Vignette – Any small borderless picture in a book, especially an engraving, photograph, or the like, which vanishes gradually at the edge.

“Le Fils des Etoile.” Horizontally asymmetrical vibrating masses of frequencies equalize the weight of their witchcraft so as to fake vagabond flight unpathed and undrawn undestined. Gelatinous light smacks him directly in the face, but this inch tall plastic purple buddha figurine labeled, “Wisdom”, smiled all the same dominating my writing desk with placid enthusiasm. Hardly 40 seconds in, and Erik Satie´s work had me mentally pinned up on the cross of art music now almost 100 years old, and still irrelevant. Much has happened, little changed.

He blows : absence. Intimate, and familiar. There it was between outside n´inside. This was, harmonize forces between them. That was the incredible task. We are ignorant to being in concert. As the breath enters we are sounded, and when it leaves us we sound as well. The well engineered cyclical respiration unbelievably attains a marvellously continuous work obliviously symphonic with other works simultaneously independent and related. A musical masterpiece! At least if nothing else, the all around was surely a musical masterpiece. Now if he could just replicate such mechanics with the bamboo flute in his hands sounding like a pitiful forgery of the aforementioned philosopher´s stone of melodies. The respiratory graph of Huckleberry´s trip to la Valle de Jerte this spring..would become what sort of score? To which genre would it pertain? Which age? What ensemble?

Thinking about the daily while practicing the shakuhachi flute reminded him suddenly of watching the stars at night in high school during the lunch period.

Sky night watching. That is to say, the surface of our all at once crunchy and juicy apple universe. Observing spots rounded out perception loops. Within the spot of his palm lay an apple, with little dots peppered about its face, each dot with an open landscape sparsely filled  by other dots which were surely nothing other than borders to another inner space.That´s where the world is. How dangerously inspiring is an apple.

Pirates. Here in the cafe across the street from bar “The Buccaneer” he finds a pirate ship on the television screen declaring singularities and abnormalities at a silence-oppressed-xenophobia manifesting itself this time as a bunch of cafe regulars aged 50 average, each caballero with his waist long jacket, unrecallably colored slacks, and trade with any mark gentleman shoes.

Upon entering Huck called out, “buenos días, cup a´Joe, please.”

Peering through the foggy mass of foreignness the bartender sees a bearded man and asks, “Got change?”

“What?” <Why would Huck ask for a coffee if he didn’t have change?> Huck said, and thought.

“What? got change?” <Why do foreigners always fail to understand me?> the bartender said, and thought.

Now screening terrorism updates from Iraq on the national tele.

A gray haired flat top man blue jacketed and purple shirted asks huck from the end of the wooden bar, “You Italian?”

“No,” he stupefied calmly in return, “ American, apologies. Why?”

Rubbing his fingers together and then raising his eyebrows followed by a raise of open palms into the air above his shoulders as if to say, “I don´t know, because it looks like you got muh-nay. I don’t know, it wasn’t me!” all in one fell swoop of international body language. Actually, quite a courteous display of charades given that to Exhibit A: Bar Regular Number 4, his audience (Huck) could apparently be italian, swiss, german, or french. Who knows, really?

Now, Palestine was on display, spread eagle and gagged on international news. They´d have you believe that the world was a circus to vicariously vent your frustrations at the improper target. Gotta love the media.

“Me pone un churro, también?” Huck directed at the bartender, and joining in on the awkward silence ignoring Bar Regular Number 4´s ..comment.

“Ahora mismo”

He realized whilst pulling the wine out of the cool place, uncorking it, and placing it assuredly on the desk, “I´m turning spanishese. It´s 4 p.m., and I’m sitting down to read Marcel Proust with a cup of crianza from the prolific Ribera del Duero. It´s four p.m. How on earth did I get to the wine so late?”

Putting a pause to the narration, Huck smelled the book´s pages. Straight Vanilla. Nothing to cut its sweetness. A sensational block interrupting his sensationless bedroom surroundings. Just as the prose found within; long blocked passages of uncut delicacy fermented in collective memory, a method of passing contents from one container to another until the final product attains a unique development, yet to be decanted. “Who else participated in this communication?” Huck imagined which hands previously touched this copy of El camino de Swann. “Were they uptight? Elegant? Crude? What nationality? Were they bored, or intrigued? Did it burn upon ingestion? So many questions.

