A Moment Alone

The sky is black with a few speckled stars. Isa’s black truck is parked twenty feet away in a row of 10 empty parking spots beside the sidewalk. The only thing separating the cars from the ocean is a wide sidewalk and a cliff side covered in ice plants and a few invasive species of grass. 
Isa is nestled in the thick coiling roots of a Monterrey Cypress. The roots are curved and exposed to the air like tentacles that emerge from the earth and then dive back into it after a series of loops.  The trunk of the tree is massive, the bark scratches against her back which is only covered in a thin cotton long-sleeved shirt. The roots hide her body from anyone that might be walking along the sidewalk or the occasional car that passes by, their headlights illuminating the tree for just a second before driving on. 
She is just a few steps and a leap from the ocean.  Fifteen feet below, the waves crash into the rocks, colliding not with violence, but with a persistent relaxed motion that moves forever without rest.  The sound is calming, like a nighttime lullaby.
Isa looks out into the black ocean sparkling with faint moonlight.  The air is crisp with approaching fall. The elements seem more alive, and she feels more real in it.  With acute clarity, she feels the coolness of the salty cliff covered in fine dust, the rough bark of the trunk, the breeze full of salt and moisture, the roar of elements as water and rock meet. 
Her left hand is in her pants, feeling the warmth of her bare skin.  Her thumb and pointer finger are expertly holding a vibrator to her clit while her others hold back the cotton of her panties.  She is hidden there, alone under the cloak of a dark sky, the protruding tree roots and the ocean sounds.
Her eyes are open, alternating her gaze from the sea to the cypress canopy above, barely visible against the dark sky, to her stomach and her legs.  Isa closes her eyes as she gets closer, clenches her abdomen and imagines tied-up young women on stage in front of a barely visible audience, women bent over metal contraptions, gagged, helpless.
The fantasies quicken her excitement and her clitoris swells with blood. She moves rhythmically and opens her eyes, watching the approach of foam-tipped waves and the serene rise and fall of salt water in the distance. 
She is alone out here, alone but accompanied by all the elements. She begins to ride the tide, pushes her breath out a little quicker, tightens her lower abdomen, and she soars over the edge.

Waves of Truth

Moving with a rhythm, a disordered rhythm of contradictions and divided impulses, Dorian made his way down the hall towards me, his fingers lightly brushing the wall, a neighbor’s door knob, the molding around the doorway. Every gesture conspired to create a chaotic rhythm that was somehow harmonic in the purity of its chaos.
Even his hair moved as if electrified, swaying in black ringlets atop his head, and his shirt sleeves seemed to breath as if drawn by an unsteady hand as part of some sketchy animation. Blue gray eyes with a halo of yellow ringing the pupils erupted from his anonymous face like a burst of noise hiding a carefully constructed melody of microtonal intensity.
The small soft looking nose, round cheeks, and unobtrusive chin were all so perfectly shaped that they melted into the back ground like a ghost and only those wild eyes remained.
Any person who tried to recall his countenance would have difficulty in restructuring the details of that face, but the eyes would haunt them. They would remain in dreams, integrated into the structures of other easier to conjure faces.
He seemed to bounce, erratically from wall to wall, then hover in between, then zig zag. The shiny black shoes thudded on the thin tan Berber as if each foot strove to walk independently of the other, as if these two feet belonged to two separate men who had been tied together for the sake of a novel race.
Even the legs bowed and squiggled as if they were involved in a mutiny against the feet, while the arms aided the hands and fingers in conducting their senseless groping. Somehow all these many singular movements, all these many notes and sounds produced by uneven footfalls and rustling garments and finger nails on plaster, they all added up to one very distinct and clear beat, something so polyrhythmic that it couldn’t be measured by me, and yet it was there. I could hear it.
Those quivering shirt sleeves were fashioned of black Italian silk, the slacks were some miracle blend that appeared either gray or silver depending on the way the light hit them.
How many times had some fool mistaken him for a billionaire’s retarded son? With a gait like that. It was easy to assume that he wasn’t all there, but it was a terrible mistake to make, a mistake that Dorian would make you pay for, mustering all his considerable mental ability to the task.
A mind like that. How does a genius perceive the world, how does his mind unfold? I imagine the inside of Dorian’s mind to be like jazz, waves of truth wrapped in disorganized bits of light and sound that collect around this or that nexus, all suspended by his attention like stars in the night sky.
As always, the nearer to me he came, the more confused my senses grew. Was I repulsed or attracted? My skin would tingle, every inch of it, the way one’s flesh crawls when in the night one awakens and sees by moonlight a spider crawling along the window pane.
It was like that, but also like when a very attractive woman is so close you can feel the heat from her body before she is quite touching you, and maybe she never does.
I stuck the needle-like tip of my mother’s broach behind the night light and was electrocuted when I was six. Being within yards of Dorian was like that. I am never sure if it is a proximity to life or death that induces these sensations. I have long suspected that they are, in fact, one and the same.

