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the archive(s):
issue no. 3:
How can I give myself a name? / Daniel Spitzberg
Frederico Fuego was a name that best fitted the idea of traveling far and wide (as he decided when he adopted it for himself at the age of four (when his imagination was at its best)). He figured it meant go, not once, but twice - what could be better. Later, he learned what it really meant. But it still meant that without much thought and less planning, he would cut his unfulfilling time in New Jersey even shorter. To clarify, the best thing to do in Jersey is to leave.
He spoke Spanish like a Spaniard. With a tongue that still held a hint of accent from Córdoba, the word for "fourteen" sounded like ca-TOR-thei. It was as if the end had been singed by hot Spanish love.
It was May 5th when he arrived in Boulder, the stepping stone on his way to Aspen. He sought to find pre-dawn employment on a farm, something he envisioned would transform him into a tamed model of pride with stout shoulders. The American farm is on its way out, he knew this. It's been a long goodbye.
Part of the plan consisted of packing a straw cowboy hat, a flimsy affair with sharp angels. But it kept the sun off, that is, when it made its way up into the sky. Week in and week out, countless hundreds of pounds of hay and crops were moved about the farm. Wielding a pitchfork alongside two other farm hands, he couldn't help but marvel at it - he had moved a bit less than a third of it himself.
Though it was never fully clear to Frederico, or Freddy-o, as they nicknamed him, why Geoff kept three horses, he never asked. Nobody owned them, but Geoff cared for them, an unbelievably laborious commitment. So strong was his attachment to these beasts that he was sullen or ecstatic with their every whim. With their massive eyes, practically the size of plums, they spoke.
It put Frederico a bit off, feeling so detached from a man-animal bond. At six o'clock one evening, while the farm quieted and the bugs buzzed around in still, hot air, he went over to listen the one-tonne horse chew. He had to crane his neck around the stable wall to get a picture with the mountains, miles off behind the fields, in the background. The horse raised its neck and head so quickly that the camera lens grazed the hairs on its nose, and Frederico fell back a step, startled. From then on, he would find time when his body was too exhausted to do anything but move his eyeballs over the lines of a book, and invariably doze off, face plastered to the pages.
He thought he would continue on to Aspen. Twenty-two days of hard work later, it was still May. But this sort of life was not far enough, yet, to whatever it was his path was headed for. The Farmer's daughter, more often in overalls than the summer dresses Francisco preferred for the reminder of España, often listened to his ramblings. They would stand on the porch together, and she would take to leaning against one of the roof supports, and her gaze over the fields left him looking at her.
The night sky was so clear he kept reaching his fingertips towards it while laying on the flat expanse of land. A silky, studded bell-jar curved outwards from directly above in untraceable ripples. For reasons that were obvious but nevertheless frustrating, he could not relate this complex astronomy to anyone in this idyllic place, just like when the daughter nodded as Frederico went on about being a bike courier in the city, or what traffic means.
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