El Carnicero

Big black hungry Spanish flies buzzed and fought around fresh red meat dripping warm blood into dust dancing along the devil’s whiplash.

A mangy cur dog rolled over in shade, ribs scraping grounded dust, begging for water.

A drop in the ocean, where it’s all H2O no matter how deep you dive. Waves washed shores singing stones.

Sausages retained a sharpness inextricably swaying like dancers in choreography. Tired, frayed strings bent under dead meat weight mass, substance, context.

Remembering the Spanish Civil War, Manuel the butcher stared through a jagged broken glass window. His facemask spoke a weary solemn stillness quiet lying fury.

His silent words were exaltations, evaluations, a surcharge, a value added tax in an empty stomach for services rendered by reinforcements riding hard through Basque valleys listening for waves of German bombers over Guernica 1936.

Beleaguered men inside stone shepherd huts trapped in desolate Pyrenees mountains stood spinning, surrounded by empty canteens, bread crusts, discarded family heirlooms, spent shell casings, and decomposing bodies relishing solitude.

He’s required to remember old Fascist propaganda spreading information.

He is El Carnicero, one who slaughters.

In order to put food on the table and provide for his family after peace was declared with celebrations of music, church services, baptisms, wine, street dancing and tear streaked burials, economics forced him to slaughter his remaining beast of burden.

His bull was his calling card, vision, hope, dream and village identity. Dictators, thieves and Fascists had stolen everything else. Dignity, integrity and self-respect survived.

Destiny arrived minus sympathy, sentiment or condolences. Shaded from a brutal sun he sharpened his axe, honing steel across a grindstone. New edges were sharpened with passionate ambivalence.

Laughter’s axe was ready.

He walked into a red clay ring surrounded by a white clapboard fence. The bull stood in the far corner.

He held out his hands lined with pulse-rivers. The bull emerged from shade. Manuel collected reins. In the animal’s eyes he saw memory reflected in his soul. Sighing, he clapped his hands twice, bowing to the bull as a Shinto priest pays his respects to Bishamonten, the Kami god of benevolent authority.

He asked for forgiveness, this act of fate, raised his laughing axe and brought it down hard and fast on the bull’s neck. The bull froze, slumping, straining to escape steel carving tough weathered skin, muscles, tendons, sinew, arteries, veins, snapping final bones.

Front legs folded, rear legs buckled. The carcass shuddered. A final breath exploded red dust.

He clapped his hands, severed the head and dragged everything through dust to his shop. He hung the severed head in his broken window.

“For Sale.”

His wife served portions to family and neighbors. They consumed his life’s work, toasting his wise sacrifice for the greater good. Sharing is caring.

I am an accomplice to death. I could have stopped it. No. This is a lie. Truth lies. Truth hides in the mystery of interpretation. I couldn’t prevent death. I tried to speak and save the bull. Words. I was afraid. Language strangled me. My voice was dust. I was five.

He was my father.

Which is greater, real pain or pain’s premonition I wondered as Manuel’s silver blade melted reflections into diamonds of glittering light. The quick and dead burned. Manual and death danced inside my childhood, inside time’s compressed memory where rivers of stained glass mosaic memory melted. I took ownership of laughter’s axe.

Mirror reflections retained red river blood and sweat dancing on Manuel’s temple. Blood and sweat congealed in red dust creating tributaries and oceans in Spanish heat one swift irrevocable summer.

The world is a strong sense of Guerencia, a Spanish term for homeland, “a place, like a bull facing death in the ring, where you feel comfortable dying.”

Surviving along the Mediterranean meant controlling trade routes in slaves, salt, textiles, gold, silver, copper, limestone, turquoise, red granite, alabaster, bananas, sugar cane, cotton, sorghum, ivory, timber and purple dye.

Land and sea trade routes flowed with cuneiform, hieroglyphics, Phoenician alphabets, Mandarin, Meso-American, Runic and Indus script, coins, wooden tally sticks recording the number of animals killed, religions, amber, animals, royal purple clothing, grains, horses, incense, olive oil, silk, spices, tin, wine, tortoise shells and slaves.

Commodities.

Witnessing everything from a small Spanish village at the edge of the sea I seized cold-blooded mercenary opportunities. I evolved through determination, persistence and perseverance. Trial and error danced with cause and effect hearing The Art Of The Fugue by Bach.

