Category: Story
Il Promoteo
| Il Promoteo |
| Birth of the child… |
| Ralph Pitre |
- Sangre Carmesí
Maribel couldn’t stop looking at the massive red stain, she didn’t feel like crying except to stare and tell what she saw. As if she wasn’t, for now, Grace’s granddaughter, just a witness… later she would cry.
It was a crimson red spotlight. The only real light in the apartment was a dim yellow lamp on the desk away from the open window. However, there, at the window, the blood, still glistening as fresh paint on a broad canvas, was filling the room with a ghastly red glow; the wheelchair, the floor, the walls around the window, covered in blood; a blood red spotlight.
After racing back across town to the apartment and fumbling with the keys, Maribel finally opened the door to find the crimson stain spotlighting the empty wheelchair by the window. “She was gone, my grandmother was gone. The window was open, the wheelchair and the floor around it covered in blood. I call her every night after I get home from visiting her every evening after work like I did tonight but she wasn’t answering. I was worried so I came right back over.”
“I called the police.”
Detectives Gentile and Espinoza stood over Maribel seated on the sofa across from the window. CSI was still working the room and uniformed officers were canvasing the building.
Gentile looked back toward the window… Sounding like sheet metal hanging from a cord banging up against the concrete wall, damn dog incessant barking.
“And the aide?”
“How did you know she had an aide?”
“Your grandmother’s an invalid, I would assume she has some sort of aide.”
“Machaela, is here during the day, everyday.”
“I’ll need her contact info.”
“OK…”
“Go ahead, you were saying?”
“Well, Machaela is a good woman you know.”
“I’m sure she is but go on.”
“Well as usual, last night Machaela left as soon as I got here. I stayed to make sure Grandma ate something cause she wouldn’t if we didn’t make her. All she’d have is a cookie from the tin which she does anyway late at night after I put her in bed. I can tell when she gets out of bed anyway, finding crumbs on the floor leaving a trail to the window where she likes to put herself in the wheelchair, she can’t sleep, she gets bored just laying in bed alone so she gets up, Machaela has found her in the wheelchair, asleep by the window covered in crumbs. I can’t imagine who would want to hurt her, she has nothing of value except what’s of value to herself. She really is so sweet, I can’t imagine…”
“Does your grandmother have anybody in the building or the neighborhood she doesn’t get along with?”
“I doubt it. She spends her days sitting in that wheelchair, it’s how she gets around the apartment, rarely using the walker. She stays in the apartment, sitting by the window looking out on the street, peeping into neighbors apartments in the building across the alley.”
“Maybe somebody didn’t like her looking out the window, they didn’t like what she might have seen.”
“It’s a good neighborhood, nothing really bad ever happens here. What could she have seen.”
“We’ll canvass the neighborhood,” Gentile turned to Espinoza, “maybe she saw something in one of those apartments she shouldn’t have.” Standing and pointing towards the window Gentile says, “Like what’s that little building on the roof there with the skylight, is that a penthouse apartment? If you could call it that?”
Gentile noticed the penthouse the moment he walked into the apartment. A ramshackle outcropping, a bad idea that became the building’s architectural cancer, simply ugly because someone decided they wanted to have a penthouse apartment.
“She did tell me about something strange she saw in that apartment. I never thought anything of it, I thought she was making it all up. I was traveling so I never saw but I called every night and Machaela didn’t seem to bother to look but my grandmother saw a man, a very large green man. The first she saw him lying on a table, connected to machines and tubes and wires like he was in the hospital, but the green man never seemed to move she said, didn’t seem to be alive, I told her that it is was probably a mannequin. But she insisted it was man. She said there was a doctor there too. He opened and closed the shade and did other things on the machines, she told me that during the day they would pull back the giant shade covering the skylight, that’s when she saw him, in the sunlight in the middle of the day.”
“Well I’m sure someone else must have seen it too. We’ll have to…”
“There are no apartment windows on this side of the building.”
“Excuse me, who are you?” A small well built mature man walked into the apartment.
“I’m the building manager, Benny.”
“There’s not one other window on this side?”
“No, all the apartments have windows front and back, nothing on either side wall except for Grace’s.”
“You know who manages that building across the way?”
“I manage it.”
“Perfect, well then I guess you’re gonna escort us over there aren’t you?
“Yeah, sure.”
‘That damn dog was getting louder. Too damn early dog just barking away like that!’
Grabbing a flashlight, Gentile walked to the window.
“Anybody put a flashlight down into the alley yet?”
“My grandmother said the green man opened his eyes.”
Turning back to Maribel, “Wait, so he was alive?”
