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!

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Respectability

"Yes. All right--Respectability. That was what did it. I found out some time back that its idleness breeds all our virtues, our most bearable qualities---contemplation, equableness, laziness, letting other people alone; good digestion mental and physical: the wisdom to concentrate on fleshly pleasures---eating and evacuating and fornication and sitting in the sun--than which there is nothing better, nothing to match, nothing else in all this world but to live for the short time you are loaned breath, to be alive and know it--oh yes, she taught me that; she has marked me too forever--nothing, nothing. But it was only recently I have clearly seen, followed out the logical conclusion, that it is one of what we call the prime virtues---thrift, industry, independence--that breeds all the vices--fanaticism, smugness, meddling, fear, and, worst of all, respectability."

I think that this quotation by William Faulkner is the perfect starting point for this blog. And I think it stands alone. And so we begin.