Bimini, Wahoo and the Hemingways

Here's an article of mine that just came out on Sport Fishing Magazine.

Here's my latest article on Collier's Magazine.

Spain Again, Seventy Years After

Before leaving Montreal for Madrid a friend gave me a heads-up. He had traveled to both Russia and Spain this year and told me that the Spanish police were much worse than their Russian counterparts.  He said that if I was within striking distance of a cop and his truncheon, whether I was involved in a protest or not, I would be considered fair game, and also that being with the press or wearing something that said prensa would not protect me. With 25% of the country out of work and fed up with the government and its austerity cuts or recortes, the police, he said, were showing no mercy. Men, women, teenagers, it didn't matter; if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time you could expect to be hit. Someone had given them a green light to get the job done the old fashioned way, and it showed. On the 25th and 26th of September, the Spanish were shocked to see news reports of the Policia Nacional savagely clubbing and shooting demonstrators with rubber bullets in front of the Congreso de los Diputados. For a country that had endured 36 years of Fascist rule, it was a bit much. Police brutality was not something to be taken lightly, and while the transition to democracy after Francisco Franco's death had for the most part worked, it didn't mean that the secret torture chambers and the unmarked graves of the fascist era had been forgotten. The memories were still there and with every clash between the police and the protestors, the Spanish could judge for themselves whether or not anything had changed since the 1930s.
But was history really repeating itself, I thought? Was Spain, as it struggled to survive in a worldwide economic crisis, on the brink of something catastrophic? And if so, who or what was to blame and was there any solution to these problems? Certainly a case could be made that the country in 2012 has more in common with 1936 then it does with the period immediately preceding the Wall Street collapse. Before the crash everyone was making money, and in the small town where I lived in 2006 just east of Malaga, it was obvious why the British had jokingly renamed the Costa del Sol the “Costa del Crane.” Everyone was building. There was a mad rush by anyone with any kind of land to sell it as fast as they could to the developers of the Nuevas Urbanizaciones (the new subdivisions). They were springing up in an almost Brazilian way wherever you looked: European favellas complete with structural faults and in some cases no running water. My own apartment building had been built on a hill and had a large visible crack dividing the upper section from the lower section. You could see it in the outside wall, and I asked one of my neighbors if the structure was actually splitting in two, but he assured me that it was just the ground that was settling and that it would take a while.
Like all property bubbles this one didn't last and when it collapsed the economic engine of the country disappeared with it. Unemployment skyrocketed, people started to default on their mortgages, and the mood of the country went south. Since 2008, over 400,000 have been evicted from their homes and my grandfather would have certainly recognized the anger and frustration the average Spaniard faced with such bleak economic prospects. He would have also recognized a government that is essentially powerless to stop the international forces that are bearing down on the country, but that at the same time are aiding and abetting these forces as it soldiers on with the austerity budgets demanded by the Germans, the IMF, the E. U. and the big banks.
The Andalusian writer, Antonio Muñoz Molina, who was the head of the Instituto Cervantes in NYC and now teaches at NYU, is not a friend of the Rajoy government, nor does he approve of its austerity policies. “There are 6 million unemployed in Spain and many of them have no government support whatsoever. The government is simply following the E.U. game-plan and pushing its own right wing agenda.” We were speaking in a bar near the center of Madrid and I asked him how things had changed in the last four years. He said that there is an immense sadness in the people. “Whereas before the crisis there was energy and hope for the future, now there is none.” At the same time he cautioned that this generalized feeling of depression could easily change to populism. “For example, look at the Catalan independence movement. It is their new fantasy.  As a country it would never be viable and in fact it has never existed as a sovereign state. It has always been a part of Spain. Now they are saying that their region gives more to Madrid in taxes than it ever gets back in funding for its social programs. But when the economy is bad everyone starts to complain about that. The real problem is that there is too much bureaucracy in Spain. There are simply too many governments when you add up all the local, provincial, and regional entities. And all of these governments are redundant and cost money, because we are looking at a lot of salaries that have to be paid for a lot of useless bureaucrats. That is what we need to cut, not our health, education or social programs.”
Strangely enough, Rodrigo Rato, an ex-managing director of the IMF and a former minister in the conservative Aznar government (PP), agrees with much of what Molina has to say. They are about as different as you can be politically but they both believe that the sheer size of government in Spain has to be reduced if the country is ever to recover financially. Rato also thinks that Catalan independence is unrealistic, but not because you can't change the laws (presently it would be illegal under the Spanish constitution) but for economic reasons. He gave the example of the port of Barcelona. It is the largest and busiest, not because it is in Catalonia, but because it is in Spain. Put that port in an independent country and its business will suffer. He then mentioned the problems that they would have using the Euro and repaying their share of Spain's national debt. He did think, though, that the push for independence was being exacerbated by the bad economy and that the Catalans were right to a certain extent in expecting more from Madrid.
