THOUGHT AND EXPERIENCE: KLERM MACHARREL GETS WILD

He was still worry about God's existence or non-existence. Klerm Mcharrel didn't know what to do with that dilemma. If his thoughts sometimes wondered about those critical questions, his daily life experience kept moving at the same pace. In other words, in a random way, never straight like the lines of any rational thought with premises, follow ups and conclusions. Life was a riddle..

One day having coffee with his friend Gally, he realized his mind felt free to talk and in that freedom he discovered his thoughts were full of life, adventure, imagination, creative or destructive, peaceful, aggressive; libidinous or puritanical, anarchistic or rigidly bureaucratic. Suddenly, looking at Gally who was smiling at him with her beautiful shinning eyes, he saw himself as a whole universe of ideas and desires.

Gally asked him if he still thought God was a relevant question in his life. Klerm Mcharrel kept silence for a few seconds, took a sip of coffee and looking at the ceiling and then at the near window, and then at himself; deep inside himself, he said: "My thoughts are one thing, but my experience goes in many different directions. Sometimes my thoughts get wild meanwhile my daily experience is quite an orderline. God might be something in between, perhaps God is just an idea that helps to put ourselves at the center of something so we can't get lost in such a whirling kaleidoscopic universe." Gally smiled again and she nodded with and approving "more or less". When he left the coffee shop he felt fully immersed in a foreign reality he couldn't name anymore. Then, words came back and he knew he must be careful how to use them naming what was there, beyond his control and daily routine. 

THE HOUSE OF DARKNESS

I was in the dark. Darkness. It was one of those narrow paths crossing the forest. It was raining in the dark. I was walking by myself trying to reach a house. It was a wooden house in the other side of the forest. Sadness. Nobody lives in that house anymore. I used to live in that house with all my family many years ago. It's an empty house nowadays. The rain didn't stop. It seemed it was going to rain all night. If I entered into the house I'd have to kindle the fire and the candles. Loneliness.

There was one table and two chairs. Yes, something else: an old bible that used to belong to my grandfather Marius. I knew there were two abandoned rooms. I wouldn't go in. The rooms keep the ghosts inside. I took my sandwiches from the backpack and I sat on one of the chairs leaning my arms on the table. I was starving. The wolves howled in the deep night.

Suddenly, I'd realized there was a stove in one of the corners. I grabbed the wrapping of the sandwiches, crushed it forming a wag and buried it with a handful of charcoal I'd brought with me. I tried to light a fire as best I could. I soaked the charcoal with gasoline from a can. Then I stroke a match. Yes, the fire was on. It was alive. The walls now glimmer with the light of the fire. Ghosts. Loneliness. Sadness. I'm scared. Why did I come here? I asked myself, because I knew the ghosts were in the other rooms. The bedrooms. My grandparents, my parents, my two aunts and uncle Jimmho died there. Many years ago. It all had happened many years ago. But I still felt them there, still finding their place in a world they'd never understood. I opened the bible and read Ecclesiastes under candle light. My father used to tell me that in case of fear and confusion that was the best book to read in the Bible. I never understood why. I couldn't finish the reading because an overwhelming anguish devoured my whole being. Absolutely loneliness meant madness.

I put my backpack on with trembling hands and slowly left the house. I held my flashlight beaming the intense light on the almost forgotten path that led back into the dark forest. Darkness. Loneliness. Turn the light of the spirit on before darkness and loneliness eat your life away.

MY ENCOUNTER WITH THE BEATLES

 The first time I heard about The Beatles was when living in Lieres, Asturies. I was thirteen years old and I remembered reading in the paper about those four guys from Liverpool, England, who made the girls hysterical and crazy in their concerts. I was aware of rock music since living in Madrid in the late fifties, because the American influence was becoming stronger and whenever we passed by the bar "Convair" in Avenida García Noblejas the jukebox was playing some Pop-Tops or Elvis Presley or Buddy Holiday's music. It was our way of experiencing what was modern, outlandish, out of the gray normalcy of that time.

The Beatles came up as a bold attempt to shake the boredom of the old ways with a twist and shout mood and that defying long hair that most of our elders defined as a "maricón style you never dare to wear". One of my classmates from The Solvay Academy told me, "Have you heard about those four English lads from Liverpool? They're great! I love their music" But for a while I forgot about them when moving to Xixón to start working and studying at night in the Technical school. That year 1965, it just happened that a cousin of mine who'd been in New York for a while came to visit us for a couple of weeks at Pumarín. He brought "A Hard Day's Night", the blue cover. He couldn't stop playing that record in our cheap record player, in such a way that all those soft songs modulated by the Beatles' hoarse voices stuck in my mind forever.

Around the year 67 I've just happened to roam about the city's flea market and suddenly I saw a bunch of 45 rpm second price records of The Beatles. Having a little spare money to spend I bought three records that used to belong to someone who signed his records as Josmay.

When I arrived home I started playing Beatles’ songs all the afternoon and that was great. I felt as if a current of fresh air was cleaning up the drudgery and routines of a sixteen years old working class boy making little money and ready to explore the freedom of a wider world beyond the prejudices and traditions of my narrow provincial landscape.

After that I was able to travel to Paris by myself by bus eager to check on the hippie life and the counter-culture that was going in those years. That's when I bought Sargent Peppers’ Lonely Hearts Club Band in the Quartier Latin and once in Xixón it was played as a ritual regardless how I felt, either when feeling down or moody, or when feeling happy and elated. The Beatles become a symbol of a new era, a new world of hopes and possibilities in which we could make our dreams come true.

In 1980 when John Lennon was shot I was ready to fly to Madrid the next day from Austin, Texas. I remember people of all ages heading to Zilker Park on the banks of the Colorado River to pay due respect to one of our symbols through music and a different way of painting life: "Picture yourself on a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies". Hundreds of people held hands around bonfires singing many of The Beatles's songs. Next day I flew to Madrid and then to Xixón just for a short visit.

YO REAL

¿Qué tendría que ser la realidad para que yo pueda ser realmente alguien y no simplemente algo que sucede.

 

El proyecto era hacer una figura exacta de mi ser. Convoqué a matemáticos de Gfhur, expertos en proporcionalidades y cálculo infinitesimal. Llamé a magos de la alquimia que vivían en secreto en unas cuevas profundas. Vinieron científicos privilegiados de todo el orbe. Hasta las brujas de Dfrnup quisieron poner de su parte.

Cuando todos se pusieron a componer mi ser, el trabajo se hacía en riguroso silencio. Se buscaron los materiales más adecuados tanto por su dureza como por su plasticidad. Se trajinaba con elementos químicos rayanos en lo sobrenatural. Hubo fuegos, calderas, probetas, hornos, crisoles, alambiques, matraces y retortas.

Había también sesudos ingenieros de inteligencias artificiales que se sospechaba eran puras encarnaciones de estas....

Incluso se unió un ente fosforescente que se llamaba Hijo de Dios...

Cuando acabaron su obra, aquella construcción era incomprensible, increíblemente deformada, insostenible en sí misma y con tendencia a partirse en millones de pedazos reflectantes. Me decían que ESO era mi yo REAL, pero eso ya se estaba transformando en una masa gelatinosa imposible de contener en ningún sitio...

Entonces eché a correr hacia el lago de fuego cercano...Las brujas me decían que no desesperase, ya que faltaban sus retoques..

Corría como enloquecido, pues nadie en su justo juicio se hubiese atrevido a materializar su ser real.