When he was a few feet from me he said,
“Remembering itself as itself. From the inside, yes. Everyone is an Observer of themselves, but who can process this reality? Are you ready Billy?”
His voice was always a little raspy, like autumn leaves scratching along the concrete, propelled by a breath of wind. In it you heard both the breath and the scratch and it made him seem both frail and boundless.
“Sure thing boss.” I told him and his hand made its way from the wall to the front of my shirt back to the door jam.
“Imagination is more important than pure knowledge. If you can't see through the other one’s eyes, then you’re blind to the oneness. Lets go bird watching Billy boy. I’ve left my cane. Lend a hand?”
I offered him my arm and he leaned on it trembling. I’d helped him this way before, but it was always startling to feel the storm of tremors that was the body of Dorian Finch.

We strode together back up the hall to the elevator and rode it down to the garage. Horace was there in the black Jaguar waiting patiently behind the wheel. Dorian lifted his hand in a gesture similar to a wave. It looked as if he were caressing the air, feeling it with his finger tips. Horace nodded.
“Not my car Billy. Your car. Separated individuality collected in the uniqueness.” Dorian explained.
“Should I get your cane?” I asked.

“Won’t be necessary. I’ll remain in the car. Image making. You brought the camera?”
“Yeah. I got it right here.” I said giving the camera bag a tap.
Dorian leaned on my battered Corolla feeling the rear windows as I unlocked the passenger door for him. He slithered in touching everything as he moved. Once installed behind the wheel I asked him.
“Where to?”
“1491 Jamestown Dr. to deliver us from SIN. From IGNORANCE Billy Boy.”

With his legs and feet at rest he was almost still. His hands caressed his own pant legs, the door, the upholstery of his seat while his wild eyes were glued to the road ahead. We waited at lights in silence, passed down the thoroughfare watching the golden dusk yield to darkness while the shop lights glimmered into wakefulness. Restaurants and nightclubs let lines of people in evening dress hang out of their doors like long tongues out of small rectangular mouths.

When we arrived at 1491 Jamestown we were submerged in suburbia, mid sized residences surrounded by manicured lawns. I had turned off the head lights seven or eight houses away and we eased up to the curb across the street from the house. The lights were on inside.
I took the camera out of its bag and fitted it with the telephoto lens, then waited. Soon I got my shot. The woman in her red underwear and the man smothering her with kisses by the window. It took me a moment to zoom in on their faces. A moment longer to recognize the woman. I slowly lowered the camera.
Dorian sighed.
“So THEN all things CAN change.”
“That’s Bettina.” I said.
“Precisely.” he breathed.
Bettina. Dorian’s girl. And my girl too, though I hoped he didn’t know. It would break my heart if he knew.
“Dorian.” I turned to him and his wild eyes met mine.
“We hope yes, BUT when THIS particular timeline ends THEN all these things ARE FULFILLED RELATIVE to the people and individuals aware of it. I am the one who can’t follow and I am the one who leads the way.”
“Dorian.” I could only repeat myself, could not fathom what he was saying to me.

Bettina seemed to be making the deadly mistake. The unforgivable mistake of underestimating the mind of Dorian Finch. Had I made the same mistake too? Was this the web? The web wrought by Dorian to ensnare us both? Did he suppose that I would kill her out of jealousy? Or was it that man in there that he wanted to see wiped off the board. Or did he know me, really know me? Did he know that I could not be jealous for myself but that I could feel jealous for him? That I could feel for him possibly more than I could feel for myself?

How many times had some fool mistaken him for a billionaire’s retarded son? Moving with a rhythm, a disordered rhythm of contradictions and divided impulses, weaving his webs without beginning or end, every gesture conspiring to create a chaotic rhythm that was somehow harmonic in the purity of its chaos. My betrayal of Dorian, Bettina’s betrayal of us both, this probable politicians betrayal of a wife and his constituency, Dorian leaning on my shoulder in the hall, that camera revealing and capturing the truth. All these many singular movements adding up to something so polyrhythmic that it couldn’t be measured by me.
I am the one who can’t follow and I am the one who leads the way, my hands cleaning my 9mm colt semi automatic deftly while my mind churns through the options and the photos dry in the print tray.
Which is the one that he intends, or which of those possibilities that he foresees does he prefer? Waves of truth wrapped in disorganized bits of light and sound.