Unlike Molina, Rato is in favor of the government's austerity policy as a solution to Spain's economic problems. Still, he thinks that the government working on its own is not enough. It needs the active support of the European Central Bank (ECB) as a lender of last resort, similar to what we have in the USA with the Federal Reserve. This, however, would require a European banking union, with a unified system of supervision, he said. I asked him if the Germans would agree to this and he answered that he thinks so, that eventually they will have to. I nodded and as he started to explain the need for “mutualizing (bank) losses on a European level,” I thought that it was actually quite surreal to hear Mr. Rato talk about the merits of a unified system of supervision, considering that recently he and thirty others had been indicted in Spain for banking fraud, falsifying documents, and embezzlement. As president of Bankia (an enormous Spanish savings bank) from its creation in 2010 to May of this year when it reported losses of 4.3 billion Euros, it would have been his responsibility, in theory at least, to have an idea of what was going on where he worked.  The meltdown, after all, was quite a scandal. The bank had to be partially nationalized by the Spanish government and here in front of me was a man who had perhaps looked deep into the center of this financial black hole. A man who supported, without hesitation, a program of austerity and budget cuts that would never affect him (he is quite wealthy) and who, as president of  Bankia, stood accused of nearly destroying an institution where tens of thousands of ordinary citizens entrusted their savings. Every man is of course innocent until proven otherwise, but it occurred to me that should eventually he be found guilty as charged and convicted, Spain would have succeeded in doing something that the United States with all its courts and lawyers seems incapable of doing: actually bringing to justice one of the bankers responsible for this huge mess.
Later that day when I met Toni Cantó, an actor turned member of parliament with the Union Progreso y Democracia (UpyD), he said that if I had spoken with Rato, then I should know that the money used to bail out the banks that he was connected with was public (which I knew). But that this was totally normal in Spain because the two major political parties are inside the banks (which was something I didn't know). “In the Cajas de Ahorros (the savings banks) Rato and company were running the banks, controlling them for their own uses. Making a lot of money and using them for projects that they could utilize in upcoming elections. Construction projects, like the city of lights in Valencia, the Castellon airport, have you heard anything about that? It was built but it isn't open, because it isn't being used, no one actually flies there.”
What I needed to understand, said Cantó, was that in Spain half the banks are private and the other half are public and the political parties thought of the public banks as a kind of gigantic ATM machine.
“This is true,' agreed Pablo Gallego, one of the founders of Los Indignados, the Spanish group that was the inspiration for the activists of Occupy Wall Street, “But part of the reason for this stems from the fact that after the dictatorship there was a political change, but there wasn't an economic change. Franco himself said that he had essentially left the regime intact. And now everyone is talking about this economic immobility. The same oligarchy that controlled things under Franco is still in control. The families that ran the banks and the building industry in Spain when Franco was alive are still there.”
But it gets worse. According to Gallego, many of the leaders of the present political parties are sons of those who were members of the Fascist party. “Rubalcaba, the head of the socialist party, is one such person. For the Falange he was a black sheep, but no one on the left ever held it against him that his father was a fascist. But this guy now has a million euros in his bank account so what kind of socialist are we talking about? People are talking about this. They don't trust these politicians and they don't trust the system, which in turn favors the fascist parties in Europe. Look at what is happening in Greece with Golden Dawn.” I asked him if there was anything similar to Golden Dawn in Spain and he said that there wasn’t, but that there are some members of the Spanish delegation to the European parliament who now openly say that Spain was better under Franco.
But what do the Spanish really want; more or less democracy? In the end would the Spanish favor a group like Los Indignados or the Greek Golden dawn party? “That is the question. We asked for more democracy. I know what happened to Occupy Wall Street. How the US government got rid of them. Here in Spain we had some meetings with the police, the police union. These cops told us that we had to be careful because the government has spies in our organization. In the end what we really want is a democracy that is protected from economic power.”
But are people in Spain beginning to wonder if they even need a government considering the lack of success Prime Minister Rajoy has had in reducing either unemployment or the deficit? “Well, during the Civil War there were over a million anarchists, a really a huge number. We have a tradition of that here. We had Franco, but we also had anarchists. If you ask me, though, it's better to have a state, and a government.”
As for Los Indignados, he thinks that they have to evolve from being protestors to citizens. They have to ask themselves just what kind of society they want. In his opinion, most people would say that they want equality, justice and an end to corruption. Unfortunately, he admitted, while a lot of people want change, they don't want to get involved because they are afraid of another coup d'etat. “Spain has had a history of this.”
To get a better idea of how the crisis was affecting the average Spaniard and indeed how it was moving up the economic ladder I spoke to film director Alejandro Toledo. Toledo has had a very successful career directing TV commercials for corporate clients and I asked him about the advertisement he filmed for Caritas, the Catholic Church's main charitable organization. It is a very powerful clip that shows a young man in his thirties walking through the streets of Madrid with a little girl who isn't more than five or six. The two of them are homeless and the man is tired and worried, not so much about anything that might happen to himself, but because of his daughter. He doesn't have any money and she doesn't understand why they can't go home, and she wants something to eat. The first thing you notice about him is how normal he seems. He is not at all what you would think of when you think of a homeless person. His trousers and his jacket are neat and clean and his hair is cut, and even the suitcase that he's pulling along gives him more the look of a tourist than a man who has just lost his job. This is a story about the new poor in Spain, about the middle class that is finding it harder and harder to get by in the big cities and that is increasingly turning to organizations like Caritas for help.
It is a very moving and realistic commercial and I asked Toledo how he came up with the idea. What inspired him to do an advertisement for Caritas? “It's based on a true story” he said. “One day I was walking along a street in Madrid and I saw this guy who I hadn't seen in ten years; a film producer like me, walking into a Caritas food dispensary with two of his kids. I was so surprised to see him that I stood there and the next thing you know the three of them were walking out again carrying bags of food. Of course, I understood immediately that he was taking that food because he needed it for himself and his kids and it hit me that this man was a professional and that if it could happen to him, if he could lose his job, then it could happen to anyone, myself included. And it was then that I knew that I had to contribute in some way. I couldn't just stand by saying nothing.”