“I don’t know I told you. I always thought it was a mannequin or that she was seeing things, I told you I never saw the green man, when I got here from work to check on her yesterday the skylight shade was closed. But she said the green man opened his eyes and looked up at her and she kept saying that for days after that the green man would stand looking up through the skylight, looking at and the doctor finally noticed and frantically pulled the skylight shade.”
Gentile looked out through the window at the covered skylight then down to the alley. ‘Like the dog was gnawing at something, it was growling furiously and barking like a machine gun’, but he couldn’t see the dog or anything, garbage and boxes lots of boxes, otherwise the alley was clean.
“Does a doctor live in that penthouse apartment, Benny?”
“No, he’s a scientist I think…”
“A scientist? In Brooklyn?”
“Yeah, Brooklyn’s got scientists…Fil, Filiberto’s his name, he’s got two roommates or regular visitors who stay often, one’s an IT guy and the girls’ a lawyer.”
“Well, lets take a walk Benny.” Gentile led them out, “Call me when you guys are done we’ll be in the other building.”
- Il Cane
In the alley between apartments, walled off from the outside the dog barked with increased anger, screaming, until Gentile walked up to the wooden wall, touching it gently, as he would. The dogs snout brushed against the wall, sniffing heavily, whimpering… suddenly started to bark, roared viciously. Gentile backed away, “I love dogs”, he said.
“And he loves you,” replied Benny, Espinoza snickered.
“They always do, lets go,” he motioned.
- Il Prometeo
“Come on we’ll take the lift.” Benny wave them both on the lift, “Its slow and creepy but it won’t kill your legs like those stairs around us. Cracked marble steps, each feels like they was made for a giant.”
“Excuse me mister Brooklyn scientist”, Gentile exclaimed looking up the elevator shaft. “Living in a penthouse apartment, is that expensive?” Remarked Gentile to Benny.
“Well its just an extension of the seventh floor, a separate staircase down the hall from the seventh elevator landing but its nothing more than an isolated shack on top of the roof, so no, not expensive.”
“How old is this building?” Asked Espinoza.
“What is this an open house?
“Just asking.”
“Very old,” continued Benny. “Before most buildings in this part of Brooklyn were built. It was a private home at first, called Il Prometeo, after that one owner turned it into an asylum before it was turned into rentals in the 30’s”.
“The Prometheus?” Said Espinoza.
“Correct! You know Italian, Detective?”
“You know Italian?” Repeated Gentile.
“When my wife and I traveled to Italy a couple of years ago and already knowing Spanish I was able to pretty much able guess my way through Italian.”
Approach the stairs to the penthouse. He’s not renting any Apts, the whole building is silent…
Upon beginning the climb up the short flight of stairs a terrible cluster of screams and a roar rained down from the penthouse. Guns drawn and Benny ordered to get back downstairs, both detectives jump up to the short penthouse landing and straddle the penthouse door. Into his police radio com on his vest Gentile, whispered forcefully for backup and received no answer. A moment and Espinoza stepped back, facing the door and kicks the door down, bursting in to the room. Sudden silence. A small room, a waiting room, a chair, a couch and coffee table and a kitchenette to the right. A man cowed in the corner to the left between the wall and the end of the couch, shaken with fear. He said nothing. Espinoza pressed the wall to his back as he slid across to pull the man along the wall and out of the apt. “Get downstairs and wait, help is coming.” Pushed down, the man hurried away.
Silence. The silence that comes with the realization that you’ve waded in too deep and no amount of swimming would get you back alive. Lilly stood with her back against the entry door, Fil sat on the floor below the living room window closest to the bedroom watching Meier as he stepped slowly toward the bedroom door. “I can hear him, Fil.”
“Fil what have you done?”
“What do you mean, Lily? It worked. You said it would never work, that I couldn’t make it happen and I did.”
“This doesn’t mean it worked. This is worse, worse than it not working at all. That thing in there – “
“My proof.”
“You’ve created a monster.”
“It was just hungry.”
“And when it gets hungry again? What then? And you Meier. Who are you, Igor to his Frankenstein?”
“What?”
Knock at the door…
When she arrived detective gentile was there, about Grace. You mind if I look in the room, the spare room, its the only room visible from her apt. Well there a lots of apts visible across the alley. True and I’ll check those soon enough but the only window visible from her window that has its shade down is the one in this apt that has its shade pulled down and from here I don’t see another window with a shade pulled. Well sorry if you had any real valid cause to enter you’d have a warrant. Excuse me detective mind if I pass? And you are? None of your business really but friends of this apts tenant. Sorry. They close the door upon entering. They moved onto knock on other apartment doors.
Noises from Fils apt.