The Storm

“Just hold me as long as you can.” She said it quietly, almost in a whisper, but they were pressed so close together that it sounded as heavy as it always did, still containing all the layers of variance he had traveled through for many years, examining the layers of warmth and breathless desire that seeped through her throat and tongue, finding his ear an open vessel for her inner lights.
Any sound in response was lost to the rattling wind outside, but she felt a slight movement in his head and a tightening of his arms around her. She responded, nudging into him as though the skin alone was no barrier.
They were two naked bodies, laying on a simple mattress. There were no sheets or pillows, nothing but the plain silver-blue of the mattress below them. She felt him breathing against her, warm breath against the cold of her neck. His breath was a fire lit in intervals, coming quickly every few seconds, warming her just as quickly as it began to fade in the cold darkness of their cabin. Her arms clung to him as never before.
Never had she wanted to be closer, to break the division of skin and merge finally into a single being. She clutched him as hard as she could, her chest rising and falling in a mad race to capture all the oxygen she could, to pull it into her, to steal it from every corner of the room and hidden crevice of the mattress, soon there would be no more.
A violent storm lashed against their metal boat. The wind knocked against their little world with force she had never known. This was a storm of myths, so grand in its fury that her mind searched for an explanation, a reason that waves could rise so high. The boat rose up and down on the black waves, riding them as long as fate would allow.
There was nothing to do but lay on the silver-blue mattress, to lay and wait as calmly as they could. The elements would do what they would, they were just drifters, untimely drifters on the waves that would eventually pull them down.
Everything on the little boat had broken. The sails had been torn to rags by the wind. The navigational system collapsed hours before in a final deafening buzz that signaled the end of their escape. Their only other crew member had fallen over the edge, he was somewhere, floating in the deep blue sea. They were minutes away from joining him and in their last few minutes, they did what was natural, what was as unscripted as rising waves and howling wind.
They got as close as they could, pushing themselves as close as their bones and flesh would allow. They had not planned on this, had not planned for it to end so soon, but just like the waves, they knew most things moved without a clock. Nothing came on time, and on the sea, there was only the will of nature, the grand force without emotion and planning.
The sea had no feeling, no cause for rage, no motive that could ease their hearts. It simply moved. It rose and fell as it was pushed by wind and heat and pressure. It moved with force, but it was not punishment, there was no conclusion to derive, though her mind searched for a just cause. It was them who had gotten caught within the criss-crossing of swirling changes. It was them who would soon come down, their bodies that would soon crumble and meet the cold waves.
“Just hold me as long as you can,” she repeated, pulling herself into him.
“I will.”
The boat lifted momentarily, then crashed into the unforgiving wall of water. She imagined it black outside. The sea and water matching in shade. She smelled the salt of his skin and put her attention on the coldness of his body. They held each other, riding the waves. Time felt short, but maybe it was as short as it had ever been, each breath a simple, sustained lifetime. It was alive, and each new second was a tragic gift.

