Suddenly the nothing disappeared

The book he was reading had a great question as its common thread: ’why is there something instead of nothing?’ (1) One really deep question! He didn't know that all the philosophy could be analyzed through that question. As a result of that reflection, some thoughts came to his mind. Life can be understood as an escape from anguishing nothingness, according to some thinkers, including Sartre and Heidegger. The action can be seen as that kind of escape. 

But without going to that totality, going down to everyday life, some anecdotes that occurred in Mondragon came to his mind, where that 'something', contrary to nothing, became present. 'The youthful habit of going to bars had to serve you something, it's not all due to maturity, man.'-he said to himself. Since they were events of a different type, a kind of classification could be made. 

To begin with, the appearance of others was enough for that 'something' to become present. Even if that 'something' was the cause of the desire to escape from it.

He was in front of a palace that had a coat of arms that read like this: ‘Pro nostri generis libertate combusta’ (burned for the freedom of our lineage). Echoes of the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance. In order not to be a servant of the Count of Oñate, the Artazubiaga burned their house in Bedoña and built another in the town of Mondragon to be free. 

That palace had a tree-lined space on one side. In the 20th century, a bar counter was installed in that shady space and a bar was opened, which for lack of a name was known as ‘la Terraza’ (the Terrace). A large family ran that bar at that time.

One weekend at noon the first twenty customers gathered before the bar counter. The youngest son came out to serve them. There the customers began to order: 'a vermouth, a Rioja, a claret, a chacoli'. At first, he looked at the customers like cows look at the train, but then he began to get nervous at the diversity of the requests. And suddenly his face lit up showing his determination. 

He took about thirty glasses and a bottle of white wine. He placed them on the bar counter and filled the glasses halfway. And he said: 'that's it, white wine for everyone'. All the customers reluctantly drank the wine and grudgingly paid and left. Something painful turned the innkeeper into something easy, although without paying the slightest attention to the customers' requests.

The owner of that tavern had a parrot: Luixito. Someone one day left the cage door open and the parrot escaped. There the innkeeper and one of his sons followed the parrot, street after street. He was last seen on the electric cables that crossed the ‘Ferial’ (Fair Grounds). The parrot took one last look at them and, ignoring the cries of 'luixito, luixito' and the whistles, flew away. Perhaps he would say to himself: 'better a hundred birds flying than one in the hands of another'.

In the following case the mention of a distant geographical name underlined that ‘something’. Normally used to praise that ‘something’.

We were on the aforementioned 'Terraza'. There was a group eating ‘pinchos’. Among them, one was very happy and comfortable tasting the food. He was a PSOE councilor for the Mondragon Town Hall. Suddenly, full of happiness, he said: 'You wouldn't eat something like that, not even, not even …- to finish his sentence, showing which one was his favorite city -in London’. 

He was not wrong in the election. Despite the bad reputation of English cuisine, chefs from around the world have more than filled that void in London. 

He was on a sunny summer day in the Udala quarter. On the slopes of Mount Udalaitz a group of people were eating next to a public stone laundry. In that downhill meadow the gentle wind was felt. It was a great help to quell the heat. Among that group, two women stood out.  They were sunbathing and eating in swimsuits. 

As a gust of fresh air rose, one said happily to the other: ‘where could we be better than here?’ And after a brief period of time to think, she added: ‘not even in Buenos Aires’. If that woman had known that her foundation Buenos Aires was called 'Our Lady of the Fair Winds’!

Thirdly, it was possible to set another type. The force of gravity and the impossibility of two bodies occupying the same space at the same time showed us that ‘something’.

A nocturnal colleague who had studied with the friars of Aranzazu told him an anecdote that happened to him. It was lunch time and he had been assigned to carry the glasses to the tables. There he went very attentive with a row of ten glasses. He had his left hand holding onto the third glass from the top and his right hand on the glass below. He heard the noise in the dining room and didn't have all his attention on the glasses.  In an instant, the two glasses above began to move, with a loud 'click, click'. 

With a reflex movement our friend grabbed the top glass with his right hand, quickly, without a second thought. It's over! The other seven glasses broke on the floor with a terrible crack. Everyone in the dining room stared at him and our friend mentally looked for a place to hide.  Even if that refuge had been the nothing, he would have gladly accepted it! 

One of Arechavaleta told him the following another night. After a large round of bars drinking wine, he returned home. It was difficult for him to keep the straight line, but, even so, he was very happy. What would his father and mother say when they saw him in that state? It was around nine and he wasn't hungry at all. 

