March March

Yes, today begins the month that kills the old woman at the edge of the fire and the young woman if she can… It is the saying that everyone knows or perhaps knew. Because now everything is different. Words and sayings are lost as so many other things are lost. What is not lost is the merriment and, therefore, the Carnival is still very much alive. People dress up as what they are not or what they would like to be. Streets and floats are made in the image and likeness of other places and other countries. Above all, the Carnival of Rio de Janeiro is imitated and its translations are nostrades, Sitges, Vilanova… Now my town, Sant Feliu de Guíxols, is boiling with emotion and nerves. Since Christmas people have been rehearsing choreographies and the last kicks have been given to the costumes. And who says kicks, says brushstrokes of glue, because, who is there still sewing? The Carnival groups are almost ready. There are those who take a holiday because they have to drive a float, there are those who take it because they have to play music in their gang… The merrymaking, the drinking, the debauchery begins. It should not last long, because next Wednesday begins Holy Lent. It is Ash Wednesday and Christians will go to the parish to have the imprint of ashes made on their foreheads (pulvis eris et in pulverem reversed, you are dust and dust you will return to) and the forty days of penitence will begin that will last until Easter. The Thursday before this Ash Wednesday is or was Fat Thursday. One had to take advantage of the fact that one could still eat pork, and on the table appeared the sausage omelettes, the egg sausage and the fat cakes. Now who celebrates it? And if someone does, it is a mere residual celebration, cultural, traditional, let's say what we want, but without any sense. Because all year round we eat whatever we want! Be it Thursday or Friday.

The revelry will be impressive. The streets will go from one town to another, from Sant Feliu to Platja d'Aro, from Santa Cristina to Calonge... Music (so to speak) and a clumsy swaying of the hips. Foreign rhythms, salsa, samba, who knows what. But March, March, will be in charge of spreading rain and wind, cold and despair. They will be crazy days. People will have a good time or they will pretend to, because it is obligatory to have a good time. Now is the time of hedonism, and pleasure is the ultimate reason for everything. But one day the Carnival ends. Well, now the Carnival never ends, it lasts all year. Because when this Carnival of partying in the streets, of unbearable noise, of extravagant costumes and excessive alcohol ends, the summer carnival will begin, the careless parade of oily bodies and major parties, with even more noise. The crowds of pale people when they arrive, leave scorched. They will fill the beaches to unthinkable extremes, so much so that soon we will have to make an appointment to go swimming. This summer carnival, which most coastal towns live off, will last as long as the heat and the sun allow it.

Josep Carner wrote, and I quote from memory, that the breath of March fills our hearts with doubts and chimeras. We all live, whether it is March or not, among doubts and chimeras and we look for ways to live with them. Days, months, years go by, and we grow old. And the world never stops shaking us with its surprises. Storms or wars, climate or political changes. This is another street. Disguised as death, and with the roar of bombs.

Doubts and chimeras, said Carner. It is our present. We doubt everything, we do not know what will happen, how the world will change. We, the majority of people, live full of doubts. But what about chimeras? Chimeras belong to those who command, especially those who can decide wars and even climate changes. Now they are called Trump and Putin, with their collaborators, like Elon Musk and all the Russian oligarchs. We all know it and we can do nothing.

I like the month of March, I confess. Because it is unpredictable, because it is windy. Because it can be cold. But above all because it holds the hidden promise of good weather, of spring. And since I have spoken of Carner, he also saw in March the signs of good weather. I think of that little poem that bears the title precisely: Clues: "The sun warms a little / he who was a weak heat. // A volva is ecstatic, / the first living firefly. // Yesterday's frost gives / to the lump that was captive. // And in the tree without any leaf, / all rejection and scar, // stripes and knots beat strongly."

The faith of the tree in summer is important. Without faith, we are dead souls.