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Sunday, April 24, 2011

Road Trip



Good Friday

It’s Easter, 2011, and we are doing something I thought we would never do. We have set out on a road trip to visit a friend who has moved from Spain to France, and the only time we can find to make a visit is during the Easter school break. Normally, when all the world, and his brothers and sisters take to the road I stay at home. That is because over holiday times like these there is usually a spike in deaths on the road. As a compromise we gave them all a head start and we waited until Good Friday to set out. Good move, as the roads were practically empty.

We left Valencia on the way to Zaragoza as a first stage, with a stop in Teruel for coffee and to stretch our legs. We arrived at noonday when the drums broke their Good Friday silence in a roar. The tradition is for drummers to commemorate the Crucifixion and burial of Christ starting at noon. It also made for a very nice welcome to us. In all, there were about 50 drummers, and that for us was quite impressive. Little did we know!

We carried on our travels arriving in Zaragoza about 3pm, and we found our hotel easily because it was situated on the Plaza Pilar, one of the main centres with a massive open space, fronted on one side by the great Basilica and church, and on the other by hotels and restaurants. At the moment that we arrived there was one of the Brotherhoods on parade with drums and wearing the pointy-headed costumes that is normal for Semana Santa festivities.

After a nice lunch we wondered around for a little while, and very rapidly it was time for the great processions commemorating the burial of Christ. This is done by parading Christ in various stages of the taking down from the cross, to the final depiction being Mary, the Mother of Christ being portrayed in all her pain and sorrow.

We had read somewhere that this would involve a total of about 10,000 drummers, but we assumed that to be a typo. There were many Brotherhoods participating, each one from a different church, and consisting of about 200 drummers in each group, some of them were very little children whose drums were bigger than they were. The processions went on for about three hours and were very colourful, so I suppose that in the end there were about 10,000 drummers, or so it seemed. The noise was deafening and was not to be ignored.

I’m not a very religious person, but I did have empathy with the believers on that day. One point of interest was that we had asked a policeman about the route of the parade beforehand, and whether the procession would pass our hotel. He said that they never passed that way, however; the parade has finished about an hour ago and we are now back at our hotel. Probably most of the groups are not yet prepared to call it a day, so they are parading around and around the plaza in front of our hotel.

That’s all well and good, but when are these people going to go home?

Copyright © 2011 Eugene Carmichael

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Strange Dreams


Wille and the Monster Hand


Everyone and his brother and sister has at one time or another done what I did last night. I had a very strange dream, in colour, complete with smells. It was something right out of Stephen King, and the thing that is most peculiar of all is that I cannot find any hint of what might have brought this type of dream on, in such exquisite detail.

The Setting:

My dream involved a cast of characters of a single parent, poor black family living on the Louisiana Bayou. There was a mother, two boys and a girl. They lived in a wooden rundown shack with a porch, and they were surrounded by water with alligators. The principal character was the youngest boy, about 10 years old. His name was Willie who had several problems that made him a little strange. He was constantly picked on by his mother and by both his siblings, so Willie became a loner He had a mutt for a friend and he wandered around poking into this and that. In my dream I could hear the dialogue and the bullying of this little boy. The one thing that hurt him the most was his mother saying, “Willie, you’re just like your daddy, good for nothing!”


In my dream I was seeing this story unfold as part of a movie audience. We, the audience were certain that Willie would be taken by an alligator, and several times he had very narrow escapes that gave us a real shock. One day while Willie was playing in the water, something, that we never got to see, bit him on his right hand. His hand instantly became swollen and took the shape of a giant lobster claw. The claw had a mouth and a stomach, and it could talk. The claw became Willie’s best friend and his secret.


Whenever there were other people about the claw disappeared. The claw had an obsession with cats. Whenever a cat came into view the claw would drag Willie after it at incredible speed, and it would eat the cat. Other than that the claw was harmless. However, it was aware of the bad treatment that Willie was suffering from his family. On one such example of abuse from his brother the hand/claw struck his brother really hard, against Willie’s will. But the blow so stunned the brother that he backed off.