They hear, “HELP, HELP!” and shift their astute bottoms and absent minds.Someone outside the library was clearly in some briney pickle juice and their salty tears were only emboldening their torment. Nonetheless, everyone about the library seemed timidly cool, faking it till they make it to psychological states: Unmoved and Unbothered and Unknowing and perhaps Unperturbed. Some of them attempted to interpret the incessant S.O.S.  as music, perhaps of a ´primitive and unfamiliar kind´, but music nonetheless – ah! perhaps this is  what their uncle Paco had meant when he said, “Modern music may sound like noise to you, but this my dear family is nothing less than the music I love!” Immediately forgetting their irrelevant memories of uncle Paco, the countless newspaper reading library goers continued shifting and shuffling their bottoms in tune and rhythm with the persistent demands for help just outside the giant windows. An embarrassment to them all, and in plain view!

So, Huck gets up, and walks outside to see just what the matter is.

There, in the prison of abandonment, were a black lab furtively leashing the tree attached and an astute belly-lying golden maned mutt.The black lab was filibustering her terms of abandonment and the mutt waited with tepid hope in her eyes, as well as the Gestural Negative Space created by the actions she wasn´t taking to avoid looking like she wasn´t annoyed by her companion, even though she was. As any dog will tell you, sometimes it´s not what you say, but what you don´t say – and dogs don´t say it, best.

He approached them calmly and obliquely, kneeling to their level. First, the gold maned mutt immediately came to me to receive well waited affection. While the pink, grey, and black plaid jacket wearing black lab continued her saeta. Where was her god?

So, Huck, thinking maybe she needed to be within immediate reach of a human being, moved himself between the two doggies. There, there, and suddenly the labrador hushed up while glaring hopelessly at the cruel laughs of the sliding automatic doors, bullying her powerless and sore spirits.

Huckleberry sang a soft ssssssssssshhhhhhhh, repeatedly and quietly, substituting a noise to soften the transition between distress and peace. As they said, “The answer, my friends, is blowin´ in the wind,” so he did his best to invoke said spirit and elicit some of that assuring magic. Waiting outside in the scorching winter heat of 50 degrees fahrenheit, the doggy god arrived. Actually she was a beautiful lip pierced goddess with brown square framed glasses that complemented her auburn curls. Briefly addressing Huckleberry with a, “Gracias!” the goddess turned to our poor soul black lab and said, “what a little bicha are you!” Needless to say, his work was done and unnoted thus leaving him back to his duties of the day: re-applying for this english teaching gig and fancying a go at fumbling out a novel from his clumsy inarticulateness. Before entering the sauna where books are stored, he noted that people even wore winter jackets in this heat – not just the dogs! – but the people too, “What a strange place this is!” he mused entering the literature adorned sweat lodge. Indeed, Huckleberry, indeed.

At the cause of the illumination rare at the hour abstract of the pre-sunwake, in some moment he saw the face of hers in absence. Without details to fill the abyss. He, one brief instant confused before the nothing that was the simple night continuation where she should be, her saw. Of some manner, twins they are, without doubt and from the vacancy appeared a smile absurd, almost sinister and cruel yet lacking signs of such motivation, none. A storm stable and satisfied of her own powers potential hidden. He swore to himself, that in that vacancy was the girl he loved one time, but now the wide and immobile smile to him replied with strong gesture of unchanging non gesture. This was not funny, not comical. But neither came to him the word “horrifying ”because he didn’t fear this apparition. He just smiled back. Two tribeless lions encountering each other in the plain. Even though the one didn’t feel threatened by the other, the curiosity rising from recognizing one´s own kind out in the middle of a foreign and nowhere land led them to contemplate each other with curiosity arrogant. They’d both seen reflection at the bottom of nothing. Now, another smile that farewelled to Huck,“Until next time.” Thus disappeared the cat foggy and Huckleberry found himself watching again the beautiful face of the girl he loved, once upon a time.

