33 abandoned stories

Movie of the week, because  I don’t know

This week’s post, along with the upcoming 32 or so, is inspired by a photo editorial roaming around the internets, showing pictures of 33 abandoned places around the world. I found it through Etgar Keret, another writer I’d like to write like…like whom I’d like to write..with which…  From his Facebook page, after I had read his book Suddenly a Knock On the Door from cover to cover, and took on board his suggestion that a story or script might be written about each place. It will be as much an exercise in imagination as an apology to the stories, ideas and poems I’ve abandoned, especially lately, due to lethargy and solipsism. It seems appropriate in the year after the apocalypse.

As much as I’d like to skip to the train depot one, I’ll follow the article’s order, so here is number 1.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/the-33-most-beautiful-abandoned-places-in-the-world

Christ of the Abyss at San Fruttuoso, Italy

Padre Antonio wrung his hands in the vestibule and shuffled his feet before reaching the pulpit. When he looked up, it was just as he expected. Hardly anyone present. The two members of the congregation were trying to hold on to the last bits of the miracle, and Padre Antonio didn’t know what they expected him to do.

Weeks ago, he was awoken at the break of day by his curate, asking him to come outside. In the garden, the fisherman’s moustache twanged with expectation; he explained that he and the other fishermen had seen something from the boat. At first, they had thought it was a large fish, but there could never be such a large fish in these parts, and the shadow didn’t move, even though they sat in the quiet dawn for an hour, staring at the water.

“Was the shadow bigger than your boat, Alessandro?” Antonio asked him.

“It was bigger than two boats, Padre.”

Antonio looked into his eyes for signs of inebriation, but they were just as sober and frightened as they had been minutes ago.  At the gate he met the other fishermen and a crowd that had formed from the village, and they all set out together for the shore as the sun came up. Alessandro was told to bring someone on the boat with him and go back to the spot where they had witnessed the shadow. Maybe things would become clearer in the light of day. Antonio waved to the boat that drifted on the clear water and turned the see the whole town congregated on the beach, looking at him expectantly, some wringing their hands. He made a decision and felt the sun’s warmth embrace him.

“Figli miei,  I ask that we, gathered here on this most blessed day, bow together and give thanks. I had a dream during the night that San Fruttuoso del Sottomarino came to whisper in my ear, as I sat on this very spot, that he would bless our town by inserting a statue of our Lord within our waters. That our sea may be blessed with an abundance of fish, that our trade with our neighbours might soar, and that our textile industry might take a new turn for the better, all its workers happy in the new prosperity, contributing to the well-being of our happy village. I ask that you join me in prayer, that we give thanks to San Fruttuoso for a new age of prosperity and productivity for all.”

When he lifted the veil of his eyelids, Antonio looked on a sea of faces rejoicing, and he joined his palms together peacefully.

“But Padre, how do we really know San Fruttuoso put a statue of our Lord in our waters?”

Antonio went up to Felipe, the bar-owner, and smiled into his calm eyes, then placed a kiss on his sylvan forehead. Alessandro’s boat headed back towards the shore.

“My child, we must believe. If we believe in the statue at the bottom of the sea, San Fruttuoso will bless this wonderful village, and give us all that we desire. Our saint appeared to me in a dream and brought to me the vision of what this statue will bring, and San Fruttuoso doesn’t just go around placing statues underwater, volente o nolente.”

Antonio went to meet the fishermen, and locked eyes with Alessandro.

“And did you see our Lord underwater, my son? Did you see his arms outstretched amongst the fishes?” he smile-shouted.

Alessandro gazed at the happy crowd, who seemed distracted and wasn’t paying as much attention.

“Yes, Padre, I saw the statue of our Lord. And more fishes in the sea than I have ever seen in these thirty or so years I’ve been a fisherman. But Padre, how did this happen?”

And Padre Antonio put his arm around Alessandro’s shoulder and explained about his vision, and they all went to Lucia’s cafe to celebrate with gelatto.

From that point on, the village prospered, and its citizens became productive and successful just like in Padre Antonio’s vision. With the extra prosperity and productivity, they built three more churches, one big one, and two not so big ones. Eventually, they became too busy  exporting their textiles to neighbouring countries, and cultivating their fish delicacies for the growing number of tourists to go to Lucia’s cafe, or Felipe’s bar, or hang out at the beach making dresses or sweaters for their sweethearts. Or even fishing. They began importing fish because the fishermen were tired from all the fishing, so they began working in the numerous new churches, making San Fruttuoso del Sottomarino relics and accessories for their houses and for the tourists.

Felipe was sitting alone at his bar, waiting for Fidelma, listening to his records. Nobody came in anymore, and he had nothing to do, but sit around listening to records, occasionally going fishing by himself. He got up from his stool and shut the lights and went outside, just as Fidelma was coming in.

“Where are you off to?” she asked him.

“I’m going to go see this statue that our blessed saint has put in our waters. Maybe have some visions of my own, you know?”

Fidelma tried to keep up with him on the shore, telling him he was being silly, and to come back. But Felipe was already taking off his clothes, and went into the water with an LP he had snatched on his way out of the bar. Something to lean on, in case he got tired swimming. Fidelma watched him go in, and swim until she couldn’t see his shiny back in the moonlight anymore. She sat on the sand and waited, then she lay down and waited. When she opened her eyes, the sun was shining and her feet were wet. Felipe hadn’t returned, but she didn’t cry because he didn’t like people crying. She found pieces of algae that she began to weave together, and waited a bit longer.

