Delusional Deja Vu - Le Abbee of Saint Michel de Cuxa

In 1988 I spent the summer in Perpignan, France. My good friend, Olivier Brial, arranged my stay with his cousin, Jacques Vial. The family house on the Quai Nicolas Sidi Carnot was in the center of the old Catalan city. The River Basse coursed past the fourth-story mansion east to the sea in Olivier's parents were out on Carnet-Plage, a middle-class beach resort. Nothing special and certainly not the Riviera. Still it was free accommodations and the house was the office for the Vial law firm and every day we gathered a hearty lunch and then sprawled throughout the first floor on the sofas and chairs. Everyone had their favorites.

It was a quiet city that summer.

Everyone was at the beach or on holiday. I was writing a short story collection set in the East Village 1978-1980. I took the train the Colliure on the border of Spain. The Mediterranean waters were warmer than the Rockaways and the rocky beach more pleasant than the wide commercial strand of Carnet Plage. I still went there by bus. It was close and Madam Brial always was happy to see me.

At night I wandered through Perpignan. I never found any place to drink. Not in the Gitane quartier of St. Jacques or next to the Caserne Joffre, the Foreign Legion barracks. I was 36. The age limit was 40. I was never tempted to join, even though the Legion offers a place to sleep, a uniform, and food without any questions. I was no longer in hiding.

Thankfully Jacques invited me on two day trips to Barcelona. Lunch with Catalan business associates and stopping in Cadaques to play blackjack at Le Perlata. I never really won or lost. The Vial family owned casinos on the Core de Rousillion, but his one-armed uncle banned all family members from visiting them.

"No one wins at gambling," he told us at a family dinner outside town. Oliver and his redheaded Californian girlfriend Cindy came down from Paris with another friend. It was a good weekend. After they left, I felt stranded. At least it wasn't Lille.

One Friday after lunch Jacques led me outside and said he had to ask me a favor.

"Anything."

At least until I heard the request.

"Tonight my wife wants me to attend a chamber music concert up in the Pyrenees at an ancient monastery. Le Abbee of Saint Michel de Cuxa. Part of he Pablo Casals Festival. After the Civil War in Spain the cellist found refuge in Prades. He hadn't play again in public until 1950."

"Fourteen years."

I had heard his LPs in high school." Franco had seized control in 1936.

"They'll be playing Bach Bourrée tonight."

As a revolutionary these quartet concerts sounded like a musical reprise accompanying the ablutions of ancien regime.

"Normally not, but anything attached to him is a go." Pablo Casals was a genius and a revolutionary.

"Please, just come. They'll be playing Bach concertos tonight I'll being a great bottle of wine. plus you'll get into the mountains. I'll drive and you can sit in the front. The women will behind us and we'll roll with the windows open

"Who's the woman?"

A friend of my wife."

"This better not be a blind date."

He didn't understand that expression and I explained its meaning.

"Une rendez-vous à l'aveugle. Would I do that to you?"

I wasn't sure, but he had been a good friend this summer and agree to accompany them.

How bad could it be?"

We met at the cafe in the center of town. Olivier's sister ran the bar. I fortified myself for the ordeal with two Calvas.

"So you are going with Jacques?" Marion's voice confessed that she had refused his offer.

"Yes, he's picking me up shortly."

"Bonne chance."

Jacques arrived on time. I downed by third Calva and ran out to the Peugot 505. His wife and the other woman sat in back. She was my age. Attractive and I politely introduced myself. I was new blood in an old town. Her name was Sylvie. She was blonde and wore a wedding ring. She told me that she didn't speak any English." "D'accord. On parle en Francais." I had taken two years of the language in grammar school. It was my second second language after Latin.

Jacques drove west into the mountains. D615 to D66 folliwing Tet river. Numerous dry riverbeds scored the valleys into the Lac de Vinca, a large reservoir. The women spoke in the back. Jacques and I smoked cigarettes with the windows open. It was a beautiful evening and even more sout turning off onto the D27 leading to Le Abbee of Saint Michel de Cuxa. The peak of Canigo rose to over 9000 feet. Higher than any mountain in New England. The smell of pine forests.