“And so, to write is to hunt” and at that moment precisely I was awoken by this certain Mr. Cowriver (Search: Mr. Ushikawa).

“That´s to say, consists of a plot of patience?” I told the interrupter of my dreams.

“no, Rigid, no.” He paused, thereby modifying the seat of power in our untimely conversation with neither word nor gesture. Sustaining attention, while nothing occurs, robbing autonomy from your audience. That was Mr. Cowriver´s favourite surprise. He continued, “ And when you strike, do it beyond rapidly. To have someone say, – my, how rapid- is to allow someone to notice, which is to fail. Nothing can occur mentally that doesn’t have anything to do with conquest. All else is waste. Therefore, as I said, to write has to do with vengeance.”

“My friend, you speak in cut lines and foam sprays.” I muttered half attent in transitional funk.

“Seems that way, as seems a spider web, and in that sense said lion plays the lamb to coax its prey into ostracizing caution from its heavenly sphere of confidence, entering into the realm of Absolute Unconscious Behaviour” His ugly manner of using his lips to outline the capital letters of his obnoxious speech would be the singular pestilence of my following week.

“So your strategy is hypocritical.” Huck exhausted at the invasive presence.

Satisfied on the high of a captive audience he succinctly succeeded in not defending his statement, “No.” And then, after a grotesque grin that unveiled stained teeth, “Your logic is at best two dimensional, hardly enough these days. Even so, you’re in luck – the world continues living out the dark ages, and no one recognizes it.”

With that, Mr. Cowriver dryly left me to my room, my mental mathematics digesting his interruptive convo, and my dreams. Not before a bit of scotch, and a touch of 1Q84, of course.

Failing to put the book down wore down his eyes and depleted his Royal Swan beverage, and thus – putting on a youtube video of “From me flows what you call time” by Takemitsu Toru – Huckleberry decided to prelude his dreams with what´s on his mind:

“Please understand that I´m not accustomed to this. So unaccustomed that I´m up at 1:30 a.m., listening to the album Coplas de Querer by the golden voice that belongs to the mere human being that is Miguel Poveda. In my right hand we find a pen bridging the rim of the cream liquor bottomed white porcelain cup.

First of all, it´s not my fault that people don´t write letters anymore, and just to set things clear, I´m not in love – I know what that feels like. And when I read this in 5 to 10 years I´ll laugh not only at the absurdity of my current emotional naivete but also at the fact that the thought of 5 to 10 years made me wonder, ´Will she be there, then?´

That´s the kind of mess I´m in. I know what fleeting is, too. Past pitfalls showed me the way there and I can promise that I won´t get carried away, lose my head, and do silly things unwarranted by reason like simply being honest, because the only person who doesn´t feel uncomfortable and inconvenienced by honesty is god, to whom I´m grateful for listening even though I don´t believe.

Because of that I know better than to lose my head and let my hands get into an irrevocably dirty mess. Even though this might have the look and feel of a letter with romantic intent let´s be frank about the grim matter: I don´t know your favorite color, though it has to be some sweet spot of purple between pink and blue; I don´t know your first childhood friend; I don´t know which type of dessert you find unparalleled; I don´t know what gestures make you flip out; I don´t know your teenage dreams, or your parents´ names; I don´t know what it is that sometimes makes your eyes betray your smile at perceptively unrelated moments.

Well, whatever else it is I´ll admit that it crept up on me. I´ve tactlessly sleepwalked during the night to wake up in an open prairie without home on the horizon. Since I don´t belong here and there appears to be some accidental faulty arrangement of the cosmos, I´ll be on my uncertain way out now. Although, I´d really like to stick around and daydream for a while. Luckily for you I´m lacking in imagination.”

He hoped the humor of the gesture came through, one could never be sure.

To read Chapter 4, Click here

This would be the first Christmas Huckleberry would have to cook up, but before all that suave jazz hit the oven a new tradition had to be added to santa’s big list of to do’s. In some parts of Spain, including Extremadura, the local culture presented itself with a fancy dress he ain’t seen nor heard’f before: ‘let’s all drink with friends from 1-6pm before Christmas Eve Dinner!’.  And there you have it, all tinsled up, ornate, looking beautiful, and out to Eat, Drink and Be Merry for Tonight We Dine! – with family. Their reasons will remain classified.

