Butano

The weather’s been chilly recently, nothing like Archangel temperatures but we need to heat the flat.

Dehydrated yak dung is hard to come by in these parts so we use Butanos (butane gas in orange metal bottles) for cooking and heating. Our seventh-floor caravan does get a bit parky if the butano runs out and we’re caught off guard by Siberian wind.

Butanos are both potentially dangerous (asphyxiation by butane inhalation, explosions, and fire, etc.) and difficult to get hold of. Although Butano lorries do the rounds on weekdays, they usually come when we’re all out.

Yet last Saturday the Butaneros came to town.

Clang! Clang! Clang! goes the familiar racket of a Butanero (Butano seller/lugger-abouter) banging a piece of metal on a gas bottle to let folks know they’re around.

"Bu—u---e- ee—o!" shouts another Butanero, Mornin’ Stannitly.

I lumber down seven flights (unsurprisingly, the lift wasn’t in order) with a couple of empty yet heavy gas bottles and reach the lorry just as it’s driving off. Shit! Butaneros are supposed to deliver Butanos to punters’ doors and exchange them with used bottles. However, they don’t carry them up seven flights of stairs unless they're rewarded with a hefty prearranged tip. The more liftless floors, the bigger the tip.

"Oi! Stop!" I yell.

To my surprise, the lorry pulls up.

The driver, El Rubio ("Blondie" round here, even though his hair is a dark shade of black) from Granada, is accompanied by a couple of blokes from India and Morocco who are wearing the distinctive corporate orange and grey uniform of Repsol, the company that distributes Butanos and sponsors motorcycle races. El Rubio nods, a gesture he makes to let me know that the bottles on the trailer are all empty and that he can’t be bothered to talk.

But he does speak.
"Back in ten minutes" he promises.
I look at him suspiciously.
He senses my mistrust.
"Ten minutes. Butanero’s word for it!" he smirks. Butaneros are notorious cheats and liars. Not surprising given their miserable wages. Wifey was once sold a used bottle (despite the apparently untampered-with seal on the top). El Rubio short-changes everyone. Everyone knows El Rubio short-changes everyone.

But, ten minutes later, he is back. This is a serious challenge to my prejudices. Perhaps he isn’t a cheat and a liar.

"That’s 22 euros"
I hand him two 20-euro notes. El Rubio puts them with a wad of money he has apparently taken from his underpants. He gives me eight euros change.

"I gave you two twenty notes"
"Are you sure? I thought you gav........."
"I’m sure"

He gives me the other ten, winks, turns round and climbs back into the cab.

Well, maybe just a cheat. Now, to get two 35-kilo gas tanks up to the seventh floor.

Road rage

An oldish man with a stick has one foot on the asphalt. He's crossing the road at the traffic lights. The green man (?) flashes. Pedestrians' turn to use the tarmack. Twenty seconds of non-vehicular bliss. Mine all mine, he thinks.

However, Boy-racer's approaching in his flash new car. Windows down. Music blares. Boy-racer manages to get through the lights at amber (amber for him, red for the man). He misses the man by a yard or so. Fuck ‘im.

The man’s slow-motion face looks up at the driver. Forehead starts to crumple. Face colour runs through the spectrum. Mouth opens wide. Confusion turns to ire.

"Me cago en tu puta madre. Cabrón de mierda!" (I shit on your fucking whore of a mother, you fucking bastard!" shouts the would-be road crosser, his face now purple with indignant rage.

Expletives shock no one here. There was never a María Casablanca to monopolise and safeguard public morality and outlaw swearing at prime road-crossing slots; El Generalísimo saw to that. Bystanders shake their heads in recognition of the man’s rightful venting of his fury. After all, the driver was in the wrong.

But,

regardless of road safety and what the highway code states that drivers should and should not do, people here who regularly cross roads know that drivers often go through the lights at red. It’s not the little green pictogram on the traffic lights that determines whether it's safe to venture to the other side, but the presence or absence of oncoming traffic.

Rules exist both formerly and in the road-crosser’s (or any other activity doer's) mind. He is aware that people break them yet, despite his powerlessness to prevent them from doing so, he can’t accept the fact. Every time they're broken (every time it affects him), he rants and raves and his bollocks work overtime as testosterone levels surge "Me cago en tu puta madre. Cabrón de mierda!".

