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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: River (08/31/06)
The Guadalquivir is hardly navigable now. After centuries of choke-chain connected gold-leafed towers that long ago bid farewell to Cortez and Bolivar, the remains of a shipping crane following the faded blue stripe that lined the rain-stained river walls pointed to the nostalgic decadence from which Seville was only beginning to recover. Somehow this kidnapped city, for which the old man left the sea in order to paint the face of Spain with colores Sevillanos, managed to retain it’s quixotic flavor through the historic life-blood of it’s slowly clogging artery, around which the Celine Dion-playing tocadores and the English and German accents of the tourist-laden former Jewish Ghetto fell away as if to make way for Seville’s real soul.

It was this old, decaying soul that brought me to Dani’s birthday party. I arrived late, in time to receive a drink from the birthday-boy (according to Spanish tradition), but late enough to see the bulk of the group leaving for the evening. Two Italian friends of Dani’s and mine, Vito and Lucciano, invited me to a party on their way out.

“Sure,” I said reluctantly. It was a Thursday and I did not have class the next day, but I was tired. I was also in Spain, I decided, and I ought to stop being tired and experience it. Hence, I affirmed my response and left with them.

“First, we have to go get some Hashish and some Vodka from our apartment,” Emanuel said. “Here, hold my drum.”

I benignly accepted the small, djembe drum and agreed to the proposal, since their apartment was not far away. They retrieved the necessary goods and we caught a cab to the party. It was much further from the center of town than I had ever been, far away from the Guadalquivir, in a poorer barrio with a bad reputation. These are my favorite parts of town, where Hemingway’s drunken arm had never reached nor would he ever have wanted to.

The taxi pulled up to the door of a run-down apartment, we exited and climbed a few flights of stairs. A rap on the door and a tall, balding Spaniard greeted us and welcomed us in. We congregated in the kitchen where the counter displayed a massive number of half-empty bottles of every type of alcohol imaginable, interrupted at one end by a girl spouting only one intelligible Spanish word: “La anarquía.” My Italian friends had neglected to inform me that we were attending an anarchist’s party. I was fascinated.

Upon our arrival in the kitchen, the girl and our host turned their attention to their new guests, particularly me since I was the only one who looked particularly un-Spanish. Then came the standard three questions:

1) ¿Cómo te llamas?
- “Peter, o Pedro si es más facil.”
2) ¿De dónde eres?
- “Los Estados Unidos, el U.S.A.”
3) ¿Qué opinas el Presidente Bush?
- “Yo, bueno, es dificil saber…”

I always hated that question because each interrogator was fishing for an opinion, a reason to vent about their other problems through arguing facts that at that point remained as provable as not. Thus, I spoke ambiguously until they relented, made my acquaintance with them, poured myself some sort of odd vodka concoction and proceeded into the next room. I found myself a spot in the circle sitting on the floor, swaying the even sound of the drums and breathing in the thick hashishan air. After a few minutes, the girl from the kitchen entered and sat down next to me. She asked me about my opinions on American Foreign Policy again; I answered as best I could; and then I asked the one question that I had of her.

“You were talking about la anarquía in the kitchen. Why”

“Because I am an anarchist,” she said.

“Oh…I’ve never met a sincere anarchist before. As an American (as you would expect) I’ve never figured out how anyone could logically consider it. Please, please, please explain it to me.”

She proceeded to explain it to me. I asked questions, she explained. I posited doubts, and she explained. I explained Christ, she derided Him.

The bank clock read 4:30 when I crossed the old Guadalquivir on my way home. I was thinking about the girl, how she explained her position not through logic, but through the experience of pain. I looked at the river.

“I suppose it’ll have to be re-channeled someday,” I thought. “The river, the girl, all of us.”
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This article has been read 957 times
Member Comments
Member
Date
Phyllis Inniss 
09/09/06
Quite an experience. Yes, at some time everyone and everything needs to be re-channelled. Good writing.
Edy T Johnson
09/10/06
This is so rich, I have had to read it two, three or more times. The writing lures the reader to come join the exotic experience of the narrator.