When I asked if the Spanish resented the immigrants who were still there and receiving unemployment benefits he said that none of these people are stealing from the system, that everyone is just getting what they paid for. He was categorical in his support for them. “This is a crisis that is affecting our own but also all these immigrants. We have millions of them here who came to work in the construction industry during the boom period. They have put down roots in Spain, with kids too, and they are covered by the system. So, what I noticed when I was making my movie was that the crisis was relative. Most of the people are covered by social security and health care is free. Of the five million that we have here who are unemployed, three million are covered by social security. It is the other two million who we really need to think about.”
All of this is manageable, he said, so long as the government continues to pay for benefits like unemployment and health care. The money is there, it's just a question of how the Spanish decide to use it. Caritas does a lot to help those who don't have any kind of coverage, but even more important is the traditional role of the Latin family in taking care of its own. “In a Latin country, you have to ask yourself with 5 million people unemployed why aren't these people on the streets, why isn't there already a revolution? It's because of the communities that exist, with the family doing their part, this is what Latin is, this is the Latin mentality. If you go to the USA you don't see many Latin people who are homeless in the streets. In Miami for example you don't see Latin homeless.” He did have a point about Spain. Many people who I spoke to while in Madrid told me that if it wasn't for their families it would be much more difficult to survive in the crisis.
So the safety net in Spain was not just the government. Individuals and families still counted. Recently a couple in the Basque Country, Jose and Isabel (their last names were not given) posted an insert in a local newspaper offering their vacation home for up to a year to any family in economic difficulty, free of charge. The turning point for them was the suicide (one of many due to eviction) of a woman who was about to be removed along with her family from a house not too far from where Jose and Isabel live. In one interview, Jose said that at this rate “Spain will become a country of houses without people and people without homes”. He said that they were not millionaires. That life, however, had been good to them but that they were no better than anyone else. Something had to be done and this is what they decided to do. Their example has inspired many. The city governments of both Madrid and Barcelona, for instance, have now decided to allocate some of the houses that they have to people who have been evicted from their homes. Perhaps all of this could be seen as a new trend and evidence that people are waking up to the fact that strong measures, and not just more austerity, need to be taken with the crisis and the pain that it has generated.
Some, such as UGT union leader Cándido Méndez, whom I interviewed the day of their general strike in November, understand that it is going to take a long time, perhaps ten to twenty years, to rebuild Spain's economy after the collapse of the housing industry. Culture, the Spanish language, and agriculture are some of the strong points that he sees in Spain's economic future, but this is going to require a lot of investment, he told me.
Others, such as the 70 year old Enrique de Castro, are not waiting for the money and are taking matters into their own hands. De Castro was certainly one of the more interesting people I met while in Spain. A Catholic priest, although he doesn't like the word “priest.” “Jesus,' he says, 'abolished the priesthood like he abolished the temple, like he abolished the intermediaries between man and god. In the Bible this is very clear, even if they try to hide it.”
De Castro has been serving the parish of Vallecas, a suburb about 10 miles outside of Madrid, for 31 years. During the transition period to democracy in Spain he denounced the torture that was still being carried out by the police, even during the socialist González government. He has always taken the side of the weakest in society and he and the other priests in his parish came out in favor of the laws legalizing divorce and gay marriage and this obviously created a lot of tension with his superiors. “We were talking to journalists in the newspapers and on TV and telling them, for instance, what we knew about the world of drug dealing (his parish is in a section of greater Madrid which has always been a problem area for drugs). Namely that there were economic interests, even political interests, in putting to sleep, so to speak, a whole generation of potentially rebellious youth.”
“What we supported and what we were against contrasted stridently with the image of other priests and especially with the church hierarchy, but our job was to take care of those who couldn't take care of themselves. Finally I remember that an auxiliary bishop from Madrid came to see me and asked me to sign a document that was written by Ratzinger himself. He was already Pope, even if this particular document was from his days as a Cardinal in the Santo Ufficio. The bishop asked me to read and to sign that document if I wanted to be in communion with him and with the cardinal. But I realized that if I signed it I wouldn't be in communion with my people, because basically it was saying that homosexuality was against nature, that they were depraved, etc.” And so he didn't sign it.
I asked him what he thought about the austerity program of the Rajoy government and he said it was affecting in a negative way everyone. He has personally worked with many Moroccan teenagers, even taking some into his own home. The cutbacks meant that all of these boys could no longer receive medical treatment because they didn't have proper visas. He knew of a few who had been receiving treatment for cancer or AIDS and they had had to give up their treatment.
I asked him what he thought would happen to Spain and he said that in his opinion things would get worse. The government would continue with its austerity measures and the labor unions would hold their one day strikes that affected no one. “I am convinced that the only solution to our problems is living in small groups and doing the best we can within these groups. In our parish we have created this kind of community, one of mutual aid and respect for others. The only revolution that we need to start is the one based on caring, on feelings, and generosity. It is the only revolution possible, because if you seize power you become that power and there is no difference between you and it. This was the tragedy of the countries of Eastern Europe, they made a revolution with the people and they then governed without them.”
Spain, I knew, would be different. It would survive the crisis because of its people. “True faith,” De Castro told me as I said good-bye, “is believing in others.” The strength of the Spanish had always come from the small communities, from people taking care of each other and believing in their essential dignity as human beings, and it would be no different in 2012. In a time of crisis, everyone is given the chance to discover what is essential in life.

