Buy Me A CoffeeIt feels like centuries must have passed, but it is only decades. Years grow shorter as they multiply. Back then a year was long. Winters moved slowly through the seasons, bookending the boundless summers. I remember the newness of things then. When I was a boy, in my imagination, I could picture death, but it seemed unreal, like a dream that evaporates with the morning mist. I never thought about anything but life. Immortality was existence. Leaving church on a bright sunny day the thought that death could be overcome, outlived, outwitted even, was mere common sense. It seems different now, now that I have felt the rain. Maybe you remember that strange feeling in the early mornings when you were a child, the first minutes of a new day where a vague belly hunger is usurped by the rush of life. The seedling imagination growing, nurturing its petals under an indefinite sky. The day you say ‘I am’ and soon after, ‘we are’. Mornings absent of fear. A day in the sun’s warmth. Growing in the scent of cut grass that grew in the meadows of the town. I had a feeling then that all roads would be trodden, but only if I could harness time, the impossible trick. Between sadness and hope, lies adventure, and that’s where the story begins.
It was around that time, at the beginning of this century, I travelled around South America. What a beautiful time it was to be alive. I even knew it then, as it was happening. I didn’t need retrospect. I never doubted things of beauty then, and that helped me to find solace later, from what would reveal itself as pitilessness. We can say doomed to die, but not to love. Even if love fails and falters, if it was true, it was worthwhile. It has taken its place in the hallowed halls. My heart was broken by a rejected love, and because she was everything and all else paled, the rejection made everything the world could offer dour, grey almost, even on the brightest of days. She robbed me of its flavour, but she wasn’t to blame. When you fall in love with someone that isn’t in love with you, you rob yourself. Even if it is accidental. The fire in life’s colour was doused. I was one of the heart broken ones. The heartbreak gave off a physical pain as I walked one morning to the inter-city bus station in Buenos Aires and searched on the departures board for the bus that would take me to Bolivia.
The journey from Buenos Aires to La Paz was long. It took days. Up through Paraguay. My only previous contact with that country and been as a boy, and the 1986 World Cup sticker album, and now here I was. Asuncion the capital city and the accompanying thought, ‘I never imagined I’d be here.” Quite right. I spent a happy night there. Alone but never lonely, the gentle prospect of adventure held me in its embrace. No one to talk to, alone with my cigarettes, the hotel bar and thoughts and dreams and memories and ideas, paintings on the walls, anticipations, and then return to the twirling of smoke. And now those times, like all those unrecorded, exciting moments brimming with life, love and expectation, have now become mysteriously void of most of their content. The thought processes blurred and misty, the shower and shit, what was I reading? What was the room really like? The hotel foyer? Gone forever, lost in times rip tide, taken out to sea by its vast whirlpool. Only the vivid haunts. Maybe God is only time, the thing that has dominion over all things.
We were driving down the highway in Paraguay on the thundering bus, over the rattling bogs, when suddenly there was an almighty thud and the bus shook with the explosive cacophony of the passenger’s screams. Delight ensued when it was confirmed it was a large hog we had hit, so the passengers dragged the great dead boar onto the bus and away we went. There would be some full bellies that night. Quite right again. Waste not, want not. Their good fortune was greeted with singing, and I remember that I smiled. I must have slept plenty as the next part of the journey on to Bolivia has become vague. I remember looking out of a bus window for hours as it went through the lowlands, green and tumbling to the horizon, with still white clouds in the reddening sky, dreamlike, unfolding the night.
At last, I arrived in the town of Humahuaca deep in the north of Argentina. The lunar landscape surrounding it gave the impression at dusk that we were driving on Mars. In the distance I could see the so called ‘Hills of Many Colours.’ I was the only one to disembark the bus and found myself totally alone in a town that seemed deserted. Night had fallen. There were no people anywhere. The desolate town greeted me with both tranquillity and foreboding, as if I was being watched secretly. It felt as if someone or something had been expecting me. I looked up and saw the galaxy was visible, our suburb looking magnificent, truly. Perhaps the most beautiful thing I have ever seen outside the smile in her eyes. I stared up, and my insignificance equalled my luck.
We are on the edge of our Galaxy, if its centre is Trafalgar Square, we are Theydon Bois, or perhaps Croydon. I recently learned that there is a giant black hole at the centre of our milky way so this could be a good thing. I sat on a wall where the bus dropped me off and lit a cigarette, dazzled by the stars. I looked around for the neon light of a hotel but there was nothing. I was three puffs in when I realised something was watching me. It was like a feeling that some entity is boring into your skull without you knowing. I looked down from the silent night to the uneven cobbles of the street and there in front of me was a rag tag dog, looking up as if we had met before. Its head was slightly tilted to the left. It was dark brown, very dark brown with unkempt matted hair and had wide friendly brown eyes, full of sorrow and expectation. I said hello. It didn’t react. Maybe it doesn’t speak English I thought. ‘Hola’ I said. It tilted its head slightly to the right with an inquisitive look. That made me smile. My loneliness seemed to evaporate into the balmy night of stars and sands.