Detectives break the door down. The door to the room opposite the entry was beginning to shatter. A great human-like angry growl comes from the room…
The Monster reveals itself disappears, struggles to be one or the other… There is blood everywhere… Grace Harold everywhere…
beats his way out of the apt… climbs to roof from where he falls
The monster was being kept in the spare bedroom…visible or invisible, conjured or manufactured in a 3d printer from vegetable matter?
- La Vita Dopo
Dr Scoma, the late shift pathologist, alone now for years, after having been married for fifteen…surrounded by death…muses that here is an opportunity to make life…
Vitto left so many notes, a detailed Bible of his ideas, called Il Prometeo, all that went into creating this thing and his diary. Makes me wonder what triggered everything. Did he find the building or did the building find him. Vitto moved into the building to complete the project, an idea he’s been working on for over twenty years. He needed the sun, and the rain, everything needed to create a being.
Strata, an adopted child.
History of Il Prometeo, the house, how, why and who built it?
God the absent father. Never around when you need him always there to beat you down whenever the stress of existence beat him down. God! Come back, God…the being that created and nurtured his child grows tired of parenting and leaves behind an unfinished creation.
Dr, what is this thing? A thing. A being of some sort. I don’t think Fil had any real idea of what he was doing. That device, what was it? A 3D printer actually. A what? Yeah, believe it or not, that’s what it is, a room size 3D printer. Didn’t know they came that big. Well they make them big enough to build houses. Well think of it, any assembly line robot is a 3D assembly machine, just doesn’t produce the material for assembly, a 3D printer does but even then it has to be given the molecular elements to produce the material to eventually “print” the object in addition to being given the actual design in an understandable language. That’s really the genius here, he devised a plan, a design for an artificial human, whose brain was part of the whole body, not centralized in the head but a hive brain where each body part, each molecule could think for itself a being that would produce an output, basically telling the printer how to complete him. He had hundreds of drawings and papers detailing his plan, a notebook filled with his intentions…but his problem was the monsters mind and soul…it had neither, at least not at birth. The soul and the mind, the brain are products of age, development and experience…molded and sculpted over time to produce a mind, a soul, a self, which the monster had none of. All beings are born infant, almost incomplete.
He plans with a friend to steal the evidence of the case. What does it matter, after the case is closed, there’s no one to arraign, no charges to consider, everyone related to the case is dead…once the case is officially closed the evidence will disappear into a locker…I’d have to leave evening behind, the job, my life…
The Dr muses, perhaps the key is creating an infant…not a full grown being.
Just finish your report Alex, so I can finish mine…
And the evidence?
Lock it up
Gentile, we gotta problem. Crain was working the evidence locker that day when two men, dressed in black, go figure, showed up with the precinct Captain with a Federal court order looking for what evidence was left of the Frankenstein case. (Made sense). But it was gone. Not all of it, just the most important part. Strata called it the head, the device spider shaped with a metal head and a thousand eyes and six extending arms. Captain was pissed, so were the Feds but they weren’t showing it. Immediately the captain personally organized a team to look for Strata the obvious choice for the felony having left for vacation three weeks prior then calling in his final notice that he wouldn’t be coming back. Once the captains team had arrived at Strata’s apartment the new tenant had already moved in…
How the hell did anybody find out about the case anyway. That was quick. Usually most cases move up the food chain unnoticed, just paper work to be stored but this… every agency, has a snitch working both sides feeding the right people the right information. Fucking federal vampires everywhere keeping wraiths at bay waiting to suck some info up their way.
At the TSA, what a beautiful child.
Alex vacationing in Maldive, beach combing with an infant tucked and sleeping in a forward carry pouch, surrounded by young girls admiring the child…
Months pass, the Dr had retired and births a child with a young man. You think they’ll let us get married in this country. You haven’t even asked me. Will you marry me?
Players:
Victor to Vitto or Bittor or Vincent or Filiberto (Fil)
Lily or
Meier or
Alex to Zeus Strata
Notes:
How was Grace kidnapped and why bludgeoned. Vitto had never killed another person.
Remove the bludgeoning. Strangled from behind, put in a large sack. No, Adam learns to slip out of the studio. Sees him prowling the studio and the green man watching her.
The concrete walls were reinforced with a later of heavy steal liquid alloy and concrete, the windows and skylight covered in retractable steel outer shutters and yet Adam figured his way out to get to Grace.
