Fort the past two weeks I have been living in a quiet world. I have been in the farm, with windy, cool weather, laced with rainy days, and have spent more and more time in my own head. Most of the time I am alone with the dogs (mostly because I take long walks and stay up until past dawn) and have been thinking a lot about a new idea for a story. It is called The Revolutionary, and it is almost completely inspired by my family.
I know that every family (as in the nucleus; parents, siblings, and maybe the closest of grandparents) has its own uniqueness, its own problems and characters, but sometimes I think that mine is a little more peculiar than most. I guess it´s not really that I believe it, but, on occasion, I am struck by how true the idea might be, particularly when I spend a long period of time alone with them, as I have done for the past month. Lately it´s been a recurring theme in the ghosts of my thoughts ever since Sara shared her view on them a little more than a week ago, on Sunday, when we spent all day in bed, exhausted and fucked up and high, talking and staring into space with our thoughts like stars and black holes in our minds. There are very, very few people I like talking to as much as Sara, because she holds the dynamic combination of being of my same age (and therefore often in the same types of situation as I find myself in), being completely, completely different from me, and yet being the person that knows me the most. Far more, I think, than anybody ever has. And, I sometimes think, better than anybody ever will.
On top of her outsider´s perspective on the madness that is the Bas family, with my wonderful Maestre mother thrown in for good measure, I had a moment with my Grandmother that only inspired my thoughts of us even more. It was during one of our family meals; Paella and laughter and loud voiced talk, and there were even more people congregated, since a few of the Bas family had also joined the fray. I was sitting outside in the Spring sun with of few of my Maestre cousins, my Grandmother, and two little Bas children-of-cousins who had previously been running around Uncle Javier´s eclectic ´garden´ and come back with two pairs of tiny little hands covered with tiny little snails. We had all been playing around with them on the table, and I was entertained with my own beautiful little snail and its strange, translucent shell and curious eyes, when Grandma grabs of few of the snails, stares at them, looks at me, jerks her heads towards the children and says,
“Where do you think these sons of bitches have found all these bloody snails?”
I blinked at her and then had to burst out laughing because it was such a Grandma comment, blunt and rough but perfectly harmless in its intention.
The idea for the story, however, really began to bloom from my Father´s recent activities, which have been aimed at causing a revolution in Spain, and that phrase is in no way or from an exaggeration. Actually, today he told me he was completely certain the CIA has been tracking his online movements, and my dad isn´t even a paranoid nut. I just think he really wants to live in a world where creating a fake Facebook account and spreading ideas of revolution on the internet will change the world.
And, more than anything in the world, I want to believe him.
Sometimes I feel detached from the notion, but it has been increasingly clear that we live in an age that screams, that begs and pleads, for change. For real, real change. The economic crisis that has taken over the world isn´t a raining or frogs, it isn´t and earthquake or a volcano or the buildup of 2012. The causes aren´t some mystery, and it hasn´t come from the earth or the sky. It has been us, all of us, our system, our failure, our addiction to creature comforts and the inevitable existence of corruption. And in Spain, we have it bad. I´m not going to get into it, but our ´democratic´ system is different from that in Britain or America, and it is made to breed corruption, because it allows the people in power to be chosen far more by the people already in power than the actual people. And so connections and favoritism plays a heavy hand in our political system, and forgoes the part where the big shots have to go to the townspeople and explain their actions and their consequences. And I´m not a conspiracy theorist, far from it actually, I hate it when people just blame everything in the politicians and are never satisfied without actually knowing what the problem is or how the hell to solve it. But my dad does know where the problem is, and does have ideas of how to make it better. And, most importantly of all, he actually IS trying to make it better, by contacting all the reliable news outlets and movement webpages he can think of. Sometimes I stand quietly in the kitchen and watch him type furiously away at the computer and am so glad to know that I am more like him in character than anybody else I know. Every now and again my Dad and I will scream at each other for three minutes and one of us will storm out and I will fume in my room about what an absolute hypocritical ass he can be. And then a few hours later when we next see each other it´s as if nothing has happened. And not because we repress it (the idea of either my father or me repressing anything is actually hilarious) but because that’s the way we are. Completely incapable of holding grudged, and more explosive than most land mines. And to be honest, I really believe it´s because we are such passionate people. Because we want to do so badly, we want to know, we want to give everything, everything we have for the things we love. I sometimes wonder if passion really has to be so damn loud, so burning, so consuming. Can´t it be quiet? Can´t it be hard and solid like stone instead of some kind of wildfire? But I just can´t picture it. Determination, perseverance, sure. Call it something else, something just as special and wonderful. But not passion. Passion can´t be kept under wraps. And maybe I´m wrong, maybe I´m just biased because I´m such a damn nutter, and if there is a trick to be passionate and not burst every now and then in some wild, foaming, trembling show of emotion and frustration and want, then I really don´t think I´ll ever get the hang of it. And I plan to spend at least a few month of my life in some green corner of the world where Monks live and try to learn to be calm and serene and controllable. Learn how to go against my nature because change is necessary for growth. But I know that maybe one day I´ll be able to be CALM DOWN AND CARRY ON when necessary, but people don´t really change, not in the deepest of insides. My first impulse will always be like this.
