It is a Monday at 6:45.
They call it Stormy Monday...and Tuesday is just as bad...
Someone wearing a shirt made from papyrus stands in front of an open rusty green iron gate to welcome green students.
Martial Catholic music blares from tinny loudspeakers. The church is under permanent construction. It is filled with towering grey artificial plastic golden arches made of compressed dust. Air conditioning ducts lie scattered in the vestibule, purple garments hanging by a broken thread in a chastity of lotus blossoms. A sharp shaft of blessed light from heaven plays along a contorted floor wearing cracked bells tolling at a nearby school. The church has gone underground in deep dark shadows filled with sin, jealousy, regret, sloth, lies, and enough parking spaces for a choir of angelic forms in the rising middle class.
Miles of cars and black tinted SUVs pull up at the entrance. Sleepy-eyed kids extricate themselves from interior dull air conditioned nightmares. A green whistle blower directs traffic.
Blue clad office boys unload suitcases filled with text books, water bottles, lunch baskets, severed cultural connections and maps of the universe. Tired, sleep deprived children stand passive, waiting for someone - a maid, a driver, a mom, a dad, a perfect stranger to hand them a suitcase handle, a plastic grip on life.
They drag their cumbersome baggage along recently mopped tile floors, through a very narrow gate wearing a shiny silver lock, around corners and hoist it onto little shoulders, or drag it clattering up two flights of stairs.
Click-clack-click-clack, down long empty corridors filled with echoes of childhood.
An elementary girl waits in the sun. Her right hand is empty. Exhaust from idling cars and trucks fills the air. It is choking everyone.
She is exasperated. She looks angry, tired and completely bored. Suddenly she begins to rapidly open and close her empty right hand. It opens and closes with a desperate spasmodic fever. She stares straight ahead, her brown eyes locked on green gates. She sees a beautiful green tropical distinct distant rain forest. She smells wild purple orchids inside deep shade near a flowing river. It is cool and refreshing.
"Give it to me! Give it to me!" says her grasping hand. Someone hands her a plastic suitcase handle. She drags her baggage into a cave.
Metta.
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