Xarxa

—Conto cabaliños de mar porque xa rematei coas ovellas. 

—Os cabaliños de mar son como talismáns e escasean moito. Collen todos na cunca dunha man e aínda che queda a outra para apañares buguinas. Conta buguinas... 

—Buguinas non, avoa. Nas buguinas resoa o mar e moitas buguinas son moitos mares e moitos mares son moitas mortes. 

—E moitas mortes son moitas vidas... Conta vidas. Conta vidas como ovellas, como cabaliños de mar, como buguinas, como mares, como mulleres despenteadas, como mazás reinetas que xa non están pero deixan o recendo...

~ Marica Campo, “A contadora de contos.” 

“I’m counting seahorses because I finished all the sheep.”

“Seahorses are like amulets and they’re becoming scarce. They all fit in one hand and you still have the other to collect sea shells. Count sea shells…”

“Sea shells, no, grandmother. The sea echoes in the shells and many shells are many seas and many seas mean many deaths.”

“And many deaths are many lives… Count lives. Count lives as if they were sheep, or seahorses, like sea shells, like seas, like women with uncombed hair, like reinette apples that no longer exist but have left their scent…”

‘The Teller of Tales” by Galician writer Marica Campos is a brief exchange between grandmother and granddaughter. The older woman advises the child on how to go to sleep, how to dream. She uses the verb contar, which means both to count and to tell, as in to tell tales. 

There are many things that can be counted and many ways to tell the stories of things and the people to whom they belong. Perhaps the most important thing is to never stop telling the stories, because without the words, the memories cannot be shared. The process is necessarily never-ending.

Xarxa may or may not have read Campos’ story, but if she has, she surely understands the significance of its two short pages. She knows she has to keep talking, telling what she knows because it is what others know - others who mattered once, and matter still. She may not be the only contadora de contos, but she is one of an important group of storytellers. We must surely be wondering about who or what she really is.

Let’s start with her name. Xarxa - the x is pronounced like sh - means ‘sage’, as in the herb. An article about Croatia says that in ancient times sage was utilized to cure virtually every disease; in addition, it was associated with fertility, health, and a long life. A saying attributed to the area of Salerno even suggests growing the herb in one’s garden would ensure immortality.

English herbalists believed that the plant would flourish or wither according to the fortunes of the owner. Sage was salvus, saver of lives, or salveo, ‘I am well’. It was also believed that the plant thrived in gardens where the wife was the stronger voice in a home.

Sage also refers to wise, which may be related to its association with memory and knowledge, at least for speakers of certain languages, ones with a Latin origin. There is very little negative associated with the plant and a great deal that is good. It is not at all difficult to see how Xarxa, who bears the name of the herb in the language of her people, is perhaps the most important being of their culture.

However, Xarxa only wields her power as long as she is speaking. More precisely, as long as she is telling the stories of Galicia. If she stops, there will be nothing but silence and if there is nothing but silence, there is no language. The people will cease to exist, the land - so green all year round - will dry up and become just another Iberian steppe. There will be little to distinguish the residents of the northwest from all the rest. 

How did this creature named Xarxa acquire such an all-powerful status? What does she look like? Does she have a place to live? How old is she? You must be wondering. Most importantly, though, what will happen if she ceases to tell her tales? What keeps her going year after year?

Xarxa may have inherited the responsibility of continuous talking from her mother and from other mothers far back in time. It’s not something we’re prepared to discuss right now because the important thing is the sustainability of her flow of words. She must not, cannot, stop. She has reached this apex because she made a conscious choice to be a teller of tales, passing along to all who listen everything that has happened in her part of the world from time immemorial.

She conjures up vowels, consonants, syllables, conjugations - all the many parts of language - and places them in her river. She flows outward and downward, but can also drift upward. Her net is larger than a city or a province, stronger than wolfram mines and the Roman bridge in Ourense where gold was once mined.