Meeting up at an overflowing bar, Orense, with Laura and Miguel and their friends, are several happy spirits being lifted to merry mouths having entrusted their money to the Group Fund. Wittgenstein wrote in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicussis, “5.12 If you don’t leave consciousness of your money behind you (here referring to the Group Fund), it’s better not to drink at all.” Indeed, if you keep your money on you, you may worry about how much you are spending on drinking therefore leading you into a trap of drinking more, now that you’ve got more worries on your plate to wash down and away. So, 15 euros each, and share rations/tapas while drinking beer until that fund runs out. Then, leave responsibly without thinking twice.

After a solid four to five hours of traditional holiday cleansing, the trusty Group Fund ran its course and it was time for Huckleberry to head home to stuff a chicken and soup a fish. All through the night, not a prep went undone, and cooking went under way like the soft night being gently retreived by the sun to be cast like a net at day’s end.

Then, as the chicken cooked in his miniature toaster oven thingamajig, the midday cheer transformed into The Waking Hangover. Sleep, my friends, should always precede a hangover. Don’t let anyone cheat you out of that buffer experience.

Thus, a hungover Huck delivered food unto his friends with a pit in his belly, unable to truly eat the pineapple, lemon, walnut stuffing or the fantastic apple pie. Nor was he able to touch a drop of Bailey’s to round off the night.

Despite his ill grievances, and almost killing one of the guests with piping hot soup, the company was charming and cheerful. His roomate Jennifer, Anna from the Netherlands, Elodie from France, and Tomás from Badajoz all made for splendid company that made this Christmas much more rich than it certainly could have been seven time zones from home.

The next day, having slept profoundly, he dined on the leftovers like a Henry V.

The following few days were consumed by reading through several books and practicing William Walton’s Five Bagatelles for classical guitar. No one has seen those days, since.

After the great consumption, Huck parted ways from Cacerays to check out the living labyrinth of Toledo and living lunacy of Madrid with his friends Jamie and Jennifer.

If you consult the farmer’s almanac, it will tell you that every year, all the time, Toledo is one of the most beautiful old world cities around. Granted, it’s not painted with gold, but it’s full of intricately gold woven everything that ever made Midas itch ta’touch. The tradition of artisan gold work has been strung out through the threads of master craft workers since the now syrians arrived in the 700’s. Every corner of every street there are swords and gold on display, but the city is quite beautiful itself. It’s charm is also imbued via ultra labyrintine alleys and streets that change directions on you lest you either know the proper passcode ooorrrr, are guided by a magic device such as the scepter they picked up at Starbucks. Letting the scepter guide his way, Huck ran into a little stout peasant in a green coat who asked him where Huck found such a little spoon. Meanwhile, a veritable hobo in steel rags ruffled through a book relating a most cervantian menage a quatre. Every page he would circle the letters d,e,a,i,n,l,u, and c and use charcol to obliterate all other blasphemous letters. The first man, meanwhile, with his pouchy panza kept insisting on the whereabouts of little spoons. Huckleberry, in want of advancing in the maze, looked daftly at the poor man, ‘had he never before seen a path iluminating scepter?’ A strange case, indeed.

After much paseo in Toledo, and marzapan trofies won by virtue of Jamie’s shiny new dagger, the group carabused to Madrid in NewYear’s Eve anticipation.

The following day, Huck saw a sign in a cafe explicitly iluminating the sickness of the poor fellow. Indeed, his desire for love must hold him blind to all before him, questioning if it is not actually a little spoon after all that he beholds. There, in Madrid, a sign reads, “As long as there is a Little Spoon, there is Love.” Or perhaps, the little man is so potbelly full of love, that by corollary he can only assume that all before him must necessarily be defined as Little Spoon.

Moving on to the net of La Noche Vieja in Madrid, a mass of people are in La Puerta del Sol waiting grapes in hand for midnight to arrive. Jamie, Jennifer, Huck and a host of international couch surfers are among the throng.

