Otherwise What?-- Chapter 6-- In Love Against My Will

The simpler life got, the more I wondered at its complexity. I was happy, and still rather lonely. At least I had Lila to talk to. Running the Cafe with Lila, Silvia, was like paddling a canoe with perfect rowing partners, naturally switching sides to accommodate one another. Everything got much more complicated when Blondie showed up.



He heard about the village through some people he’s met in Granada and arrived one day hitchhiking. His real name was Matt. Lila and Silvia nicknamed him Blondie, because they said, snickering affectionately, that he looked like a Marlborough Man from cigarette commercials. The slang word for cigarette means ‘blonde’ in Spanish.
    Blondie wanted to know if he could “volunteer.” Silvia said he could stay, and he was to sleep in the shed with me, on the other side of the hay pile. I hardly spent any time there anyway, so that didn’t matter. Lila and I showed him where he could leave his stuff, on the side of the shed immediately inside the door. Blondie was fine with this, but honestly I was not happy about it. Silly me. I had enjoyed being the only anomaly from the US who had made it to this particular off-the-beaten-path spot.
    Blondie too was American, to my dismay. While Americans are used to living alongside compatriots of any ilk back home, we have a strange distaste for running into other Americans abroad. There is no stereotype general enough to represented multiple persons from any country. Nobody likes their reputation being wielded by someone they don’t know. This awkward misrepresentation is accentuated for Americans, because the average foreigner, especially Europeans, tend to know more about the role of the United States’ military industrial complex in world politics than most Americans do. Civil rights, equal rights for women, environmentalism, and other great movements also started in the US. There is no ultimate right or wrong regarding all this. There is no such thing. No big lightning bolt shoots out of the sky when people make mistakes. Morality is left up to using one’e conscience, which, judging by the state of world, is optional and highly out of style. There’s not even so much as the need to say, “Oopsy daisy. I supported the wrong side all my life.” As politicians know, the human attention span is too short, and we are all to fallible, to bother. We are not to blame for what our parents, grand parents, or great grandparents did, nor for our own ignorance for that matter.
    Blondie had wandered off the path in a similar way as me, spontaneously, without knowing how life in the wilderness works. The main difference between us was that Blondie did not have a life-changing mystical experience to get here. He still subscribed to the myth of meritocracy, the notion that, if you work hard enough, you will prosper, (as many of us are taught growing up). He had enough self-confidence to parade around, smiling like he was God’s gift to this earth, which in that sense made him more emotionally stable than I was. Blondie was a do-gooder, and he was still on the path, in terms of which spiritual beings he was a vessel for. Blondie knew nothing about the path, which is paradoxically common for people who constantly wish they were somewhere else.

.......


    Silvia came to the Cafe after I had watered the plants the next morning. I was serving coffee to Blondie in the kitchen, and he was looking around at all the postcards stapled to the wall around the altar. A black and white portraits of Picasso, and Lorca, Botticelli’s famous Venus de Milo, a quote by Thick Nhat Hanh, many colorful photos of people. He asked what he could do to help out, and Silvia said usually guests decide that for themselves, depending on what they see which needs doing. Blondie wandered around getting his bearings on his first day, a good idea. Blondie had more nerve than I did, and he explored the trails above the field on his own. When he came back, he told me that he came across several houses, not far up the mountain trails, where people were living in extreme poverty. My guess was that he’d confused being poor with voluntary simplicity in this case. Blondie said he studied political science in college, and fighting poverty was something he was really into. I made Blondie some tea in the kitchen before going to bed, wishing he would leave so I could journal in peace. I had taken to writing on the backs of pieces of paper I found in the evenings. Blondie said he got an idea from seeing the poverty in the village, but he needed more supplies.
    The next day he set about destroying the delicate stone steps leading up from the gully by the donkey barn. Blondie replaced the smooth wobbly stones with huge flat pieces of hard concrete he found in the ditch near the highway about 300 yards away. The work took a heroic amount of effort. The slabs were heavy, and he wore no gloves. Unfortunately the end result was a hideous downgrade compared to the quaint narrow staircase that had curved through the dense beds of lily of the valley under the verbena and rose bushes. He worked with heroic effort, and the results were horrendous. Green tufts of tender sorrel, dandelion and columbine, which had self-seeded between the rocks, were eradicated by his shovel as he widened the corridor to straighten it. The new flight resembled an escalator. At least that’s the look he seemed to be going for.
