Mandarin Duck, Cadiz, Spain

Omar remembered a daughter in Cadiz. Faith worked at Mandarin Duck selling paper and writing instruments. She practiced a calm stationary way.

“May I help you,” she said one morning greeting a bearded stranger. She knew he was a forcestero. His eyes linked their loneliness minus words. She averted her eyes. He was looking for quick painless intimacy and ink.

“I’d like a refill for this,” he said, unscrewing a purple cloud-writing instrument with a white peak.

Recognizing the Swiss rollerball writing tool she opened a cabinet and removed a boxes of thin and medium cartridges.

“One or many?” she said.

“Many. I don’t want to run dry in the middle of a simple true sentence.”

“I agree. There’s nothing more challenging than running empty while taking a line for a walk.”  

“Isn’t that the truth? Why run when you can walk? Are you a writer?”

“Isn’t everyone? I love watercolors, painting, drawing, sketching moistly.”

“Moistly?”

“I wet the paper first. It saturate colors with natural vibrancy.”

“With tears of joy or tears of sadness?”

“Depends on the sensation and the intensity of my feeling. What’s the difference? Tears are tears. The heart is a lonely courageous hunter.”

He twirled a peacock feather. Remembering Omar’s Mont Blanc 149 piston fountain pen, he said, “I also need a bottle of ink.”

“What color? We have black, blue, red. British racing green just came in.”

“Racing green! Cool. Hmm, let’s try it.” Omar would be pleased with this expedient color.

He switched subjects to seduce her with his silver tongue.

“Are you free after work? Perhaps we might share a drink and tapas? Perhaps a little mango tango?”

“I have other plans. I am not sexually repressed. I am liberated. I have a blind secret lover. Here you are,” she said handing him cartridges and inkbottle with a white mountain.

He paid with a handful of tears and a rose thorn. His ink stained fingers touched thin, fine and extra fine points of light. Faith and her extramarital merchandise were thin and beautiful. She was curious.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” she said. “How old are you?”

“Older than yesterday and younger than tomorrow.”

“I see.”

“It was nice meeting you. By the way, have you seen the film, Pan’s Labyrinth, written and directed by Guillermo Del Toro?”

“No, but I’ve heard about it. Something about our Civil War in 1944, repression and a young girl’s fantasy.”

“Yes, that’s right. It’s really a beautiful film on many levels. It reminded me of Alice in Wonderland.”

“Wow,” she said, “I loved that film, especially when Alice meets the Mad Hatter. Poor rabbit, always in a hurry, looking at his watch.”

“Funny you should mention time. A watch plays a small yet significant role in the Pan film.”

“Really? How ironic. I’ll have to see it.”

“Yes, it’ll be good for your spirit.”

He pulled out a Swizz Whizz Army stainless steel, water resistant Victoriabnoxious pocket watch.

“My, look at the time! Tick-tock. Gotta walk. Thanks for the ink. Create with passion.” He disappeared.

Faith sang a lonely echo. “Thanks. Enjoy your word pearls. Safe travels.”

Under the Banyan tree he sat on a park bench in weak sun, fed cartridges into a mirror and clicked off the safety. It was a rock n’ roll manifesto with a touch of razzmatazz jazz featuring Coltrane, Miles, Monk, Mingus and Getz to the verb.

A Century is Nothing

Moon Ghosts

The Andalusia moon would be full tomorrow.

Mad as hell caged hunting dogs howled high anxiety on western Sierra mountains with an excellent view of a white bone marble spinning through sky inside clouds of pleasure and pain as rolling valleys dreamed of planting and harvest.

Spanish men in sturdy boots carried tools of time’s labor through fields below the rising moon. When full they would not go to the fields, the river, the forests or the mountains after dusk. They owned the day and spirits controlled night. They respected magic.

Dogs bayed and howled through sunset into dusk of rising orange clouds as the moon rose through the either.

The men passed the cemetario on their way to the harvest. It was quiet there. The small church door was open, it’s scared thick and heavily bolted brown wood a thick piece of old resistance. The alter decoration was a simple Virgin Mary crying blood. The altar cloth was changed daily by a woman in black doing her duty saying her life’s penance through intention and devotion.

A forcestero, a person from outside the pueblo, a stranger with a camera passed her and she thought she recognized his shadow.

”A ghost. Yes, that’s all it was, a figment of a soul visiting friends.”                                 

She blessed herself twice with bird-winged fingers watching men walk to their land. It was the end of a warm winter day and the sun had disappeared with Egyptian vultures in heaven. She locked the black gate leading to a series of crypts.

