Queue the Abstract

Reach

Defend

Act

Breath
Leave Space

What You Can See with a Pen

I had to buy a pen to make this worth while.

There’s nothing happening and there’s nobody around, except tourists and die-hards.

No fish – that’s the killer. No fishmongers, no crowd. No life, no smells, no locals. Why open if there’s nobody here. No fish on Monday.

The sound of an electric plane paring down wood is about all I can hear over the voice of the delivery man sitting next to me. He’ll never forget, he says. Something bad has happened. He’s taken a seat for a smoke and to talk of how Mondays are slow, how Mondays are always slow. Now he smokes and speaks of Christmas. His companion talks of family for Christmas – how to get paid double for working on feast days. That way he can make a little more, cash in hand, and juggle his days to see a little more family for Christmas.

The Boqueria without the hustle and bustle is like a film set before the stars arrive. All vans and hard work; preparation.

The barman has a lumpy scar on his face that runs from his right sideburn to his chin. It must have been quite an opening – perhaps someone with a knife wanted to see in – or wanted him to see in. He seems to have forgotten about it. It doesn’t tilt his face or make him twitch. He doesn’t raise a hand to touch it. It has become part of what he is – a turn he took that left a brand.

Miles of aisles run away from me in a grid that becomes a radial convergence of bare stainless steel benches at its heart. On any day but today fresh fish lie gaping, some slithering slightly, piles of crabs crack their exoskeletons at us as parents point them out to children.

The ladies call us guapo and reel us in with special offers and recommendations. They tell us how fresh it all is and turn a specimen over on the bench or laugh and joke while skinning a sole.

They are visited at election times and photographed when the man-on-the-street needs to be seen. Like a wet finger in the air, the good folk of the Boqueria are turned to for direction. The opinion of the masses distilled through the heat of conversation, so many mouths all achatter – ceaselessly selling and buying.

You can eat fresh fish at the bar. They carry it ten paces across the aisle from a stall and place it on the pan for one’s good self. Today the fish that lie exposed under angular glass bar-top vitrines are of dubious origin. The chicken, yellowing and pasty now, is not to be recommended. Perhaps an open minded foreigner might order it in an effort to get closer to the local customs.

But then the locals cannot always be relied on for their discerning taste. They may well be immune to death by poisoning or a dodgy stomach. Beware gullible traveller, while tonight you are big, tomorrow you may awake as if bound to the bed by a myriad of tiny cords.

The floor is strewn with cigarette butts and empty sachets that held single helpings of sugar. The clock is ticking and the bar staff are not inclined to sweep up what rubbish lies in the aisle – the public highway.

In the corner of my eye a gentleman with a blue sleeveless anorak orders a coke and ice in a long thin glass. He pours the coke slowly and watches the bubbles rise. He stops three quarter way and taps the base of the bottle against the glass – to make it fizz more, it seems. He pauses then, then waits a little more, then drinks.

The quirky ceremony of the individual. Signs of life indeed. What greater ceremony can there be?

Playing at Bridges

We’re standing on a bridge – six million car journeys of us are standing on the bridge between the Día de la Constitución and the Feast of the Purísima.

Some of us are lunching in restaurants. Yet more of us are eating fast food, sandwiches or hamburgers, while we trudge through the crowds of Christmas shoppers. They’re in from the provinces and the prices are twice what they’ll be in three weeks time. But hey we don’t mind, it’s Christmas – let’s not get rational about it.

It’s half past two and families are pouring in here for lunch. This place pays homage to the sea, to sailing and its literature. I see Moby Dick squeezed up beside a book about knots. The tables are small and round and covered in white table clothes that hang half way down to the ground.

The waiter is past middle age and wears a fleece jacket, a closely shaved grey hairstyle and glasses with very little frame – just bridge and arms.

It’s a motley crew, we’ve got; a Peruvian with a hat, some Germans with children and an old couple who only really came in because they wanted to use the toilet. That they have done and now they are sittings at a tiny table glancing at the menu.

There’s an elevator in the kitchen that takes the plates up and down, delivering and receiving. Right now it’s not in use; our fleeced waiter seems capable of working without it.

A bar runs above my head like a curtain rail in a shower. It originates in the wall on my right and carries many tiny light bulbs along its length till it runs to ground at the same height in the wall on my left. This is the sky, I believe.