Changes: Adam can see in the dark. how Grace is killed and taken by Adam a cat bringing its owner a present after Adam overwhelms Vitto and goes directly to Grace. Adam has already installed a tracking and homing device that triggers Adam to come home but doesn’t work. Adam inadvertently kills Grace and brings her home as a gift to Vitto all bludgeoned and limp. Adam treats her body like any other piece of meat when he discovers that’s all she is and wonders if Vitto is the same. Adam begins to tear Grace apart, confused that she is like Vitto, yet like the meals he has been given but the taste is different, his first taste of meat that Vitto tries to take away from him. Efforts with a tranquilizer weapon fail. Adam realizes that might be just as tasty and as one would encounter a hungry tiger, Adams seems to show anger and chases Vitto out the door; thank God for steal.
rarely allowing a visitor and most often it was Lilly, his girlfriend who would visit. It had been weeks since Lilly did so at his request and now he was asking her to come he had something important to show her. Fil sent Meier to pick her up. What’s he want to show me Meyer. I’m not sure how to explain it, if he even wants me to, but he never said not to. is this another prank you two have screwed. Ohhhh I wish it was. Tell me Meier. I think you can wait…its important he show you, its important to him, that he present it plus you’re a lawyer. You both are in trouble again aren’t you? Well its hard to explain, just keep an open mind.to pick her up. What’s he want to show me Meier. I’m not sure how to explain it, if he even wants me to, but he never said not to. is this another prank you two have screwed. Ohhhh I wish it was. Tell me Meier. I think you can wait…its important he show you, its important to him, that he present it plus you’re a lawyer. You both are in trouble again aren’t you? Well its hard to explain, just keep an open mind.
Do you know a Grace Harold? Well she’s a tenant of the building across the alley. Ohhhh really? I don’t know her. Well she’s missing and we’re conducting an investigation. From which apt? That one up there with the open window. Well maybe she ran away? Maybe, but she’s eighty and wheelchair ridden for the most part. Ohhhh I see. Just asking if you might have seen or heard anything suspicious last night. Ohhhh no no I didn’t, I’m down the hall you see. Down the hall from what? Do you know the guy who lives in that apt? Um…
Fils focus lost in a void spoke up and said, “we went all the way, its gotten out of hand.”
The door to the apt they first knocked on across from the suspect sit opens. You guys knock on my door? Gentile goes to her while Espinoza continues with the old lady.
Fil lived alone…technically, in a shack the owner called a penthouse cause thats what it was, a one bedroom shack on the roof. A living room, which he pretty much lived in, a small kitchen and a bathroom in between. The bedroom, he didn’t sleep in his bedroom. This was a rare rooftop apt with a skylight in the bedroom doubling as a studio. Once was probably a former tenants if not the original owners studio; being the polymath, the studio was his except now, it was a nursery…Fil stood against the door to the studio, back to it he turned pressing his ear to listen and he could hear the man quietly sobbing, groaning as if in deep pain.
Maria & Matthias / La Vida De La Dona
Maria & Matthias
“Dando y dando, palomita volando” if you receive you must give,
comparte el amor
I will take flight as I grow with my wings of great integrity to share all I’ve learned with the world…
“Si querida.”
“Que Papi?” Maria, laying on the grass, looked up toward Father…
“What will I learn, Papi?”
“Todo querida. Con Todo el cuerpo…”
For how long?
“Siempre. Por siempre…”
“And who will I share it with?”
She wonders and looks at Matthias.
So often she wondered of him, Matthias and their change…
He stood at the dock and
Wondered at the shore line of the coast that
Looked out into the great sea
Wondering of his home…
“Your greatest love.”
Memories…
And she longed for…
All that she left and was…
All she had known, wanted and who?
Alone…she longed for all she promised herself, those she dreamed of and still dream of…
Maria…Maria was her name, Maria Agatha… the Latin form of Mary taken from the Hebrew Miryām, a name under much debate. Many believe it to mean “sea of bitterness” or “sea of sorrow”, sources cite the alternative definitions of “rebellion,” “wished-for child,” and “mistress or lady of the sea.” The name is borne in the Bible by the mother of Jesus, the son of God. It is not what she imagined and would not imagine the thought for years. Maria was just a young girl and the only male presence in her life was her father who could never entertain any sexual urge or thought to satisfy Maria. She was not even a woman yet but the presence of Matthias would begin to change those thoughts, make her see, make her aware of the woman present and call it to attention, call her to appear and wonder of her needs, desires and questions that would have been answered with the help of a mother who was never in her life.
Matthias… his name was Matthias, “gift from God,” typically given to the much desired first born son of a Christian family. Matthias therefore usually has a healthy sense of self-worth, strong, independent and self-assured. Matthias’ mother had become a Christian while her husband, The King, would lead his people in the war against Portugal, as she became the traitor, embraced Christianity, converting herself and the child and naming him as such to earn and satisfy her weaker religious needs.