What sort of appearance does she have? We have just now noted she is not a static entity and she may not quite be human. She catches the seasons and every last detail in her teeth and what she does with them might be uncanny yet simultaneously might put listeners at ease. She moves close to us and retreats, whispering, humming, her sounds on the tips of human tongues and on the snouts of heroic pigs, which is a good thing. She tastes everything with the utmost care and herself tastes like oregano, wild anise, hummingbirds, water in the basins of holy water by church columns.

Xarxa is not a monster, however, and it’s hard to say if she is or once was a woman. She is a she, though. Analysts and scholars may wish to make something of this, but Xarxa’s gender is hardly the main point here. If sage ‘quickens the senses’, it does not do so because of her gender. In fact, we may find out she is a sexshifter, a creater who can move from female to male and back again. That is part of her charm, according to some.

We may with to address the question of where Xarxa can be found. Some say she inhabits old stones like mámoas and antas, but that could lead to a confusion with the mouras who are often associated with gold and seduction. 

Xarxa’s power comes from her mouth but in a different way. It comes from her eyes, which see anything she chooses to see and are blind to what is wrong, what is of no use to her people. She does not record those things because they have no purpose.

If it is difficult to describe the being we are discussing, it is equally difficult to locate her place(s) of residence. She has apparently been spotted near the statue of Santa Escolástica in Compostela, but that must have been an accident. She does not belong in cathedrals, not even in humble hermitages. She is drawn to open spaces, night or day, and gentle light, preferably not artificial. She could pass through some groves of chestnuts or oaks, or walk along paths lined by low drystone walls. 

It is an error to focus on Xarxa’s exact home and is far more worthwhile to listen for her tales, because as long as she is speaking she is everywhere. She should be everywhere, putting sounds, flavors, colors, scents, and surfaces into listeners, who can then pass everything on. 

Sometimes Xarxa is very tall and diaphanous, but she can coil up on herself and select a matte finish in almost any shade. Whether as tall as a birch tree or as small and round as a sowbug, she puts all her efforts into maintaining her words. She is intelligent and fully aware of the valiant labors of Scheherezade, who saved so many by entertaining her master nightly with her narratives. 

She knows how vital it is to reach the Galicians and she knows that it’s important to be useful, valuable, to everyone. That includes rural workers, artisans and artists, to political and philosophical debates, to children with or without shoes. Xarxa simply cannot allow the luminescence of the terms for the growth stages of grelos leaves to fade. She cannot permit the words for potatoes to be tossed to the livestock. She balks at sentencing the terms for the parts of the chestnut tree to death.

If these all go, her people will follow. Nobody will survive. The easiest comparison would be the world of the Walking Dead. People devouring the flesh around them yet unable to satisfy appetites. A world destroyed because nothing can grow in a space devoid of the hundreds of plants mentioned in its literature. A space parched for lack of beverages, from auga and augardente to licor café and leite. A starving space, with all its food imported from the steppe of Madrid.

This is only an introduction to Xarxa. We have allowed a more detailed description to slip through our fingers and we haven’t really shown her at work using more specific examples. There are a lot of these, though, and we will get to them eventually. For now, the main issue to keep in mind is the need for this creature - despite her sometimes scary nature - to keep telling her stories. She must never cease to be a contadora de contos. 

In order to achieve this goal of allowing Xarxa to convey her stories to us without reaching a state of exhaustion and silence - which would be certain demise for Galicians - we can learn to listen better and also to use what she gives us. We can do this, must do this. Is that expecting too much?

Epilogue

Xarxa has not yet stopped telling her stories, but we can do better. Some of us may have some good strategies for helping her, better ways to understand her iridescent words, her stony nails, her mossy eyes, her brilliance like the sunset seen from Obradoiro Square.

We will be calling a series of local and global meetings to deal with the issue and sincerely hope you will be able to attend, whether virtually or in person. Please bring suggestions for the preservation of our national treasure.