walking through cassanova

Jonas and I visited his hometown of Cassanova, Israel, which is built into a rocky seashore. His fathers house, crumbling unbelievably for how old it is not, is right there on the water. Our first night there was also the first storm of the season. The waves began crashing against the wall and quickly broke it down, flooding the house and causing us to evacuate to the street above. I took a few of my favorite items in a hardshell suitcase – not necessarily the most useful for a situation like this, but things that I was sure that I would need throughout my days in a place like Cassanova: a pair of silver chunky heel ankle boots, a few flowery tops, a black hoodie, and several books.
In the morning Jonas's father dispatched us to the insurance company to get some insurance for the house so that he could be compensated for the damages caused by the sea. It was still raining lightly and the house crumbled periodically, pieces fell off and floated peacefully away into the sea. Jonas's father was not concerned at all with this, in fact, Jonas informed me on our way through town to the insurance company that his father did this every year – waited until the damage of the first storm, payed for coverage for the three months up until the last storm and then cancelled the insurance until the next year. He saved money that way. That's why the house looked so strangely old for it's age – every year it was being partially destroyed by the forces of nature and rebuilt by this human's hands, which could be considered neglectful, given this seasonal process. However, in Casanova this way of dealing with things was the norm. As we came to the insurance office I saw that there were many of us, hundreds of sons and the visiting friends of sons being sent on this very same errand by fathers refusing to keep up the payment year round. We shared with the others stories of houses being ripped apart in the night, hardshell suitcases opened to display what we had considered to be our prized possessions. Many were impressed by my boots.
As I was showing my boots off I lost Jonas. I wandered around Cassanova looking for him and looking at the people. Since we had arrived at night it was the first time I had been able to explore. There really were very few roads, as instead most of the ground was covered in rubble – rocks and broken bits of cement, metal scraps, etc., which did not make for an easy stroll in the boots.
The people of Cassanova were a hairy bunch. There were many afros and long bushy beards on the men. The women were fashionable in an offbeat way and many seemed to make their own clothes. There was a commotion on one corner. I saw a girl walking who looked exactly like an acquaintance of mine named Annie. She wore long fingerless gloves stitched up the back with thick red yard, or were they a sweater-less sleeve? And then I saw two of Annie – she had doubled, replicated herself exactly right in front of me, same clothes, same hair, same person, just another! As I began to round the corner I saw that the two had turned into four and coming fully around the side of the building that four had squared, and there were sixteen Annies all arguing on the street corner, all wearing the same clothes, all exact replicas of one another, and they were arguing over which one of them was the original. I decided not to involve myself, really there was no place for me in the discussion, and anyway it seemed as though they only saw each other and were capable of only talking to each other, and only in order to have this one conversation regarding originality, over and over throughout their own forever, however long that lasted for them. So I stepped away and continued walking through Cassanova.
After a time I became tired of looking for Jonas and sat down on a pile of rubble. I was hungry. A boy came and handed me a Roma tomato. He was a teenage boy, maybe younger, and he was wearing a grey muscle tee. I thought maybe that he was Palestinian. I thanked him and looked at the tomato. It was split as if someone had thrown in against the pavement, and there was white mold growing from out of the split in the skin. I looked at the boy and he gave me a look, urging me to eat this rotten tomato, showing me the rotten tomato that he was holding and biting into, making faces like it was so delicious. I then saw that there was a gash on his upper arm, about the size of my Roma tomato, and there was white mold growing out of it. I wondered if this is where the tomatoes came from, perhaps he grew them out of his arm gash and walked around handing them to people sitting on piles of rubble looking hungry. Or maybe it was poison? I did not eat the thing, even though he continued urging me. I thought about throwing it at him to make him go away, but didn't. I was nice, and he eventually left me alone.

I decided to go back to Jonas's father's house. Maybe he had gotten the insurance and returned by now, I thought. I sat on the rocks below the house as the waves came in. the storm was over and the sea was back to its usual gentle behavior. As I got up to walk back up the hill towards the house a landslide begun. I was walking up, but getting farther from the house. Rocks were sliding down all around me, and I was sliding down with them towards the sea. It wasn't a big deal because the sea, being back to normal, wasn't exactly the scariest place to end up, it was just annoying because I wanted to get up the goddamn hill. I then realized that I could walk in a zig-zag pattern and easily traverse the rocks, as they were going straight down. I ascended the hill quickly, happy and proud to have figured out this problem of how to get oneself out of a landslide situation.
I saw my friend Jilberto, he had shaved his head completely bald. I have no idea why, or what the hell he was doing in Cassanova. He did not see me and I did not stop him. His bald head reminded me of Engadiner, and I thought of al of the things that I saw in other people that 'reminded me of Engadiner'. Because actually, the fact is not that everyone else and everything else has a little bit of Engadiner inside, it is Engadiner that possessed certain qualities that were of the world around him. Maybe he had a high concentration of very special things that I love of the world around (me) and that is what I love about him, but the point is that those things originate outside of him, and I am finding it easier to love those things outside of him, and finding also that those things have nothing to do with him, only that he has to do with them. like, for instance, once Engadiner sang to me, over the phone, for several hours, every top 40 hit of every year in the 1980's and some in the 1970's and even some before. He knew the words to all of them, even the ones I had never heard of before. But he didn't write those songs! So what if he just knows everything there is to know about everything. It is fun trying to stump Engie, even if it can't be done.