Further Defined

Here's a word I could easily guess at incorrectly.  Barmecidal.

It feels like it could be something that you drink at a bar for medicinal purposes.  It might mean you've been standing at the bar so long that you are slowly killing yourself.  It could mean somebody has been sitting in your corner spot at the bar for so long that it is absolutely within reason to consider homicide to reclaim the prized red stools. 
Or at least manslaughter.    

But it probably means you've been at the bar for so long, too long, that your capacity to estimate the amount of cash you actually have in your pocket is highly distorted, which is why it seems like a good idea, at the time, to buy another round of patxaran. Ya falta menos.

.

Ya Falta Menos

Departure stress aside, there are only good things ahead. A long train ride to the Spanish border. Good friends en route at the same time. A peaceful breakfast on a Basque terrace. The remembering of long hikes, sacrificial breasts and William Faulkner. Home-made paxtaran. Those people in the mirror. Soon enough we'll be driving down a familiar route, finding a familiar face with familiar keys and a familiar balcony. Bullrun watching will occur. Kaiku y Cognacs and mullets. Breakfasts at long, friendly tables. Late nights out and early morning visitors using keys on strings. The Ham bar. Fitero. Sixto. Drive-by the Windsor. Shampoo. Al Capone. Cafe Luis. On the ledge at the Kayak. The corrida. A box of bakery cookies and the lyrics to El Rey. The Geriatric Club. Bets are taken on when the mid-week crisis will occur. It will. And then things will resume. Music in the street, all day and all night. The boom-boom-boom is about to begin and will not let up until the end. ¡Gora San Fermin!

.

Preparing the Whites

It's my birthday today, and since there's no white knight here to celebrate it with me, I've made my own. I bought myself a birthday present his morning. It was as spontaneous as it gets. Saw 'em on the rack, tried 'em on. Sweepin' that Visa with aplomb.

Though, I must say, it wasn't much of a splurge. Dee Dee Sue (and Mother Theresa) will appreciate that in this particular case, the cheaper the better.

Because they won't be white for long, will they?

Ladies, prepare your bleach-pens. And happy birthday to me!
.

Drinking their History

"I have always felt that if you are drinking an artisan distillation, you are drinking the history of a people, of a region," writes Steve McCarthy, in his recent post, The Pursuit of Pleasures in Pure Spirit from the New York Times blog, Proof.

This is exactly how I feel when I drink patxaran. When I bring the over-sized snifter of the red elixir to my lips, it's like I'm sitting out on a café-terrace in the hills of Navarra in the late afternoon sun, or happening upon a group of comrades in white, seated at a long table in narrow street who've fallen into spontaneous song after a hearty breakfast. Patxaran goes down your throat like a Jota ballad, its syrupy liquid is exaggerated, longing and soulful in your belly. It's a vigorous red dance with ice, waiting on a varnished bar at 3 am in the morning. Patxaran is the 6th of July, with a whole damn week ahead and nothing to do but live it. Patxaran is strong and sweet and stays on your lips long after it's gone, like the coveted first kiss from a perfectly sculpted stick-boy.
.

The Blonde Goddess

It's neither one of us, except perhaps in our Pamplona dreams.

We're bowing our heads and ordering another patxaran in honor of Conchita Cintron, the most famous female bullfighter who fought more than 750 bulls in her lifetime. She died earlier this month, at the age of 86.

Read about her here, and here. Or watch her in action.

(Photo courtesy of Vladimir Terán, http://www.flickr.com/photos/vladimirteran/)