Although venting anger on (perceived) wrongdoers (rather than other people or objects) may be a healthy thing to do, the expression of rage (when nothing can be done about it) could, on the other hand, be a manifestation of disempowerment; a stage in the dynamics of impotence. People should follow the rules (those that suit me). People do not follow the rules (those that suit me). That's reality. I'm unhappy.

Boy-racer, meanwhile, pulls up behind another car at another set of traffic lights. The lights are turning from green to amber. The driver in front slows down and stops as an old woman cagily steps out onto the road. Boy-racer can’t believe what he's seeing. "We could both have got through, you stupid bastard!" Breach of Boy-racer’s boy-racing rules.

Overcome by impatience and fury, purple-faced Boy-racer leans out of the car window and hatefully shouts at the driver in front "Me cago en tu putísima madre. Hijo de la gran puta!"

Existential post

Do we (people) create images of how we think things are and of how we think they should be? If an individual’s "should be" world and real world do not coincide then misery inevitably ensues. However, both can be/are totally fictional. This does not mean that external realities (famines, wars) do not exist, but that levels of happiness or unhappiness are directly proportional to the way in which an individual relates to a perceived situation. People react to situations in different ways. The way they react determines the extent to which they can change the situation, should they wish to, or accept it, if they can’t.

Easy to say but difficult to put into practice.

There are some benefits to this idea.

1. It is very empowering in that I am not necessarily the person I thought I was. If a person has an unhealthy perception of him/herself, this idea can bring great relief. If a person’s "positive" notion of self lies in something that is inevitably short-lived (e.g. a job), then it softens the deflating blow after the impermanent situation ends.

The question "who am I?" may initially seem easy to answer (name, age, physical, psychological characteristics, etc.), but it is virtually impossible to find a convincing response. This is both because people change constantly (e.g. I may have dark/long hair now but won’t in a few years so dark/long hairedness is not an essential feature of me), and because characteristics are something we desperately grab on to confirm our identity and therefore avoid unbearable existential nothing-to-hang-on-to-ness.

2. Therefore, I am not wholly the person I believed I was (or you are not the person you believe you are); only partially and temporarily so. This means that to some extent I can choose who I want to be (which is more practical when dealing with emotions than, say, physical appearance/age). It also means, for example, I have the option of choosing not to reacting to a situation in a way that will ultimately prove detrimental and reinforce negative dynamics (there are situations in which individuals get into an anger dynamic. e.g. you say x/ so I say y/ so you get angry/ so I get angry or ........./ which makes me.../ which makes you...). Furtheremore, it is not a "cop out" as it does not mean denial (e.g. of anger) because in order to choose, it’s necessary to be aware. That awareness is more than half the battle.

These are guidelines. It does not mean that I, or anyone else I know, have reached such a high level of self-awareness that I can choose not to feel pain if I break my leg, but it is a starting point to relating to those traditionally niggling things and dynamics that destroy wellbeing (e.g. she didn’t put the top back on the toothpaste) in a way that does not increase denial, but rather enhances awareness.

The implications are astounding.

Things

The council has tarmacked a long stretch of the cycle lane I use to get to work, which means a grateful prostrate gland and thankful bollocks. But I shouldn’t count my domestic fowl before they hatch because they’ll probably be digging it up to lay gas pipes or fibre optic cables in a couple of days.

I’ve been meeting a lot of deadlines recently and devoted little time to things other than work.

However, on Saturday I took Little One (10) to appear as an extra in a film. My daughter has a incandescent desire to be an actress and a singer (normal for a pre-adolescent girl). The drama school she attends once a week often gives information about auditions for plays and parts for extras in films and television programmes.

Far from being a miserable bastard and trying to put her off (You can’t do that/not for the likes of you/our family’s always been shite at everything, etc.), I try to encourage her to go along, get parts and generally learn about theatre, telly and film.

Wifey usually refuses to accompany her but I like going.

This Saturday we took a long metro ride to the station at the end of the red line. We emerged on what seemed to be a different planet from the Barcelona with which I am familar. After leaving the station, getting lost a few times, an hour or so's walk, and being asked several times by Little One whether I knew where we were going, we ended up on a piece of wasteland where the film was to be shot. Shady-looking individuals leaning on cars, long since left to rot in the urban wilderness, hung around the site.

The fear of having my throat slit for ten bob/x euros (irrationally) disappeared when I saw that a large group of film people had arrived already; chief grips, stand-in booms, etc. (people whose names appear in the credits at the end of a film and whose identity folk in arty cinemas hang around long after the film has finished to discover).

