Manuel, The Butcher

Manuel the butcher stared through his jagged window of broken glass remembering the Spanish.
    His face was a mask of weary, solemn stillness. A quiet lying fury.    
    His silent words were the exaltations, evaluations, the expected surcharge, on an empty stomach, a tax for services rendered, reinforcements riding hard through the Basque valleys, listening for waves of German bombers over Guernica in 1936.     
    Beleaguered men held their own inside stone shepherd huts trapped in the desolate Pyrenees mountains spinning and standing grounded, surrounded by empty canteens, day old bread crusts, discarded family heirlooms, spent shell casings, their decomposing bodies relishing solitude.       
    He was required to remember old Fascist propaganda - the spreading of information.
    He is a fleischer, one who slaughters.   
In order to eat, to put food on the table, to provide for his family after peace was declared with celebrations of music, church services, wine, dancing, after burials he was forced by economics to slaughter his remaining beast of burden.

    This bull was his calling card, his vision, his hope, his dream and his identity in the village. Everything else was stolen by dictators, thieves and fascists. All he had was his dignity, integrity and self-respect.
    Time arrived short of sympathy, sentiment or condolences. He sharpened his short axe. Standing in the shade under the brutal Spanish sun he worked steel across a grindstone. Removing old edges. New edges on his blade. It was sharpened with passionate ambivalence.
    Laughter’s axe was ready.
    

    He walked into the center of the red clay ring surrounded by a white clapboard fence. The bull stood in the far corner. He approached the bull and held out his hands. They were young and lined with pulse rivers. The bull slowly emerged from the shade and Manuel collected the reins. Looking into the animal’s eyes he saw memory reflected in his soul.      
    He sighed, clapped his hands together twice, bowed to the bull, as a Shinto priest pays his respects to Bishamonten, the kami god of benevolent authority. He asked for forgiveness, for his act of fate, raised his laughing axe and brought it down hard and fast on the neck of the bull.    
    The bull froze and slumped, straining to escape the blade carving through old tough weathered skin, muscles, tendons, sinew, snapping final bones. Front legs folded, rear legs buckled. The carcass shuddered as a final breath exploded red dust.
    He clapped his hands again, severed the head and dragged the body to his shop. He cut it up and 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 wisdom. Sharing is caring.
    I witnessed this.

 

Daily Casket Express

Greetings,

The daily Casket Express Metro pulled up at the central station between two platforms. On the "Departures," platform stood young military boys in battle dress; helmets, gas masks, water canteens, with weapons locked and loaded. A sergeant at arms played a bagpipe dirge.

On the "Arrivals" platform were strong black eyed men in front of 1,000 weeping women.

The orange and black doors opened on both sides. The soldiers rammed their spines to attention, eyes straight ahead as notes floated.

The express was five cars long and each car held 100 crude wooden caskets. The strong men spit on their hands and moved forward. As the boy soldiers sang, "We're off to the front, we're going to meet our destiny,"  and their wives, sisters and daughters waved goodbye the men hauled out the wooden boxes.

Teams of weeping mothers, daughters and sisters surged forward, pulling and grasping at wooden boxes as the men stacked them against walls. The women were seeking clarification, an I.D., an old photo, a necklace perhaps, a shred of evidence, a glass eye, some visual epiphany.

They came because they were called by some faceless totalitarian desk jockey handed the inevitable task of notifying next-of-kin so they came to claim.

The wives, mothers, daughters and sisters cried tears of blood. This captivated the audience of passive transparent heavily indoctrinated raw stoned ambivalent authorities hiding behind a pile of shredded documents containing treaties and falsified bills of lading.

When the men finished unloading the caskets, the soldiers marched into the cars,  the doors closed and it departed.

So it goes on the daily Casket Express.

Peace. 

 

Freedom is terror

My friend's son found a job. He refurbishes pots and pans. It's a dirty, hot, stinking job with great wage slave benefits. His mom is ecstatic to have someone in the family making money. She's addicted to money and the fear of poverty. She wakes up in the middle of the night screaming,"It's economic terrorism! My child is being exploited!"

Must be the season of the witch. He is facing his future with a calm mind. Clearly.

 

Hala

    He met Hala who invited him to her home near the mosque in Lhasa for dinner. Her father is a factory worker, her mother a homemaker. One brother is a doctor, married with one child. Another brother is finishing his two year compulsory military service.
    A pleasant small place displaying a carpet of Mecca on one wall and a 4x6’ glossy photo of a two-story white American clapboard dream home surrounded by trees and a large green yard.
    Ah! No money down. Act now!
    It reminded him of the ubiquitous color glossy images decorating simple Chinese and Muslim restaurants here; large strange revolting pictures of Western bread, cheese, wine and gleaming dishes of food as if an advance team from Better & Better Houses & Wild Gardens or Lifestyle Of The Possessed ripped out the advertising and plastered it up for an eater’s dream.
    They dined on butter tea, rice, meat, and scrambled eggs with tomatoes as Hala translated conversations about life.

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The Potala was constructed in 1694 out of stone, wood and mud. It contains 1,000 rooms, 10,000 shrines and 200,000 statues.
    He entered through the west gate climbing steep wide stone stairs. The interior passageways were packed with pilgrims filing through rooms and chapels. It was very dark, mysterious and beautiful with yak butter lamps flickering in front of statues, rows of dark texts stacked in cubicles accompanied by mumbling muted prayers from the mass of humans squeezing through twisted corridors and along narrow, steep stairs.
    Uneven stone floors were slick with yak butter as pilgrims spooned offerings into thousands of flickering candles on altars. He climbed through a series of temples, past shrines to the roof overlooking Lhasa.
    He wandered around the north side of the Potala inside markets fronting the Dragon Pool. He had a noodle lunch, and made images along path and bridge of Potala, prayer flags, mendicants reading sutras, beggars, pilgrims.
    Calm mind, slow steps in dust wearing out old boots.
    A Tibetan woman selling butter on the street near Ramoche asked him to read some of her English writing. It was a story about someone hiding something behind their back in a classroom. A guessing game. He pointed out a couple of awkward sentence constructions and asked her about her life.
    “I stay single because if I had kids they’ll have to go to a Chinese school. They wouldn’t be allowed to speak Tibetan.”  Historical shades of American Indian treatment by the white Anglo Saxons.

New War - New Opportunity !

You'll be happy to know the so-called war on the southern flank is going well. It's actually been going on and on since 1984 when George began screaming about Maoist aspirations and recruiting young naive desperate boys to play with loaded guns. Big Brother came out to play.

He never looked back and now he's living with his mistress in an air conditioned and well fortified cave. Life is sweet when you live in a cave and the monthly maintenance fees are reasonable.One of those no money down, low interest hovel the shovel habitats.

The military dudes, who ran the show at one time because they lost patience with the Suit & Tied guys, are back with a vengeance. They've got the best fighter jet sets, bombers, laser guided precision high-tech toys, tanks, artillery, amphibious landing craft and Death on Wheels money can buy.

It's a numbers game. We know you love numbers. Led by General Incompetent they massed 60,000 well scrubbed conscripts on the border.

Their "enemy?" 3,000 hardened fighters and survivors. 60,000 vs. 3,000. How can 3,000 hold off 60,000? It ain't by talking. They employ tactics and strategy in the The Art of War. Cunning, guile and environmental impact statements. Send in the dummies.