    Watching Blondie work, it dawned on me what the purpose of the Cafe really was. It was a screening station, a distraction for people interested in the village to keep them from going deeper into the woods where most of the community member lived.  Silvia rose in my respected ranks even more; this small feminine balancing artist was the bodyguard of the whole village. With her social skills she vetted, like a martial artist, who came any further.
    Blondie was very impressed by the bicycle generator under the tarp by the storage room. He used it to charge his phone, which he talked on almost every day, walking back and forth in the middle of the field, swinging his bowlegged feet as he took aimless strides. Looking out the window that night, I decided I wanted to go deeper into the wilderness. I wasn’t sure when, or how, but sometime soon I decided I would tell Silvia I was ready to move on.


.......


    The next morning I met the Carpenter. His physique was just as grand as his reputation. He was tall and stalky with broad shoulders. His beard was turning gray, in the parts of his chin where most men don’t even grow hair, but the center was still bright red and he had a reddish mustache and balding red hair, which he wore in a wispy ponytail. His face was rosy and his eyes piercingly light blue. Probably in his early 60‘s he had a boyish smile.
    He came from the road, and he walked enthusiastically up the steps as though swimming the crawl.
    “Hi. I’m Nu.” He smiled and looked around. “Is Silvia here today?”
    “She left a little while ago. I’m not sure where to.”
    “Oh.” He just stood there, not seeming in a rush.
    “Would you like something to eat or drink?” I asked.
    “What have you got?”
    “I could try to make whatever you like, but on hand there is lentil soup, that dried Italian break Silvia makes, and yogurt, cucumber, and dill salad.”
    “That sounds great. Would you serve me up some of all that, please?”
    The Carpenter followed me into the kitchen, obviously not the average guest. I felt like I was in the presence of a giant, and I did my best to not fling any of the pots across the room, or trip, or do anything else extremely stupid while he was watching. Blondie was splitting firewood out back. When he heard another man’s voice, he stopped and came in. Blondie poured a glass of fresh squeezed lemonade for himself and one for Nu as well, putting out his hand. Nu shook it.     “Hi. Welcome. I’m Matt.”
    “Hi. I’m Nu. Nice to meet you.”
    “Nice to meet you.” The conversation ended.
    I scooped a ladle of the lentils with carrot, potato, celery, bay leaves, and a little apple, (Silvia’s secret ingredient in almost everything) from the cast iron caldron into a smaller pan, already sooty on the bottom, and heated it over the fire. This we kept always lit. The cucumber salad was fresh, and I served a large bowl for the Carpenter and one for myself.
    “Do you want some too?” I said to Blondie who still stood in the doorway to the storage shed, relaxing with his lemonade.
    “Um. Sure. Why not?” There was a lot of it, and it all needed to be eaten today.
    “So what brings you here?” The Carpenter asked me, pulling one of the yellow chairs out from under the counter and sitting down.
    Nobody had asked me this yet, and I had no idea what to answer. My world had been turned on its head by an psychological episode of I knew not what sort soon after landing in Spain. Everything had been taking care of itself after that. “That’s a good question,” I thought to myself. “What did bring me here?” I still needed to respond something.
    “Flamenco music mainly,” I said.
    “Me too,” smiled the Carpenter.
    I looked at him, filling up the whole kitchen with his aura, smiling a sign of relief. This was the kind of man you wanted as an ally.
    “I was here two years ago to learn Spanish, and I met some people who introduced me to the music. It totally changed my life.” It was easier to talk now with this shared passion.
    “Similar to my story. I’m Catalan, but I discovered flamenco music as a teenager and fell in love with it too. That, and the provincial mentality where I grew up in, made me want to move south.”
    That surprised me. Catalonia is known as a well-educated sophisticated area. I refilled the Carpenter’s empty glass with water and brought him the bowl of salad, scooping hot soup into another and also setting that steaming in front of him. On the side I placed several chunks of the dehydrated whole wheat and rye bread that Silvia had learned to make from some Italian friends of hers. The bread is baked as usual in the wood oven. When it is done, and the oven has been opened once, the bread is broken into chunks and closed in the oven again as it cools. Gently dehydrated thus, the bread travels and keeps well, because it cannot go stale. Dipped into water, it becomes resuscitated. It is almost better than fresh bread, in my opinion. I loved sucking the rye-flavored water from the porous crusts.