Desire

Here is a short story that was published in Chum Literary Magazine last August.

Desire

As she moved his hand to her throat her blue eyes expanded in ritual fright and desire. The less she could breathe the more she knew she would feel him and if his penetration was true then abortions would follow. It had happened this way three times in the space of six months and while the abortions weren't exactly Celtic cannon she had told him nothing. In her own way she may have even loved him, expressing herself in a comfortably confused pot-pourri of ideas that she'd acquired from her father, grandfather and the internet.

The bedroom where he would take her faced the beach and the Gulf Stream and was on the twentieth floor of a high-rise next to the shipping channel. She would have preferred an imitation Bauhaus with sweeping white lines and protective stonewall, but the waterfront was public property and even with all her wealth there apparently were limits to what you could buy in America. Looking at her building from the beach he often thought that like his lover, its unblemished, blinding white façade was far too distant and severe and whispered of future disasters.

She was not from Miami, but appreciated its lack of traditions and the way that men looked at her when she drove her Aston Martin down Ocean Drive or parked next to one of her favorite boutiques in Coconut Grove. They loved her eyes and her diamond watch, her legs and her small but well shaped breasts. But most of all they could never get enough of the way that she would look at a man. As if he were the only person in the room or on the street and as if nothing else mattered. Her focused but ephemeral attention giving each of them their 15 seconds of fame. It was a drug and she needed it as much as they did.

The monthly events were altogether different from the chance encounters. Only old friends were ever invited and always in groups of three. Three being the minimum number for a Celtic quorum, even if you couldn't really call it a quorum in a deliberative sense. It was more a celebration of humiliation and dominance, although in that particular sect they liked to refer to it as a “trust building” experience. With just three friends for dinner they'd use the ropes. But with six or nine or twelve they could take turns holding her down. There was always an objective and the objective depended on the month and the ancient saying for that month, the father is fear, trust derives from pain, what to do when Leos collide, etc. It was difficult to remember everything but from the age of six she'd been raised for this, following the old ways, the ceremony and their language (a mix of pre-destination and romantic brutality). Her friends after all were depending on her for guidance and she had never let them down.

She believed in her cult and its future and initially had chosen him as a kind of designated pinch hitter. This Italian-Cuban native of the Keys would bring new blood to her decadent line of Uber-menschen businessmen. He was relatively young, younger than her, and poor, certainly compared to what she had, and this she figured was a good match. He was a barman on a cruise ship and that was where she'd seen him serving mojitos and daiquiris. She drank a lot and paid in cash when she was alone, which wasn't too often. She had a foreign accent, German or Swedish, and she liked the company of men.

