All aboard!

My ears are still ringing from the booming blues as I head home across Casemates Square. It's midnight and the last throes of our hot and steamy summer are hanging in the air. The youngsters are just starting to head out for one last fling before they go away to university in England. So, I segue from the blues playing at the Lord Nelson to being serenaded by these creatures of the night calling their lust to each other in the darkness. The women look beautiful each one an exotic flower seeking pollination, wearing flowery skirts so short they should be called napkins. The men so handsome everyone of them a King Bee, delightfully long & lean in their low cut jeans showing off their briefs.

My mind is numb from work and my body tired. All day we didn't stop shuttling people up to the top. The line stretching right across the parking lot with a waiting time of two hours. Gibraltar was filled to capacity, three cruise liners were in port bringing over 6,000 people from different parts of the world to our little town. Then there were all the others who had come across the frontier from Spain by coach, car and foot. This multitude all heading towards our Main street and the upper Rock!

As I pass through the ancient tunnel gates which still guard the entrance to the city square. The memory of the queue shuffling slowly forward is still flickering in my eye. An endless stream of humanity like Fritz Lang's gray workers in Metropolis heading towards the elevators to begin their shifts. The difference being these guys are on vacation and are wearing colors not seen in nature. All day: I'd take off the rope and start counting as they went by One, two, three...till I stopped at 24 souls. Souls? Yes, because getting into a cable car is a matter of faith. Those of you who snicker are welcome to join me in a steel can some 14 feet long, 6 feet wide and 8 feet tall which is about to be taken up some 1400 feet by a cable. Then everyone has faith, even those with fear have faith...in their fears. I have faith in the technology...mostly. Except, for the times I don't...

All day: I put people in and closed the door, pressed a button, then waited until the operator at the top was ready. You see like a pair of dancers on wire our cars are linked. One goes up as the other comes down. Within seconds the temperature inside the cabin would soar from our bodies crammed together. I'd press another button and a voice would say “Welcome to the cable car! You are traveling up 412 meters to the top of the Rock of Gibraltar.” This of course does nothing to console those who fear heights and there is at least one person every ride who is very scared. After nearly two months, I can spot the nervous ones quickly. Their eyes give them away. Women deal with it quietly by grabbing a hand rail and looking at the floor but men are terrible wanting to be in control. They also have the odd habit of teasing their women instead of consoling them?

The people who enter the car are an audience with expectations and anxieties. How often do you check the cable? Has the cable ever broken? Are the monkeys friendly? Do they bite? I joke and reassure. It seems forever but after a couple of minutes the car moves upwards and we’re off. There’s a gasp of relief as air comes through the open windows cooling us off and the ground falls away. It's as if some cartoon ray gun is at work because everything below us seems to be shrinking. The buildings, cars and people become toys. Then suddenly we are clear of the town and the scenery opens up to show the Straits of Gibraltar. A cacophony fills the cabin as the cameras beep and a sing song of languages begins talking. I don’t need a Babel fish in my ear to know that all those tongues are saying the same thing how beautiful! For it is a sight which invokes in me a genuine feeling of awe. Not 'awe' as in an “awesome ice-cream” but the real thing! Something both mystical and mythical which your spirit cannot tire of.

On a sunny day the calmer waters in the bay between us and Spain seem like rippling, liquid glass. The ships in the port which are so huge outside my bedroom window now seem small enough for a child's hands. Fisherman's large row boats sit like minute bugs on the waters surface. To the north the wind turbines on the Spanish hills are just the right size for Don Quixote to tilt. But we're not done yet. Higher and higher we go and our ears pop with the speed of our ascent. We're visiting the gods! Over there to the south Mount Hacho peeks over an icing of clouds. It's one of the mythical Pillars of Hercules with Gibraltar being the other. This is where the ancient strong man stood and smashed down the divide between the Mediterranean sea and the Atlantic ocean. At this point the once dark continent of Africa is a mere 14 miles away.

I'm almost home at my flat with a crescent moon smiling down. The ships in the bay once more normal sized and the lights from Spain twinkling their goodnight...goodnight. Love Andrew.

The olympics & the true face of medusa.

The True face of Medusa?