Maria, born upon the death of her Mother, Don Lilo’s wife, Agatha ..Maria never had the chance to caress her mothers breast. Suckle a toast to life from her mothers nipples, salute the abundance a child should expect, instead she found her own way. Loving her Father but needing a mother. Agatha died at the violent hands of strangers, pale white men invaders in Africa during the Portuguese occupation of Mombasa. Mombasa, where Matthias’ Father, The King Ruled. It is where they both promised each other to care for the others current child. And it is why Lilo is recognizing Matthias’ arrival. For Matthias would become King after his Father, the King of his home, a just man who was deceived by the Portuguese into giving away his peoples land.
Maria imagined she could see the coast of Africa across the sea from where she lived with her Father in Catania. Their home sat on the edge of a stream that flowed into the Mediterranean.
“Tell me again Father where he will be coming from?”
“Over the horizon, we can’t see their home from here where he will be coming. The land he will be coming from is distraught. The Portuguese have landed and are taking their home from the people. Matthias will stay here until it is safe for him to go back. Until his Father the king and his mother can be found. Until then he will stay here with us.”
All of Maria’s Father’s offerings to her, friendship with Matthias she cherished most though spoke the least about, to whom she would never pledge her love and instead waited too long.
“In a city deep in Africa. along with his people, he battles the Portuguese for control of the land he is king of.”
“But if it’s his land why are the Portuguese fighting for it.”
“Because the Portuguese believe they can manage it better.”
Maria looked back at her Father. “Matthias’ Father must submit or battle for control. I’ve known the king many years.”
“The world would in times of strife, help with the cost of influence whether invasive or persuasive changing your home because the world can and truly believes their way is the right way, and they violently force their way, insisting… out of fear that their way may not be the singular right way, their way enslaves you.”
“It is greed Maria. In a world where people often need help, a much stronger aggressor often becomes invasive in the effort to offer help and instead becomes the aggressor and uses the weaker to feed off.”
“Feed?”
“Yes feed. People who believe and feed off the weakness of others as nourishing…There are those who believe the guidance without question.
“The world angers me, Maria.”
“Why Papi?”
“So few are satisfied with what they have to live the rest of their lives but always want more for the express purpose to oppress others who don’t have and never have had enough.”
Don Lilo was often heard commenting with other statesman about the Portuguese interest in Africa, “we battle the white man to influence and control all of the other black influence.
Their friendship was established quickly, soon after Matthias’ arrival from the near Mediterranean shores of Africa soon after they were introduced. Matthias traveled with his Mother away from what would become Kenya after the colonial period, his father a tribal King fighting the Portuguese.
Don Lilo’s house sat along the river, so quiet a visitor would barely notice that it was occupied.
Old, unkempt, so loved and lived in, the house, a young woman given to laying about in the sun, by the pool waiting for her lover to be free. Maria and Matthias became the best of friends until they aged to include the thoughts of lovers… a matter of time until those thoughts bore fruit, set root and sprout quickly to become lovers.
Maria the love of innocence in sync with the innocence and love of a child in Matthias who would become a King yet the darkness of truth whirled in their heat, a wheel of fortune spinning with choice.
Regret, at so young an age, is regret unto oneself…one looks at how brief life is and regrets the unfortunate choices made as battles lost without ever having fought them…
I will learn so much from you…I will learn so much from you likewise and we both will learn so much from each other…
“Maria, baba yangu amekufa.”
“I’m sorry Matthias? Did you say? Your father – ”
“Yes, my father has died.”
“I’m sorry, Matthias.” She sat up, having laid down on the warm sunlit green grass.
Matthias, the dark haired, handsome Moor child, she’s grown so fond of, who stayed and Don Lilo adopted until he had grown into a young man, Matthias he was called by his family, so fond he was of Maria and knew for so long ago as she matured into a young woman, who amused her in youth, long before Baldo, never could…even though Matthias was looked upon as suspicious by so many. Maria noted his dark skin as others noted and became apparent to others who worried some without cause.
“When did he die?” Said Maria.
“A communique your father handed me, from my mother.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Really, your mother? She’s been found?”
“Yes, una carta. A note from my father before going into battle and another from my mother that she came out of hiding and found notes from my father letting my mother to whom he left me with and where. After that I was easy to find, but for the distance she traveled to find me was great. Did you know your father was a warrior, he fought along side my people, alongside my Father, Maasai Warriors for the Portuguese.”
“My mother angered my father by giving me a christian name in addition to a warrior name.”
“Then your father as a Somali Warrior must’ve had a warrior name. What is your warrior name?”
“My father did and I do. My father divulged it to me when I was very young, long before I understood the purpose and it’s meaning. A small piece of paper he entrusted me not to show to anyone, even my mother but I want to show it to you.”