The cruise was to the far reaches of the Lesser Antilles and Suriname, and on the fifth day out of Miami she arrived later than usual, ignored the others who were hovering about her and waited for him to finish his shift. “Take me back to my room” she whispered as he brought her her last drink. They stopped briefly on the deck to look at the sea and the full moon and he felt her waist and her hands, which were small and fine. They didn't have much to say. It was time and they knew it and at the door to her cabin he pushed her into the room and onto to her bed where he took her from behind, making her feel his pain. She, of course, appreciated the gesture and remembered, as he drilled into her, that there had never been a moment in her life without fear and that the fear had tempered and protected her from the things that would bring her down. Hadn't her father himself told her that he would always love her and that if another man even so much as looked at her that he would take the matter into his own hands. Wasn't this fear on his part? And wasn't he instilling it in her, wondering as she always would as a girl if any boy who ever looked at her would live to see another day? And didn't he also teach her how to come from the age of four, fingering but never penetrating, preparing her for the eventual public deflowing? Indeed he had, and she was as grateful as a Celtic daughter could be, given the circumstances.

In the world outside their tribe they called it incest and rape, child abuse and a host of other distasteful terms, but from her vantage point as a five year old it was just love, pure and unadulterated. If a man wanted to take a woman and be truly married to her then it had to be this way, in the circle of trust, from behind, with an initial thrust that would demonstrate once and for all who belonged to whom. That she belonged to her father was clear, or at least that was the plan. They would marry when she was twelve in a conservative rite with vetted friends, good food and wine. As a girl she had dreamed of this, of being united with her father as only lovers are. Deliriously happy as he would attend to her for hours in their wedding bed.

While those dreams never materialized all that had happened was hers to live with and cherish or despise, depending on the day and how she felt or who she was talking to. Of course, she told the pinch-hitter, Giacomo, about her upbringing and her father. At first affecting a kind of shame to see how he would react, blaming her parents and playing the victim. But as the weeks passed and their love-making blended with the drinking and the drinking with the pain, she told him more and he discovered that it was easy to get her to talk. She might not be telling him the truth but what she was saying had a certain coherence to it. He discovered that when she was drunk he could ask her anything and she would answer him so long as he was “matter of fact.” The most intimate details of her father's weekly sessions were his for the taking if his voice was neutral and clear. She liked easy to answer questions and on those rare occasions when he couldn't keep it simple he wouldn't get a response.

“When was the last time you were with your father?” he'd asked her as the two of them were sitting on the couch of her living-room. The apartment was quiet and the glass windows to the balcony were open and you could hear people shouting from the beach. She had half a bottle of Porto in her hand and was leaning against him naked and tanned as she took small steps into the twilight of her past. She had reached that blurred state she so often sought out in the evening, when her mind needed to wind down from the day and recover the stability she'd never had.

“We were with the lawyers and I was 11. It was in their office and they were wearing their robes and so you couldn't see much.”

“They worked for your father?”

“They did. And my grandfather, too.”

“He was also there?”

“No.” she said.

“And what were you wearing?”

“Nothing, of course,” and she told him that there was perhaps a film of the encounter because it was an official meeting and they had an interest in documenting these things for future generations.

Pedophiles with a need to set the record straight, he thought, with an expression that bordered on mild interest. There was a breeze blowing in from the ocean and he looked out the window and then back at her. He'd never asked her age, but assumed that she was at least ten years older than he was, just from the look that her eyes sometimes had. A tired gaze from too much experience, a mental fatigue she couldn't shake off.

“And what did your father do?”

“What he always did. I was on the desk, so that the lawyers could see and he was licking me. Slowly at first, concentrating on my clit and then expanding his scope to include the rest.”

“With the lawyers as passive observers?” he asked.

“No, not exactly,” she told him, “they participated, doing what they'd been told to do.”

“Which was?”

“Curious today, aren't we?”

“Sort of,” he said, feigning disinterest.

“Well, I'll tell you,” she told him taking another drink from the bottle, “but only because I love you, and because it really was beautiful, ceremonially speaking. They were the children of the goddess, Danu, and I became the Lady of the Lake under warm rushes of steam and liquids over my chest, neck and cheeks.”

“They were jacking off?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“You never told me that before.”

“You never asked” and he knew as soon as he'd said it that it was stupid but he couldn't help himself as he looked at his girlfriend and imagined her in a room with these men. It stopped him cold and as she went on describing the scene and its particulars he thought for a second that this was what insanity was like. Not being able to come clean or dislodge from your mind what could never be wiped away.

“Now I want you to fuck me like those old ugly lawyers never would,” she told him as she stood up and moved to the dining room, nearly tripping over a chair and dropping the Porto on the carpet.

“Get me another one,” she said motioning to him with her hands to come closer.

