Basia Unleashed

Me and the Taoist. The Taoist and me. We come up with the coolest jibber jabber. This is my last day working in Spain and it has been on the whole a pretty lovely experience. Now, as dear Taoist says, I am no longer slave to the man, I am now slave to nothing but the rhythm of my own spirit. Grass skirt, rumbling volcano, war drums and canoes a-sail on the South Pacific notwithstanding.

People are always very keen to get the measure of me and I am always keen not to let them know when they are right, cos I am contrary like that, but some people, well, they just know me like the back of their hand and there is no point even trying to pull the wool.

The Taoist is one of those people - the fact he can remember everything I ever said verbatim did I say ver.bat.im? has nothing to do with it - of course. This is not news to me but in a sense it is due to the fact that up until recently we haven’t spoken or communicated for nigh on six years. And that in itself is another story and one that will forever remain locked away in the wee box in my soul with the label on the front that reads “secret”.

So when I am on my South Pacific idyll, shaking my hula for my hunky Polynesian war lord, there will forever be a corner of my love shack that is reserved for a Taoist. Should he ever wander by.

Posted by Basia at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Spain near enough grinds to a frenzied halt during Santa Semana, where on the surface it seems that the Spanish are celebrating their unbridled passion for being theatrically Catholic. But bubbling barely beneath the surface is the desire to reaffirm and give reverence to what it means to be Spanish. A little bit of history: the present day traditions of Holy Week in Sevilla has its origins as early as 1248 when King Fernando III reclaimed Sevilla from the Moors. And thus Spain to Catholicism. The events of March 11th 2004 in Madrid were not lost on the Spanish, whose expulsion of Arab dominance is re-enacted in every city, town and village in former Moorish Spain every year without fail.

Spain is built on passion and blood. Passion for life, for the Madonna, for the family, for love. The blood of martyrs, the blood of Christ and the blood of innocents, whether they be Spanish or those who were victims of Torquemada’s Inquisition or those who fell at the hands of the conquistadors. Blood and passion are the twin pillars of what it means to be Spanish.

When the Madrid bombs killed 191 people on March 11th 2004, the Spanish were the first to realise that history repeats itself. If the jihad is truly against those who seek to crush and destroy Islam, then Spain knows its bloody passionate past had a part to play. On March 12th, eleven and a half million Spaniards took to the streets in united grief and passionate, yet non-violent protest. Within days, José Maria Aznar´s Iraqi-war supporting government was uprooted in the general elections and Spanish troops came home when Zapatero’s new government took office.

Semana Santa in Spain is an unforgettable experience that causes all who see it to reflect on their own culture and the history of humanity. This is a country of frustrations, petty bureaucracies and endless rule breaking. Yet it holds in its palm a race of people intensely emotional and deeply spiritual. The blood of the passion may refer to Christ’s journey to Calvary, but that very same stuff flows in the veins and drives the heart of every Spaniard.

Posted by Basia at 4:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

There is nothing quite like being at 40,000 feet, where time seems to stand still, where the world is pure and bright and beautiful. Unless it’s a night flight and all you can see is the void. Which reminds me of the days when a girl could ask to visit the cockpit and be allowed without being considered a threat. Today I am not even allowed to bring eyebrow tweezers on board in case I kick in the flight deck door and give the captain a much-needed brow job.

So I suppose I should explain why I was in the cockpit in the first place. It all started with a certain Capitan Teresano, an Argentinian airforce pilot, who allowed me into the cockpit of his Fokker as we flew from Perito Moreno glacier in Patagonia to Ushuaia, the most southerly inhabited town in the southern hemisphere. For those who don’t know, the Argentinian airforce used to sell seats to civilians as they shuttled around southern Patagonia, maybe keeping their eyes on the Malvinas as they did so. Anyway, this flight deck thrillsville was a revelation to me. Because the planes don’t fly to great heights like jets, the topographical views are mesmerising. I saw the tip of Chile and Argentina as it turns up at its most southerly point back towards the Atlantic, I saw the gentle blue curve of the Earth itself - and I saw the ground rise up to meet us as the Captain landed the plane with me standing upright jammed between him and the navigator. I was addicted.

The night flight from Rio de Janeiro to Amsterdam was, however, something that made me a small child once more. The pilots were after chitchat about Ireland, I was after seeing some stars. The cockpit of a 747-400 series is the size of an average room in an average house. There were three extremely tall Dutchmen, an equally long limbed stewardess and me, with plenty of room between us to set up a dining table and get the drinks out. The pilot duly switched off his cockpit lights so that some random wee Irish girl could sit on the floor and press her face to the window like a child, staring at stars the size of Chinese lanterns for a good 25 minutes. Hundreds of thousands of glowing gleaming dazzling pieces of cosmic light. The sight of them burned a hole in my conscious.

I could have stayed there forever but he wanted his dinner. When I got up to go, still mesmerised, I asked him why they flew with the cabin lights on, thus rendering everything into a gaping void before them, he just laughed and asked why he needed to see where he was going.

“Oh it’s not that,” I said, “it’s what you might not see coming towards you.”

But that, dear reader, is another story….

Posted by Basia at 5:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Donna Tartt wrote in The Secret History: “The dead come to us in our dreams because it’s the only way they can make us see them.” She went on to say that when we “see” the dead in our dreams, it’s akin to seeing a star….if that is true, and I think it might be, then the dreams I have of my mammy, each one portraying her ever younger and ever more glamorous, and always laughing and always the force of nature she was, is pure light from a dead star.

Let me set the scene.

My mammy and daddy met in a small village. She told me she loved him the minute she set eyes on him. She was 14, he was 15. They got together shortly after. They stayed together. They got married. Had me and my sister. He would never leave the house, not even to the post office, without telling her where he was going. He called her bird. She loved the very bones of him. This is my standard, this is what I have to live up to.

My mammy died of cancer two years ago. Today. She was living her dream and she loved every single moment of it. We had an inexplicable mother-daughter bond, yet in some ways I am half the woman she was. She was afraid of nothing. Nothing.

In the end, she went very quickly, once she knew I was on my way from London. All she was worried about was that my dad would be ok, that I would be there for him. I just hope she heard my healing prayers of hope across the miles and that she felt the bright white light kiss of my love.

She sang everywhere, my sister said she was singing some Irish song shortly before she died. It wasn’t a party until my mammy showed up. She was cute and funny and rude and bawdy and bloody bloody beautiful.

And I would give up every single thing every single thing just to have my beautiful bird song mother hold me one more time…

for Ruby. with endless love. 02.04.2004.

Posted by Basia at 8:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)