Unai Elorriaga: Plants Don't Drink Coffee

I make a big effort to be intelligent, but some things are very difficult for me. Very very difficult. The most difficult thing in the world for me is licorice. I don’t understand licorice. Sometimes I stare and stare at licorice and there are two things I don’t understand. The first thing is: What goes in the mix that makes licorice? And the second thing is: Who invented licorice? I ask Uncle Simon things like that. When I remember. And yesterday I asked him about licorice. He told me he doesn’t know what goes in the mix that makes licorice, but he knows who invented it. He told me: One of our uncles invented licorice. And I didn’t believe him at first, but afterwards I did. Because Uncle Simon used to live in another town before; he didn’t live here, he lived somewhere else. And they make lots of things in that town. They make bicycles and typewriters. And sewing machines. That’s why I believe him. They probably make licorice there too.

There is a big bicycle factory in Uncle Simon’s town. I went to the factory once, with Uncle Simon. There were one hundred bicycles hanging on a wall, all of them red. Without wheels. I went there with Uncle Simon once. Or maybe I didn’t go, maybe I haven’t been there, but Uncle Simon has told me about it many times. One hundred bicycles hanging on a wall.

Uncle Simon brings licorice home every day. To Aunt Martina’s house. He says his mouth has fun with licorice. That’s what he says. But most of all Uncle Simon has fun with rugby. On TV especially. And this makes him sad. He says that yes, there is rugby on TV, but not outside. He says that no one has explained rugby properly here, as God ordains. He says rugby is very complicated and needs to be explained properly. And it needs to be understood properly. Because it’s very important to understand rugby well. When rugby is understood properly people realize very quickly what an intelligent game it is. More intelligent than soccer, and more intelligent than tennis. And more intelligent than volleyball. Sometimes Uncle Simon speaks about rugby on the phone.

It is summer now, and in summer we go out at nighttime too. We go out for a walk come nighttime. With Iñes. That’s the good thing about summer. At home we never go out at nighttime, not even in summer, but at Aunt Martina’s we do. And we go for a walk all the way to the school or the soccer fields, and all the streetlights are lit and there’s no one around, and it smells like grass in some places, and in others it smells like soup.

But there is one important thing in the world now. For Iñes and for me. Now the most important thing in the world is to catch the dragonfly. I mean the blue dragonfly. I mean Orthetrum coerulescens . This is the most important thing in the world.

Iñes explained it to me very well. And very slowly. She explained how a dragonfly can go a hundred meters in seven seconds. Flying, of course. And that’s like flying quicker than a magic carpet. And going quicker than Mateo’s bicycle. Mateo has a professional bike, a racing bike like the ones they use in the Tour de France, and it almost goes faster than any truck. But a dragonfly, Iñes told me, can go even faster, and flies like a crazy thing. It can go a hundred meters in seven seconds.

That’s why I haven’t caught it. I’ve seen it, though; I’ve seen the blue dragonfly, but I haven’t caught it. Iñes hasn’t even seen it. At least I’ve seen it, or I think I have, though I’m not so sure I have now. I’m not sure if it was blue or green; or maybe it was a blue butterfly, or a green one, or maybe a grasshopper. Sometimes grasshoppers are very green. And I started running, following the dragonfly, and it escaped more quickly than a flying carpet. It flew like a crazy thing to escape from me. And I didn’t see its color so well, but I saw its fear.

Aunt ROSA in the sewing room

I have another aunt: Aunt Rosa. Aunt Martina is my aunt and Aunt Rosa is my other aunt. I have other aunts as well, but above all I have Aunt Rosa and Aunt Martina. There’s one aunt who is my aunt but is also my godmother. She’s two things. Normally people are one thing, but there are some people who are two things.

Aunt Rosa and Aunt Martina make wedding dresses for people, and normal clothes as well. Most of all they make normal clothes but sometimes they make a very very long dress, a very white dress. And that’s a wedding dress. And that dress is always very big, it’s more like a blanket for a big bed than like a dress. Then a small woman comes to Aunt Rosa’s, to try the dress on. And I don’t know why a woman so small needs a dress so big.

And when they hang the dress by the window it hurts my eyes. But that’s the sun’s fault, not the dress’. I don’t look at wedding dresses when they are hanging by the window. Almost never.

But most of all Aunt Rosa and Aunt Martina make normal clothes. At Aunt Rosa’s house. In a room. It’s called the sewing room. And that room is always full of clothes. And full of textiles and full of needles. Some clothes are pieces of textile before they become clothes. Very very long pieces of textile. And very little sunshine comes into the sewing room, and there must be more than a million needles in there.

Sometimes I go to Aunt Rosa’s with Aunt Martina. Other times with Mom. And we spend the whole evening in the sewing room. But Aunt Rosa gives me an important job to do and I spend the whole time doing that job, in the sewing room. And the job is to pick up all the needles that have fallen on the floor. But I don’t pick up the needles with my hands. Picking up the needles with my hands would be a normal job, not an important job. But my job is important because Aunt Rosa gives me a lodestone, a big one, and I pick the needles on the floor with that, and that’s why the job I do is important, because of the lodestone.

A lodestone is a special thing, like gold, or like platinum, or like diamonds. Or like bronze. But I prefer a lodestone to gold, because the lodestone can do things, mysterious things, and gold can’t. For example, one of the things a lodestone can do is attract metal. Put it next to a piece of metal and the lodestone will attract it. And to watch how it attracts it is a bit special and a bit mysterious, because no one can understand why the lodestone attracts metal.

And needles are made of metal, and that’s why I pick them up with the lodestone and not my hands, because some needles can’t be picked up by hand. Some needles can’t be picked up by hand because they fall into the crevices in the floorboards. Because there are cracks in the floorboards in the sewing room. Crevices. That’s what Aunt Martina calls them, crevices. That’s why Aunt Rosa has a huge lodestone and that’s why the job I do is important. Because otherwise some needles would be lost down the crevices in the floorboards, for ever and ever, and that would be the saddest thing in the world for the needles. And for me, too.

Sometimes I take veteran needles out from the crevices in the floorboards. Veteran needles are the ones that have been in a crevice for many years. Aunt Martina says that, the thing about the veteran needles. And it’s easy to know which ones are the veteran needles, because often they are a bit rusty. Some are a bit rusty and others are very rusty. And others are almost entirely covered in rust. And Aunt Rosa says that those needles have to be thrown out, because they are no use anymore and they ruin dresses and leave orange marks on them, because rust is orange, or brown, or red, and it leaves orange marks on dresses. Especially on wedding dresses.

And when Aunt Rosa says that a needle has to be thrown out, it’s the worst tragedy for me. Because maybe that needle has been there in the sewing room for a hundred years. And it has been under Aunt Rosa and Aunt Martina’s feet for a hundred years maybe. And I think it’s a great shame to throw those needles out with the garbage, out into the street where the truck collects it, and then out into the sea, and then into the Atlantic. I think a veteran needle is much better off in a crevice in the sewing room than in the Atlantic. That’s why I save some needles. When I see that a needle is rusty I push it back into the crevice again. And I don’t tell Aunt Rosa, and she doesn’t realize. And the needle is quite comfortable there, it’s clearly much happier there and doesn’t want to go into the Atlantic with all the other rubbish.