“Should I open it?” he asked, and she nodded a couple of times as she positioned herself against an antique wooden table. It was long and very heavy and he thought that it was the kind of table that you could jump or dance on and it wouldn't break, it was that strong.

“This is how it happened,” she said.

“What?”

“With my first husband, not here but many years ago.” And she was bracing herself with her arms stretched out of in front of her, her legs spread wide, ready for his pleasure, submitting to him the way she's been taught to.

“Anyone ever tell you that your skin looks good against live oak with termite holes?”

“No,” she said, “now take me, take me here.”

He uncorked the Porto and took a swig. She was re-enacting her wedding night, the one where she'd been raped by her spouse in a hotel dining room that had been rented for the occasion. At least sixty people had watched, and, if he was to believe her, it was something that she had really looked forward to.

Later on, because of the pain and the blood she wouldn't sleep with another man for 20 years, until the pinch-hitter. The excuse for breaking her vow of chastity was that she needed to conceive but she didn't like the way a fetus felt inside of her and got rid of them with abortion pills. The RU 486 treatments weren't cheap at $500 a shot but that was about what she paid for a bottle of pink Moet et Chandon and comparing them to one of her favorite drinks helped her to keep things in perspective. Life was expensive, but even terminating it had its costs.

She loved her man and if she wanted to continue making love to him then she would have to use the pill every time he succeeded in doing what she wanted him to do. Birth control just wasn't contemplated in her cult and she didn't waste any time worry about it. She was still fertile at 41 and she loved the way he could make her come for hours on end, never letting up, never letting her stop. In bed or against the oak table she would scream at him, act deliriously, swear at her father and her mother and all the Teutonic knights and witches that had come before her. They hovered above her in those moments, laughing at her and her education, her foolish pride and the childlike belief in a love that would some day free her from this carousel of shame.

He took her where she wanted it. Holding her hips and hitting her another home-run as he pinned her against the table and realized that in delicate moments like these he was thoroughly expendable. She didn't need him, she never did and five minutes after he'd finished she announced that it was time to go out. They dressed and she was surprisingly steady considering that it was nine and she'd been drinking since two.

Down on the street it was a short walk to the bar just off Ocean Drive. that had couches or quasi-beds for those who wanted to get comfortable. It was a place that was set up with canopies, which together with the palm trees and the sand gave it an almost Arabian feel. An oasis of booze and attentive waiters that always put her in a good mood. She ordered two mojitos and as the waiter came back and Giacomo paid for the drinks two young men sitting on another couch had already taken notice of her. They were both Cubans and tanned with black, gel covered hair that seemed to reflect light into the darkness beyond the bar.

After her second drink he asked her if she wanted to leave but she pretended that she hadn't heard him and one of the Cubans immediately ordered another round of mojitos.

“I want to live life to the fullest!” she said standing up with her glass in a toast to her new friends as the waiter marched back to the bar.

“A la vida sin compromisos!” said the Cuban closest to her.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“Means damn the torpedoes.”

“Oh, but I want torpedoes,” and Giacomo looked on saying nothing, raising his glass whenever a new toast was proposed. He was drunk but it didn't matter. They were putting the move on her but he didn't care. She was damaged goods but they didn't know that and anyone could watch. She would want him to watch.

What happened next happened for no particular reason. She announced that she wanted to see the waves and the Cubans offered to take her there. It wasn't too far and he walked behind them as they staggered along in the sand with their mojitos in hand. The tide was coming in and you could hear the surf in the darkness. He followed maybe three feet behind them, the Cubans sometimes holding her, sometimes dragging her to the beach. She was kissing them as she moved along and when they were there at the water's edge she knelt down in front of the quiet one and unzipped his pants. The talkative one pulled her shorts off and came in her from the rear.

At that point Giacomo would have left but a floodlight appeared above them illuminating the scene along with a voice over the sound of helicopter blades and wind telling them to put their hands in the air and to stop what they were doing. The Cubans looked stunned and confused but his girlfriend turned her head for a second to see a camera on the nose of the chopper. The police were filming everything for posterity and she smiled, remembering the old ways and what a daughter had been told to do.

John Hemingway                       Copyright 2012, John Hemingway

Destinations

Here's a new poem from John Lyons

Destinations

Hoy no ha venido nadie a preguntar;

ni me han pedido en esta tarde nada.

César Vallejo

We are destinations:

not Rome or Athens,

or São Paulo, or the zoo;

as friends or lovers,

sisters or brothers

fathers or mothers,

we are the destination,

and neither travel nor tourism is

an out-of-body experience;

we may take places to our heart

just as we take people to our heart

but we are always the destination

just as we are always the recipient

of the gift we give, of the giving,

of the love we make, of the loving;

we are the place where others

meet us, the point of arrival

and the point of departure,

our bodies and our senses

the theatre of our soul

in which our deepest dramas and

and most unworldly loves

are daily enacted; Barcelona

came to me one torrid summer,

many many years ago, the air,

dry as a whip, lashed my cheeks,

entered the deepest recesses

of my lungs, fed me with dust,

threw me into myself

like a discarded rag.

