Nearing the end of November in a room full of circular breathing ‘music’ the like of which should be prohibited from all places holy and unholy, Huckleberry wonders just what exactly these spaniards want to accomplish in this discussion at the conference for teachers of the EOI Extremadura. At this point, the overcaffeinated and wine surplus-ed Huckleberry consciousness following the MontyPythonLifeOfBrianLetsDecideHowWeSaveBrian discussion exemplifying a classic display of spanish decision making at work: let us all yell, all at once! the whole time!
Somewhere between enjoying the humor of the show and the mixture of alcohol and caffeine in his system a culture shock worm whole finds him unaware and vulnerable.
Unaccountably passive to the social machine, Huckleberry follows the flow of their Three Jewels of culture here. In christianity, we see the Trinity at work. In buddhism, we see the Sangha, the Dharma and the Buddha at work. In Spain we see the café, the caña(6oz. beer), and the copa(glass of wine) at work. Denying an invitation to participating in any of these social rituals is pure heresy. ¿What else could you possibly be doing? ¿What else could you possibly want to do? Between attending the religiously efficient imbibing and pursual of artistic/personal desires he has to choose: integration or isolation? Dear readers, in Japan there is a phrase that more or less says that the nail that sticks out gets whacked. Don’t stand out, don’t be different. After paratroubadouring himself into the iberian peninsula’s countryside all evidence concludes that this particular city is as white as middle american culture can get, with all the blessings of a dwelling vacuumed void of that dusty, messy individualism. This manifests most unfortunately in the classroom where students are often too afraid to stand out, not because they are simply too cool for school (as often happens in the US) but because they are indoctrined from a young age not to do so.
During the falling of autumn into that abyssmal black night of winter (which in Extremadura never really arrives, it is actually quite balmy there all things considered), Manolo invites the group of friends on a trip to the Monfrague National Park.
ExSqueeze me, Garth? a-BakingPowder? Oh, dear me, let me introduce you to some of Huckleberry’s friends. For starters there is the fear inspiring french duo: M&M. Marion and Manon are two lovely, but seriously intimidating, charming french girls that also teach here in Spain. Somehow they continue to tolerate his presence. One night, out in the spanish twilight hours of half past 4 in the morning at the bars, M&M and Huckleberry met a certain Tomás Ivan (Quinto) and his lifelong pal Gregorio. Through the exceptional help and patience of Ivan the Fifth Huckleberry established his first friend group here in Cáceres. Tomás’ cousin, a wandering giant named Manolo, also lives in Cáceres with his girlfriend Francis. Altogether these are the core friends of his life and it is with these people that he joined a day trip to the National Park of Monfrague.
And it is at this national park that he is pulled out through the wormhole from the amnesia inspiring cityscape. One may walk for blocks of the city and in the bottom floor of each apartment complex one may find the same shop with the same items that they saw 15 steps before. There is the same cafeteria, with the same menu, and the same friendly yet pessimisticly surly (search: spain Crisis) barista or bartender serving the same newspapers that print the same news everyday. There is the same clothing store that feeds the bulimic (anti)materialistic consumerist machine of the globalized middle class. There is the same ‘Chino’ store selling the same questionable quality items at the same substandard price. (There is obviously a place in life for a religious attitude for awe and astonishment at existence. That is also a basis for respect for existence. We don’t have much of it in this culture, even though we call it materialistic. In this culture we call materialistic, today we are of course bent on the total destruction of material and its conversion into junk and poisonous gases. This is of course not a materialistic culture because it has no respect for material. And respect is in turn based on wonder-A.Watts)
If you have, esteemed and patient reader, ever watched the television show pokemon you will know that the same health clinic, the same restaurant, and the same hotel/hostal exist in every town. That’s kinda what this is like. Every block. Somehow, they have achieved the American Dream of the 1980’s.
However, all that aside, here we find Huckleberry in the nature of Monfrague looking out from the castle atop the hill towards the horizon beyond the river Tajo and the landscape of endless green hills, mountain silhouettes, black vultures, golden feathered eagles..and this is the place that makes him feel most at home as well as simultaneously excites him with the urge to wander out wherever (and preferably towards nowhere, specifically).
Even though it may be the status quo here, fitting in simply bores a hole in his life force, which has proved to be an obstacle on several occasions with friends. One night, sitting down to play an electric piano, his friend walked over and started a click track whilst Huckleberry mused on textures, shapes, gestures, clusters, harmonies, melodies, chains and sustains of beauteous autonomies temporarily given alphabetic nomenclature during our present age. The implication had been made prior, that Huck doesn’t follow a rhythm..and here we find the worm hole of culture shock creeping up behind to suck him through and spit him out all gooky, sticky and a generally unpleasant disturbance.
Having given a lecture on culture shock, our tactless protagonist chooses to jazz the click track, unhingin’ its fascist implications in the manner a logical positivist might retort, ‘yes, but what you’ve just said is actually quite irrelevant, you see?’
Perhaps thanks to learning about the process himself in order to give the lecture, Huckleberry involuntarily finds himself sailing, and staying afloat in the group therapy session of this teacher conference. Instead of sucumbing to the shock by getting irrevocably upset with the group’s inefficiency, he surprises himself – realizing that, in the first time in his two and a half months in Spain, he is finally capable of following everyone speaking in parallel in this unfamiliar language. Basic fluency, stage one: complete. Stages remaining: infinite.
To read the otherside of the coin, Chapter Two: part two, Re-encountered, click here