Gong. Grape.

Gong.

Grape.

gong, grape, gong, grape, gong, grape, gong, grape, gong, grape, gong, grape, gong, gong, grape, gong, grape, gong, grape.

Midnight hits and the sounds of guns and bombs light off into the night as the herd of people celebrate 12 months of good luck, or at least, not choking to death whilst inhaling grapes for said good luck.

It is now, some time later, the new year.

Right now last year, Huck was in the works to find himself here right now this year. And he’s starting to get an idea of where he’d like to go right now, next year.

Meanwhile, the loopty loop of time fractals out like a good Javanese gamelan piece that it is, and Huckleberry finds himself back in Cáceres with all sorts of new things on his time –  among them the image of a spoon.

To read the next page, Intermezzo, click here

Unlimited magic at the company dinner so astounded Huckleberry that immediate reassesments of his physical health were paramount to his psychological health; of which the primary instigator of such concern was a classic Infinite Wine trick. Every time a glass chapel was sparse on The Lamb’s Blood an angel, swinging low, would thereby deliver moral reinforcement. The only time a chapel was left empty was when the congregation had moved into the barroque belfry of bubbly to cheer and toast a solid, but creamy and hopefully digestible New Year.

A bouyant evening which set sail for the bars after much jubilating, leaves Huck some time to consider his quarter-complete-journey whilst embarking by train from Grand Nostalgia Station. Watching train cars pass, each frame films in file taking this chance to unravel themselves from the serpentine orgy of a neuron cluster that they cummulatively resembled. The great sleep of rememberance reconstructs for him a sequence he hardly believes.

Awakened by the suited man pleading, “tickets, please” Huckleberry fights the ludicrous frequency of these sterile lights, somehow fitting for the Flight from time which is Swiss incarnate. His ticket is somewhere in a pocket of something, and everyone else is clearly getting ticketed off quite frankly because, who let this yokel on the Flight, anyway? Is he registered, is he aware that we simply don’tnevergot time for these social disruptions?

there, **, there it is**

and peace, again, laid out on the train’s interior cloth benching gazing up at the extremely unstable frenetic light of this one Winterthur bound Flight. Sleep.

There came a time for penguins, at the zoo near Zurich. He found that they too were constantly gazing out and around. upwards, backwards, underwards, sidewards yet somehow still in progression – the paradox between motionless and figurefull postured postulations implicated some sort of space motion, but it was imperceivable. They were simply cunning creatures by creation.One walks with penguins and registers their brain on a frequency other than Flight, and then begins to wonder just what the hell they are doing in a place called Switerland. The slip, they slide, they shuffle, they sail, they surf, they swim. One could romanticize and say that penguins engage with the Capital T A O, that they might possess a certain T E. But that, dear readers, is simply the tendency of this narrator, yours’truly now and for as long as lasts this meambulation. There is, however, one thing the Flight has in common with penguins – a love of sledding. This unaccountably postcard christmas environment was just itching to be sledded, and so, in the mountain town of Rigi Huckleberry’s hosts took him sledding. Sledding to town. Sledding to the bar. Sledding to Saint Nicolas! Sledding to the grocerey store. Sledding from the peak-ed sunset into the darkness of night, through curves of reflection and the perils of friction. It is dangerous, to move at such speed without knowing what is on the other non-existent side of the mountain path edge..he thinks

Somewhere between the absolutely stunning winterscape of the Swiss Alps and the horrid Flight that the sensations of [ChristmasSnow+ BeautifullyWisconsinLikeCountryside] remind him of that extremely singular place, of Madison. What an exceptional rarity, oddity, peculiarity of a community is Madison, Wisconsin. Especially more so, the particular community to which he pertained there is in no way explainable or relevant when people say, “oh, you’re from the states!”

