To All Ye Facebook Naysayers

Moving through life I encounter people who, for inexplicable reasons, I know are meant to be repeat players. My lifestyle does not afford the luxury of being in constant proximity to my people and so we hold to each other through less conventional means. Cosmic brain signals, letters, facebook.

Five months ago I became increasingly conscious of a Philmont friend, from training the summer of '06, who was existing somewhere in a far away life. Jeff 'Beantown/Boston' had since become a New York Business dude. He has stories of suits and incognito house slippers, people who don't believe in eye contact, cars that don't stop at pedestrian crosswalks, initiating office department recycling revolutions, and 40 story buildings towering everywhere. Three months ago we began a facebook dialogue through which he alluded to this existence and I was dubious as to the long term effects of being too deeply immersed in such a place. Now, I am certainly an explorer but I never considered this city, concrete jungle of which he spoke. I extended a casual invitation that he come visit. I had considered it more as a tiny reminder to him that another kind of life existed, I could not let myself get my hopes up that he might actually come.
Three months later he was standing on my doorstep in tan work boots, sagging jeans, and carrying an experienced old backpack. He had been awake for 30+ hours but knew enough about jet lag to insist on staying awake through the day. We walked through the old city and talked about the adventures that had brought us to this place. I reveled in conversing with someone with a sophisticated grasp on the English language, no matter how comically the jet lag and Boston accent slurred his speech.
It so happened that the Spanish decided to throw their fiesta de San Sebstian so that it would coincide with his visit (remember, Spanish fiestas last a week). On Monday night there were fires and grills spread throughout the city. Concert stages littered the streets and Spanish rock could be heard intermingling with traditional Mallorcan ballads from another stage up the street. There was a gentle rain which eventually drove people in early (3 am) but as long as the music was playing and the fires were burning, people were out celebrating the patron Saint of their City. We grilled steak strips (although the traditional practice was to eat pork) and talked with everyone and anyone who might be out. I ran into pupils and their families and Jeff found a harmonica playing South American who he beat-boxed along with.

For the next 4 days we walked the streets, perused the museums and old homes, and stared at the Cathedral and Sea. We took an afternoon tour of Monumental Mallorca, led by a Mallorcan guy who loved Nashville and slicked his hair like a Greaser. The history was fascinating and the insight into the family and hierarchical workings of these people hundreds of years ago made me grateful to be living in this century. For example this architrave in the front vestibule to one house is of two women with their fingers to their 'shushing' lips. The banner around them says, essentially, 'keep quiet and get married, ladies'. I am still not sure how I feel about that. Either way, it was a learning experience. As were my conversations with Jeff. It is always fun to see your city through the eyes of another. Especially someone who knows about all the things you don't. . . like cars and business negotiations (the African street vendors from whom I had always shied were an interaction in which he thrived). I remembered my days of haggling prices in the markets in South America and it appeared that this guy had made a professional study of this as a science. Crazy stuff.
We ate at all varieties of restaurants and discussed how Soda tastes different abroad. I was able to use Jeff as a sort of apology to my 6th grade class. They had all been extremely dissappointed in me, as an American, for knowing next to nothing about New York. Jeff came in on Wednesday and fielded questions ranging from sports, to geography, to the Jewish influence on the city. Yeah, these 6th graders went there. Everyone enjoyed it. Jeff spent the rest of the day feeding into another, entirely foreign to me, interest, golf. I, meanwhile, inhaled the murder mystery book he had brought for the plane. My reading material here is a disjointed, bare-knuckles collection of Dostoevsky, Douglas Adams, and Isabel Allende. However, I am very excited because in one of the museums I picked up a copy of "A Winter in Mallorca" by George Sand. In fact, I am going to tuck into my reading chair and have at it.

So, anyway, that is my argument that anything can happen.

Peace and chicken grease.