I write this time from Ocean Village a complex of expensive apartments and piers built by speculators hoping Gib will become another Monaco. The dream to attract people with a lot of money to buy summer homes and berth their luxury yachts. I’m in one of a slue of high class restaurants which have opened and this is an Indian restaurant without a hint of Indian styling or dark skinned waiters. Through the open windows the smell of the sea and the sounds of the bay float across me and the sweet white flower which floats in a glass on my table. All this mingles with Nora Jones whose crooning quietly in the background. As I peruse the menu and listen to the music. I notice a heavy set woman in her mid-sixties looking towards my direction almost smacking her lips. I wince at my sudden attractiveness and order a drink to steady my nerves. A gin and tonic in honor of my dear friend John Whitley who would love this tranquil moment. He would also smile to know that the man with no sports gene (moi) has so far successfully managed to miss the Olympics. A hard thing to do in Gib which like the rest of the western world has become littered in every bar and restaurant with flat screens plastered with the games.
The young waitress with the accent from some unfamiliar European country comes over with my drink and I order a chicken Byranni with some Nan bread. The lady across the room is still glancing over towards me with that hungry look. Feeling like an appetizer at a homeless persons convention. I try looking elsewhere towards a framed picture opposite of me of a British fox hunting scene. An image totally incongruous with the Asian menu I’ve chosen my food from. I drift back to my notes and sip my colonial G&T. Where was I? Oh yes…the Olympics in China with all it’s Ying and yang grandeur and grotesqueness. A more humdrum looking singer swapped out for a lip-sinking cutie. A spectacular fireworks display tweaked with computer graphics. A mind blowing opening ceremony utilizing countless humans doing the same thing in unison. Spooky and spectacular. You ask me Chairman Mao still casts a long shadow across this culture?
But not to worry folks here comes President Bush who bumbles and drools his way through the ceremony and games. Ignoring…like all the press…China’s human rights record and pollution levels. Why wouldn’t they? The USA’s are not so good! I like John Stewart am looking forward to the end of the Bush administration ‘as a person….and as a mammal.’ Speaking of mammals the woman is now looking like she’d like me to suckle her deepest desire.
I look once more towards the picture of English gentry on horseback hunting down a fox…when I spot it. Like Perseus avoiding the gaze of Medusa by using his shield’s reflective surface to see. The glass of the painting opposite me has a reflection dancing in it from an until then unseen television screen which is above my head. A perfectly beautiful young man on the parallel bars. The figure that the woman has been watching with such hungry eyes. He is the tall drink of water which her thirsty body would love to drink. I smile…a little disappointed and eat my dinner in peace. At least I didn’t get turned to stone!

Motor cycles and music (August 14th)

I slip down Parliament lane towards the Star bar where our oldest pub and my local is. Its situated in a razor blade thin cobbled stoned street which reminds me of New Orleans. For a second I remember my sweet ex-wife Lois dancing with me at a jazz funeral. Then she’s gone swaying on the balmy air. Behind me I can still hear the sounds of the crowd coming from Gibraltar’s main town square. Where I’ve just walked through to get to here. It’s the Summer nights festival and a large stage and sound system has been set up in Casements square so that dancers, musicians and DJ’s can entertain a large crowd of locals eating and drinking at the restaurants. As I pass through the crowd checking out the scene I shake my head smiling. A couple of 21st Century sorcerering apprentices in the guise of two young DJ’s are dueling each other with a cacophony of robotic beats, repetitive crescendos and lusty electronic mush…but not a note of music. Like enthusiastic amateur lovers they grope around each other with sampled slivers of sounds but there’s no ecstasy to fool the ears into orgasm just deafeningly loud sloppy moments. A pair of struggling Mickey Mouses comes to mind with an over conjured tempest brewing wilder and wilder all about them and threatening to drown us all.
Earlier this week the same square had been full of some 800 Shiny Harley Davidson’s from a motor cycle rally that we had here in Gib. (I have a couple of photos attached.) A nice bunch of leather clad folks took over the town. Shame the bodies were not in better shape. Mostly…beer bellied men and older women who should know better. But tonight, the bodies are much younger and hesitatingly move to the beat. Mostly just teenagers dancing who are on vacation and so don’t have curfews and much confidence in their steps. Suddenly, as if hearing my thoughts about the lack of real music in this musical event, Tom Jones voice roars out across the square with a cry of “I think I better dance now!” and The Art of noise song ‘Kiss’ pounds away with it’s own brand of retro electronic beats. Then as if magically freed from the DJ’s spell the youngsters are gyrating as one. A split second later the music wave washes across the adults in the restaurants and toes start tapping while butts bounce around on their seats. Will he ever die I wonder? Or will Tom Jones just keep living on in some zombie form? Inside some future mix? I think he just might. It’s our modern mummification. An eternal digital after-life.
I move inside the tiny Star Bar to get a drink and the babble of music is taken over by the drone of dueling TV’s spewing out news. SKY (British) on one…CCN (European) on the other. Not much of it good…the markets are still collapsing from the credit melt down and the Middle East wars are escalating with their casualties. Joined by Georgia’s foolish attempt to get into a pissing contest with the Russians. Plus, I still haven’t met up with a Hash dealer. I take my brandy and move outside to a cooler table in the night air and sit opposite a stationary store called ‘Write away’ How things have changed? No pen and paper with weeks to get your words to someone. We now keep in contact with facebook and can see the smallest things that a friend is up to. Feeling anachronistic as I write in my journal, I smile at the ease of all the other things in my new life this time. It’s no longer the scarping nails on glass at having to give up the USA. Instead a growing acceptance and confidence in the future. I still miss people but the sense is of something to the end of a run but not the adventure. That there is much more to be accomplished.
The job has turned out to be mostly fun and this week I had a singing experience with some four Germans folks in their sixties who were riding down from the top station. It was a truly beautiful day and the sky we were moving through seemed just endless as a powerful cooling wind slid through the open windows of the cable car. (Yes, we have open windows in summer but they do have bars to prevent folks from falling out.) Then a husband of one the two couples began quietly singing a song to his wife. It caught my ear because it was the same song that I had been loudly singing on top of the cable car as we did our test runs. Partly to overcome my nerves at the long drop but mostly because it is such a thrill to be doing such a thing. Anyway, the fella starts singing and I join in. He turns around, smiles to me and starts singing louder. Then all five of us are just singing our heads off as the cable car seems to fly!!! I finish this weeks ‘Bloggo’ from Gib with the song. Love and miss you all.