    I tried to guess the Carpenter’s age, calculating whether or not he would remember Franco’s Spain. He must have been around my age when Franco died, so he probably remembered. Franco came into power after over half a million Spaniards died in the Civil War, which he won by hiring Moorish mercenaries. Although Franco’s constitution was simplistic and oppressive, Franco became cronies with the Allies, due to their shared distaste for communism, his Fascist regime continuing on for decades after World War II ended. The rest of the world turned a blind eye on Spain while it was undergoing a cultural abortion, because its economy was growing. Franco became more and more lazy until the bigot finally died, of old age in 1975. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment in life was being one of the world’s most negligent leaders, a large category rife with stanch competition.
    “And you? What you brings you to these parts?” The Carpenter asked Blondie. who had finished the cucumber salad and was washing his dishes in the sink.
    “Well, I wanted to volunteer somewhere while I decide if I should go to grad school or not. I studied political science, which doesn’t lead to any type of career, since I don’t want to teach. Probably I’ll go into business. I figure making a lot of money and then donating it to charities is probably the best way I can make a difference in the world.”
    He might as well have said he was here because it would look good on his resume.
    “Silvia told me you walked around for eight years,” I ventured, hoping to befriend this burly invincible man.
    “She did?” The Carpenter smiled and chuckled. “What’s your life like back in the USA?”
    “Well, I graduated college this past spring. When I go back I’ll start my new job working in a residential school for kids who have been removed from their homes and are waiting for foster parents. I’ll probably be working with the foster parents too, which I’m nervous about because feel so young.”
    The Carpenter nodded in approval.
    “What’s your name, by the way?”
    “It’s Aia.”
    “Aia! That’s pretty name.”
    I was pleased to be named after a tree, if for no other reason than to have Nu as a friend. He finished eating his food and stood up as though he was about do the dishes. I took his plates, forbidding any such thing. Listening to Blondie talk made me more sure than ever that I wanted to go further into the wilderness. I wanted to sacrifice more of the ways I’d lived before.  The Carpenter likes my name, but he would probably loose interest if he got to know me. I wasn’t nearly as interesting as all the people I had met here. A community where everyone has made a radical amount of sacrifices to be there tends to attract amazing folks.
      “Well, will you tell Silvia I came by? Actually would you mind giving her a message for me?”
    “Of course not.”
    “Tell her Marco is coming for the Moon Festival.”
    “Ok. I’ll tell her.” The Moon Festival! I hoped I would be invited to that, whatever it was.
    The Carpenter walked to the arched doorway and then turned, his shape, dark in front of the stripes of daylight and strings of beads, looked strong like a monument of a historical figure.
    “Everything was delicious. Thank you so much.”
    “Thank you.”
    After Nu left, Blondie asked me, “Who was that?”
    “I guess he’s an old friend of Silvia’s. He works with wood.”
    Blondie went back out to the wood pile. Not long after that, the heinous noise of a truck backing up disturbed a wide vicinity surrounding us. Sure enough, as I went out to the terrace, I saw the rear of a flatbed squeezing up the wide trail from where the market is. This was the first time I’d seen a motorized vehicle down here. It appeared to be delivering something.
    Blondie rushed through the kitchen and stood on the terrace next to me. “Oh good, he was able to make it all the way in. I wasn’t sure if he’d fit through that path.”
    Indeed the path was not designed for cars and had probably not been compacted by one in many years.
    “Do you know what this is?” I asked Blondie, perplexed.
    “I told you I had an idea. I’ve noticed that people don’t have proper chimneys in their houses, which is really bad. The kitchens get smokey which damages women’s lungs who are in there cooking all day. I’ve read about clean oven initiatives in other poor countries, and I downloaded some plans on my phone.”
    “Spain isn’t that poor.” It was the only thing I could think of to say.
