Disturbing

AOG, Madrid

Tonight I left home and headed to my usual coffee place: Diurno. It has been raining all day and Madrid felt cool, wet. 

On the way over, I saw a mattress. On the street. With a stain. Propped against the trash containers.

It caught my eye immediately. 

A mattress outside its natural habitat is a visual abomination. It challenges your sensibilities. Why is it there? Well, that question is not really as important as: What is it doing there?

We seek an answer to a strange question because of the horror that an abandoned mattress causes us.

Perhaps it was not abandoned. Perhaps it was discarded. And we can't help but wonder about the cause.

The owner moved home. Or, worse, died. 

That red stain near the edge, resembling a wound to the shoulder; or the heart.

Perhaps the owner bought a new one. No, that can't be right. Because when they deliver the new one they take the old one with them. But not this time. This mattress is there because it is no longer needed.

But it isn't something you can give away. Who'd want an old stained mattress? And yet, surely someone, somewhere, would like it. Would take it and use it.

I remember reading long ago that in the past, when someone died, their mattress, or their whole bed, would be thrown out. In most cases, burnt. Thrown into the fire.  

Perhaps not those of the poor, only the beds of those with money, and mattresses, to burn.

A sort of cleansing perhaps?

So, to see such a personal item just thrown out is, was, disturbing.

2010 recap

AOG, London

The year 2010 is over. What a year it has been. I think the older I get the easier it is to take the good with the bad. Perhaps because one eventually realizes that there is just nothing else to do! 

Maybe this is wisdom of some kind.

Although only 365 years long, I have to say that, for the most part, I can't really remember a lot of what went on this year. Perhaps I can think of the grand themes of the year.

It started in a very humanitarian way with a natural disaster in Haiti early on. Moving on to a historical (but only for the British and no one else) general election in the UK which gave the country its first coalition-Government since the 1940s and the Winter Olympics in Vancouver which completely passed me by.

Later, I can recall the up-and-coming post UK election quagmire regarding the state of British finance; rioting students in London, and....well....little else in that country.

As for the rest of the planet, there was the Chilean miners story, the (pretend) Coup in Ecuador, Cuba's ever growing spiral into the abyss whilst pretending that all is well closely resembles the same idea, although with a local flavor, in Venezuela.

North Korea attacking South Korea, the US shunning the EU a few times, the Spanish economy heading for disaster,  the odd political corruption scandal in Spain, the Nobel peace prize winner (from China) and the Nobel prize for Literature (from Peru, though the Spanish press treat Vargas Llosa as though he were domestic), turmoil in Africa and, again, in the Middle East (by this I mean that there is no progress in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict).

On a personal note, this year was eventful in many ways, and subdued in others. 

Job went well, colleagues at work were all nice, made some friends, discovered one enemy (odd, right?), tried to find a new career path but was derailed early on and until further notice, and went to Turkey.

A new baby came into my partner's family, and thus, somehow, into mine. I had a good year for my photographs though not so good for my short-story writing. 

Health wise, well, I could be better. I've read some good books, and some good short stories. I've become (finally) a fan of Gaga, even though her concert in Madrid left me a bit lukewarm. I'm just not her little monster. Nor her little freak.

And, finally, I got to visit the place where I was born and to where I'd never returned since, not even once. And it was an odd experience.

I end the year realizing that, perhaps, I am a little ahead that from where I was this time 2009. 

I think that, all in all, this is a good thing.