Full Moon

Grazalema.

I was blessed to see many full winter Sierra moons. A bone white marble rode clouds. Undulating valleys dreamed of planting and harvest. Mad as hell caged hunting dogs howled high anxiety below western mountains.  

Grazalema men in sturdy boots carried lifetime labor tools through fields. After dusk when Luna was full they didn’t visit fields, river, forests or mountains. They lived the day. Spirits lived the night. They respected magic and ghosts.

Dogs bayed sunset to dusk. Rising orange clouds danced with a yellow moon. Men passed the cemetario toward harvest.

A heavy open thick bolted brown wooden church door led to the vestibule of an old Republican resistance memory.

A Virgin Mary crying blood decorated the altar. A woman in black performing her daily life penance through action and devotion changed the white lace cloth. She soaked blood out at Roman public baths below the village where water flowed from stoned carved angelic mouths.

A forcestero with a camera obscura passed her. She recognized his ghost. Yes, that’s all it was, a spirit visiting friends.

She blessed herself twice with bird wing fingers at the end of a warm winter day. Sun went home. Egyptian vultures danced in blue. She locked the black gate leading to the crypt. She remembered the forcestero doing his reconnaissance after yesterday’s funeral.

Today he worked in the crypt zone. Four walls held departed. Engraved stones with names, dates, in memoranda of children and adults to 1896. He made images below smoky green eyes of a wild Siamese cat on a red tiled roof.

Crypt construction tools, bricks, cleaning solution, trowels, broken black buckets, and rags dressed empty crevices. Rectangles waited for ornate boxes from a casket factory miles and lives away.

Caskets with simple bronze handles for six pairs of weathered hands. Brown and black religiously lined caskets and satin pillows. Pillows softer than language mumbling living tears. Hearts beat long personal and collective drum solos.

Every heartbeat contains a universe of possibilities.

Caskets in black cars with wreaths of infinite floral scents reached the black gate where they were hoisted on strong shoulders, carried past a palm tree, past a small church, another black gate on rusty hinges and slid into empty domain names. Cold gray cement cavities wore red brick ceilings.

I studied a desolate crypt space. It was long. It was empty. It was cold. It was a permanent change of address marked Eternity.

Leaving death’s shadow I heard men’s tools dig hard winter ground. They were above ground.

Black was the night and cold was the ground.

“Any day above ground is a good day,” whispered a gravedigger.

“I’d rather be a tiger for one day than a sheep for 1,000 years,” chanted a Tibetan monk at Sera Monastery outside Lhasa. He sat on a raised platform swathed in burgundy robes holding the Vajra diamond thunderbolt and bell in his left hand.

Ringing muted tones he chanted sutras. Chanting voices, drums, incense, and bells. After spinning copper prayer wheels pilgrims climbed narrow slick stone temple steps entering through a worn door hanging. Three ornate, copper-plated Buddhas faced them.

Past, Present and Future Buddhas contemplated rows of flickering butter lamps, fruit offerings, khata scarves, paper money and coins. Two wooden benches sat against a wall. On the floor was a pan of round clay balls. Devotees took one, rubbed paste on faces and hands, dropping it into a used pan.

They joined people waiting to be blessed. Gathered with bowed heads at the chanting monk’s feet were impatient, playful, devout jostling pilgrims. He cycled through sutras, chanting, touching people on heads with the thunderbolt before pouring holy water on their heads. Long life!

They eased away, others moved forward. He was in a trance state of awareness. Beyond wild.

An old woman in a heavy sheepskin chuba sat down next to a foreigner. Sharing a smile she mumbled kind pure words.

“Namaste. Blessings to you.”

Babbling tongues sang. The bell rang.

After this visualization I returned to Spanish crypts. Humming Estimated Prophet by The Grateful Dead, I manipulated a visual tool recording interments with names, flowers and passages of memory in love, loss, and chiseled historical pueblo connection. I imaged cavity shells of rectangular vacant passages where invisible stories dreamed. They illuminated desire, conflict, ambiguities, metaphors, and silence.

They waited for air to carry them to the listening faithful. Silent stories, silent night of the pious, silent in collective breathing with stories inside stories.

“The rest is silence,” said Shakespeare.

The church woman turned away from shadows crouched over rocky fields, shifting stones, fence plans and pruning dead growth from olive trees along the Rio. She saw her pueblo. Romans cleared fertile land now blanketed with yellow and purple wild flowers. They built stone homes and village roads.

They named it Lacilbula. They designed baths below mountains. Their road wound below towering cliffs. Ten-foot wide dolomite gray scraped stone roads twisted from the pueblo down to the valley. They built towers and walled fortifications with defensive mountains behind them for future legions expanding their empire. Soldiers treading west branched north to Seville or south to Cadiz.

Grazalema men loaded cork on tired tractors. Using bedsprings for gates they built pens for sheep, chickens, dogs, goats, and children. Twisted rusting bed coils lay scattered. Survivors used everything trying to tame poor rocky land. Men assembled fences using blackberry brambles with sharp thorns.

They decorated fences with stones and sticks, recycled old tires, tin cans, metal struts, old cars, discarded cooking stoves and bathtubs. Chipped tubs became watering troughs for livestock. Small stone dams diverted Rio streams to small fields.  Everything was done by hand. Labor worked dawn to dusk, day in day out. Labor cleared erosion’s debris marking land with tools and footprints.

Her husband slept in the Catholic crypt. Dusty light danced through palm leaves. She remembered his final whisper swallowing diamond ice. “I almost wish it were true.”

She was a full silent moon above his bone white memory. Her spirit guide served spirits.

A ghost worked among dead memories. Finished sacrificial rituals he flew above river stoned fields where men worked trust. His cloud vapor danced away from the cemetario.

Spirit energies manifested destiny with a full moon.

Caged mad dogs howled fear in gathering darkness.

A Century is Nothing