INFORMATION WITHOUT REASON

He saw an obituary of a childhood friend, Conchi, and that awakened within him memories of his childhood and some unexplained events. He walked on deep in thought.

’ For physicists, information is matter. But then, what kind of things are my childhood memories? What material will they be composed of?  Maybe of electrical impulses? But, only that one? If only neurologists knew! – he said to himself. 

'In the end, particle or wave, I am just a fool who moves through that space divided by mathematicians into three spatial coordinates and one temporal coordinate, nothing else more' -- he added, muttering quite angrily.

Toribio Aguirre Street took shape in his brain, as if it were an elongated hallway.  At the beginning Patxi the shoemaker, where the 'bam, bam' sound of his hammer could be heard. Then Emili's grocery store, where her husband Jose Garmendia, from Zaldibia, approached, pulling a wheelbarrow full of breads and buns that he had baked in the communal oven. 

Next, the Iskiña bar. There would be Sodupe bored during the quiet morning and full of people and overwhelmed with work in the afternoon. Then the noisy Txantxote fish market, full of shouting and jets of water. In front the shadows of Arbolapeta, a meeting place for people, without people in the morning. Then the Juldain tobacconist. There in their shop window, in addition to tobacco, were the magazines 'Vidas Ejemplares' from the Novaro publishing house, 'La Codorniz' and 'el Caso'. 

A little further on, the fruit shop of Petra 'kolunas' and the Gomix kitchen gadget store, packed with gadgets in its horseshoe-shaped space. On the right was his cousin Pedro Zubia 'Perikin's barbershop. How many sarcastic people among his clients! On the other side of the street was the 'Caserío' bar. And at the end of the street, surrounded by walls, was the Montzon house, with its pear trees loaded with fruit. 

Leaving the street was the church of San Francisco and its cloister, next to the market. That market on weekends was called ‘Berduli dancing’, and became a dancing place for young people. In that cloister the Mercedarian nuns had a nursery school. He used to go slowly, secretly hoping to find the school doors closed. Sometimes he achieved his goal. A nun was going to retire and he was chosen, in his first year of nursery school, to read her tribute speech. 

Another nun took him to a girls' classroom to rehearse the speech and give him the text of the speech ordering him: 'read it'. Then she began to tell him:’ louder'’. Somewhat bored, she grabbed him by the waist, put him on top of a school desk and told him: 'Now, in a higher voice. Keep it reading'. All the girls in the classroom, three years older than him, burst out laughing. He no longer remembered any of the words of the speech, but he did remember the shame he experienced in that rehearsal. 

Another day a nun sat next to him. He began to tell him that bad people went to hell and how bad they had it there. He spent several minutes describing that terrifying panorama and he still didn't understand what the nun's creepy explanation was about.  In the end he took from him the pencil sharpener away and left. He explained everything to her mother and in the afternoon he returned with her to the nursery school to clarify things. He had exchanged the pencil sharpener for a new paint box with another pupil. The other pupil's parents missed the pencil sharpener, but they didn't notice that he had a new paint box.  

The nun turned out to be a diligent judge sending a five-year-old boy to hell, without taking into account all the reasons. 'If there is so little justice in heaven, it is better to go to hell' – he thought to himself. But he also had beautiful memories. One day, when he got up from the table next to the exit door to go home, a nun called him to his table, while everyone else was already going home. He told him: 'If you are three friends and you have seven apples, how many do you get for each one?'. He answered: ‘two’. 'And how many do you have left?' she asked him again. ‘One’- he answered. A couple more questions of that type and at the end he said: 'Well, go home. You already know how to divide’. 

There were also advanced nuns and good people in that nursery school where they entered at a martial pace and in a row while making the gesture of singing some Francoist martial song. Outside that classroom there was a small garden where a fat pig was fattening. It had a formidable size!

Still, what he wouldn't have given to know the reason for some of the experiences he had experienced...!

For him, another corridor was the one that crossed Zarugalde Street. From home he could hear the noise of traffic. How the trucks, above all, accelerated at the beginning of the street, and as they advanced the sound faded until they passed under the arch of the street to turn right towards Kanpazar. 

At night, under the weak light on that somewhat lumpy and slightly peeling roof of the kitchen, the shapes of those trucks and the arch came to life, accompanied by other shapes, as he heard the sound of traffic on the street.  On summer nights, the noise of the cicadas stirred something inside him, as if they were saying 'come, come'. In the afternoon around six there seemed to be a change in the atmosphere with the weakening of the light. As if the speed at which we live were slowing down.  On one side, the birds chirping in search of their tree to spend the night. On the other were the cars that came from work and stopped near his house. The door opened with a 'see you tomorrow' and then closed with a 'slam'. The engine was started again.  

His third corridor was that of the mound of San Cristóbal. At twelve noon, at the time of the Angelus, the sound of the small bell of its hermitage could be heard from his house. From the top of that mound you could hear the noise of the town.  The car engines, and the horns, the screams of the people, the barking of some dogs, some whistles, the Parish bells ringing the hours, all this showed that the town was something like a living being. 

