xmas away

The Kwikshot was in Spain this year, and with that I pulled ahead or at least tied in the number of Christmases spent here, celebrated in my mother’s house. This year he is in Barcelona with Megan (Jackie’s spelling); after wandering up the coast in the footsteps of Dali while drinking wine from balconies--a nice place to be. Before, I missed when I spent a Christmas in France and another one in Korea (under quite different circumstance).

That first Christmas away I was in Bordeaux at Patrick’s house where I was living. It had been his grandfather’s, who was a bicycle postman and carpenter who lost a lung at Verdun. The basement was where he made his cabinets, outfitted completely with clamps, planes, tables, stains and powders, and not a power tool in sight. The door leading down the stairs had a long center pane of beveled glass. Late in the night, when I’d come up for some more wine, the house would be still with resting dust. That door would glow out into the sitting room.

Patrick would be away in his room challenging the emptiness with his blue typewriter. I was away in the basement making Christmas gifts for my friends. I’d painted two paintings, two static proclamations; adornments to their personality—jewelry for the eye. For a third, I’d taken the empty bottles of ancient wines and made labels, “sanglier, sanglier, fenetre, fete foreign,” (wild boar, wild boar, window, municipal fair; making no more sense in English); just enough to make Herve laugh.

He lived in Toulouse four days of the week, then to Bordeaux, where he tended to his father’s vineyard. Four of us would go out for those three days, spend them at the Chateau managed by Mico, a Portugeses veteran of the wars in Angola, and places that no longer have names. Herve had gotten a Masters in Viticulture and taught us all how to taste. Mico taught Herve what they don’t teach in school.

Incidentally, none of my friend’s liked Paris.

After midnight on Christmas Eve we all met at Patrick’s. We ran out of wine. Every other bottle was dry, even the soaked plums. Patrick said he felt terrible guilt over drinking what had been his Grandfather’s wine collection. We had no money. The wooden shoe from Britannia was empty, except for a few centimes.

In the autumn, when it had gotten cold, Patrick pulled the pot plant in from the patio. First, we smoked the lowest boughs. By Christmas it was a spindly twig in a heavy pot of dirt. We were around the kitchen table; I said had an idea. I had developed a reputation for innovation (by disregarding consequence). So we boiled the plant, boiled it and boiled it; made longer by our anticipation. The water turned green. Then I sought to reduce the quantity of water, thereby concentrating any potency. We drank our tea. We waited. No effect, maybe something, but so slight, could be easily overlooked or invented. Being late, Jean-Marie left. Patrick went to write in his room. And I went to write in the basement. As usual, when daylight touched the little window above the workbench, it was time for bed.

I woke-up when Patrick started making sounds in the kitchen. Something wasn’t right. I was pungently stoned. As it turns out, so was Patrick. And he was having trouble with English; and the French meant nothing to me. Merry Christmas.

Christmas for me was to be with Patrick’s parents. Patrick said he detested them; that they were ignorant and formal to the point of parody. He said they were of a family that had emigrated to Bordeaux in order to cover their crudeness in money and manners. We dressed to go. Patrick was blanched white, nervous, anger rising, over being obligated to associate with such people. Merry Christmas.

Since I was a stranger to their customs, the majority of the conversation was over the foods, from what part of France they came; and of course how they are harvested, evaluated for purchase, and appropriately served. The wine held an exulted position. The bottle was raised in the air by his father like it was a victory—both that someone had made something so splendid and that he possessed it. They served a dessert, a rolled log, frosting and sponge. It signaled the end of the meal, that the indulgence had come to an end. But the novelty, that is the presence of a foreigner, could only forestall the wrong question to Patrick—a parent trap for this time the mother, to express their disappointment in their son. She could not understand why someone so smart wasn’t also rich. I think it made them feel the brunt of an accusation. I recall his father giving him an envelope. Merry Christmas.

Late that afternoon, we met-up again with Jean-Marie; we had money and went to the Gran Viloxera, a creatively licensed social club over in San Michael, and a hang-out for other economic dissidents.

The second Christmas I spent away escalated into an international incident, the origin of which can be traced back to someone teaching Kenny how to say “nice boobies” in Korean.

…and as it turns out, Merry Christmas.

l'a-ro