The stranger was here yesterday doing his reconnaissance. Today he worked inside the second metal gate, inside the sanctuary, inside the crypt area. Four walls held the departed. Engraved stones revealed names, dates, places, memories, children, and adults back to 1896. He made images under the green smoky eyes of a Siamese cat on a red tiled roof.

Workers had left their crypt construction bricks, cleaning solution, black buckets and rags in empty crevices. Rectangles waited for ornate boxes. Boxes made in a casket factory miles and lives away. Caskets with handles for hands. Brown and black religiously lined caskets with satin pillows. Pillows softer than language mumbled through tears of the living seeing everything before trembling eyes with hearts beating like drums.

After church services in the village of 2,300 caskets were dispatched in long black cars with wreaths of infinite sweet smelling floral varieties to the black gate and carried on shoulders of strong men past the open church door, a palm tree and through a black gate on rusty hinges and slid into an empty domain.              

The cold gray cement cavities had brick ceilings. The forcestero stared inside an empty space. It was long. It was empty and it was cold. It stretched to eternity.

He stepped out of death's shadow. He heard men in fields using their tools on hard winter ground. They were above the ground. “Any day above ground is a good day,” a ghost whispered.

He listened and went to work.

In fast fading light he imaged interments with names and flowers, passages of memory in love and sadness, chiseled history and their connection to pueblo life. He focused down cavities and shells of rectangular rows of empty passages. They were invisible stories waiting to be told. Waiting for air to carry them to listening faithful. They were silent stories, silent night of the pious silent with collective breathing. 

“The rest is silence,” said Shakespeare.

The woman turned away from men and their shadows bent over fields moving rocks toward dreams and fence plans, pruning dead growth from olive trees along a river and saw the ghost working among shadows of the dead.

Her husband was there. She held his final whisper in her silent heart. “I almost wish it were true.”

She was the silent moon above her bone white memory, a spirit guide serving spirits. She joined the moon.

When he finished his work the forcestero flew away from the cemetario, river stones and fields where men worked their trust, his vapor rising to the moon.            

Their spirit energies manifested their destiny with the moon as dogs howled below them.

 A Century is Nothing

Invent a God

Broken glittering glass edges reflecting an elegant universe magnified the tears of an Iraqi girl burying her parents in a white shroud of cloth, an old flag of final surrender.

Tree leaves blasted green to deep yellow and brown. They flew into a river. They gathered on boulders clogging the Rio Guadalete and dolomite waterfalls. One leaf did a lot of damage. The river needed cleaning.

"See," said the Grand Inquisitor ringing his broken Spanish bell, "it’s all possible. Nothing is true. Everything is permitted if there is no God."

Everything you know is a lie.

"Let’s invent a God," said a pregnant nun supporting her nose habit. "We need reason and faith to believe in a higher power."

"Reason and faith are incompatible," said a logic board filled with circular flux reactors.

"Look," said Little Nino, "I found a compass and it works. The needle is pointing to magnetic north. This may help us. I am a compass without a needle.”

Ahmed read the instructions. "Great Scott! It says one sharp line of description is better than any number of mundane observations."

"You don’t need a compass in the land of dreams," said a mother. "We need all the direction we can handle."

"Maybe one direction is enough," said a cartographer.

"If you need a helping hand," said another, "look at the end of your wrist."

"O wise one, tell us another," cried a disembodied voice.

"Ok, how about this," someone said. "Our days of instant gratification are a thing of the past."

"Looks like everything is a thing of the past," observed a child sifting dust particles at Ground Zero on 9/11.

"You’re wiser than your years."

"That’s an old saw with a rusty blade cutting through desire, anger, greed, ignorance and suffering."

"Yes," said a child, "there are two kinds of suffering."

"What are they?" asked another orphan.

"There’s suffering you run away from and suffering you face,” said a child arranging leaves on blank pages inside her black book.

A Century is Nothing

Life Essentials Post 9/11

Tribal adults and children survivors of 9/11 sifted through leftovers searching for sustainable resources. They needed essentials: food, shelter, water, air, sex and stories.

"This is the day of my dreams," said a girl with a diamond in her mind watching fireworks explode over the Willamette Valley in Eugene on the fourth of July. Her wisdom mind reflected 10,000 things.

Yangon, Burma

Omar opened his book, traced braille and read.

“The honorable monkey mind trickster wandered through her expansive museum sensing pure intention, motivation and reflections. If she is not careful and paying complete attention the monkey mind will run wild splashing green jealous slashes, red anger strokes, and blue attachment colors on her beautiful canvases. While some ignored it at their peril others respected monkey mind and kept an eye on it with respect and dignity.”

