Rolly-pollyness and his legendary insect obvserving dopey smile.

“On that rock,

there’s another guest

of the moon”

From common perch, other howls screech madness and delight. It’s been a while since the Banana poets, and chivalrous delusionals, and seductive Genjistas reincarnated but improperly alocated as cyranesques in France have seen their genetically cryptic codes encased in the concrete chambers of fragile ink-paper reductions. Ginger beer and rum, tequila and loquacious evenings in tents with progressive women may haved failed to derrail catchy imperialist trends; but the world has changed in other ways.

Luckily one may still rise to the Realm by oblique entry.

“Actually cerebral theaters obligate such entries,” Huckleberry thoughtlessly whimed, “just to get outside subjective projections, through the screens and onto the prairie of the Real scrolling away into wind. The force is massive: a thousand and one films screen hopeful debuts everyday. Which ones sell out, returning tomorrow to repeat? What say the paparazzi? The critics? The self-critics!? When must we close the curtain on those that overstay their welcome, and how? Look! The theater’s guests start music, soundtracks, and sound derailments! On any given day one could be so entertained, “A granite color crowned blueberry lying in a Goya-esque painting whilst murmuring coquettish whispers of toxin defusing anti-oxi-morons” or possibly the lesser known but for its sucint expression and infinite interpretability – the highly appreciable, “Disjunct expectations.”

“Leave this strange world, exit the theater!” Huckleberry wonders why the green lit exit sign has so many words. Theaters aren’t the most efficient      .

He leaves through the dusty projected light, and walks out onto that prairie out down below those clouds you see flowing pink, blue and red off of that long cliff wall below the black lit stars. Leaving an impression in the ground, a small pond fills in the memory of his shoe soles in which (in fish eye lens magnifying reflection) gathers the entirety of the unwrapped Milky Way.

When one witnesses such enthusiastically minimalist rhythms through said vertigo inspiring stellar perspective grows in the individual a new, atemporal definition of identity.

It’s the simple things like the entire night sky clearly illuminated in a shoe-print-pond which intrigue wanderers. Wanderers of parks. Or park benches. Or the kitchen sink. Thud! Thwack! Dohhhhhmmmmmm…Peripatetics hunting asymmetrics with perfectly round lenses. Travelers of great variety who cover inequal distances with equal immersion. Huckleberry encountered one traveler catching the eye of a bird who, on the first day of summer, leapt dove and skipped in the air only to abruptly regain composure on a branch, looking over its shoulder to make sure no one saw its glee. The look of surprise in its beak as it turned around!

A stork above an open world spotted Huckleberry below the pines in the park where humans gather, and – just for fun – the stork imagined our man as he once knew them to be, in nature, before all these strange vertical nests were built up. At the circumference of a fountain sit 30 archers spouting arches of water towards the center. They collide and cascades of red, purple, blue, green and yellow fall down in droplets. On the otherside, a blanketed couple wayfares through the vastness of leisure on a Sunday afternoon. In the lowest laid fountain were orange fish looking at each other under the blasts of UV from the afternoon sun. Gracefully floating and ignorant to our world, they have no fear of falling.

Waterbugs paint concentric impulses in shadows that cross current with the light raying and rippling like sand dune crests through the bottom of the shallow water. Snake stripes and other gaseous fumes are evoked in the mad currents of a souless park pond, under pink blossoms and beneath the stoic calls of spring frogs.

These are other simplicities that help an itinerant gauge the how much quality they are truly digesting in the moment, and therefore how they should proceed. Self evaluation 101.

Lately Huckleberry had been making good use of a nickname he didn’t know he had. The Errant American. (In spanish, Errante mainly carries the meaning of Wandering, so let’s leave all notions of moral decrepitude out of the story😉 )

He not only fully exemplified this wandering type, but lately sought parallel human resources of such devotions and disciplines to help fuel his current efforts. He was in a deluged Plasencia hunting for a bookshop in hiding.

Huckleberry meandered the depressed faces, and traversed the puffed up umbrellas bearing the might of the Great Nothing above apparently on shift at Olympus.

Streets flew from perpetual rainfall, rain escaped the radiant judgement of Zeus, and Zeus cracked thunderous laughter as he watched Huckleberry get lost in the messy matter. It’s a small world, afterall. Life is intertwined by the roots, even though sometimes this Creation’s lyricism seems sloppy at times. Humans still haven’t come to an agreement upon which of the gods is to blame. We’ve all pretty much come to an agreement that no one is The god or The goddess( You’d think we’d have learned after Troy) but one of them sure as hell is to blame.

Suddenly someone grabbed Huck off the street. It was Tannhauser. Coffee-Bookshop Tannhauser

(Wagner squeals in maniacal delight.)

There, Huck bought two books about two travelers: one, Cyrano de Bergerac recounting his blasphemous journey to the moon and the sun; two, the diary of Matsuo Basho (he’s a Boss. A Haiku writing Boss) on a poetry pilgrimage.

It was good to be among veterans.

So good, that Huckleberry decided to wrangle the undomesticated students up on Tuesday to feed on collective poetry writing sessions. ¿Would they survive? Of course. With flying colours and tasty colors and touchable no never mind. In a much less psychadelic manner Huckleberry played Haiku and Improv games with his students.

One aleatoric masterpiece went as such,

He seems to be a singersongwriter,

How much longer will he live?

It was a truly inspiring day. The onus of editing fell upon the already guilt ridden Spanish-Catholic shoulders of his students, of course. Cut the innecessary and redundant (woops), readjust the awkward and banal bits. By the end they were vagabond in the open plains of that massive Truman Show like cage under the tyrrany of “now, only 5 or 7 syllables at a time.” They found the untraversed paths.

Huckleberry essentially brought them on board the process of writing such mistakes as “On the Road” and such bloopers as “Oku no hosomichi.” Every step of talented revision becomes more dificult, more enigmatic, and more…new. It’s an important tool in the apprehension expansion of one’s linguistic capabilities. In a few brief revisions, a student’s expressiveness opens and flows by leaps, bounds, and kaplooshes. One must, afterall, maintain the fun once in a while in those operation room like classrooms. (Poorly, poorly funded operation rooms – we might add, Dear Readers)

At the end of the day, he got to see a side of some students he may have otherwise not seen. This is one of the many joys of teaching.

After such a momentous day of meditative music, Huck left to take a short journey between the school and home which might involve going any which direction (there aren’t that many) and thoroughly bathing in that life sustaining itinerant habit. He looked forward to meeting whomever, whichever of the Also the Original Jack Kerouac’s he might come across. Where to today? With whom? Whoever they were, hopefully they’d be able to stand the presence (or that “recently christened” stench) of one Huckleberry “el americano errante” Grimm.