Should I stay or should I go

19 March 2017 – dia del padres

So many things seemed the same as life back in the UK when I first arrived – more things held in common than apparent differences.

Now I’m not so sure.

Much water has passed under the bridge in eighteen months.  Many things that seemed similar seem less so at closer quarters.

Familiarity is comforting, of course.  People don’t talk about comfort-zones for nothing, there’s a lot in it.  Strangeness can seem hostile at times, especially when experience has taught us that changes that we don’t elect to make ourselves are often changes for the worse.  No amount of Change Management conditioning and psycho-linguistics can deny that ineluctable experience.

Some aspects of Spain (this bit) that differ from the country I left are familiar from an earlier time there, notably the lower emphasis on self-interest and individualism, the appreciation of the shared, the social and an appreciation of time.  Time in life, time in lives, making allowances in life for time.  Where Britain obsesses about “work-life balance” whilst being pressured to undermine it, Spain seems to understand the priorities perfectly well.  The British are encouraged, by “opinion formers”, to sneer about manana culture but, oh, how they want it.  Conditioned.  Disciplined to deliver ROI to investors.  Quality of life?

From a distance, it seems even more starkly apparent that only those who have “earned” time to enjoy life are entitled to it.  That seems to include those who have inherited the right.  Oddly, many strivers who are caught up in that mess and have the opportunity to enjoy time appear to have forgotten what to do with it other than work, so conditioned are they to the idea that to do otherwise is laziness, idleness.  Ha!

Time.  It always seems to boil down to that.  Once you get beyond putting a roof over your head and bread on the table, it comes down to time: a few moments in the day, a few days in the month and so on.  Time to live.  Time with friends.  Time with family.  Passing the time of day.  Time to think, to read and to appreciate what it means to be alive – to be a human being and spend that time existing on this marvel, this marble, illuminated and warmed by a friendly star.  Maybe sight of that friendly star once in a while is key to the process.

Will I stay or will I go?  What’s to go back to?  Not a lot at the minute, so I’ll stay a while and watch the endless flow of humanity through parks like this one, which commemorates a shared idea and a work of fiction within the same space.  Isn’t that, after all, what our lives are?  Ever more so, it seems.

I’m lounging on a bench, killing time, waiting to go to the cinema with M, my intercambio partner and friend.  I should have done some work today, preparing for lessons, but spring (primavera) has brought me into the city to share the experience with everyone else.  The streets and parks are a manifestation of blossom and people shedding winter coats and scarves.  A few more weeks and shoulders and legs will be bared to the sun.  First, we have to get through April.  “En abril, aguas mil.”  In April, it rains a lot.  No wonder we’re making the most of this weather.

20 March 2017 – local public holiday

Breakfast in a sunny window.   A few laughs with the camareras.  My usual: coffee, toast and pain au chocolate.  I’m trying to rationalise the expectoration going on at the table behind me.  I’m at risk of sensationalising it by writing about it, I know that.  I can hear voices I know crying “Gross!” in an exaggerated form designed for effect.  But which is more gross, the sound of his phlegm, or the idea that he shouldn’t be able to enjoy breakfast in this sunny window?

He seems to have a chronic problem.  In his seventies, I’d say.  Heavy smoker.  Trigger the socialisation of smoking as a crime against humanity.  Fine, but let’s wait to see what happens in twenty or thirty years when age catches up with the current crop of Personal-Best-chasing high-achievers and worn-out bodies become a burden on everyone else.  Let’s see what form self-righteous judgementalism takes then.

Get past the social conditioning, and it’s quite easy to filter his coughing out, or at least rationalise it differently.  Who would change places with him?

I watched Trainspotting T2 last night with M.  Thankfully, we got into the original version (Spanish subtitles, rather than dubbed into Castellano).  The film (Irvine Welsh’s novels) hit a nail on the head for me.  Or several nails.  Within 20 minutes I was transfixed and almost unaware of M watching beside me and trying to follow the Scots accents. 

We had a great talk after about the film and some of the issues it raised.  She was surprised at the Britain it portrayed.  Britain’s PR and marketing has seeded and borne fruit here.  Land of milk and honey, opportunity and success for all.  The land of logos and design successes, Britpop, royalty and wealth.  Does the setting for the film exist in real life?  Well, it’s a work of fiction, first off.  But, there’s no fiction without inspiration.

It was a shame for Renton that his escape didn’t work out.  No greener grass over the North Sea.  Maybe it will work out better for Veronika.  We talked about the difficulty of escaping a life that seems predetermined and what family and friends are capable of doing to prevent such escapes.  The drowning-man situation.  “If I’m going under, so are you.”  I told M about bitter rows with my father that had come back watching Begbie and his son.  And the guilt watching Renton walk back into his childhood home to find his father among the lonely wreckage of his old age.  What the fuck are we supposed to do?

I’m not proud of what I did, walking out and abandoning my family, my kids.  Sometimes, though, I wonder if I somehow broke the cycle with that act.  God knows.

Change.  There’s always a cost.  Self-betterment – selfishness.  Dishonour amongst thieves in the film.  Are we all thieves?  In the end, you have to live with yourself.  To stay or go.

And the film? Trainspotting – mythbusting.  It gets my vote.