But, oh! that first paragraph! Those long sentences distracted me, trying to find which verb goes with what subject! So, the reader could miss the whole point. [I know, I have the same problem, needing to cut my own too-long sentences.] While the writer knows what he wants to say, the reader needs that help to sort out the message.

Still, I would say that this is an exceptional writer, worth watching :)
Alexandra Wilkin
09/13/06
Richly descriptive and a well captured moment. The heart is as observant as the eye too - noting how people think with their pain - and the reader is left with as much to dwell on as the writer. There was a slight change of tense in the opening paragraph which threw me a little, and perhaps a little polish needed mid-way - but this was excellent and I liked it very much. God bless. xx
geoff anderson
09/20/06
I LOVE your style, your literary, almost nonchalant construction of sentences which always threaten to go on too long and sometimes do, the second sentence being a good example. But I still loved it, even though I haven’t the faintest idea what this means: ‘After centuries of choke-chain connected gold-leafed towers …’ Who cares what it means when it is such a fabulous string of words. Have you read Manley Hopkins? You must have, with your predilection for hyphenated words, which create a different kind of rhythm from normal English. I just have enough breath in this old body to say the whole sentence, gasping through the ‘faded blue stripe’ and the marvellous ‘rain-stained river walls’, lingering over the wonderfully evocative ‘nostalgic decadence’ (tantalisingly near-tautologous but not quite)from which I, never mind Seville, was only beginning to recover before we are regaled with an even LONGER sentence, which again I hardly understood – which old man? Picasso perhaps? Why is it a kidnapped city? What are tocadores? I’m afraid I was a French major and all things Spanish have passed me by. But again, who cares? I (and obviously the judges too) relished these sentences because I loved the rhythm and the exotic vocab which painted such a vivid picture. I think you may have lost marks through not keying the article into the theme of River more deeply. The river seems to be just the means of getting you to a party – until you tie the story up with a mystical reference to the river needing to be re-channeled one day, and the girl, and all of us. Again, I’m not sure what you mean but I enjoy half-understood stuff (it happens to me a lot!) because it leaves scope for my imagination.

A minor point is that hashish and vodka don’t need capitalizing.
I don’t think you mean ‘benignly’ which means harmlessly, with no ill intent, like a benign tumour. I think you meant ‘without objecting’. Anyway we’re told to ditch adverbs and ‘accepted’ says it all.

La anarquia is TWO words, but I know what you mean!

‘I was fascinated’ spoils the paragraph, telling us what you’ve already shown us clearly.

‘particularly me …………… …. looked particularly ……..’

I know that in 30 years Spanish will be the first language of the USA, but maybe it’s a bit soon to write bi-lingual texts for the general public? I’m a linguist so I managed the second and third questions, but why did they ask him ‘How are your llamas?’ I think maybe just have the ONE ‘standard question’ (about Bush) and that could be in Spanish because you do explain what it said. But the other two are superfluous to the story, even though the truth, I’m sure.

I wanted to hear how the girl explained anarchism! On the other hand I was high on the thick hashishan smoke by then so I wouldn’t have paid attention. I would be very surprised if this is an invented article. It has all the hallmarks of a biographical account. It drifts through the events in just the way that memory does when recalling an evening, and also it swings between generalized happenings and descriptions, and tiny, detailed observations. It’s a section out of a chapter of a book of Memoires of My Year in Spain – and as such, hugely enjoyable. Years back I had evenings exactly like that – I remember one such occasion when we visited friends in Hait Ashbury in 71 …

Thanks for that, Peter! (And how ARE your llamas anyhow?)
Edy T Johnson
09/20/06
Geoff meet Peter; Peter meet Geoff. I think you two are going to be a hoot to watch! You both seem to exist in that rarified atmosphere of linguistic Shangri-La delights many of the rest of us can only enjoy through your eyes. Your readers won't be able to help loving you both, I would imagine!