unalloyed love

"what two words come to your mind when you think of this cave?" asked mario when he came by to visit a few weeks before they pulled it down.  "pure love" i said without even thinking.   i suppose "love" would have done; "pure" only served as an intensifier due to the two word stipulation. now that they have pulled it down i reflect that it is wonderful to have loved a place to such a degree for so long at all, even if 'our cave' as such is no more.  as to the question of ownership of or entitlement to the cave, Jenny often reminded any disputer that it was Papa Teide who created the cave, and his creation it would for ever remain.  (El Teide is the volcanic vent which flung all of Tenerife above the sea in the first place.)  

how naïve of us to have imagined that our cave would probably be considered exceptional and exempted from the general cleansing.  "of course they want to remove the messy constructions put up all along the coast" we thought, "but anyone can see how much love and care we have put into this place." the particular beauty of this place is undeniable and overwhelming . . . or so we thought.  others concurred, and commented that this concave fold in the rock deserved be conserved - not inhabited by any one person, but kept open, empty and natural - as a place for contemplation.  we had left behind a fetching image of Jesus, pointing at his sacred heart, wearing a calm inscrutable mona lisa gaze, and with long flowing blonde hair, looking just like a mild-mannered jimmy page.  along with a statuette of the madonna with child, we thought that these icons might emanate peace and awaken an attitude of compassion among the catholic police force.  indeed i found that they had been respectfully removed from the cave and reverently placed under a cactus up the hill, whereas the door and window of the cave - which Jenny had once salvaged from a shipwreck - had been ripped out.  The morning they came to knock the walls down I was hiding out in Pepe's old cave by the sea, feeling like a fugitive because of the security men who came down with bright torches the night before.  I had wanted to spend one last night in the cave.  There was still a group of policemen standing by the scattered stones as I appeared the next morning and attempted to casually walk by.  I saw from their tense faces that they were here on a serious mission: to erase all illegal dwellings along the coast, and that they would brook no dissent. This time they had been much more professional and efficient. Nothing had been burned like in the last wave of evictions but long lines of workers had worked hard to carry everything out.  They barked at me to put a mask on, and to show them my documents, and said that no-one was allowed here while they were clearing up, so I'd better clear off.  I told them untruthfully that I had not lived here; had only spent time here occasionally.  Something in the way I eyed the cave painting - exposed to full daylight for the first time - made them ask me if I had painted this.  I assented and they asked aggressively, "what if we were to come to your country and paint the rocks there?"  I imagined for a moment the Salisbury Crags covered with colours and thought that it might not be that bad, but yes, objections could be raised, and hmmm, yes, in retrospect it would have been better to have left the rocks unpainted.  The irony is that the greatest part of the south coast of Tenerife has been disfigured by indiscriminate hotel building, holiday apartments, golf courses, commercial centres, etc, and elsewhere covered by blanket banana plantations, leaving very little room for any natural environment, compounded by the discarded detritus from construction projects lying all around, and other accumulations of all types of rubbish from careless, throw-away society.  I can appreciate the official stance that, amid such run-away construction, it is worth putting aside one area to be preserved as unbuiltupon land, but why not treat all land as having its own intrinsic worth, to care where possible for its elements of natural beauty, instead of saying:  here we can defile.  here and here and here is all okay to defile, but not over there.   Later I found the window and the door, still intact, on a skip at the top of the hill, and came back to salvage them.  I took them to a strip of land which Jenny had bought above a little village called Tierra del Trigo in the north of the island.  A lot of the plants which I had tended over the years had been squashed by the rubble; I dug them up and took them to the land too.  Mostly the agaves, which can endure much hardship, and a few choice cacti.  I had found one broken off cactus limb lying by a layby, who suddenly blossomed not long ago after I planted him outside the cave, encouraging him with sparing little drinks of water.  I think he was a queen of the night, because of the brevity of his bloom.  I came down to the cave one night and was gradually overcome by the most enchanting perfume filling the air.  It took me a while to realise where it was coming from; in no time this once discarded limb had rooted and drank and had now pushed out the most beautiful scented single white flower, making me feel touched and thanked. At first light next day I took some photos, and the next day the flower had already begun withering.  I found him buried and bruised under the rubble, and have carried him now to the land, where I am sure he will get on fine.  All the aloes I left at the cave; they didn't seem to need much water to grow healthy and strong.

Back in March - just before lockdown - we were delighted to be able to celebrate Gabriela's first birthday at the cave.  Gabriela was radiant and relaxed.  We had invited a discreet group of friends, and had a barbeque and some beers.  

Everyone in la Caleta said that it was the best lockdown they had ever had, which I found a funny thing to say, given that there hadn't been any precedents.  It is true that the caleteros lived it up largely, with no tourists or excursionists to intrude on their idyllic stretch of sun-drenched coast, gathering and playing music on the beach at night, with very little regard for maintaining social distancing, I imagine.  One young German went out fishing with his mate on a canoe and proudly posted a video of it online.  This could have contributed to the triggering of the ruthlessly efficient clearing out that summer, when lockdown had loosened.  Apart from the question of keeping the natural environment untouched, there was a social aspect to it, where local residents resented that their coastline had been usurped by largely socially misfitted foreigners.  Already viewed with suspicion due to their unconventional ways, publicly flaunting lockdown restrictions when all other citizens were kept imprisoned in their homes was taking just too many liberties.  After the evictions the beach in the summer swarmed with canarian families, visibly very happy to have their beach back.  Looking back now, what is surprising is not that they eventually kicked us thoroughly out, but that such free living was tolerated there at all and for so long.  "one of the truest anarchist communities I have came across," Dante said to me recently.  this had its undoubted perks, but its drawbacks too.  Dante wanted to be able to play guitar and sing from full lungs at 4 in the morning, so having no rules was just right for him.  Once Jenny and Gaby were trying to sleep while they were blasting out music from huge loudspeakers powered by a generator above the beach - about half a mile away, but big bass booming right into the cave.  2 or 3 in the morning. I ran round and said to a few people: hey, the baby is trying to sleep, do you mind turning the volume down a bit?  all they did was grin with their party grins and say: "tell them to come and dance with us"  to be fair a fairly well functioning communal space was created above the beach: seating area, shade from sun, fire pit, clay oven, pizza nights, meals made, wood collected, water collected, refuse disposed of.  there were always those who wanted a little more organisation, more participation, not always the same people doing the same tasks.  there was a great range of experiences and stories and motives behind the people who spent time in la caleta.  it can't be denied that the place exerted a powerful influence on certain people; it was a deeply appealing place to be.  many people would initially be passing through, and would end up lingering until in the end they somehow could not leave.  quite a few people went crazy.  jenny used to talk about decorating little bottles and labelling them as the lost souls of hippies, and selling them to the tourists.  it is possible to smirk at jenny's macabre sense of humour here, but thinking about it now, i feel aghast at the mere phenomenon of a lost soul.