Film-making is a dull business for anyone who’s not at the centre of it all (there's no Oscar for Best Boomholder or Set Sandwichmaker - "and the Oscar goes to ...... Mrs Ethel Bishop for her Mother's Pride with Potted Meat period feature"). It involves a lot of hanging around waiting for people to do or not to do things (e.g. waiting for the sun and clouds to get into position so the exposure is right/telling a guy in a car to switch his techno down/he refuses/more persuasion/he refuses/bribe/he accepts).

Little One enjoyed it a lot and I made up for lost father/daughter bonding opportunities.

All work and no play makes Bob a really boring bastard

Tibetan class No. 7 and statement of intentions

I’m at the "beginner’s paradise" stage, in which I feel I’m learning something with every external stimulus. This phase doesn’t last – next comes a phase of stagnation and the feeling of being bogged down in a routine; learning nothing new. However, experience tells me that neither stage is totally real. Better just to get on with it without considering/worrying (or fantasising) about processes or goals.

I announced my intention to become a wanderer/vagabond to Wifey and Little One. "The Ladies" were not keen and did express some resistance. But I’ll give it a few years yet – see Little One through her childhood (my own life and death permitting – death rarely comes into a person’s plans unless they know their number’s up). Then it will be up and on my/our way. Wifey and Little One are invited of course. In the meantime, I’ll carry on learning Tibetan.

Statement of intentions

I’m reactive. I don't take initiatives; I react to situations.

Yesterday Wifey went to Vic to finish recording some songs in a studio. This project has been on the go for a long time now. Moonwise, perhaps it started even before I met Wifey. I was asked to contribute too but Ramón (el mamón), control freak extraordinaire and writer and producer of most of the songs, would be telling me what to do all the time - in front of Wifey. I couldn't stand two of them at it. It would mean a potentially humilatating experience for me as a tag-along-er, which I don't want to be. So I declined.

Pride, envy?

Quite natural.

I therefore reactively wondered why I don’t do my own songs. I have had a lot of songs (thirty or so) knocking around in my head and on my fingers for a long time now. Low self-esteem, hedging and paying more attention to others than to myself (envy) have stopped me in the past.

So therefore............

I, Bob, before the (possible) reader/s hereof, hereby state my intention to write, record, perform and/or distribute the tunes/songs that, for a number of years, have been using up valuable RAM in my head, which could otherwise be put to different non-hedging purposes.

Bob, Tuesday 15 November 2005.

Happiness depends not on external realities but on relating to things positively, no matter how shitty or wonderful they may be.

About twenty years ago I saw a film (I can't remember its name) that had been made in the environs of Soweto before the end of Apartheid. The film had then been smuggled out of South Africa. One scene showed a group of young black demonstrators being arrested by white security forces. The demonstrators were taken off to a detention centre, put behind bars and left indefinitely. After several days they were all pretty gloomy except for one who suddenly said to the others "I don’t know why you lot are all so miserable, at least we can’t be arrested now".

Relating to phenomena in a positive way enhances wellbeing and quality of life and is intrinsically a dynamic that leads to further positivity.

However, there are one or two pitfalls in fake or insincere positivity, i.e. feeling like shit but pretending to be positive. These include:

1. Putting up with and doing nothing about crappy situations that could be improved but are not because of a pretence of positivity.

2. Punishing/haranguing yourself for being negative instead of positive (and hence being doubly negative, first with regard to the "perceived" situation, and thereafter about the fact you are being negative when you "ought to" be positive).

Being positive is therefore a dynamic process and not something an individual can force him or herself to be just when it seems to be a good idea.

There are others. You just have to catch yourself at it/in the act/red handed.

Tibetan Class No. 6

Yesterday Ngawang explained how Tibetan is developing differently according to the part of the world where it is spoken. After the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950, many Tibetans went to live abroad, mainly in India and Nepal but also elsewhere.

Tibetan, as it was spoken until 1950, was a seriously medieval language. There was very little foreign influence, the country had very few infrastructures and travel was by horse or on foot. What was spoken on one side of a mountain often differed a lot from the language on the other side.

In Tibet, from 1959 until very recently, speaking and writing Tibetan was prohibited by the Chinese authorities. Material was only printed and developed outside the country. There’s no codgery institution like the Académie Française or the Real Academia Española so there has been no standardisation of new words or concepts (e.g. to establish whether a mobile phone is a "mobile", a "cellphone", a "hand phone" or all of them). Quite a large difference has therefore developed between the Tibetan in Nepal and that used, say, in Dharamsala in India.

