Dennis Hollingsworth

Last Day in Tossa

When the fish hook dug into the tip of my right index finger, I took that to be a sign to slow down and think about what I'm doing. It was a gentle reminder, the tiny jewel like barb dug into the callous and it grazed a shallow layer of bleeding flesh below. A little nip it was, enough to grab my attention.

It was Stephanie's last day in Tossa before she flies off to Los Angeles to work for Guess? Jeans as the design director for Young Contemporary division. She was excited about it: the prospect of seeing old friends, reuniting with Guess? inc., living in temporary housing across the street from the ne plus Angelino Farmer's Market/The Grove, shopping heaven. Imagine this transition after living in Tossa de Mar for over a year. The saying "it's all good" certainly applies here...

...except that we will be apart for most of the summer while I stay behind in Tossa to prepare for two exhibitions to come.

Kiko promised to take us out fishing and today was the appointed day. Knowing that Stephanie fights the custom of partying all night to the break of dawn (as do Kiko and Teresa most times do), he half teased her with plans to celebrate her last full day in Tossa with a morning fishing expedition, a bar-b-que in the afternoon, a dinner late inthe evening and a party at a friend's place to cap the night off. He was gaming to send her off to the Barcelona airport from the party itself.

My dad would have been proud of me. He loved fishing, he loved nature, the only place he was truly comfortable. He had prepared his will pretty badly but to cover for him, I took his request for his ashes to be scattered at sea -literally. What body of water is more of a sea than the Mediterranean? I chose Spain because that was where he was probably the happiest in his life. I chose Tossa because my mother and her side of the family chose it to vacation/settle here. I chose the Codolar Cove because its scale was intimate and human... the cove is like an embrace... and releasing his ashes while treading water at the center of the plume seemed like re-embodying him there in nature itself.

First catch.

We caught about thirty fishes on this day. In the summer, you can swim through schools of them. On this day, we ate the hapless ones who bit the worms impaled on our hooks. It was a funny feeling, knowing that my dad's ashes were scattered here and these fishes must have imbibed his molecules over time and on this day, we were about to eat them up in a skillet with a little salt and olive oil and pan Catalan.

Stephanie's dad was an outdoorsman too, but of a different kind. He was a speedboat racer. Her family would camp by the rivers and lakes of Southern California and take part in competative racing. She was a good skier herself, snow or water.

It didn't take her long to catch on to baiting and casting the fishing rod out to sea.

I must be too urbanized, as I found myself feeling a little sad to snuff out these beautiful little lives. I whispered apologies as I ripped the hooks from their throats, their eyes bulging out. Do they feel pain? Is pain the same for a little brain as it is for our bigger self conscious ones? (I read an article once that claimed that pain is different in a self reflective creature than for one that is not).

I promised to cook them well and savor their flesh.

What a life Kiko has here. He makes certain that he will have his month and a half off in the summertime. He makes sure he comemorates the parties and celebrations that marks the year. And boy, there sure are many such co-memorations, social punctuations in the claendar here. For him, life has a purpose and that purpose is to savor it... kind of like my dad thought. In my many fantasies about alternative family histories, I daydream that my dad had settled in Spain after he retired from the Air Force.

He would have been an excellent Catalan.

I asked Kiko for a list of the names of the fishes we caught: Churiola, Serrano, Gombid, Espadar, and Sargo.

At one point, I snagged an octopus. My fishing rod bent in an extreme degree, straining in a fight, I managed to raise it in boiling surf. And as I got the creature near the surface, it managed to grab a rock with a tentacle and it was over. In a moment, the line snapped and the prospect of simmering it's fine body over hot coals and a little garlic and extra virgin olived oil and a pinch of salt... over.

i'm glad it got away.

Ecclesiastes.

Nacho, his wife Leslie and their daughter Berta arrived for the three day weekend. We bumped into them on our way back to Kiko's for the afternoon bar-b-que, they had just arrived into Tossa from Barcelona for the holiday weekend. I remember when I could just barely hang on when Nacho talked. I would follow a conversational thread and often lose what wisp I had of it, hoping to reassemble the drift of the conversation... or as a last ditch effort , pull the rip chord: "No entiendo.".

Eyes wide.

Blinking.

Head shakes slowly from side to side.

Now, I can track almost every sentence. And I can certainly keep on top of the conversations in Castellano. Here's a shout out to our Spanish teacher, Elena Obach at l'Study! I can bat the ball back over the net, even though I still maul the verbs. Lord, I must sound like an blithering idiot to the locals.

