“The world was not wheeling anymore. It was just very clear and bright and inclined to blur at the edges.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Pamplona
Sometimes it takes so little (or so much a man could argue) and the thing explodes. Like San Fermin festival. It took one book Mr. Hemingway wrote and the event became an international festivity. A place where modern tourists come to savor the real taste and scent and looks of Spanish extravaganza.
Pretty women, smell of piss, amazing tapas, white cloth covered in red whine and six brutal deaths in a row… Arena. Party. Bulls. Á lá Balmain type matadors … All so colorful, hectic and full. So diverse that it doesn’t make sense anymore. Overwhelming, and then you feel like you can’t feel anymore. Is that how I felt about San Fermin? Oh yes. But there was much more than that. Some sort of sudden clearance of my mind and understanding that I should actually wake up.
San Fermin. Ya know. The big thing with the bulls running through the town of Pamplona. Occasionally, killing one or two people… Around 6 bulls a day in total for seven days in a row. Not animal friendly. But when you give it a bit more thought.. better that than being an American farm cow?Wikipedia does it better than I do: “The festival of San Fermín is a week-long, historically rooted celebration held annually in the city of Pamplona (in Navarre, Spain). <…> While its most famous event is the encierro, or the running of the bulls, which happens at 8:00 AM from the 7th of July to the 14th July, the festival involves many other traditional and folkloric events <…>. It has become probably the most internationally renowned fiesta in Spain. Over 1,000,000 people come to participate in this festival.”Did I mention a little stop in Barcelona?
She said she writes about cultural differences. And that, thanks to my talk, she’s on the verge of change. I didn’t know that I could urge people to change. But probably it wasn’t me. She knew it deep down inside her.
Now she’s gone. I’m not sad. She didn’t look sad. She rather felt young, full of opportunities and life. She was smiling. She was inspiring.
Her future is under construction or maybe a … reconstruction of what it was supposed to be? Like Sagrada Familia. Always and forever changing, never finished, never perfect but so intense and fascinating.
Uncertainty is fear and miracle in one. Now I’m again facing it right in front of me. I mean, it’s actually always here. On the dark street corner, on a dangerous jump, in a tiny glimpse of not paying attention. Any moment our whole life could change so drastically that we wouldn’t be able to live the same ways as before, love the same as before or even be… the same as before.
So far all my life’s surprises were pretty predictable and even chosen by myself. And it always takes so much of me. And then always brings back even more, so that it almost hurts.
I wished to remind myself and others that the future is under construction. Not AGAIN. It’s actually always been and always gonna stay this way. So there’s no reason to freak out. It’s not less certain now than a walk home from a club alone, or hiking in the mountains… or falling asleep in his arms.
Never finished but scary beautiful. Sagrada Família
