The Criteria for Beauty

"Your bike is dirty," she said when he pushed it into the elevator.
"Yes, isn't it just beautiful," he said smiling. "It loves nature."

"You have the criteria for beauty," said the Chinese teacher. We were going down. Neon red floor numbers practiced subtraction.

Her arms were filled with thin standard brown student exercise books. She'd finished grading them with her sharp red pen. The books dripped blood on her shoes.

"Beauty is it's own criteria, as it's own criteria," he said. The door opened. He followed her with his dirty mountain bike.

She carried the books to the guard shack next to the partially closed black gate. A tight squeeze. Inside, the passive guard was watching bland tame soap operas at a high decibel level. Reruns.

Her students would trek over to collect them. She passed her responsibility with authority.

He pedalled away toward a dirt road in the mountains and beauty's natural criteria. Where he would sit in silence hearing wind sing through evergreens.

The Day of the Dead

Her Cadiz map was useless now because she knew every part of it.

Her ancient chart held lifelines, dashes, angles, seven magic symbols, dead ends, detours, forests, high rise apartment buildings, tourist offices, oceans, parks and pealing cathedrals.

Her word worn projection designated plazas, beaches, monuments, theaters, parking lots, banks, cafes, hotels, hostels, hospitals, libraries, universities, markets, bus stops, taxi stands, railroads, bus stations, antiquities, cemeteries and Benjumeda #3, Apartment #2, Cadiz, 11003 where she worked on her loom.

On the Day of The Dead white haired widows waited for a bus marked ‘Cemetario’ at the COMES station near the harbor. Shrouded in black they carried bouquets of fresh carnations, daisies, daffodils, roses, white forget-me-nots and food to share with their dearly departed soul mates.

One ancient woman juggled wine bottles. They talked in muted voices and paid their fare. The bus rolled past a heavily armed statue of a Spanish soldier on his bronze horse penetrating the sky with his saber discovering Central America.

The Atlantic Ocean edged into Spanish alleys sniffing at Roman ruins. Clouds danced above the ocean giving birth to small powerful tributaries searching for a source of renewal.

Wool Factory, Lacilbula, Espana

He wrote a simple letter to Melody living at The Future.

Truer sentences were never written in their loving relationship. Neither of them were on the net and the map was not the territory.

She’d sold the house after 40 years and moved to a retirement complex where she lived in peace and quiet. Her long term creature comforts were guaranteed for $2400 a month.

He sent her a thick white wool scarf and green hounds-tooth shawl for Christmas. He worked under the table with Spanish elves doing their end of the year labor.

It was produced in Lacilbula, an old Roman pueblo in the Sierras. The 18th century woolen factory originally ran on water power from a mill. People who controlled the land controlled the water. The mill went under.

Thirteen obsolete mills in the valley were sold to locals or European investors and renovated for guest houses. The weekend get-a-way plan at $500 a week allowed guests to furnish their own towels.

In this part of Andalucia they said, “rich land, poor people.”

This was a lie. It was poor rocky land. Suitable for olive groves and grazing sheep and pigs.

Village men spent their lives laboring over small isolated plots of land or stood around the plaza studying their shoes, talking with fellow unemployed men waiting for their pension checks. Some worked in the village tearing down old homes and renovating them.

Many homes were in a bad state, with no insulation or central heating. Tight local architectural regulations restricted the amount of interior light. Village people preferred living in dark cramped spaces where sin and guilt multiplied, fostering acceptance and mellowed with regret.

The wool factory in Lacilbula was two long whitewashed buildings on a hill at the west end of the pueblo. Part of one building had a small sales area.

Old obsolete weaving machines collected dust. They had big iron wheels and treadles on rails for rolling back and forth. Industrial revolution memories. Large brown and red functionally finished rusting machines. They’d done their job after people made them and used them.

The factory still produced shawls, horse blankets, ponchos, scarfs, blankets, capes and serapes on two remaining machines.

A woman working under a solitary light bulb at her table sewed a factory tag in the corner of blue wool scarves. After running the needle up, down and around tag corners she lifted it and severed threads with her scissors. She adjusted her thread, a new tag, scarf, and got the needle moving again.

A man loaded wet wool blankets into a wooden machine, released two long metal handles to start two iron wheels turning. He picked up a slab of wood and wedged it between the metal bars to keep them tight and running. The wheels rotated two giant wooden hammers on an axle spinning up and down smashing brown and white blankets against the wood. Pounding water out.

He grabbed an old earthen vase off a wall, took a long cool drink of water, resealed the container and joined another man outside where they attached fresh cleaned wool blankets to long porous supports to dry in the wind. The smell of wool was thick and delicious.

Local people didn’t wear these wool products. Women walking to the Tuesday morning vegetable, clothing and plant market, small shops, or talking with their neighbors in cold January air wore somber black crocheted shawls. The wool from the factory was sold in local tourist shops and exported to Mexico and South America.

Spanish trail

She unplugged the heater under the table, checked the gas cookers were off and locked the first wooden door with a heavy iron key. A remnant from the Moors. The kind of huge metal key she saw hanging from religious or military clothing in old European paintings.

The key to paradise was very heavy and carried by people with leverage demonstrating leadership potential.

Walking across the stone patio she hit her head on a low hanging winter orange, laughed, pulled it free from the tree, slipped the bolt on the second wooden door, locking it behind her and entered a courtyard. She walked over to a large single red rose beneath a lemon tree, inhaled deep fragrance, put an old fallen curled petal in her pocket and touched one thorn drawing blood for luck.

“Ola,” she said to the old petite smiling woman sweeping her stone steps. She worked from sunrise to sundown.