But I´m ok with that.
Jesus I like talking about myself on here. The point actually was that today I had a long talk about this revolutionary movement (spurred on by the manifestations going on all over Spain in the face of the elections) with my Dad and Uncle Javier, who are both very wise, and, though they are as different as Sara and I, I can see why they are such good friends.
The talk was a lot about my lack of faith in people VS. what needs to be done. Because, why aren´t we, the young generation, standing up and fucking doing something about all this? I mean, please, anybody who reads this, go watch “The Inside Job” (a documentary explaining the nature and cause of the Economic Crisis) and tell me that it isn´t the most fucked up situation you have ever seen. And usually I am weary of documentaries that are all about going against something, mostly because my bullshit detector has been trained to spot when something is taken out of context to make a point. And to be honest, when I started to watch the film, which began with just snippets of conversation from different people in varying levels of power, I though, here we go, just some out of context, controversial bunch of facts that will leave me dubious and unsatisfied. But, hell no, this isn´t a Michael Moore film (and yes, I know Fahrenheit 9/11 is shocking and revelatory and that anybody who watches it will want to throw a shoe or possibly a grenade at Bush, but there were points in it in which I just though oh please, is this necessary? Breast milk? Lone policemen on the countryside? Just some pick-n-choose cases to make something that is already awful enough unnecessarily more controversial). The Inside Job was factual and progressive and sickening and when I watched it I stopped reading the news because seeing how powerful and untouchable people in power are is like realizing how unspeakably enormous space is, how unimaginably unalterable it is for us. But, today, talking to Uncle Javier gave me hope, made me believe again, because we can always do something. Wars always seem that they will go on forever until they stop.
After that little chat I went to my room and watched The Pianist, which is sent in WWII, and cried desperately during it, like I haven´t in a film for ages. There is scene in which the protagonist´s family is watching as the Gestapo climb up the stairs to the apartment in the building across from them. The German soldiers open the door and shout at the Jewish family they find eating around the table to get up. But one of them, and old man, is wheelchair-ridden, and cannot follow the orders. And so, without preamble, they throw him out the window, to his death. One of the women in the movie screamed, and I sat up straight, clenched my fists trembled and trembled as I started to cry. Because that was real. Maybe not that particular scene, but the idea of it, the level of cruelty, it is not fiction. It is History. And I thought about the fucking mess in Iraq, about the greedy little men in power, about the patients I saw who were wondering how they were going to feed their families now. Is this what we are all capable of? I though. Is this what the human race does? What it has done, and will do again? It suddenly seemed so real. Everything was suddenly so damn tangible, so ugly and apparent and inescapable. I looked at Yuka then, my gorgeous, intelligent dog, sleeping on the bed next to mine, and saw, as clear as a chasm between us, how very different humans will always be from every other species. I felt helpless to really change anything. And it´s ironic, because the original idea of this story of mine, The Revolutionary, is based on a character that wants to do something, wants to change the world, and finds themselves incapable of doing so, only to be shown by their family that we are all responsible for our own world, that the people we meet, the things we say and the ideas we express every day are, in their own right, able to change the world around us. That we do not have to be some great figure, some face on a T-shirt or a name in a hundred history books, to make a difference.
Amazing how I can digress completely from what I wanted to talk about and still make the point I wanted to get across! This blog post has grown in a ridiculously sized monster, and I apologize. It is just that I spend so much time thinking, here. I will lay on my bed and listen to music and just think. And the more I get into my head the more I find it will be impossible to return to society. I just want to run farther and farther into the woods. And it´s not that I´m hiding, I simply feel myself detaching, sometimes. And ever since I came to Spain to spend the year I have learnt how much who we are depends on the culture we are in. Because I may be deemed fairly outgoing in the conservative nature of Britain, but in Spain I´m positively introverted. More times than wanted have I been in a group of people I have just met and someone has turned to me and said something like “well say something!” or “I can tell you´re not very open” and actually my mum told me I´m not naturally very sociable, and my brother said I had grown, over the past three years, to me much more quiet and “mysterious”, the latter of which baffled me completely. And as a knee-jerk reaction I protested, but it´s made me think. Because I like being with people, I love talking, really talking to them, I love going out and being a crazy dancing fool. But maybe I´m not cut out for it. Like I´m meant for something else. And I need a constant dose of adrenaline rushes (lately I´ve taken to helping Yuka hunt rabbits, which may or may not involve me barking, and am setting up something to go bungee jumping. Go figure.) But I also seem to slip too easily into this pensive slash explosive Marina which is such a fucking mad combination I´m really not surprised I feel so inexplicably sad sometimes and yet seem to entertain myself endlessly whilst doing pretty much nothing.
I don´t know what´s up with the doom and gloom that has taken over this blog. I hope it doesn´t seem too gloom and doomy. I´m actually, genuinely happy about everything here. I just talk serious.
Anyways, I have no bloody clue who still reads this or if anybody reads this at all, but I know it´s exam time for most of you so good luck with that. And I´m not adding a ´suckers´ at the end of it because I´m such a wonderful person, be grateful for my magnanimity!!
Ok, almost 9 am. Great. Who needs more than 4 hours of sleep anyways? Not me!
I run on crazy, not sleep.