Felipe didn’t return the next day either. At the end of the week, they held a wake at the bar, and avoided the church for a while. Fidelma opened up the bar at the end of the month and some of the kids in the village came in to learn weaving and listen to music.

Years later, some travellers were scuba-diving off the coast of San Fruttuoso, looking for the lost underwater statue. They found the ruins of the old city, and fishes swimming happily around some sort of moss-covered vinyl.

In the new world, I’m going to be shevelled and gainly

Article of the day/ post-apocalypse

I’ve included an article written in 2005 by Rob Newman – someone introduced me to his stand-up on peak oil a while back, and I hadn’t realized at the time he is the other half of Newman and Baddiel, the first (and last?) comedy act to sell out Wembley stadium. Not an ideal venue for comedy, but a sign of how illustrious it had become. I got excited about comedy again, and was watching Jennifer Saunders’ Laughing at the ’90’s, which is when British comedians became the new rock stars. Newman was briefly mentioned because he broke free from the new emporium of mainstream stand-up to write and do more fringe, activism-inspired writing and performance. I don’t mean to sound like a wanker, but he writes about things that I think about. In Oxford, there was a brief power cut during the evening, and my first thought was “Oh no, I’m going to have to go out and look concerned with people, and talk about electricity in a way that makes me sound as if I know things about electricity.” And then I thought, I don’t actually know how to do anything. I had an unnatural urge to check my email, even though I don’t have a great presence online (be quiet, everyone’s got a blog), and to Google solutions to possible problems that might arise. I had a feeling it was only going to be temporary, which it was as it lasted only a couple of hours, but I wanted the neighbourhood to be deprived for a bit longer because I knew I’d soon enough forget that feeling of solitude and ineptitude, which is essential to survival in the post-apocalyptic world, once the status quo had been reinstated.

On our last day on earth, I sat in the train going from Veliko Tarnovo to Buchurest, writing a proper letter with ink and paper, panicked that I’d only a few hours left to read the second half of Joyce’s Ulysses – serendipitously, I’m at the bit in the maternity hospital, where Joyce spans English literary forms within one vortex of a chapter, in a metaphor of conception and birth, with the fresh memory of Dignam’s funeral. Although everything ran fairly smoothly in the heavy snow, while we anticipated massive closures in the west at the first sign of flurries, the trains were slightly delayed. It’s basically Mila’s fault, the woman who works at the hostel, impresario to my new music career, because she tempted fate when she questioned my need to buy a gyro in the snow-barricaded city of the previous day, as we shopped for informal Christmas dinner. She was going to the north to her mother’s with her little boy, and we stomped our frozen feet, while Yorgi sang and chewed on the 7 Days croissants that was my staple diet as a child. Mila has that great linguistic gift of non-native English speakers of coming up with brilliant phrases. Like during our walk, she was talking about windy snow, and said “When it blows you from behind, it’s not so bad.” There’s all manner of new poetry people create by misusing – I would argue better using – language. People like Gogol Bordello and Bjork do it with brilliant results.

My productivity hasn’t increased except for a second sort of gig at Dada on Monday (Da. Yes. The last word of Ulysses. Gosh, it’s all connected, isn’t it?), which Koce, the manager, said it meant I’d already sold my art, as it was for the owner’s work outing, and he paid me in Zagorka beer and 20 lev. I don’t think anyone was listening, which was comforting. Also, I’ve received about seven rejections for short stories I’d submitted, but one acceptance from Notes From the Underground magazine for their March issue. We spent that day popping in and out of shops full those plastic toys and souvenirs that nobody should be ever buying, but whose mixture of faux cosmetics and stationary collection had me entranced.

Furthermore, the pope seems oblivious to comments I twitted him, and he has yet to twitter me back, the twit. He’s only following versions of himself on Twitter, in a kind of onanistic positive feedback loop of infallibility.

Ceausescu’s palace, now the House of Parliament, is ugly. Sitting in the security entrance, waiting for the English speaking tour to start, I felt as in a mausoleum, and drew up a list of songs I’d like played at my funeral:

-Golden Brown

-Bach’s Goldberg Variations

-K.MacColl’s version of “Days”

-Get on up

-Raglan Road

-NO Mozart, or any sort of requiem

-Bjork

-Django’s Nuages

-The Lemon Song

-Me and the Devil (Robert Johnson’s obviously)

-She moves through the fair

-Candela

-Paloma Negra

-Girlfriend in a coma

-Porcelain

-Brass in Pocket

-The piano has been drinking

-Nina, all day long

-Karmacoma

-That song from La Double Vie de Veronique

-Padam, Padam

-Let’s face the music and dance

-Je t’aime…moi non plus

-Hey, that’s no way to say good-bye

-Goran Bregovic

I think, besides the obvious vulgarity and the knowledge of a nation’s drained resources associated with the construction of the palace, what struck me most was that the velvet, Communist red, gold-embroidered curtains in one of the elephantine halls were made by nuns. They weren’t paid, as far as we know. Deputies and members of the press walked the halls with conviction.

Walking through the park in the snow, I chanced on a James Joyce pub. They didn’t have Guinness. I mean, really!  So that was the rest of my afternoon. We’re all still here.

I have to catch a plane now. I dont’ like planes, I like trains.