“It was a mindfulness,” said a woman sketching shadows.

"Now I see why Picasso painted Guernica in 1937," said a blond kid kicking stones, raising dust.

"Everything we love is going to die."

"Yes, we accept loss forever."

She cleaned her canvas with a camelhair brush while leaning against a wall of sound. The echo was deafening. Silence is the loudest noise in the world.

"Picasso was a great thief," said a museum curator. "When you see his work you see the influence of all great artists."

"The ancient texts predicted this," said Other, a seer.

He sat in a pile of splintered wood sharpening the edge of his knife on a small piece of flint taken from his old sweater pocket. Sunlight glistened off his finely honed Spanish blade as he worked it under the skin of a pear. 

"They talked about choices and unintended consequences," said a woman digging for water.

"I’m thirsty," said Little Nino.

"Be patient my child."

"Yes, said Jamie. "It takes faith."

"You can’t take faith to the bank," replied a girl.

"True," said Other, "faith doesn’t know where the bank is."

"A bank is what holds the river together," said a child.

"Faith is a woman in this tribal tale."

"It will take more than Faith," someone said stumbling over piles of discarded twisted logic.

"Speaking of falling faulty twin towers, it will require firm resolve, an unyielding capacity for vengeance, retaliation, and retribution in this living memory," said Lloyd, an unemployed insurance underwear writer from classless London. His three-piece Brooks Brothers suit was in shreds.

"It’s because of the amygdala," counseled a doctor.

"What’s that?" said Little Nino.

"It’s a location of the brain where fear lives. It’s a knot of nerve cells and tissues. We think anger lives there as well but we don’t know for sure."

“Yes," said Alfredo Jari, “memory is the duration of the transformation of a succession into a reversion. In other words, any internal obstruction of the flow of the mobile molecules of the liquid, any increase in viscosity is nothing other than consciousness.”

“Can you put that in plain English?" pleaded a lit major.

“Yes I can but I won’t.”

“Their collective archetypical memory was heavier than collective unconscious and lighter than consciousness,” said an analyst named Jung.

Lighter than wind.

Fat democratic spectators cheered from sidelines. Consumers swallowed bitter tears of greed and desire.

Let’s go shopping to reduce our fear of poverty, said nations of sheep.

“The archetype can't be whole or complete if it doesn’t allow for the expression of both good and evil in the conscious or unconscious,” drooled a sedated American soldier in a VA hospital wheelchair. He needed an exit strategy.

“More drugs, nurse!” he screamed. “I coulda’ been somebody. I could'a been contender!”

All he received was his pitiful wailing voice echoing in empty chambers.

On a movie set medicated military reservist wives dressed as cheerleaders jumped up and down in wild mind agitated states of abandon. They filed for divorce after taking lovers while their husbands looked for improved body armor in oppressive Middle East desert heat.

They were the undereducated doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful.

Other visualized their death while poverty’s heirs prayed that instant replay would change reality. 

A Century is Nothing

Moon Cartoon Town

Beyond the forest on comet tails South of North Star near a state mental hospital and directly across Nugget Sound-Bite from Paradise Prison full criminals doing hard time, he passed through a small conservative town of 1,001 retired military guys and gals. Every house displayed a large American flag on its stoop.

Blowing in the wind.

He needed a haircut.

Incorporated in 1848 by religious fanatics from Siberia, Moon had a city hall, asphalt tennis court with a broken net, a restored drugstore with Native American artifacts and pharmaceutical histories, public security department and Indian tribal cultural center museum.

There was a post office, dentist, bank, small market, church, pub and deli - a converted gas station selling high octane java to drivers - well manicured lawns with roses and annuals, an upscale dining establishment and ferry service to neighboring islands.

A heavy-set blond woman, wearing wrap around sunglasses, blue jean shorts, a white t-shirt and tennis shoes hesitated at the door of a barbershop.

She was on Insane Street. A red and white striped barber pole rotated in its glass container outside the gray one room building needing a fresh coat of paint. Inside were three black leather barber chairs, two metal folding chairs and outdated Hunting & Flagellating magazines. The barber had a neatly trimmed beard. Out back a small dog kennel sat near a rusting van with a fundamentalist religious bumper sticker, "Jesus Loves U."

“Can I get a trim?” she asked.

“Sure,” said the barber.

“How long will it be?”

“About twenty minutes.”

“Do you take checks?”

“Sure.”

