Archive for the 'Miscellany' Category

I Can Ride My Bike with No Handlebars

It’s funny how some things in life come to some people, but never come to oth­ers, or come when it is least expec­ted. I never was able to ride a bicycle without handle­bars, nor had I ever really set myself upon achiev­ing that fant­astic skill. Yet, some­wise, after I had lived on this Earth more than quarter of a cen­tury, on my way from prac­tice today I abso­lutely auto­mat­ic­ally did none other, but start rid­ing my bike with no handle­bars. And did with such an ease as if I was doing it for ages.

La sangre no llega al río

Today, after some­what tense match, colleague-referee, Basque by nation­al­ity, sum­mar­ized: “As they say in Spain, blood did not reach the river.” (la san­gre no llega al río). That is, there was a fight (and blood was spilled), but, by and large, ser­i­ous destruc­tion was avoided (its streams didn’t imbrue river’s waters with crim­son). Very such image-bearing, fine expression.

Pro­verb, as it turned out, is rather com­monly used, but of lit­er­ary ori­gin. I bur­rowed in the Net and have found that this phrase most likely belongs to the pen of Fed­erico Gar­cía Lorca. How­ever, I couldn’t find dir­ect ref­er­ence to the source, so, if sud­denly the expert on Spanish-language lit­er­at­ure should hap­pen to crawl by, it would be inter­est­ing to learn whence feet grow.