I was the destination

and nobody called.

Not a hair out of place,

not a stone unturned,

and nobody called.

São Carlos, 12 December 2012

Interview with Urban Daddy on running with the bulls

Published June 17, 2012

Bull Session
Bull-Running Advice from a Hemingway

When you want advice on being famous for no reason, you ask a Kardashian. When you want advice on surviving the running of the bulls, you ask a Hemingway. So we talked to John (Ernest’s grandson, author of the family memoir Strange Tribe, two-time runner of the bulls) for a few pointers in advance of next month’s run.

The whole week’s a nonstop party. “You meet friends, you make friends, if they don’t show up, you meet someone else,” he says. “People always ask, ‘How many hours of sleep did you get last night?’ ‘Oh, three. That’s not bad.’”

Well, except the running itself. “If you partied all night, you better be able to wake up and be in some sort of condition to run.”

There are a few simple rules: “You have to be 18. Don’t touch the bull. You can’t be drunk. And if you get knocked down, stay down.”

Leave the running shoes at home. “I just wear Converse.”

It’s over before you know it. “It’s two and a half, three minutes at the max.”

“Whether you’re a good runner or a bad runner, you could have bad luck. But that’s like crossing the street in NYC—you [could] get hit by a car.”

The people are more dangerous than the bulls. “You’ll get knocked down. You’re gonna get scraped, you may break a bone. It gets kind of crazy, with everyone pushing and everything.”

Beware of a bull separated from the herd. “If a bull becomes separated from the herd, it immediately stakes out a territory—anything within striking distance of its horns, he goes for. If he’s got you there, he will keep coming until he kills you.”

His grandfather ran. Or maybe he didn’t. “I see no proof that he did run, but there’s no proof that he didn’t. People have said forever that he used to run—that he ran like mad.”

VITALS

John Hemingwayon the Running of the Bulls
Pamplona, Spain
official website 

Read more: http://www.urbandaddy.com/jt/events/18353/Bull_Session_Bull_Running_Advice_from_a_Hemingway_Jetset_JT_Event#ixzz1yAT2PPel

New Review of Strange Tribe in El Pais

This review of "Los Hemingway, una familia singular" came out in the Madrid daily, El Pais, today. http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/06/15/gente/1339772315_144173.html

New review of Strange Tribe from Brazil

Here is a new review of Strange Tribe from Brazil, in Portuguese.


http://www.clinicaliteraria.com.br/2010/uma-tribo-mais-que-estranha

Uma tribo mais que estranha

Luis Peazê - Publicado em 20/04/2012 07:04

Categoria: Literatura
Contexto: Hemigway

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Foto acima: esquerda capa de Strange Tribe (Ernest Hemingway e seu filho Gregory. A direita o autor, John Hemingway, filho de Gregory.

Ernest Hemingway, Prêmio Nobel de Literatura de 1954 e um dos símbolos americanos em mais de um sentido, com cuja obra e vida vence as barreiras do tempo como nenhum outro protagonista da literatura universal, sempre atual e instigante, certa vez foi surpreendido pelo filho mais novo, Gregory Hemingway, experimentando as meias de nylon da mãe e soltou a frase: Oh, meu Deus! Intimamente devastado e pensando “você também?”. Uma semana depois teria dito para o filho: - Gigi, nós viemos de uma tribo estranha, eu e você.

Por Luis Peazê  - tradutor de Por Quem os Sinos Dobram de Ernest Hemingway.

Gigi, ou Greg, foi o pai de John Hemingway, autor de Strange Tribe (Tribo Estranha), um livro de memórias que poderia ser um romance de ficção, daqueles que aprisionam o leitor no sofá, um filme, daqueles de se ver e rever várias vezes, ou ainda, um livro de auto-ajuda baseado em histórias reais da vida, de sofrimento, superação e do exercício do perdão, e até de uma aventura existencial. Na verdade, lê-lo pensando em qualquer uma dessas classificações, não fará diferença. Sem mencionar que, ao se tratar de Hemingway, é um livro da história da literatura, sem lê-lo, um naco importante ficaria faltando para qualquer estudioso.

Ocorre que o próprio autor, John, é um dos protagonistas centrais da história que começa em nossos dias, posto que o livro foi lançado recentemente (2007), e nos remete aos mais secretos labirintos hemingwayanescos, isto é, uma ramificação de fontes verídicas de clássicos da literatura de uma verve única, de segredos de família que moldaram a personalidade, obra e imagem de um autor que marcou várias gerações, de escritores, leitores, acadêmicos e cultura popular, neste caso dos Estados Unidos.