“Yes Matthias I love that you entrust me.” She felt queer but refreshed. For as long as they had known each other, been together as friends, they were on the verge turning of mind to become adults and were sure they never would. They would always only be friends the rest of the way. War, death and family commitment would force them apart.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Of you? Yes.”
“You will keep my secret.”
“I will.”
“My Father called me Simaloi.”
Maria held the small note written in Swahili on a thin sheet of bark held close and carefully to her breast.
“What does it mean, Simaloi?”
“It means no matter how difficult my challenge is, I am capable of completing it by being exceptional, my quick wits and my tremendous adaptability to various powers. Which is why I am always needed! I have a special talent of coping with all hurdles that make me indispensable.”
“I don’t know much about my Mother, she died soon after I was born. My mother, Consuela was a distant cousin of your Father’s.” The weight of her sadness came washed over her again as it had so often before but knowing of Matthias’ happiness…
“Matthias?” Maria looked up….
She had been laying on her blanket on the grass and looked at Matthias…
“My father has died.” His voice had lowered to a whisper…In the few short years they knew each other, in those few short years.
Don Lilo cared for him, and Maria came to love him.
“My mother traveled far with her aides and she told me the sadness, far from our home, Abiba.”
“It isn’t so but I always imagined this was your home, I feel we came to be as…one.”
“I will miss you Matthias.”“I will miss you too Maria.”
…she longed for…
Her father, Don Lilo…the day before his death upon which he left her a trinket and a thought of defiance, “Dando y dando, palomita volando”…he sang as she danced roundabout his guidance…once he was everything to her but she never really knew him. And now there was only darkness…then Lilo gave way Matthias and they danced about in looming desire…
Matthias was already gone and age distanced them more. The world had changed and she sought more and looked where never expected.
They are a couple in love they became older and their love became real though unsure. She was fascinated by his physique and him with hers. Time limited, his mother coming get him.
From afar she could see him talked at a distance she could see him talking to his mother.
This is something both expected and dread.
Maria, she watched Matthias walk away, a kiss unkissed, a touch untouched, a desire or undesired…Matthias looked back as mother tugged…
Matthias was raised in the house of a Spaniard, in the arms of their love, he walked away from her, feeling her release she watched him as he walked, along the river bank away from the bridge and… as if he missed the crossing then walked up to the foot of the bridge, looked the length then looked back at Maria. She was going to be different, grow different, become important and it was time and though they didn’t hear a call, it seemed they were, as if they were.
“Matthias, do you believe in God,” she asked.
I dream of God and yearn to sleep when awake to open the caverns of God when I sleep. I know God is there but I can never find God. I love to talk about God. The mystery of God is that there is so much to know because there is so much mystery. Simply put, God has created us and yet we really don’t know why.
Caverns?
Yes, God’s presence is deep, almost unknowable, deep, but look often, look often and the walls will open, you will become aware.
Have you been there, to God’s Caverns?
Not yet, but I dreamed that I had dreamed of them, one day, I will find my way there.
Tell me about the Caverns of God.
God is not a person, a being that you can categorize.
But the Cavern’s?
God lives no where but is all over, to behold, to have a presence
For a moment she tried to imagine his thoughts.
I have been there Maria. Gods Caverns. How? But you say it can not be categorize, God has no home. But I have seen it. Not in a dream but not asleep but and expanse of being I don’t understand but that I don’t clearly.
Matthias, I didn’t know that you were so aware of God.
He looked confused by her query.
True, you and I have never spoke of this but I have thought of God often. I spent many years as a child. I don’t know when I started. One day I was aware of these thoughts. I talked to the Catholic priests and the Priests and wise men of our Tribe not so much to follow but to learn why. To know the purpose.
Come Matthias his mother called. It is time to go.
Maria watched from a distance, the child with his mother, they talked and she felt their loneliness invade, a darkness from without felt clouding her sight of him.
Don Lilo watched from an upper floor window as Matthias walked away. When they were gone Don Lilo walked to Maria seated by the pool.
“I will miss him father.”
“I will miss him also, Maria.”
“Why does he have to go.”
“His mother needs a man for the house. For Matthias it is that time. He has become a man, that man needed to assume the duties of a man, a King, to carry on his father’s wishes at which his mother will be come disappointed when he becomes a man and that King he must and not son she can’t have.”
“And why do you not need a woman?”
“Yes. Your mother. Your mother died, you know that. I decided that after your mother I would prefer to be without a woman. Maybe one day long from now, in a different place as different people and in a different way, you and Matthias will meet again.”
“What way will that be, Father.”
“Ese es el futuro, mi Palomita, no puedo decírtelo.”
Maria relates her yearn her sadness for Matthias silently telling her father nothing about her feelings, her concern for Matthias.