Thin calm detached hungry dancing spirit fingers hummed down a necklace of threaded skeleton bone beads of catastrophic karmic actions near contemplative Gomchen mystic Tantric hermits north of Sera monastery in Tibet. Monks sat chanting and praying in sight of Chomolungma, the Mother Goddess.

Butchers, the untouchables, flayed corpses before smashing bones for vultures to reincarnate a spirit in a sky burial.

Frozen earth informed archeologists there would be no work here with their soft brushes.

I absorbed Tibetan dialects by swallowing bone dust. Transmissions of spirit energies, renewal and transformation evolved with joy, beauty and gratitude.

I sat meditating, breathing, digging, absorbing creation stories, illusions between what was and what is.

Realizing amazing journeys I discovered childlike laughter, curiosity and joy.

You are either innocent or mad.

Flip a coin. Magic nature opened my third eye to see what will be. Mirrors are free of dust and illusions. I dissolved.

The day after tomorrow belongs to me.

The Gomchen taught me how to meditate on the process of death. It centers a person fast. First thing in the morning, shapes my motivation with clarity.

“What is the motivation behind my desire to acquire _______ and the things that come with it?”

Motivation and its effects were determined by reading The Roots of Wisdom by Ming.

Mountains and rivers and earth are already nothing but dust.

Man, of course, is but dust within dust.

Bodies made of blood and muscle will surely return to bubble and shadows.

If the highest wisdom is not obtained, there will be no heart of understanding.

All is vanity.

One ought to live a life of peace and quietude.

What’s the point of unrelenting pursuit of external things?

El Carnicero, archeologists and I cherish our illuminated rolling stoned spirit energies.

Our choice is simple.

Sit or move. 

Weaving A Life (V1)

Cadiz, Spain

“Once upon a time,” said Nino one bright future day as the tribe rolled along, “and such a strange time it was, the gravity of thinking played music in a new century. There was a Spanish man with a hammer. At 9 a.m. on an overcast Cadiz morning he began chipping away at unexplored caverns. The Alio modo Fugue a 2 Clavier by Bach drifted in the background.

“He was building an extension on a roof where housing was scarce and straight up. The only split-level ranch duplexes with multiple garages in sight were American reruns on old battered televisions. He hammered stone below The Sheltering Sky.

"It was over 100 degrees. His hands bled. Blood seeped through an old Moorish roof splattering into a room where a writer lived in exile with a blind prophet. Hemoglobin landed on a keyboard. On the B. He let it dry. He treasured sudden rare immediate insights. Drops fell and congealed.”

“Fascinating,” said Omar turning a page. “And then?”

“Down below in deep morning shadows Rosario swept her front stoop on Benito Perez Galdos. Her white apron was clean and starched. She swept away yesterday’s accumulated debris and the mist of pedestrians coming and going. Old shit, dog urine and dust received her mop’s holy water. Their accumulated real and imaginary sins littered Galdos, heading for the gutter.”

“Let me guess,” said Omar picking up the thread, “church bells pealed eternal melancholy songs of hope and redemption across from the Castelilo de Santa Catalina, the main citadel of Cadiz built in 1598.”

“Exactly,” Nino said. “Inside tight white oval corridors, an exhibition of black and white photographs depicted Nicaraguan people fishing, polling canoes through jungles, chopping down forests, sitting for the camera, living and laughing.

"One room held beautiful black handmade fans in tribute to Federico Garcia Lorca. Considered the greatest poet and playwright of 20th century Spain, he was assassinated by members of the Escuadra Negra (Black Squadron) a Franco death squad in August 1936 for his left-wing sympathies and homosexuality. He belonged to the Generation of 1927 with Dali and Bunuel identifying with the marginalized Gitanos and woman chained to conventional social expectations in Andalucía.

"He wrote about entrapment, liberation, passion and repression. A long red scarf lay draped over a single rattan chair. Invisible wires held black fans decorated with peacock feathers and rainbow colors suspended in silence. Outside a dark window Atlantic waves smashed ramparts.”

Nino inhaled. Omar sacrificed an orange skin to enjoy the fruit.

Weaving A Life, Volume 1

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."

"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 Earth.

"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