Enfim, pode-se dizer que existiu um Hemingway antes e um depois deStrange Tribe. Ainda que não tenha sido este o propósito do autor, demarcar a história hemingwaiana.

Para os versados na vida e obra de Hemingway, não era desconhecido o seu filho Greg que gostava de travestir-se, desde criança, que ao fim da adolescência implantou um seio (apenas um) para ver como ficaria, que mais tarde fizera uma cirurgia para trocar de sexo, e passou a chamar-se Glória, e que, apesar disso tudo, não era gay, era reconhecidamente maníaco depressivo e alcoólatra, foi casado quatro vezes, escritor e médico durante uma década e meia até perder a licença e morrer prisioneiro em uma cadeia feminina de Miami, por andar nu e embriagado em público, e por tudo isso, até então, considerado a ovelha negra daquela família.

Da mesma forma não era desconhecido de muitos as subjacências andrógenas na vida e obra do próprio grande Ernest Hemingway, que sacara de experiências pessoais, por exemplo, inversões de papéis, uma de suas mulheres teria vivenciado a fantasia de tornar-se lésbica ou homem e ele, no caso, a mulher de sua mulher, não só no secreto espaço de quatro paredes e uma cama, mas também em público através do corte de cabelo e tintura da mesma cor (cobre), ele e ela, em brincadeiras do gênero...  Sem ter perdido, até então, a imagem de símbolo do macho americano, número um, vencedor, que gostava de praticar box, desafiar os perigos dos safáris africanos na caça de tigres, leões e elefantes, ou nos mares do Caribe a procura de bater recordes de pescaria dos maiores marlins já fisgados no mundo, enquanto liderava um grupo de informantes do FBI (formado por ele mesmo) para espionar atividades anti-americanas a partir de Cuba. Experiências tais, inesgotáveis, como o feito de ter escrito uma peça de teatro, a Quinta Coluna, inspirada na Segunda Guerra Mundial, enquanto refugiava-se entre um pelotão da resistência num hotel em Madri, em meio a um bombardeio de verdade, sem contar ter sobrevivido a duas quedas de avião.

Tudo isso é “remasterizado” (na linguagem de cinema) em Strange Tribepelos recortes corretos e honestamente revelados pela obstinação de John Hemingway que angustiava descobrir, responder para si, acertar as contas com seu pai, sua mãe, com o avô, com a avó, tios, irmãos e com tudo o que havia lido a respeito de sua família cujo quebra-cabeças não lhe fazia sentido.

John não só revisitou cartas trocadas entre Gregory, seu pai, e Ernest, seu avô, mas introjetou-se nas crises de suas avós paternas e mãe esquizofrênica e alcoólatra, revirou as contrações uterinas das gestações conturbadas de sua hereditariedade, reviveu os seus sofrimentos de infância, em que trocava de endereço mais de uma vez por ano, seguidamente, perdendo a chance de criar vínculos, dos carinhos maternos, ao contrário, crescer vivenciando as crises da mãe, o alcoolismo, e a androgenia do pai maníaco depressivo e o seu comportamento desequilibrado.

Perguntando a parentes, primos, tios, lendo relatos de biógrafos, os próprios romances do avô famoso, e as repetidas manchetes de jornais do mundo todo informando que "mais um Hemingway" cometera suicídio, finalmente John nos brinda com um final feliz, na medida do possível, posto que nos ensina de maneira delicada e sem espetacularismo como é possível simplesmente dizer “eu não gosto disso” ao invés de julgar “isso é errado”, como é possível amar e perdoar os pais, mesmo tendo aguardado até o fim de suas vidas um carinho que nunca obteve, sem ter sucumbido aos mesmos erros e fraquezas de seus progenitores.

Com respeito a forma e estilo, John escreve de maneira fácil e convidativa, por revelar uma personalidade despojada de vaidades fúteis. Desde que a matéria prima da narrativa é rica e surpreendente, John escolhe uma estratégia temporal elíptica e semovente, indo ao passado e pulando para um futuro indeterminado, para trás e para frente, e vai assim até o final onde é, na verdade, os nossos dias e por isso o vocabulário é bem atual e rico de influências latinas (pensa e escreve em inglês), do espanhol e italiano, culturas que conheceu por ter vivido muitos anos na Itália e Espanha.

Não era nem preciso ser engraçado, mas há momentos de Strange Tribe que a gente e pego de surpresa e ri. Ernest Hemingway dissera uma vez que “você saberá se escreveu alguma coisa boa se conseguir fazer alguém chorar”. Eu diria modestamente que entreter, arejar a história da literatura universal e inspirar um leitor já seria o suficiente. Em Strange Tribe John Hemingway consegue um pouco mais do que isso.