Conversation among soldiers about the growing world… Not enough of the world no matter the shape for every animal, man, woman or child…
Viejo Mundo / La Vida De La Dona
Viejo Mundo
Part 1
“Hurakan…”spoke El Cacique. “I can smell the water of the great sea burning”… said El Cacique…
“The dead…”
“To speak of the dead is wrong…”
“Men of no color?”
“Men of any color?”
Canimao and his men gathered the remains of the men of no color, the men of no color, who suffered the storm…
“They are dead and deserve rituals of their dead…”
“They are dead, Cacique,” said Canimao… “We do not know their ways…
“Nor do we know their intent… They consume without the intent of nourishment…
Canimao…since you will explore where they come from… It is your choice…
We will…gather their remains from the beach and ready them for transport…It is a long journey and I fear we will know what we fear to know…
The fear of where these men come from…
Return them to rest…
I fear they will come back…”Cacique shooed them away….and to himself he spoke.
“We arrived to this world too late and the world will return us too soon…
They’re hunger is like the heat of an angry fire…
The fear is they are seekers of desires, of lonely people who never stop looking for they know not what they seek…
Their desire, their urge is insurmountable… a mountain never to be looked upon or climbed upon…”
Canimao and his men gathered the bodies…
They had been laying dead for days after the storm and Canimao and his men found their bodies while gathering supplies for their own expected journey across the great sea…
The great sea was tormented…inundating them with a great wash…
Canimao climbed out of the boat and let the cold of the great water wash over his legs. Looking back across the sea where so much of their lives had been spent in the recent months of their voyage. Here they arrived to find and explore the land of men with no color that would bring them to the land of the men they sought, the men who died in a terrible storm that lashed the shores of Canimao’s home land. Saddened by the lost men and their failed quest…Cinimao’s quest succeeded with his warriors quest to bring them home.
Canimao gathered his warrior’s and searched for the items of the lost men. They were pale men challenging what is known by the people’s bohiques, surmising the dead man’s origin and considered adding the found men to return them to their people and their land…
Canimao’s spear, tethered to his waist, a shield held in his arm, six warrior’s, all exhausted from there long trip, still healthy and fit but thinking of rest and hunger. They found a place to camp among in the tree, hidden from view of any natives. Finding their bodies laid about the beach, Canimao asked his people for volunteers, to help gather their bodies and things then try and transport them all back to their homes, a dangerous and great distance away…The dead men were sailors from a land over the horizon. A consult with the chiefs and bohiques led them to understand where the pale men were from.
Canimao once heard of people like them who’s color was pale compared to him and his people. Their home, a journey long and far away on the great water and much preparation would be involved.
Canimao, I have heard of these men but have never seen them, they are explorers of riches and only riches, they seek wealth from others to add to their wealth as their own. Your quest is your own but know their lust stains them as blood. But know the consequences of your journey.
In the year 1491, inhabitants of a land far across the Atlantic, arrived on the shores of Portugal. Canimao and his crew arrived in a large seaworthy vessel with the personal belongings of the men they found after having succumbed to a terrible storm off the shore of Canimao’s land. Each, equipped with survival pouches, and information describing the men whose lives they tried to save; men who arrived across the ocean in a land they believed was in Portugal
“Canimao, how will we find those who knew those men?”
Shaking his head side to side, “I don’t know yet, we don’t know the language, who the men were, I don’t know how but we shall try with their goods of trade.”
Canimao and his crew disembark from their sailing ships and scan the forests perimeter, looking for signs of life while dragging their boats up from the waves onto the shore. They quickly unloaded the boats of their goods and packed the remains of the men of no color, the items that were theirs and lay them beside the their own and the lay down to relax and rest and ponder their journey. They had After some thought they will walk along the edge of the forest without delving too far from shore prowl along the forests in search of someone who might help them find the origins of the men they helped. They do this without calling attention to themselves. Skirting along the edge of villages they judge who they will try and communicate with… They watch the daily lives of the inhabitants of this new land and they wonder…
His name was Lilo, by age, young but much older in spirit so much so they all noticed… Canimao especially took not of his will and his demeanor though and they didn’t know each other’s language and seemed to talk easily..
Canimao knew to show Lilo the items he brought to represent the men who he returned across with them…
Lilo one of them and understood them to be the men testing the waters for a great voyage…
They meet a boy during the effort to find food, a boy Lilo from Portugal was curious and very helpful helping..Lilo is able to help the men escape from near capture of the colonialists who were gathering funds and supplies for the Kings mission to find more of the world and it’s riches…
Lilo helped gather the few goods needed by the visitors to start their return journey across the waters to their lands.
What is left is still to be had… To be taken and will be the claim of the northern European over the original black men
Six other able men and six able men who died as a terrible storm lashed the shores of Canimao’s home.
