Time does not exist

A phone call from my parents who are spending their holidays in Northern Spain in the same little village where we used to go every year when I was a child, was enough to tele-transport me earlier today to that distant and mythical Kingdom which is my childhood. Because if there is a place on Earth which represents that time, that will be Canicosa de la Sierra (Burgos). A small village with more cows than people. There is also a prairie with a little river and extremely tall pines. All over that area there are also huge rocks. To give you an idea of the sheer size of these rocks, some of them are so big that on their surface a whole cemetery was carved in. There are holes with the shape of human beings of all sizes, some of them are smaller, for children, other are even tiny, suitable only for babies or newborns. I cannot remember if these tombs where dug buy an old Iberian civilization or by the Muslims, that lived in that land some 500 years ago. Whoever they were, they really found the perfect spot for final peace. You just would not believe how mythical that place can be. I was always mesmerized. We used to spend every afternoons and evenings in this prairie, we, children, chasing each other among the rocks or looking for tadpoles in the nearby creek while our parents sat reading their books or just relaxed on the hammock. Children. There so many of us. It was not just me and my siblings but also my cousins and half of the village´s children which somehow managed to pack into my dad´s white Seat 124 (which was later substituted by an orange 1977 Seat 124-D especial, which eventually was replaced by a 1983 Peugeot 505 turbo).

Oh dear, I am sitting at the balcony in this summer night (Winter here, in the Southern Hemisphere) and am so frustrated that I have to work on these August days. Just the thought of missing the sacred month of vacation makes me feel so jealous of all those back home. I even feel jealous of those which are grossly underpaid and condemned for life to awful jobs. Because even they go on holidays in August. Because in Spain, as in France, everybody goes on holiday in August. The whole country stops. Offices close and overall production is kept to the minimum. The country's productivity plummeting to a minus while every one is heading to their summer houses at the beach, the hills or their grandmother´s villages. It is a hot and sleepy season during which the days are longer than ever -and so are the customary siestas-, a real luxury during the rest of the year and a must during this month.

I just cannot believe it has only been three weeks since I came back from holidays. I already am in a desperate need of a holiday and I despair when I realize that there are still five months to go until I fly home for Christmas.

Only good news is that for the next days I will not be much in the office. On Thursday I am flying to Rio for an event and I will be able to take Matt with me in the hotel. Three nights in a row. That itself is already a luxury. He is already there. School holidays are over (the return to classes was postponed because of the swine flu) and he is now looking for an apartment to live during the new semester. Then on Sunday I will fly from Rio to the Northeast of the country where I will be doing some presentations and trainings, which will keep me busy until Friday, and then, Shabbat Shalom.. As by magic, another week will be gone. Soon after that a month that to me seems has barely started, will be over. As simple as that. No one can stop time going by so quickly. That just reminded me of a song we learnt at our English class with Mr. Silverio (call me Silver). I was only twelve or thirteen years old, and in spite of more than twenty-five years in-between, I clearly remember it. It was sung by Anne Clark and I found it mysterious and for some reason, very disturbing.

Which Fassbinder film is it,
in which an armed man bursts

into a flower shop and asks,
which flower expresses days go by,
and they just keep going by endlessly,

endlessly pulling you into the future?
And the florist says: white lilies...

In that very moment, while the tape recorder was playing that song in our English class, I closed my eyes and after a while I opened them only to realize it is already 2009 and I indeed have been pulled into the future.