    “Since the 2008 recession, the unemployment rate is more than 20%. That’s why I came here. I’m interested in seeing for myself what a first world country in decline looks like..... I’d better go tell the driver where to unload.” He dashed down the rough cement steps flagging the driver towards the barn. He looked like a traffic cop, and I must admit he sort of had a knack for it. A group of people had gathered under the bridge wondering what all the ruckus was about. Blondie motioned over and over for the beeping truck to continue, his expensive sports pants trying too hard to be work pants. This guy really drove me nuts.
    Blondie was trying to bring “progress” to this place. Couldn’t he see that the community was as progressive as anything you see nowadays? The village existed in response to the spirit of our times, which is demanding that we re-evaluate what our basic needs are and live more in tune with the environment. We can make this change willingly, otherwise it will happen to us due to climate change. Not everyone will be forced to make this change of course. The rich will be able to buy their way to safety, while the poorest parts of the world already have no choice. It’s a matter of time, though the passage of time does not equal evolution necessarily. To believe that negates the possibility of free will.
    As believers in God, who are accused by some atheists that having faith in the divine is mainly for comfort, I choose to believe in free will. Granted, it is an arbitrary opinion, since there is no way to confirm or disprove it. Perhaps human evolution is already written as the Hindus say, but I am not Hindu. Adhering to the culture I was raised in, I say we have the freedom to fuck it all up if we choose to. Of course, dealing with life’s consequences is a matter of time, as well. Evolution is a matter of time insofar as our capacity to be present, to be alright with whatever happens, to release the chains of the past, to let go of living for the future.
    The smelly truck chugged falteringly in reverse, screeching occasionally, until Blondie waved for it to halt about five yards from the lower flowerbeds. The trailer had a mini-crane on the back. The driver managed to unload six palettes of what appeared to be heat resistant bricks, miraculously without damaging any gardens. 
    “How many chimneys is Blondie planning to make?” It seemed like an awful lot of bricks to buy, not to mention that many people make bricks here, out of sand, straw, and mud, for free.
    When the driver got out, leaving the heavy truck still running, he noticed that he had messed up the market trail with the width of his heavy duty tires. He didn’t apologize, and neither did Blondie, glad they could offer us a taste of the good things money can buy. While Blondie paid the driver, the truck’s idled sounded plagued with indigestion, belching and loudly tooting noxious fumes, which both men pretended politely not to notice. The people under the bridge had already left, but Blondie glanced in that direction as he counted a wad of bills and handed them to the potbellied guy.
    “What are you building?”
    “ Wood stoves and ovens. These people have lots of smoke in their houses, because they can’t afford proper chimneys,” Blondie explained delightedly.
    That’s what I think he was trying to say at least. Blondie’s Spanish was mediocre at best. The other man didn’t seem to care. With a friendly wave of the wad of cash and some disingenuous remark, he climbed back in his truck. A few more astounding honks resounded, and the rumbling beast was off, covering the entire playing field with a thick orange cloud of dust.
    Blondie was proud of himself for volunteering, not really aware that everyone else here was volunteering too, in a way. He hadn’t picked up on the fact than hardly anyone here got paid with money. They were doing things for Joy, and he was doing it for Vanity. I recognized Vanity well, because I was still going through its withdrawals.
    My senses during that time were blurred by a despairing meaninglessness so strong that it seemed worthless to even breathe sometimes. I had oft neglect to breathe out previously, but lately I resisted letting air come in. A nagging voice in my head kept saying, “Even plain air is more special than you. Do not wasted it.” What had felt like bliss weeks before had left me exhausted. If enlightenment is permanent, it hadn’t been that. I was also sure whatever had relinquished me wasn’t insanity. Blondie wasn’t having withdrawals. He was still working full time for Appearance and Vanity. I could hear him boast of his accomplishments on the phone to his girlfriend. His whole justification for being here was because it would put him (and her) in a better position when he got home. It depends what hoops you’re aiming to jump through I guess.
    A few days later another delivery arrived. Again, it was for Blondie. This time it was dropped off by the postman. Blondie opened the medium sized square box on the terrace, but I couldn’t see what was in it. It was from his girlfriend. He took out a postcard which was lying on top. He brought it into the kitchen later and showed it to me. It was a picture of two kuala bears hugging. She had also enclosed a photo of herself, a classic beauty, strawberry blonde hair looped with a curling iron, eyes depicted by mascara. Popping her sexy hip to one side, she smiled like a supermodel, resting her manicured hand on the back of a park bench in the glossy photo. I wasn’t sure what to think. His obliviousness of my annoyance towards him was a reminder that Blondie didn’t think anything about me at all.