When he was inside it he didn't realize how noisy his town was, but when he moved away from it a little, it became a bustling whole. He seemed to be in front of a clumsy orchestra, where each one tuned his instrument before the concert, without paying attention to the notes played by the others. 

Still, what he wouldn't have given to know the reason for some of the experiences he had experienced...!

He was clear that the circumstances were different when he lived those experiences. There were no mobile phones. That meant that the only sources of information were a few newspapers and a few television stations. Social networks did not exist. ‘There were not many silent writers like today in many homes trying to make their opinion true. The only thing that breaks that silence is the use of capital letters. Those who are not in their right mind have no other recourse to express their shouts or orders than to use capital letters. Even for that you have to use a code!’- he said to himself rather angry. 

’During the Second World War, if there had been so many radio stations, the Americans would still be in Iceland asking for directions to Normandy. Meanwhile in France, radio stations around Normandy would be discussing what effect 'the long sobs of the autumn violins' would have on their hearts’ (1) or what instrument would be most appropriate to express autumn' -he thought with an involuntary smile.  

He knew that it wasn't a ‘déjà vu’.  These cases could be caused by an electrical impulse on a certain point in the brain. He had read that when a person receives an electrical impulse at a certain point in the left frontal lobe, everything in front of him seems funny, even if it was his own incarceration order. But no, something external was coming into play here. If it had anything to do with his life, he might come to the idea that he had read something blurry and fragmentary from the book of his future.

The first one happened while he was on vacation. That day he took the bicycle and from Beasain he went to Ataun.  Going down that narrow and curvy road he began to notice the license plates of the cars.  The first was a regular series, 1357, or something like that. In another, the first two numbers and the last two were the same, or in reverse position. 

These types of license plates began to be seen by him in greater numbers than usual. He didn't remember exactly what it was like, but this situation led him to think that something that had to do with him was happening. He had a strange thought in his head, which somehow led him to think that 'the heavens were telling him something'. It was totally irrational, but he was immersed in that state of mind. Once the vacation was over, he returned to Bilbao and there he found out that he had been promoted at work.

He remembered how the second case was, even stranger than the previous one. One morning in Beasain he was going to work. It was a cold December morning. He hadn't been in the company for long so he was in a hurry. Next to the sidewalk was a small van. 

The van had the following name written on the door in capital letters: XAKA ORDIZIA. At the same moment he saw it, a name crossed his mind: Sa Carneiro. From there, a few meters away, he entered in his working place. Later that night when he returned home he found out on television that Sa Carneiro had died in an accident the night before.

The third case was rather surprising. He was once talking to his friend Iñaki Berecibar 'Txaparro' about when to use the jota or the iota in Basque. He remembered that once he went with his father to Aramayona.  There the priest gave a sermon using a Basque language full of iotas. For him it turned out to be a different world. 

Furthermore, Mondragon's Basque was a Basque language full of jotas. 'Juau', 'jitzuau', 'jat', 'jok' and similar ones were widely used. Yes, it was a somewhat harsh pronunciation, but it was, nevertheless, of their own. That's why he couldn't understand how his friend Iñaki Berecibar told him that he had to say his name Joseba using the iota. At the end, bored with his rhetoric and his explanations, Iñaki Berecibar told him: 'well, from now on I will call you 'Josebapulos.'. 

About eleven years later he was working in Malaga. His colleague, Emilio Alba, asked him to translate some instructions of use of a Tarot that were in English into Spanish.  Since his partner, Lola, was in that world of the esoteric.  Once the translation was done Emilio took him to his house. His partner, Lola, was very thin, looking too spiritual for his taste. Lola told him that she was from Burgos and suddenly said to him: 'Josebapulos'. Despite being totally astonished, he didn't make any gesture, as if he hadn't heard. He never saw Lola again.   

The fourth he read in the press. He remembered an interview to the 'witch of Ulia' in the 'Pais Semanal'. Maritxu Erlanz, from the Roncal-Erronkari, received a visit from the journalist and the photographer. Shortly after beginning the interview he told the photographer: ‘You have a mole on your back'. And so it was, despite having his back covered, he had a mole in it.

That mental trip did not turn out to be very pleasant for him. Even so, he had a couple of questions in mind in search of answers. ‘Why have I remembered events from my nursery school?’ -he asked himself. ‘Perhaps, by taking my memories to a time before I met Conchi, I would try to erase the idea of death from my mind.’-he answered himself. 

‘Why have this kind of events come to my mind that have no rational explanation? - he murmured desperately. No simple explanation came to his mind. Who was he to say anything about the difference between totality and science? Then she remembered something she had read about human intellect: ‘which were tooled by nature for survival, not for penetrating the inner nature of the cosmos’ (2).

‘Some things can be known in unknown ways, although only a fool would think that this kind of knowledge could be organized in a way that could be used. We are faced with something fragmentary, incomplete, which, even so, we can receive through unusual means’- he finally concluded.

(1) The BBC in order to alert the resistance of the Normandy landings broadcast the following verses by Verlaine: The long sobs of autumn violins rock my heart with monotonous languor.  (Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne bercent mon cœur d'une langueur monotone)

(2) Holt, J. (2012). Why does the world exist? New York/London: Liveright Publishing Corporation