He told me that he's working with Americans. And he talked about American style, smiling like "You poor guys are all messed up.", a big grin on his face. "American style." he says with a whip of the head. Hombre.

What is American style of motorcycle sport? A single objective: explosive speed.

The Spanish way is agility and accelerlation. Look at the tracks:

The Spanish style has more dimension. It is more than mere complexity, there are more ways of failing and therefore it is more hazardous, peligroso. The former is perfection in the service of a singular goal, the other, a dance where you accelerate into turns as your knee kisses the piste.

Going after a singluar objective, perfection is the American way. American bikes must appear perfect, flawless. The spirit is monomaniacal and there is no tolerance for anything less. The result is a little transhuman, inhuman perhaps, overdriven certainly. Unjust. This singular overdetermination contrasts sharply against the dimensionality of the Spanish way. And isn't life less like the linearity of a speedometer and more like the contraposto of combined perspectives?

?Hombre, venga!

And so it went, that afternoon, the beginning of the summer.

I asked what the holiday was that rendered the three day weekend. No one really knew. Shoulders shrugged. It has something to do with the Virgin or some such thing. But how Yanqui it is to ask the nature of the holiday? This, as if one needed a reason for it. How linear!

The Spanairds are tough partying folk, but even a day long festival schedule needs to schedule a few breaks para descansar. We agreed to meet up again at Bar Josep to watch the soccer game between Barcelona and some other team I'm not the one to get too specific here. I know less than nothing about sports. Colored jerseys, a big field, the ball pap, pip, pap back and forth, lots of action but precious few goals and points scored.

I mostly watched the reactions of the audience, the game in their eyes. They moaned and gnashed and when it became apparant that they were going to win, the whole town agitated. Petardos, firecrakers started to go off in the street. Blood curdling cries of men and man-boys pierced the night. Air horns, car horns and singing "?Ole,ole, ole, ole!", they all know the song young and old alike.

The party reassembled at Nacho and Leslie's place, another super sweet habitation in the center of town. Their apartment, a triangular plan that ascends three floors, ending with their daughter's bedroom above in a crows nest that frames one of the towers in the their window.

Nacho explained his theory of managing a racing team: "You must have five factors that must perform perfectly: the pilot, the team, the tires, investor and logistics. He went on like a philospher general. He is the Patton of the motorbike world.

The hour of two in the morning approached. It was time for young Berta to go to bed (she's 5 years old, so cute). It's common for the kids here to hang out in the bars past midnight with the parents. But even the kids have a an "early" bedtime as the parties take a more adult turn.

And we had a date to go to a party at Manolo and Jose's place. Manolo and Jose are -or were Kiko's clients. Kiko refurbished their building, an old structure right next door to Bar Josep. They are owners of a chain of perfume stores in Barcelona and elsewhere. Like Nacho, these two maintain a second vacation home in Tossa. Their place is nicely put together, Kiko did a great job.

Knocking on the door, a porthole opens and we were admitted inside. We could see Maria and Manolo using the stairs as a backstage. We were just in time for the evening's performances.

Mexican karaoke with Flamenco flourishes.

Manolo was into it.

Another song and Manolo begins a strip tease. Discarding the white suit piece for piece, he revealed his body in a black leotard. A rose, the only ornamentation.. planted on his crotch.

Hips gyrated. He worked that rose hard.

A golden moment.

Stephanie had three hours until we had to get up for our appointment with Se?or Bartolo, the taxi driver, to take her to the airport. Kiko's devious plan to pour her into the taxi directly from the party was working perfectly.

I have very little biographical information on Maria. I know she is a professional singer. She has several recorded CD's and a career of note.

Husky. Sultry. She's been there.

I first met her at seven o'clok that morning when I arrived at Kiko's place. She, Manolo and Teresa were winding up a night's festivities with the sunrise. What strong constitutions they have!

I like this pic better than the flashed one below. A camera flash seems to betray the effect of the stage. For documentary purposes, however brusk, here it is:

Musica Sevillana.

A woman wearing a leopard print click clacks the castenets. I want to buy some castenets, maybe I can click clack in a PruessPress jam session someday.

But what a night it was. It was a wonderful way to toast the end of our first year living in Tossa together. An ending and a beginning of a life lived between two cities, Los Angeles and Tossa de Mar. Our pendulum life has begun to swing between two places, torn and loving it.

Posted by Dennis at May 15, 2005 3:35 PM