.......


    Blondie didn’t usually make phone calls at night, but I guessed he wanted to thank his girlfriend for the gift, whatever it was. He whispered to her, on the other side of the hay pile, and I tried not to listen.
    “I miss you too, baby.....You do?....Oh, baby!....Tell me what you have on.....Oh yeah? What do you have on under that?.....I wish I could see you..... Baby! I love it when you talk like that.....”
    The conversation went on like that for awhile, making it embarrassing to be in the same room. Blondie must have forgotten that, although the hay was very thick, there was nothing but air above and around it. When he hung up the phone, I heard the rustle of the cardboard box open. Moments later I divined its contents, as the familiar smell of peanut butter exuded over the hay as well. He didn’t offer me any.
    I was frustrated. The problem I was having, or thought I was having at the time, was that I had so much love inside me that was going to waste. In the market I saw many beautiful people, men and women, but I assumed they were all coupled off. The men who came from the other side of the bridge, who I often watched climb the bank to the road, looked dirty and dangerous, vampiric almost.  The mountain people were threatening in a different way. They were all incredibly fit, probably simply from walking on the steep terrain around their homes. Since they didn’t seem to have any needs, they were difficult to bond with. Silvia charged the guests from under the bridge money at the Cafe, so they rarely came. Those from the mountain side came bearing gifts. Wooden spoons, raw almond, honey, and date cookies, beeswax candles, flower seedlings, melons, oranges. The Cafe seemed to stand on the brink of a divide. Truth be told, the people from both ends of the community all treated me kindly. The blockage was my own perceived sense that I wasn’t giving enough to relate with anyone. That is why I had not yet crossed under the highway, nor explored the forest trails, yet. The other reason I wasn’t reaching out was that I was still trying to figure out whether I was severely mentally ill or not. Intuitively, it felt like I just needing a pause, to slow down and integrate my recent massive spiritual download. Not valuing my own strengths was jeopardizing; though I knew better, I got beguiled by Blondie’s intentions, disregarding any consequences.
    The days after accidentally overhearing Blondie’s phone call passed uneventfully, but the nights did not. The following day, as I lay with my sleeping bag partly unzipped, I fantasized about Blondie. I allowed my fancy to flit about wherever it wanted, because, in effect I didn’t know what I wanted. It may have been entirely circumstantial, that I found myself longing for Blondie, him being the closest male around. Hearing him whisper from the other side of the hay pile had revealed a whole other side of him to me. I felt special knowing this glimpse of Blondie’s passion, his sensitive side, his interest in beauty, his desire for pleasure. Thus I fell in love against my will.
    Alone in the dark, I imagined things I would never have dared to  act out. Somebody’s feelings might get hurt. I had so much love to give, so I gave it secretly, sure to breathe more quietly than the breeze caressing eucalyptus trees outside my window. Of all the wild things I imagined, none of them really satisfied me, except one thing. Not his hands, not his weight, not his tongue, I wanted Blondie’s eyes on me. I just wanted his attention. I needed someone to witness what I was going through, at least to notice I was here, on this earth. Bearing witness in that way is the most powerful attribute we have, and foolishly I gave it away to Blondie.
    This change of heart made me feel even more alienated from the community. Blondie was so clearly not a good person to have around. He was ripping apart things that were beautiful,  and ordering construction materials, which wasn’t good for the court proceedings. He had no appreciation for the local economy, the collective abstinence from communication technology, nor the finer things in life, such as having free time, knowing the value of things by making it yourself etc. He wasn’t interested in me, plus he had a girlfriend, and he was a closet peanut butter addict. How many red flags does a poor girl need?!
         I didn’t even tell Lila about my compulsive regression, falling for someone to affirm my unworthiness. It did add some bland sort of spice to my days. Having a crush on Blondie was like being poked on Facebook. Literally the day following my first erotic fantasy about him, he responded differently to me. As if he knew, he began fishing for my attention, poke. Once he had it, he ignored me, as if what I was giving him wasn’t real.