You can believe your fancies.

We are on the bridge.

Letters for You, Letters for Me

Valle said it was for Valle. Nixon said it was for Victory. I said it was a line that reached a point of inflection and turned back almost upon itself.

Last night it was a strip of light that ran down a ceiling in a passage under a building beside a gig house where five bands played.

Inside there was a lot of smoke, smoking, cigarettes. Cigarettes that were loaned and borrowed. Cigarettes filled the air with a presence that only becomes evident this morning on the clothing sitting in a ball in the corner.

Young people, mostly men, bearded, crowded the floor, greeting each other and catching up.

The music obliged everyone to lean forward and shout into the listener’s ear while looking downward. This brought to the floor more attention than it merited. It was covered with large sheets of some rigid material, could have been plastic, could have been wood, or maybe metal. It was riveted to the floor rather like the stretched material that covers a sofa.

Amsterdam – Light in Early Winter

The lady sitting opposite Marta wore a black ensemble. A Dutch lady who entered and sat beside the low table that ran along the back wall and under the window. She leafed through a magazine, she focused on nothing, she was waiting.

The husband arrived, clad in a similarly black rig-out of equally understated elegance. She greeted him with a kiss. He leaned down to her as she sat on a velour cube-for-a-seat coloured green. She ordered his coffee and his apple tart with whipped cream. He perused the Sunday papers. He stood up now and then to search out a different paper at the other end of the long narrow along-the-wall table.

I moved to seat near theirs. A low cube, this one red, under the window where I could lean my elbows and cup my camera at the right height to photograph the bikes coming over the bridge before me.

The sun was golden, low and soft like a gift of dissolved summer in winter. It shone over there while over here we were in shade – what we gained was the picture of beauty on the other side.

I noticed how the cyclists were sun-lit before they reached the half way point on the bridge, then they fell into a lesser light that my camera called shadow. Bicycles swooped around to the right mostly, that was the way to the centre. Some were going back to where they had come from. Some ladies rode side-saddle on big old black bikes pedalled by fit young men in gabardines whose corners waved back at me. Some ladies rode bikes with boxes over the front wheel. The box was big enough and deep enough to carry a young child and some bags or two young children or many bags. Some cycled alone – all cycled slowly, leisurely. Nobody was in a rush, it was Sunday around noon.

A young lady walked out of the light and across the bridge. She wore a black coat over a floral winter dress. She wore boots with buckles on the heels to tighten the leather around the ankle – she didn’t use this feature – it was an aesthetic plus to break the monotony of the sheer vertical.

She moved in the viewfinder of my camera, appearing on the left in the light at the other side of the bridge. She moved, only the upper half of her, visible behind the bridge’s hump. Then she rose and moved to the centre, still illuminated, glowing at the edges. Behind her a street with greenery blotched. Rising above her left shoulder the golden window panes of narrow four-storeyed houses with decorative bottle-neck parapets and gables. The facades leaned out over the street like contained bulges.

Into the shade she moved towards me. I did not look at her, nor did I notice her looking at me. She moved further right and out of sight. The café door opened and in she walked. As if I had photographed enough I turned off my camera and sat back beside Marta.

Undoing her coat she greeted the couple, well-dressed in black. The door opened again and what must have been the son, came in, he too was in black, as sharp and presentable as his parents. He kissed his father and his mother and sat with his girlfriend. She kissed him full on the lips and smiled – they seemed new, to the parents in law at least.

All four talked politely. The father ate his apple tart which tasted of cinnamon. He cut it with the edge of a spoon and scooped cream onto it as he slid the slice off the plate and into his mouth. The mother sat, cross-legged towards the young couple. Her hand lay at ease on her right thigh. Her finger wore an engagement ring – one central diamond with two smaller ones on either side supporting it.

The cuff of her well-tailored jacket came down as far as her wrist. A few centimetres from the cuff an X was sewn in two long light blue stitches, each about a centimetre across. Above the first X was another, and a third completed the triad - the three Xs of Amsterdam. A declaration of identity, like wearing a heart on a sleeve.

It was time for us to go. We put our jackets on for it was chilly. The light still beamed on the other side of the road. And we walked towards it.