cuatro sevillanas de baile

When I was a little girl, back home in Los Angeles, I used to dance with red castanets in a little flamenco dress made for a 4-year-old girl. I would stomp and lip-sync to Marisol and Lola Flores all day long, particularly her Cuatro Sevillanas de Baile. I would sing along about the snoring husband, the boyfriend who has a girlfriend prettier than me, the lover who I killed with nine puñaladas to the throat, and the midget husband who couldn't climb onto the bed to be with his wife. I doubt my mother really bothered with supervising the content of the lyrics. This was, of course, after my mother took me to Spain, to gypsy country, where we spent too many nights in flamenco venues, drinking sangria (me water or soda), and eating those olives out of the little white ceramic dishes, where the occasional dancer would smile because there was a (gasp!) kindergartner in a flamenco bar. It was also then that I put a gypsy curse on my poor grandmother: "May the blacks of your eyes never see again!" My grandmother, however, was much immune to the curse of a four-year-old obstinate child. Today she is very much alive and can see very well, thank you, and my mother blames that episode on the fact that we were in Andalucia, land of the gypsies and of all things mysterious.

Anyway, I thought the Cuatro Sevillanas today would be appropriate to: turn down a lunch appointment with one of the most prominent artists in New York due to the inclimate weather, bid on a pair of shoes that I cannot afford on eBay, accept the sofa that Flymeth Kautrau sat on (among other such celebrity butts, and yes, I have been offered a butt list) in a barter exchange with my client instead of pay, and to push my son out the door to try out for the rowing team (me waiving a fist and saying "Represent Denmark!" "Represent Cuba!" and other such nonsense).

Flamenco songs are about life. The ridiculousness of it, and the beauty of it. May everyone have a flamenco song appropriate for her own situation.

******
for Melissa: if you like, I can drop you off some queso de Oaxaca.