Borders

This post would not be complete if I didn´t say something about my new life long love, so I´ll start with her. She´s got curves, and she´s beautiful. I ride her nearly daily, sometimes nightly, and always ever so rightly. (She´s usually on bottom). She likes to go fast, which is good, because I do too.
I bought her second-hand at Dak-Tak, perhaps the only skateboard shop in Madrid. The best €70 I ever spent - riding that board through the streets of Madrid fulfills fantasies.

Britney, a good friend here, left for Canada. It was a sad night, though we made it a good one (we being Britney, her Swedish friend named Daniel, and me). We went to my favorite bar, a cidrería called "El Tigre" in Chueca, the gay neighborhood, where giant tapas (free food that comes when you buy drinks) nicely set off good cider and dead moose on the walls. From there, we went to another gay bar, and after that a jamming jazz club.

The fun night was interrupted by a reality check. While in the second bar of the night, I decided to get a breath of fresh air outside. On the plaza, shady-looking group asked me if I had a light. I didn´t, but they started chatting with me. I take any chance I can to talk in Spanish, so I chatted back. One guy asked me where I was from.
"California," I said.
"¡California!" he said. "¡Fútbol, sí!"
"That doesn´t really make sense," I remember thinking. "Sí," I said, non-commital.
He started demonstrating a football tackle on me. "I guess he meant American football," I thought, but still, I was a little weirded out. Plus, his friends were muttering, "No, Pedro, no hagas..."
Then he reached into my back pocket. Thankfully, my valuables were in my front pockets, and all I had in my back pocket was a "Calvin and Hobbes" cutout from a newspaper I´d been reading (actually, pretty valuable).
"¿Que haces, cabrón?" I yelled. (What are you doing, motherfucker?). I tore the newspaper from his hands.
"Broma, broma, broma," they said. (Jokes.)
I looked at them. Bewilderment mixed with growing anger as I realized what had happened. I went back into the bar, and we split. I was still fuming until we got to the jazz club.
At the metro, Britney and I parted ways. It was really a sad moment. She was the first good friend in Spain to leave.

Members of the Basque separatist terrorist group ETA shot down two Civil Guards members. One died immediately, and the severely wounded one died days later never having left his coma.
The two major parties united to demonstrate against terrorism, although the public split into pro-Zapatero and anti-Zapatero divisiveness (Zapatero is Spain´s President). There were smaller daily reminders, too; I was on the subway when it stopped for five minutes to honor the men killed.
Watching the TV reports the next day, my host dad Alberto saw Ibarretxe, the President of el País Vasco (the Basque Country), at the demonstration honoring the policeman who died.
"That´s good of him," he said in Spanish.
"Because even if he is a Basque nationalist, he still is against terrorism?" I asked.
"Yes," Alberto said.
Ibarretxe is trying to hold an independence referendum in 2008. Alberto and I began talking about the referendum.
"It would be unfair to have an election now, when ETA makes it dangerous to campaign against independence, but if there were no violence, wouldn´t it be better to hold the referendum?" I asked. "In Canada, Quebec holds referendums on independence, and I think there´s a lot less strife partly because Quebec´s citizens have the power to choose their autonomy."
Firstly, he answered, the referendum would probably fail right now, but Basque students read history books with blatant separatist bias, so sooner or later a majority in the Basque country will want to separate. The area has been part of Spain for centuries, and before Ferdinand the Catholic married Isabella of Castile, it was part of Aragon, but the textbooks stress the separate race and language. So eventually, a referendum would be more than an exercise of the power to choose -- it would make separation a reality.
"Okay," he continued in Spanish. "Besides the fact that it´s unconstitutional, that it´s illegal -- so, above the law, in high moral thinking -- is the referendum a good idea? Well, where does the Basque Country start and end? There are three parts -- Gipuzkoa, Bizkaia and Araba. And one is more Basque than others. And who should vote? How about the people who have fled because of ETA? Should they be left out?"
In talking about nationalism, I hadn´t really considered how important that point was. Borders are arbitrary, and that means self-determination is messy. Borders rarely capture the whole situation.

I wrote about my pride for the US in the last blog post, but there´s some contradiction feeling pride for a country that only has to do with me by chance -- born by chance within arbitrary borders.
Really, my pride for America is irrational, an emotional pull from wherever I come from. It´s similar to my love for California, for Los Angeles, for Santa Monica, even for Harvard-Westlake, recognizing its many flaws. And I think that irrational love is good, a force that gives cultures power to stick around, stay signifcant, and keep their variety.
It´s good only to a point, though. Eventually, love for the place you come from can separate you from where you didn´t, and at that point it´s good to remember that where you come from is a made up name with made up borders. Until then, it´s good to celebrate.