María Castaña

“Write a story in which a character receives a message from somewhere (or someone) beyond their understanding.”

That was the prompt at the top of the journal page when I opened it today. The journal was the one I have been using to write my memoir, or one of my memoirs. It is an important memoir because it was either the prequel or the first memoir of the five I have written. [Note: A memoir is not an autobiography, as I’m sure I stated elsewhere. It can be very selective and often shapes the narrative in ways that are more inventive than factual.] However, I did not know I was going to write this type of story when I began. Fiction, I thought, as I was being pulled in and closer by an unidentifiable thing.

The prompt did not seem all that compelling at first, but then I gave it some careful consideration and gradually it seemed more conducive to inspiring me to write. Ironically, this same prompt and what I subsequently wrote would also foreshadow something that would actually happen. It happened to me, and in my absolutely most beloved bar in Santiago (Galiza). What happened to me in reality, not in fiction, was excruciatingly painful. I kept wishing it weren’t real, yet at the same time it was the most powerful (in the sense of having and giving strength) thing I have experienced. That’s not how I wanted to put it, but I’m trying to get to a point that’s important but hard to describe. Guess that’s because it is, after all, beyond my understanding.

Nevertheless, in order to comprehend the message referred to in the prompt, I had to delve, really delve, into the reasons for the pain as well as the gain. (Did I really just say that?) Why, for example, would a message reach me in that precise place? And why would my reaction be so intense? Therein lies my motivation for telling you all this very simple story: I’m just looking for answers, for explanations.

We should probably start with the setting, which was the restaurant known as the María Castaña (I’ll give you an insight into the name choice) in Santiago de Compostela. Hopefully you know this city is the capital of Galicia, one of Spain’s autonomous regions, but that doesn’t make Galicia Spanish. Maybe I’m assuming too much. I’ll explain it in a different way: Spain has generally been the (very) abusive stepfather to an abused (and resentful) child. The problem is, that ‘child’ does not exist and it posesses a sense of self-worth that belies a compliant exterior.

I’m becoming distracted now and will have to put the chain of thought in subsequent stories (if, in fact, they are stories). For now, the moment the message arrived, in María Castaña Restaurant, and it condensed years, or perhaps crnturies, into thirty minutes of everything timeless.

The restaurant is on Raíña Street, which surely has a beguiling medieval history I’ve misplaced in my memory. The original founders of the eatery deliberately chose a female figure, a figure symbolizing rebellion against ecclesiastical power in the cold, imperious Lugo of the 14th century. Testimony of this woman’s resistance is found, along other places, in an 18th century church history, but there’s no need to go through all her occurrences in real documents. She now exists as a reference point to a distant past. Way back when, as they say.

María Castaña Restaurant has a very well-chosen female head as its logo, like a rapidly-sketched drawing by Picasso, Seoane, or Díaz Pardo. It’s a round, pleasant head that recalls Greek aesthetics and is distributed throughout Galician art forms since the 20th century. Happy, strong, female, in a single blue line, in my favorite color. Blue like the Atlantic and its estuaries, the rías, like the skies when there is no drenching rain, like the diagonal stripe in the Galician flag.

The walls are the original stone slabs, inside and out. This is not a new locale. It holds a long table that was for long stretch populated by a group of men who were intellectuals, semi-intellectuals, creative thinkers, and drinkers. They established a territory still unforgotten, even without the sketch of the group attached to the wall beside the table. It was a Galician- speaking table; they were regulars, part of the furnishings.

None of the remarks that follow will matter without a broader context. You see, it had taken me decades - how many? - to shape, formulate, define my own Little Galicia. Think about areas that have come to be known as Little Italy, but know the only resemblance is in the word ‘little’ and the geographical references. My personal Little Galicia is a homeland I’ve built in my mind, ever avoiding the wannabe effort. This is another long story that needs telling, but I simply wanted to clarify that this adoptive homeland has been maturing for a long time, meaning, the waters run deep. I long ago crossed the wannabe border, but the ‘am’ part is far more fragile albeit true. I am who I am all because of a land without a state.

More on that at another time. For the moment, in the María Castaña, there was a group of fiftyish people, eight or so, all of who burst into song. A sappy, Andalusian cheap pop dumb song. In the heart of Little Galicia! Action was required, and so I stood up, two tables away, no occupants though, and stared. Then I moved toward the group, swerving to the right as if heading toward the W.C., but stopping in as floating a manner as possible to ask/complain/scream What kind of music is this? Why not sing Galician music? (If you aren’t familiar with this music, think bagpipes and jigs.)

I waggled my hands at shoulder height and floated on toward the bathroom I never planned to enter. Then I turned, went to my table, and sat. A song later, a perfect Galician tune emerged, so I knew who the people in the group really were. I also knew I had to stop them, so again I stood, staring at them with my green eyes, never blinking. They had no choice but to face me, now that their true identity had been revealed. I held them there until the light exploded, ricocheting off the coins perched for love or good luck on the ancient stones. It found the tiny bits of mica as well, and there was never going to be a way to stop the illumination. It was fabulous.

I turned to leave, feeling my little place was going to remain safe. Then I remembered: Pedra de abalar. The rocking stone. The seesaw stone. Not the huge one on the coast in Muxía, but a big rough-hewn slab like the others in the floor of the restaurant. I’m not sure if other people use that name like I immediately did, nor do I know if people who worked there knew about the wobbly slab. They acted as if they’d never heard of it, but Galicians are so tongue-in-cheek. It makes them irresistible.

Then I knew I had to really start writing my memoir(s). The way we manage to achieve meaning by simply taking the time to create it, step by step, stone by stone. The place in which that process begins probably matters not; what matters is time, using it to learn what we need to learn. And in the María Castaña I heard myself say, in a language not native to me, a language learned orally, like a child learns: “What music is this?” (What fresh hell is this singing cutesy Spanish pop in the center of my Galician world?)

Conclusion: I might never know who sent the message or whence it came, but I know what it meant.