As he climbed the stairs, he had a brilliant idea. He would enter the house, open the kitchen door, say goodnight to his parents and go straight(?) to his room. At least he could open the entrance door. It wouldn't happen to him like others he knew, who, faced with the impossibility of opening the door with the key because of their drunkenness, knelt before the door, earnestly begging it to open itself. He opened the entrance door. Perfect! 

But then when he opened the kitchen door, he lost his balance, and staggering after a great swing, he fell flat in the middle of the kitchen floor. His mother and father looked at him terrified.  To the hell with the excuse! That ‘something’, the kitchen floor, stopped him. If not…

Another tavern narration is the following. There was a person trying to park. There someone from Aramayona appeared to help him. He began to tell the driver: 'Move it, don't be afraid, move it'. The driver moved the steering wheel to move the car backwards. The man from Aramayona, while moving his right arm, kept saying: 'Move it'. 

The driver was not very sure since he saw the car behind him very close, but he decided to follow the assistant's instructions. The assistant remained firm, moving his arm and saying: 'move it, move it'...Then a click was heard when he collided with the car behind him.  And the one from Aramayona concluded with a firm tone: 'you've already moved the other car'. And as if what happened was something logical and natural, the assistant left calmly.

In the fourth type, a painful accident exposed that ‘something’.

In the town there was a figure who was a member of a family known by the nickname 'Katanga'.  That nickname came from the bar they ran with that very name.  He was a relative of the person who writes this, since the father of the figure in question was the brother of his grandfather. He was very special, next to the Unión Cerrajera company he had a shelter. There he had a couple of dogs, an old bicycle and an old car with a wooden chassis. 

That bicycle had no brakes, and apparently it braked with the tip of its foot, touching the rear wheel with it.  One day our friend Elías was cycling down the steep slope that entered Mondragon from Kanpanzar. In that descent he reached dizzying speed. Suddenly Elías said: 'next time I will brake using the “Katanga brakes”'. He began to descend the steep slope full of pebbles at full speed. When he was halfway there, he directed his right leg backwards and touched the rear wheel. As a result, the entire bicycle was lifted into the air. During that terrible flight, Elías found himself between the road surface and the bicycle.  

Then he hit the pavement with both arms and the bicycle fell on him. He got up shouting: 'I'm dying, I'm dying' and headed towards his house. The next day he appeared with both arms in casts. It was really a hard 'something', the road surface!

The next one was very simple and would not deserve to be told if he had not witnessed it directly. A friend with the nickname 'Roka' told him one day: 'I have never broken a bone'. The next day he came with a sad smile, hiding his left hand behind him. With a slow movement he showed his casted left hand. 

You should think something like this when you saw him: “never say 'something hasn't happened to me' if you don't want that this kind of 'something' happens to you”.

Finally, our own mechanical inventions mercilessly showed us that 'something'.

A close friend was returning home, around 8 in the morning, after spending the entire night drinking in the taverns. He was in a hurry, because he didn't want to cross paths with his grandmother who used to go to eight o'clock mass. She usually came back earlier, but the night was short that time. To his misadventure, he met another whose motto was: 'how to return now if it is still night, how to return now if it is still day'. If he had lived in London it would have been enough for him to tell them 'I got together with Oliver Reed' and if he had lived in Dublin 'I got together with Brendan Behan', but he was in Mondragon. 

He was going in a hurry when he saw the so-called 'Little Houses' on the right hand side and he quickened his pace. Opened the door as quietly as he could.  At the entrance he fixed his gaze on the accusatory pendulum clock. It seemed to tell him: 'it's about time, man'. It was very close to eight o'clock. He had an idea. If I advanced the clock a little, the eight chimes would not strike and no one would know what time he had arrived home. So that telltale clock wouldn't proclaim your arrival time home. 

He opened the clock door and moved the long hand. He advanced the clock a little, and set the clock at eight and a few seconds. ‘Well, fixed!’- he thought. But when he opened the door to his room, the damn clock started striking: ‘Bong, bong…’ At the house of the former footballer and former deputy mayor of Mondragon that day, at eight in the morning the pendulum clock rang sixteen times. ’Rotten idea!’-said the close friend when he went to bed- Bloody watch! If that thing hadn't been at home...!'

Once he remembered those ten events, he felt something bitter inside him. He wasn't clear about the reason for that feeling. ‘Since we are at the beginning of Artificial Intelligence, it would be necessary to highlight the real events. In these events there is flesh and bone, while in the realm of fantasy there is only a lies compound.’--he said to himself.

Grumbling, he went on to say: 'Reality is the impossible-to-remove pebble that gets into the shoe of fantasy, which reminds us of who we are and where we are.'

In conclusion he asked himself: 'How does reality prevail over a lie repeated over and over?' That is the crucial question!'

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