One day Willie was in his room talking to his claw when his mother heard something and went into the room surprising Willie. He immediately hid his hand/claw behind his back, but his mother insisted that he show her what he was hiding. Of course, Willie said he didn’t have anything, but his mother became violent with him. Let me see what you have behind you, Willie! We could see that the claw was making angry gestures, so we thought that the worst would happen. Willie! Show me what you have, Now!

And I woke up. The only thing that I had seen during the day was an advertisement for “Saw III, 3D” Of course, this is a terror film but I haven’t seen any of the Saw series, so that may have triggered the thought in my mind to create a horror story, but I can’t think of anything that would have directed my thoughts that way. Dreams are wonderful ways to escape, and they can be so vivid and detailed. I know there are people who try to make some sort of science about interpreting dreams, but frankly, I think dreams are usually just the entertainment during the sleep trip. They provide a means to fantasize and even to get the girl that is otherwise unattainable. That’s all, and nothing more.

The thing that is unusual about this dream is that I remembered it long enough to write it down.


Copyright © 2011 Eugene Carmichael

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Strange Dreams


Wille and the Monster Hand


Everyone and his brother and sister has at one time or another done what I did last night. I had a very strange dream, in colour, complete with smells. It was something right out of Stephen King, and the thing that is most peculiar of all is that I cannot find any hint of what might have brought this type of dream on, in such exquisite detail.


The Setting: My dream involved a cast of characters of a single parent, poor black family living on the Louisiana Bayou. There was a mother, two boys and a girl. They lived in a wooden rundown shack with a porch, and they were surrounded by water with alligators. The principal character was the youngest boy, about 10 years old. His name was Willie who had several problems that made him a little strange. He was constantly picked on by his mother and by both his siblings, so Willie became a loner He had a mutt for a friend and he wandered around poking into this and that. In my dream I could hear the dialogue and the bullying of this little boy. The one thing that hurt him the most was his mother saying, “Willie, you’re just like your daddy, good for nothing!”

In my dream I was seeing this story unfold as part of a movie audience. We, the audience were certain that Willie would be taken by an alligator, and several times he had very narrow escapes that gave us a real shock. One day while Willie was playing in the water, something, that we never got to see, bit him on his right hand. His hand instantly became swollen and took the shape of a giant lobster claw. The claw had a mouth and a stomach, and it could talk. The claw became Willie’s best friend and his secret. Whenever there were other people about the claw disappeared. The claw had an obsession with cats. Whenever a cat came into view the claw would drag Willie after it at incredible speed, and it would eat the cat. Other than that the claw was harmless. However, it was aware of the bad treatment that Willie was suffering from his family. On one such example of abuse from his brother the hand/claw struck his brother really hard, against Willie’s will. But the blow so stunned the brother that he backed off. One day Willie was in his room talking to his claw when his mother heard something and went into the room surprising Willie. He immediately hid his hand/claw behind his back, but his mother insisted that he show her what he was hiding. Of course, Willie said he didn’t have anything, but his mother became violent with him. Let me see what you have behind you, Willie! We could see that the claw was making angry gestures, so we thought that the worst would happen. Willie! Show me what you have, Now! And I woke up.

The only thing that I had seen during the day was an advertisement for “Saw III, 3D” Of course, this is a terror film but I haven’t seen any of the Saw series, so that may have triggered the thought in my mind to create a horror story, but I can’t think of anything that would have directed my thoughts that way. Dreams are wonderful ways to escape, and they can be so vivid and detailed. I know there are people who try to make some sort of science about interpreting dreams, but frankly, I think dreams are usually just the entertainment during the sleep trip. They provide a means to fantasize and even get the girl that is otherwise unattainable. That’s all, and nothing more. The thing that is unusual about this dream is that I remembered it long enough to write it down.


Copyright © 2011 Eugene Carmichael