"C'est tres belle ici." I was content to have come.

Sylvie smiled back. Conversation was unnecessary with the windows open. It was turning into a pleasant evening, until the monastery hoved into view and I gasped.

Sylvie asked what was wrong and I explained in bad French that I had been here before and that I have seen this place before."

"Vous etes de New York?"

I explained I lived there and she laughed saying in good English, "You have not been here before, but one of your millionaires, John D. Rockefeller bought and transported half of the monastery and a good deal of its art to the tip of Manhattan."

"The Cloisters."

Sylvie explained my mistaken deja vu to the Vials. We had a good laugh. The evening was better than expected. A young woman performed Bach Suite #1. We later drank a good bottle of Cote de Rousillon at the Les Halles du Conflent. Sylvie was fun. A good time for all.

Yesterday I traveled on the A train from Clinton Hill in the freezing cold to visit Professor Bertell Ollman in the far north of Manhattan. West 190th Street. Only 55 minutes. The elevator ascended to street level. I strolled across the Bernard Baruch park. Below the Hudson filled the fiord. No snow in sight, but the temperature was 21 and windy. I walked into Fort Tyron Park. Alone, except for a dog walker. The Cloister tower was far away. I had only been here twice. Once in 1980 a friend and I had walked from the East village to here. The hike took a little over two hours. Today I was satisfied to view the medieval monastery from the Linden Terrace. I tried to recall the taste of wine and the music. I heard Miles Davis' KIND OF BLUE instead. I shivered for a few minutes and walked back to see the Professor. He was in good shape and happy to see me. I told him of seeing the Cloisters twin a long time ago back when wew not so much young, but not as old as now. I showed him a photo of both places."

"They do look alike."

They still do and I only say that shit about chamber music to bug pseudo-intellectual. I never play it in the bathroom, then again I'm not royalty. SA for Perpignan and my family there. One day I will go. And this dream is always deja vu.

Thai Cat Scratch Fever

Several villages in Thailand's Ang Thong province have reported a plague striking household cats dead. The cats basically starved to death and locals are now scared that this 'cat fever' or 'kai-wat me-ow' could spread to the human population. Medical authorities have found no threat, but cannot explain the fatal phenomena affecting over three hundred cats.

Birds, snakes, and rodents are enjoying a respite from the feline hunters, although dogs are despondent over the loss of their favorite animal to chase other than bicyclists.

In 1989 Barcelona cats suffered a similar decimation of their ranks.

The cause was not a disease, but a radio report erroneously stating that cats caused AIDS. The next morning thousands of cats or gatos were floating in the Catalan capitol's harbor. The Spanish government reassured the city that no one was in danger and within a week dead cats were no longer flotsam on the Costa de Brava, although another radio station responded to the hysteria by playing Ted Nugent's 1977 hit CAT SCRATCH FEVER every hour.

Ted Nugent, ex-Amboy Dukes guitarist and friend to Donald Trump, has never seen an animal he didn't think was worth shooting, except for the human kind, since he avoided the Draft during the Viet-Nam War.

"I got 30 days' notice of the physical. I ceased cleansing my body. Two weeks before the test I stopped eating food with nutritional value. A week before, I stopped going to the bathroom. I did it in my pants. My pants got crusted up."

Not throwing any stones at the Madman of Motor City, since I dodged the Draft by going to university. Soiling myself would have been cheaper.

By the way I've never heard of anyone eating cats on purpose, but the chicken in Chinatown is not chicken. I did find an article about cat-eating.

http://www.messybeast.com/eat-cats.htm

Cantonese Chinese and Koreans eat felines. So did Europeans during the 19th Century. Meow-meow says yummy.

Foto - Paulette from Barcelona 1988

Perpignan July 31, 1988

Last night Jacques Vial, my patron in Perpignan and cousin to Olivier Brial (Cousins could be anyone from the same town or village in Catalunya), had invited some forty people to a forest dinner. At a long white-clothed table his beau-frere, his wife, Jean-Louis, his employer, Francois, a compatriot, a sad carpenter, a skilled woodsman, doctors, painters, the Brials and waves bronzed by the Med sun.