“Ola. You are going to the mountains, yes?”
“Yes. I will climb high today. Back in time.”
“The weather is good today. Clear and cold.”
“Yes, it looks fine. See you later.”

She passed the shuttered Municipal Bibilotech where she studied the history of Spanish art and Andalucia reference books on week nights between 6:30-8:30 p.m. as giggling elementary school kids scattered around tables made faces, did their homework and messed around.

They teased her about having sex using their fingers to show her what happened between men and women. Their behavior was direct and honest. They shared mutually whispered conspiratorial secrets until the middle aged librarian needing dental care told them to be quiet. She was an aberration in their youth.

The girls carried bags of pens and pencils giving them diversions and endless choices. Which color? A pen? A pencil? Ink? They did a lot of tracing animals, drawing people and copying Catholic lessons. The boys wasted time and the girls studied.

Passing tight narrow secluded white homes toward the mountains she read a poem by Manual Nogales from the El Gastor Pueblo. Every stone home was buried below rising geology. Streets were rough sharp jagged broken Roman stones sloping toward the middle for water runoff. They’d last forever.

Villagers looked up at Penon Grande seeing gray dolomite rock piercing the sky. They looked down at their feet to see where they were walking and gray dolomite rocks stabbed their eyes.

Nogales’s poem was about Andalucia. It was about rocks, pines, sun, water, clear mountain air, local pastries, simple men, beautiful women, 1,000 balconies with 1,000 geraniums, old Moorish and Iberian secrets, hidden treasures, red and orange Sierra sunsets, famous bandits, ancient myths, legends and stories.

She left Lacilbula behind to climb west of the Penon Grande. She stopped occasionally to catch her breath and thought about turning back. She took one step at a time and moved forward. The walking staff felt good in her hand. A metal point stabbed soil.

She knew it was always possible to stop walking, to avoid the path. She wasn’t out of shape but smoked too much and knew it reduced her lung capacity. Every kind soul in her life had warned her about the habit. They meant well. They cared. It was all you could expect from friends. They wanted to celebrate life with you at 80 going on 100. Age was just a number and hers was unlisted.

Friends said living well was the best revenge.

“The one who laughs, lasts.”

Her healer friend in Arizona remarked once, “I never heard a dying man say, ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office.’”

She climbed through her office. The elevators were down for maintenance. She was being transferred to a new branch on another level of experience. The branch extended its tributaries in all directions like veins from a heart. She trusted her direction, her way and felt blessed to be here now.

She stopped in a valley of Spanish pinsapar woodland fir to survey the massive ring of limestone peaks. The dark green fir was a protected national treasure and required a walking permit from El Bosque. It remained from the Tertiary Period which ended 2.5 million years ago, surviving in isolated parts of southwestern Andalucia and Morocco.

She hiked through the finest Spanish pine grove in the country, a veritable living fossil which only grew at altitudes over 1,000 meters in the Sierra del Pinar or Pine Grove Mountain Range. The rest of the park’s vegetation was Mediterranean in type including large areas of holm-oak woods. Cork, oak, gall oak and pine groves lived with carob trees, wild olives and blueberries along riverside woods and thick scrub.

Her staff was designed for this terrain. For a person facing a date with her destiny she took her time quickly. Step by step. Simple muscular skeleton bone skin steps. Her heart pounded, echoing through her ears as her pulse roared a wild throated sound.

It was magic. Every step revealed new peaks as distant valleys became miniatures, spreading fir ranges mixed with gray limestone rocks under flowing mountain ridges.

She climbed on sharp white and gray dolomite stones. They tore at her boots when she missed openings. She was a rolling stone. An occasional bright blue arrow painted on rocks indicated the way.

Moss at higher elevations was a clear luminous soft green. Small yellow wildflowers clung to stubborn roots. Fast western clouds were propelled by invisible perfection.

At the summit was a meadow of dolomite limestone rocks exploding from the surface. She’d climbed back in time. Patches of snow lay in shadows. Snow mirrors reflected sporadic mountain light rising in front of her. Peak shadows covered eastern valleys.

She’d reached another planet, a very old part of the universe. She was between peaks, feeling blue sky pressing her forehead as gray, white and dark blue clouds hurtled over rocky formations throwing shadows.

Time on a mountain top runs faster than at sea level because gravity is stronger at sea level and gravity slows time down.

Silence enveloped and welcomed her. A whisper of wind in a silent world. She was suddenly very cold then blazing hot as a sun exploded through clouds. She enjoyed long deep breaths.

Enjoying ice cold water and raisins sitting on jagged stones she read her compass instructions.

“You’re never lost, there’s only various degrees of uncertainty about your position.”

She laughed as vibrations of joy echoed a beautiful emptiness.

The Formula

Greetings,

Red star flags catch wind above golden dragons nestled near crude rough red brick home boxes. Red balloons trailing yellow slips dance, trapped and held by rusting iron wires leading to a basketball hoop waiting for a net to catch a delicious fish

swallowing dust as sad-eyed freshmen drag their suitcases filled with dirty clothes home to mother where, in her undying love, she will scrub them on the 14 gray cement outdoor sink steps inside a cold reality smiling, knowing, feeling her daughter inside her again, inside her womb, her throbbing music of calloused hands scrubbing dreams

dreams of a simple day and time hearing melodious silver tubed chimes and a violin's laughter forming a voice, distant yet clear, forgotten yet remembered as the mother slows down to examine a thread - dancing colors blend her blood, speaking in long babel tongues as a soft morning wind greets star flags, singing new sensations...

Peace.