She went out, sat smoking in her car for a minute, got out, slammed the door, came back in and sat down. The barber was finishing a customer.

She started talking.

“I’m taking sixteen to eighteen pills a day,” she said to no one in particular. She turned toward an old man reading the obituaries in a paper-thin daily newspaper.

“I knew it would never happen with the guy at work,” she said. “He started seeing someone else on another floor of the hospital. He cheated ME. He never really opened his true heart. He put people under. He was a divorced anesthesiologist with a three-year old kid he never saw. His ex-wife was a lawyer and they made some deal, an arrangement about life without parole. He loved me. But he wasn’t in love with me. That’s the difference. Do you live here?”

He looked up. “Yes, twenty years now. I think you are a strong person.”

“Actually, I’m a wimp.”

He laughed knowing better.

“True,” she said, “I’m just average.”

The man told her things. He influenced her. They were vulnerable. Her old history of fear, anger and resentment was about trust, loss of self and manipulating men to get them involved, in bed with a warm security blanket and then out of her life.

The old man knew about martyrs and the futility of rescuing women. Being human they were both predators. He was available without making her uncomfortable no pressure no expectations.

He was willing to be vulnerable.

She asked his age.

“All I know is that I’m retired from the Army. After that I worked at the state hospital.”

“Is it true they tie them down there? I heard they kept people tied down for fifteen years.”

“No. I never saw anyone tied down unless they were married to their insanity.”

“Are you married to your insanity?” she asked him.

“My wife died two years ago. We celebrated our 50th anniversary and she died two years later.”

“Will you get married again? Insanity is a blessing.”

“No. I won’t get married again. Marriage is like a business deal with bad sex.”

She took off her glasses revealing layers of dark smudged eyeliner.

Trucks loaded with cement, paper products and garbage rumbled past the open door throwing dust into air.

“Yeah,” she said, “well, my ex-husband works at the nut house and he has trouble with them people so he’ll probably sue.”

She kept talking to no one in particular hoping someone would listen.

They talked about everything but mostly he listened to her pain. They shared emotions and feelings and she was surprised at his openness. Stories with detachment increased emotional truth and trust.

They enjoyed hours of conversations filled with laughter and insight, confronting grief and loss and discovering their authentic self. Their communication bills were staggering.

They were lost, looking, open and honest.

They talked about their dysfunctional families, the absence of love in their respective families, her gay brothers and the sexual humiliations they faced. 

“I worked in a hospital once,” she said. “I hated the stress of working in an operating room during heart surgeries, how some of the ancient surgeons were inept with their chauvinist attitudes. I felt uncomfortable working with an ex-boyfriend, so I quit. I’m not good at handling this breakup. I need to find a new job. I need to get a life.”

She started in again. She was a broken record of life’s miscarriages.

Aborted possibilities lurked inside her screaming heart.

“When I met him I was a model, size five. Look at me now. I can’t believe I’ve let myself go. I did lingerie and bathing suits. Look at me now. I’ve joined weight watchers and lost five pounds.”

“Off with her HEAD!” screamed the Queen.

No one said anything. The barber cut and dried.

She blasted hot air. “I’ve been in a couple of films, if I can’t get back in films I’m not going to do anything.”

The barber finished, shook off the plastic sheet, pushed white metal numbers on an old wooden cash register ringing up the sale. The woman stood outside the shop smoking.

“Nice haircut,” she said as he passed her.

After the barbershop conversation and discovering cosmological stamps of nebulas at a post office he entered a local day care center full of violence and neglect after seeing a child get slammed into a door by a caretaker.

He started to say, “Excuse me…it’s none of my business...” and stopped, seeing a girl dragging abused kids into the cramped office.

The exhausted receptionist said, “May I help you?”

He switched gears. “How much does it cost?” 

“$135 a week.”

“What are your hours?”

“5:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. M-F.”

Ok, he thought, the woman is going to talk to the girl about the petrified kids.

The halls reminded him of a nursing home. He wondered if parents working in some office had any idea what went on in these places. What really happened to their kids during the day?

Temporary jobs for undereducated, unskilled and poorly trained child care providers. Looks good on the outside, all the advertising, bright yellow buses and plastic gym toys in the yard.

One wonders how the effect of early childhood mauling inflicted hard fast lessons of FEAR for future child development construction projects.

We go to these places when young. We go when old, paying people to take care of us. In between the beginning and end of life adults dropped us off, picked us up or left us alone to figure it out. The only difference was years and quality health care. Dynamics.

Random acts of kindness inside wire fences and behind metal doors needed a way out of a labyrinth without a center.

A Century is Nothing