In Spanish, a mobile is called a "móvil". That’s what the Tibetans here call it too.

In Spanish Tibetan (which sounds a bit mad), Khye rang tsö di móvil re pe? means "Is this your mobile?" whereas in India, the same question would be Khye rang tsö di cellphone re pe?

Idiotic linguistic policy is as old as politics itself. Banning the use of a language is a simple manifestation of this stupidity.

Mao wanted to stamp out reactionary feudalism in Tibet and bring "progress" to the country. The Tibetan culture and language were a symbol of backwardness so he forced those who insisted on speaking it into re-education camps to learn Chinese and discover the glories of Chinese Communism. It didn’t work of course, but flooding Tibet with millions of Chinese workers (who are paid comparatively huge bonuses for working there) did.

Here too, the Catalan and Basque languages were banned during the dictatorship until 1975, when Franco died. In the "tough" period of the dictatorship (1936 to the end of the 1950s) people could be imprisoned for speaking Catalan or Basque in public. I’ve been told it was common for people to be reprimanded by the Guardia Civil for speaking Catalan instead of Spanish in the street.

"¡Hable Cristiano!" (Speak in Christian!) they were apparently ordered.

Police, teachers and civil servants in Barcelona and Bilbao were recruited from elsewhere in Spain so there was no danger of Catalan and Basque being slyly spoken "on the side".

Wifey, who’s a Catalan speaker, went to school in a small town with a population of about 5,000 people, all of whom were Catalan speakers except for the teacher, who spoke Spanish. Teaching in the town was in Spanish. Wifey’s Mum has no idea at all how to write in Catalan. She’s often asked me to write things for her.

Anyway, despite the efforts of Chairman Mao, El Generalísimo and Disney, some form of multilingualism seems to be the norm in many places in the world.

Anxiety

Here are these doctors telling him he’s fine but he feels like shit. In the Underground he was sure he was about to have a heart attack but they’re all saying he’s OK. Now, as well as feeling he’s about to die, he’s also going round the bend.

He has another attack the following week. Same symptoms. The diagnoses of two doctors the previous week can’t have been right so he goes back to hospital. They're panic attacks, they say. Go and see a specialist. They'll give you something to stop them.

It must be something to do with the Underground he tells himself. "I get claustrophobia when I go down there".

He decides to go by bus. But one day, on the way to the city centre, he has another attack: irregular heartbeat, cold sweats, breathing difficulties but, worst of all fear, an overwhelming sense of dread.

So, he stops going by bus too and starts avoiding crowded shops, pubs, airports, stations, theatres, and cinemas. He develops a theory about the amount of personal space he needs to feel comfortable in. Give him that space and he’ll feel OK.

But not long afterwards he has an attack on a windswept hillside in the Pennines.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" he curses as he sits breathlessly on a rock on a Pennine hillside, overcome by fear. They're now happening in sparsely populated areas too. Theory out of the window.

Soon, just about any venture out of the house becomes unbearable. The mere thought of an attack makes him shake. He is virtually a hermit.

The sky at night

After a hard evening’s yoga in the old converted farmhouse, we stepped outside to breathe some cool refreshing air. The rain clouds that had earlier filled the sky were gone so we were now able to look up in silent wonder at the bright stars in the clear mountain night. A long way from the influence of the artificial city light, far-off galaxies and a host of constellations, the names of which were unknown to us, could be made out.

Suddenly, a voice interrupted the gathering’s common reverie.

"There’s one missing!" asserted Kim, who had earlier explained that he couldn’t do most of the yoga postures because his skin was not stretchy enough.

"What?"

"There’s a star missing!", he repeated, "a heavenly body’s gone astray."

"It can’t have," replied Maria, whose body was truly heavenly. "You must have miscounted. Try again."

So, Kim began again, his outstretched biro bobbing up and down every time he counted a star.

"I need a longer pointing stick," he moaned as he lost count at star number 11.

"Click the end of the pen", suggested a voice in the darkness.

"Anyway," continued Kim, "it’s not my turn tonight."

"You must have missed that sparkly one over there" exclaimed Maria, extending her finger yogically to indicate a point somewhere between due north and due south.

Problem solved. We would sleep soundly and thus be refreshed for the following day’s rock arranging in the nearby stream. Well, somebody had to change the river's tune.