No tan lines on the shoulders.

I was the only American there, but I was a cousin too.

Family covered a lot of ground in the South of France.

We dined on Sanglala, a Spanish fish dish, almost like a paella, however the fish was better.

Wine loosened tongues. Old stories transported to laughter. Everyone laughed at how Oliver's father, Doctor Dudu, had thought I was the 17th ranked tennis player in the USA five years earlier. Everyone was a target. Everyone got their good-hearted revenge. No one spoke politics. The party lines were old fights for for a dinner or at least until several someones had drunk too much.

It was great to be Rousillion and even better to be away from the Reagan USA.

Despite my reputation of a nightclub thug, I had been invited everywhere; Prades in the Pyrenees, Toulouse, the casinos of Cardeques, and the bars of Barcelona and Coillierre harbor. Jacques had sold me as good people. He was a good salesman.

The bright southern sun blindingly lit the walls of the 3rd floor bedroom on Blvd. Wilson.

Carnet-Plage was only twenty minutes away, I called Serge to accompany me, however his girlfriend said, "He's sleeping."

"Another long night at the Playa de Argeles." I hadn't returned to the nightclub, since the weekend.

"Et toi?"

"The same."

I hung up and phoned Alan Vaughan in Paris. Sleep drenched his voice. No one was waking early today and he said softly, "I can't talk now." I suspected Mdme. Chenu was in bed next to him.

Friends stop talking to you once they fall in love.

Next call.

Pauline in Barcelona only two away from Perpignan.

"Come down. We can drink wine on the beach tonight."

I packed up bag for a weeklong trip. Pauline was modeling during the day and I was writing a collection of short stories. I arrived at the train station with a single bag packed with my Aiwa tapeplayer and a Canon typewriter carrying case. The bag's strap had broken in Luxembourg Aeroport. I lugged it in my hand. I wished I had left behind both and only had a bathing suit in my bag. Pauline liked the beach.

Three hours later I'm on a topless beach with my friend. Her cigar-thick nipples certainly change a man's view on life. She touched my shoulder. I've been alone to long to be alone tonight. I love 1988.

Zombie Flu -1989

In the summer of 1989 I visited Barcelona to see a female friend. Floe was a model from Sarasota, Florida. Her apartment overlooked the Ramblas. We were attracted to each other, however she was faithful to her absent boyfriend. We slept in the same bed without touching. It was a very frustrating experience. One afternoon we went to a city beach. We didn't go swimming, because countless dead cats floated in the sea. I asked the cabana attendant why.

"The radio announced that you can get AIDS from cats. So now we have 'gatos de la mar'."

The government later reassured the fearful citizenry that cats were not responsible for the spread of HIV. The reassured populace resumed their normal level of paranoia and refrained from drowning homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and Haitians, the first vectors of the AIDS epidemic. At the time I suspected these groups would either resist to strenuously or else were too heavy to throw into the Mediterranean.

This last week a similar panic developed after scores of Mexico City residents fell sick with the swine flu. Over a hundred died and government officials rightly responded to the crisis by ordering the public to remain at home. Schools were closed and football games were played without any spectators. Their rapid reaction seemed to work, although the American media whipped their TV viewers into a panic with 24/7 coverage of the deadly breakout.

"Hundreds of people are dead in Texas." A young woman said at Famous Dave's Ribs in Des Moines.

"That's not true." The only death reported in the USA was a Mexican who sought treatment in Texas. My explanation fell on deaf ears. The young woman was adamant in her opinion. American believe everything if it comes from the TV. "Okay, maybe hundreds are dead in Texas, but I heard of a case of zombie flu in Arizona."

"Zombie flu?" Her eyes widened in horror having seen the full range of living dead movies while dating high school boys.

"Yes, the dead are walking the earth again."

"That's not funny."

"And not true either."

I bought her a drink. A shot of tequila calmed her nerves. Her name was Stephanie. Her boyfriend was waiting at home. My hotel was across the road. She didn't respond to my mentioni of this information. She was a good girl. I order BBQ pig ribs. I'm more scared of mad-cow disease than swine flu.

Zombies too.