Haza! Olé

say a bit under your breath - addressing the guitarists strums, then loudly to the sky, then not or more when the spirit moves anyone who has stopped clapping and is on their feet, ready to stomp and spin and seduce.

good stuff. had my first night with the Andalusian gypsies in SF last night, high above the twinkling city. and there it was for a spell - just some real livin', some kickthroughthefloor cuz ya can can kinda passion - and mostly, just comraderie - the encouragement in whatever language it was: baile! baile! so that anyone who is moved has a net and can do any damn thing they want, how they feel it. how it should be. no wonder these go on all night. so easy to imagine actually being in Spain, encircled by gypsies, at four in the morning, in love with everybody, at the edge of some town that had been passed through for centuries in wash after wash of culture - all sifted through the emoting strings of the flamenco guitar.

The evening was a memorial to a man who most everyone thought was excessively and chronically lying when he said he travelled with the gypsies for eight years and played guitar with Segovia and was a spy in Berlin in the cold war and wrote more sonnets than Shakespeare - and lived in... Carmichael! On display elsewhere - stunning photographs of the gypsy life (thousands - all found in a suitcase by his son). I wanted every one of them.

anyway. much of this points back to how limp and insipid american social life generally is and makes me want to resurrect my inner 18 year old of the straw hat, backpack and passport. Time to scoot off to Madrid, or Ireland, Africa, India, Buenos Aires.
On your feet, Lala!

Haza!

pygmy hippopotomus

read at three in the morning that they elusive pygmy hippopotamus finally got its picture taken in Liberia. thought to blog about it for some reason but decided against. then as i was falling asleep i realized it stands only 6inches tall!. I thought I'll post his picture tomorrow. that's incredible!

Here he is. Seems his problem is that the forest is shrinking around him.
I would think in this case that could be okay.

But, alas, he's not really six inches tall. Guess I made that up.
He's still very cute.

for A.

heart frees a friend to fly.
it happened again this evening, just like from our Hell's Kitchen rooftop.

you can stay with me..