I stood up and it lifted its head with an air of loyalty. I walked on to where I thought the town centre was and the dog immediately followed, walking alongside. I reached a crossroads and my spirits lifted again. I began to walk towards the sign that said HOTEL with an independent air. The Bois de Boulogne it was not. The dog followed. I looked down and straight away noticed that it was limping. Wait, was it a limp? I stood a step to the side and focussing in the dim light noticed it only had three legs. Three legs. Poor thing. Must be a hard life out here on Mars. I looked up again at the stars and as I did so two drifting clouds ate the moon. I lit another and said to the dog, ‘Alright hop-a-long. Vamos.”
The three-legged dog walked beside me, looking up at my face. The immediate fealty impressed me, there was a certain loyalty in its manner and an irrepressible eagerness for life. I stopped and waited. The dog stopped too, looking curious as to what I was doing. I breathed a plume to the night sky and carried on walking, and the dog followed by my side. We parted company for a while as I booked in and put my bag in my room. The hotel was old but clean. I lay on the bed for a while staring at the ceiling, wondering what to do. ‘A beer’ I thought. I looked at the clock on the wall and it read nine, so I launched off the bed and returned to the warm evening. The cripple dog was waiting for me at the end of the path to the hotel.
As I approached, he looked up at me in friendship, so I smiled back and said ‘Hola.’ Then I went to look for a bar and sure enough, the three-legged dog followed. I stopped walking just to see what it would do. It stopped and looked up at me. I carried on. The dog followed by my side. I stopped again. So did he. He looked up but now with an expression that read ‘don’t fuck about.” No more testing. I saw some empty plastic chairs outside a well-lit window and presumed it was a bar so I crossed the desolate street. The dog hobbled along with me to the door and then stopped and sat down under the beer light, awaiting my return.
I drank many beers, smoked my mind, and indulged in whiskey until the light’s glow behind the bar told me that I was drunk. I have for many years found it difficult to both get in and out of bed. Could be a sign of depression, not sure. I’m usually happy. Maybe content is a better word. I thanked the barman in Spanish and he nodded warmly and waved me goodbye. I was surprised to see hop-a-long waiting for me. It must have been hours. I looked up at the waxing moon lighting the night world dreaming. I lit a cigarette and started the wander back to my hotel in the full knowledge the dog would follow. In the middle of the empty square, I sat down on a wall to take my measure of the town. The crippled dog stood in front of me on three legs where I sat. We looked at each for a while under the watchful gaze of the night. Then he began to sing.
The first note sat still on the air, full of loss and pity, but constructing a harbour for hope out of notes alone. It was full of duende. Fulloftheheartbreakingbeautyoftheworld. And then the music soared up to the stars above us. How could such a perfect blue note be produced by an unwanted animal like this? I thought. Then I saw that the answer was in the question. It put its head by its missing leg and again the song came. It was the rawest blues I’ve ever heard. I remember thinking to myself, well raise my rent, you make Muddy Waters sound content. But it was just a three-legged dog on the lunar earth. He made me smile on a low ebb, which is what good friends can do. In the perfect moment, just as the moon disappeared behind the clouds, the dog stopped singing. All that could be heard was silence. I realised music, like poetry, is not academic. All academic pursuits require evidence. Music does not. I don’t know how long I stayed with the three-legged dog, untalkative. After a time, the beer began to wear thin in my mind and I decided to go to bed.
“Well, good night.” I said, but the Argentine hound didn’t understand. I looked at him in the eye and he understood I had acknowledged his song. Then I turned and went into the hotel and slept. I awoke the next morning to the sound of voices and the distant rumble of a motor car. I got up scratching my spinning head. I realised I hadn’t gotten undressed which saved some time and headed out of the hotel to find the bus that would take me on to Bolivia. Hop-a-Long was gone. I felt a pang of sadness and regret. I looked up and down the desolate street but there was no sign of him. That afternoon I boarded the bus and departed. I looked out of the window as the bus passed by the frontier of town and saw a truck being loaded. There in a cage carried by the dog catchers was hop-a-long looking forlorn and scared. I jumped up with my bag and guitar, ran up to the front of the bus and banged on the window as he pulled out. I asked the driver to stop and he obliged. I ran back and told the dog catchers the he was mine. They believed me after I gave them some money, and the dog looked up at me and smiled. I looked away to the horizon and pictured distant La Paz in my mind’s eye. I noticed he was also looking out to the distance.
‘Looks like we’re walking there’ I said.
Hop-a-long sang. And off we went together, towards the childhood of mountains.
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