The swinging slide swoops in for more:

Nauseating amounts of mixed perfumes pressurize the cabin of Marion’s car as they head back from a trip to Badajoz. The girls left Huck to DoAsDoesBest in the central part of town. Amidst a town still destroyed by the civil war not so long ago, amidst a town where the financial crisis is spelled out for you by degraded letters on crumbling housing and deserted abodes, Huck finds a Tapas Fair burning alive. While M&M make a tour of the shopping center near the border with Portugal, Huckleberry dines on one of his favourite stereotypes of Spain: a tapa crawl. At the first bar, while talking with the very definition of a friendly southern spaniard, Huck picked up a map of bars participating in the fair with a special tapa for a Fair price…ha ..ha..ha.. oof, my knees aren’t what they used to be!

It’s 11 a.m., time for the first tapa, and the first cervecita on his trail of beers. Several bars later, and full to the tapa his capacity, Huck joins Manon and Marion for la comida around 3 p.m. Perhaps it was the abundant caña consumption, but at this time Huck embarks on a halucinogenic journey incited by the often orgasmic taste of lightly salted Iberian Jamon. ‘Please eat (acorn fed ham) responsively.’ will go the saying, one day..

A horn, and  tac-tac clinking heels which claim the night in Spain break his concentration, and Huck crosses over from the Madrila – guitar slung – onto the main drag of Cánovas. To his right is a line of apsiring Festives, young hopefuls entering the arena of the nightclub Cameron. He has been there, once, and yet that one time was a source of great friendships outside of the arena that also aren’t likely to return there. Often, friendship is the celebration of serendipity. Often it is as simple as two or more parties, all of whom recognize {we are here, IT is remarkable, and we are together to witness it} as an extremely fulfilling set of circumstances that does not necessarily exist within any defined bounds.

Including the company dinner and other similar festive pre-holiday send-off’s, the pace of the film before the frames of his train car seating go beyond the bounds of his vision, a space oddity.

It’s been four years since he heard that voice. To which, having only a month of speaking under his belt, responding with his own is quite embarrassing. Picking up a language after a break of four years without a formal review is quite the startling experience, but not quite as startling as picking up a conversation with an equal stretch of time between Goodbye and Hello. What a fascinating shape the river of life takes, Huck thinks and reassures himself that the raft assuredly continues downstream despite the manifesting Relativity of the moment. Then the Absurdity hits. You see, tonight is Halloween, and Huckleberry is painted like a Sugar Skull much like you would observe within the Mexican community for Day of the Dead. He’s wearing nice slacks, shiny shoes, a silveredBlue tie, and a fedorah; all in all, dressed to kill and a handsome devil – we might add. He’s out at the bars with friends, it’s midnight and he is sipping some terrible (cheeeeap) whisky if only to remind himself that somewhere, out there, truly tasty whiskys exist. Tomorrow afternoon (or the morning in Spain), he expects to pick up his friend from the bus station – a friend he hasn’t seen for nearly four years. He’s generally swept up in the fun of Halloween and having a …hugh? aa-roouu? What’s that Scooby? a text from Cindy? What’s it say, dude?

‘Surprise! I caught the last bus from Madrid, I will be in Cáceres in an hour!’

Like Zonks, Scoob, we better get going!

Thereby, Huckleberry, in complete Halloween-Day of the Dead regalia, walked through the midnight streets of Cáceres to the bus station with no time to change out of costume and greeted his long found friend with a big tooth-painted grin.

It is the joy of everyone to have friends who accept you, even when you look like death. And here in Spain Huck finds the film largely reconstructing itself around these pilars. I will, my lovely companions, return this magic narration device to the joyful librarians at this moment; but before this part of chapter three ‘Soulstice’ comes to the intermission pause, allow me to leave you with this last sequence of frames from the homeward bound nostalgia journey screened two evenings past in Huckleberry Theater, for me, a man away from home, it is exceptionally full of the spirit -the carol – of Christmas:

Something simple, incredibly simple. I simply can’t explain how remarkable it is to just have bread, goat cheese, pate, olive tapanade, chocolate covered figs, yogurt cups, almond turron and effervescently dry white wine in the company of such rare individuals with whom I simply enjoy being near. Smiles through silence, thankfulness through wordlessness, and in the background croons Frank Sinatra,’and so I offer you this simple phrase’ and coffee is brought out,’ for all kids 1 to 92′ and though it’s been said, ‘ma-ny timesss, manyWayyysss’…Merry Christmas, to You.

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