The world is finite despite the belief of many…
Maria & Lilo / Padre
La Vida de La Dona y El Cuerpo del Cacique
“Dando y dando, palomita volando” / remember that you have to die
Don Lilo, long delayed a much needed journey back home to Genoa… “Dando y dando, palomita volando”… he recalled the days of life together with his daughter before the dilemma of wealth and the cold indifferent world that had come between them…”you were a free bird once and yet, you chose jewels of iron to bejewel yourself in tarnished glamour.”
Don Lilo had come into money, after selling off his small but successful shipping concern in Genoa to Baldo and The Church. Moving to Málaga, with his daughter Maria, Don Lilo continued to manage shipping details of the business while he set his daughter free who then turned against him, broke his heart to be an elitist socialite. Don Lilo unhappy with the wealth bestowed upon him sought to give Maria the rich life he felt she deserved…the life that would eventually drive her away from him…and to Baldo.
Don Lilo was openly against Maria’s relationship with Baldo, who was more than fifteen years her senior, too old it seemed, to pique the interest of such a young and innocent girl, but the glimmer of wealth in a big city became the draw and her comfort. Though in doubt, she longed for the hope she imagined upon agreeing to marry Baldo…despite her father…and the awareness that her self-imposed ignorance resulted in Father’s death.
The sound of duende filled the air as he walked alone in the streets of Málaga after drink and celebration then sadness, the cries and sound of anguish and tragedy from an open window came the sound of a gypsy song… death in the guise of familiar faces from the darkness of la cantina. A night of misery that caressed him in fear, the two men came to him as he drank and as festive as they were they wondered who he was, where he came from, why he was here in Malaga… “you sound Genovese, si, why are you here?”
“My daughter…”
“Su hija, si, bella, si….
“Es bella.”
“Let us drink with you, liven your misery, jest with us until then, until your misery is gone.”
And they did, their familiar faces became darkness without jest, death was their friend to introduce to Don Lilo…The men hovered and laughed over Don Lilo’s bloodied body, his eyes and body deflated of its soul, the shell collapsed of structure but longing for Maria…the two men walked away with death having spoken it’s orders and carried out.
Don Lilo dragged his limp and beaten body back to the Last Cantina he visited; by the time The Crowns soldiers noticed and identified the body and his importance, he had died from the assault. An inquest ordered by the court found no suspect… before Maria left for the new world and had lost interest…
duquende
remember that you have to die
To see the darkness…
after the light
haunts the light and remains always there…
Even in the light there is darkness without expectation…
There is never only light…
But when there is no light there is darkness…
Before the light there was always and only darkness…
Light must rest from questions of the darkness…
Darkness by default questions existence itself…
Darkness is why…
It is assumed that only the light consumes energy but darkness is the energy…
It is a side that seems to deceive…
But in truth is honest, almost to a fault…
Its feared because it represents as unknown as the truth really is…
What we perceive as the truth is an assumption and accepted without question while darkness is questioned and preferred but humankind doesn’t ask but more often questions the light assuming the answer and fears the darkness because it’s questions answered…
Darkness has its consequences as all do, always ask a question or be taken a fool…
Alone on the ship Maria travelled and pondered all she left behind and the fear she sailed into, so much of it hers but the fear of others…. They were upon the Lord’s bounty the Lord’s beauty… Have we been offered enough?
Balbo had insisted she bathe herself in a complex skin bath to lighten her complexion… Her skin was too dark her mixed heritage was showing through.. She would have to change to fit by his side, otherwise…
Maria speaks to traveling holy man of the military…The world is finite despite the belief of many throughout… What is left is still to be had… To be taken and will be the claim of the northern European over the black men
Drool
A black man walking with a cane, boards the subway train struggling to move along but still standing walks to a seat nearest the door with his back to me. Mostly I saw his hulking physique trying to find comfort in his position. I could likewise see him via reflection through the subway train glass and he still adjusted side to side to be comfortable. He slouched forward and seemed to drool from underneath his hood, the drool falling forward coming to a rest. As I continued to watch his body slouch even more until the hulk he seemed to be disappear within his clothing that folded accordingly. I watched the man as his clothing folded in on itself. And out from underneath the mass of clothing he was appeared a squirming caterpillar-like being. And then the train filled with other pedestrians…
The Exploding Man – The Christ Conqueror
Joshua, made his way to the end of a railcar,
where the other sardines were packed…
His anger rose to emanate the heat coming from his body,
as if the warm cinders within generated,
a rising heat to burn and become a fire…
clothes shed in seconds to reveal
a God
distraught with all about
to wreak havoc upon all sinners…
God has spoken
and there’s more to do.