The Surfer

The waves crashed in on him like a pyramid shattering, crumbling with the force of kings rising in their tombs. Glass ceilings of aqua blue held him down. Tendrils of slippery green hair pulled the wisps of his fleeting soul into the fury of the waters, there would be no escape. Not for his body. Not for his ego. Not for the whisper that came from his heart. His hands reached to the surface, he could see the blue of the sky in the distance, he could almost feel the sunshine of the day, but the seaweed pulled tighter on his legs and the last of his breath was gone.
He lay on his hammock, imagining his death in such detail that his body had begun to react. His palms were sweaty, his heart thumped laboriously, he managed a weak smile, but palpable fear still clung to him like imagined seaweed.
He had the nagging sensation of helplessness, it always made him remember the fat white woman in red shorts and the oversized white T-shirt that draped her shoulders. Sixteen years ago she had walked among the white crested waves, walking slowly as each foot sunk into the crumbly sand. It was her presence that he remembered, the fleeting glimpse of a woman… he watched… as her shape became smaller and smaller. She was not very pretty, she might have been once, but life had made her into a fat tourist, into one of many who crowded the shores and dotted the exuberance of the water with a drop of middle America. But still, although she was perfumed by consumption and betrayal, he noticed her, out of all the others that came in shorts that exposed their varicose veins and white legs that jiggled with every breath, he noticed her. And it was her body that later showed up on the same shore, bloated and even whiter than he remembered. He had seen her breathing and six hours later, he had seen her dead. It was she, even though he had spent a thousand lifetimes in the water, it was she who taught him to respect the strangeness of the waters. He had thought it before. He had thought he believed it before. But it was only with the vision of the bloated woman that he truly learned the lesson. Without a word, she had taught him. The waters were like a seven sword wielding bandit crawling in the night, a force to love and admire, a threat to respect and fear.
The world’s largest waves crashed to life on the rocks by his home, his home that existed between two skinny palm trees that aimed for the sun and bore no fruit as a sacrifice to their god. The dingy hammock was his bed, chair, and sofa. It was his dresser and meditation spot. The accumulation of his knowledge and possessions hovered between the two trees, and like the trees, he swung alone, without a coconut for company.
He had chosen the small spot between the trees to be closer to the cave of flowers. From his hammock by the water, he could see the black mouth of the cave, and although he could not see it with his eyes, he knew that the fragrant red flowers grew beside its black gaping mouth, there and there alone. And although he could only imagine it, he new a small group of women journeyed daily to gather the red offerings of the soil and work within the depths of the cool cave.
The women of red flowers were the most sacred of treasures that the island bore. Every woman here adorned her hair with flowers; pink and yellow and white, the flowers rested in their black hair like jewels upon velvet. Soft shades of perfumed petals opened up to deep shades of yellow in the center, where their sex stood out to the waiting bee, calling it, teasing it, begging it to come, nature herself naked, her legs wide open and full of yellow life. The waiting whore, exposed and unashamed, just waiting. Waiting to give, waiting to be taken.
But the women could not be taken this way, at least not the ones who wore red. And while all the women on the island were beautiful with long black hair that shined even in the moonlight, and although they were all lighthearted and playful and a delight to every sense, the women with red flowers bore something else. They held the image of the fire, they held the sacred rites of the ancestors in their thighs, these women, these precious few women were closer to the source. By divinity, by birth, by the love of the moon, theirs was a magic source. Whether in this lifetime or the thousands before, they carried something that he could not shake, it held him. He could not begin to understand, that he knew with confidence. He was the grayest rock on the path of their greatness, if he could be their servant, if he could die for their ability to continue, he would take his last step, his last breath, ride his last wave.
The day was hot and sticky and the thick scent of flowers came to him on the light wind. Journeying from the cave high in the distance, it slithered down the mountain and wrapped around the trees and filled his nose like a snake of sweetness. It entered him and his eyes closed with heaviness. He sunk deep into his hammock, imagining it was the liquid arms of the ocean. His ears heard crashing waves and his hands reached for the tendrils of seaweed that held him and his mouth, which opened for a breath, was filled with rushing white foam.

The Love Of Pigeons

The wind was blowing softly through the fragile branches of the deep green bushes and the tender leaves of the tired creaking trees. The water of the lake lapped at the muddy shore like soft kisses bathed in saliva and completed with the loving taste of a moist tongue. There were many little broken twigs on the ground, half covered in the mud, half bathed in the rays of sunlight that made their way through the trees above. Among the twigs, there were many little black worms, twisting back and forth in the ecstasy that was the wet soil. The sounds of laughter and the honking of cars came through intermittently from the concrete path that made its way around the little lake and from the road which was only a few feet away, but seemed much farther. A dead tree extended into the water and a pink flamingo rested its long claws on the wet wood, every so often dipping its beak into the calm waves.
A young male pigeon flew in between the branches, avoiding the obstacles that were the big leaves and the possible danger of the big gray cat that sometimes was hiding in the darkness of the trees. He opened his wings, resisting the momentum that carried him downward, and he landed softly and quietly on the muddy ground next to the shore. A young female pigeon was already there, digging for worms in the mud and flapping her wings slightly as she made her way through the offerings. The young male pigeon stepped close to the female pigeon, pressing his right wing against her slightly. The female pigeon reacted with a slight jump and a quick turn of the head. She looked at the male pigeon with eyes full of curiosity and then the male pigeon did it again, letting his weight rest on her side for a bit longer. She again flapped her wings, this time a little harder and then she slid away from the intruder.
The male pigeon then turned away and moved closer to the shadowed darkness on the edge of the concrete path. He tried to find some worms in the deeper mud that brushed against the concrete, his little head flipping up and down, in a delicate dance that was both sudden death and an urgent desire for life. His wings flipped backwards and he stepped away and dug beneath a twig. The female pigeon raised her delicate little head, her little dark eyes bulging slightly, wondering what had become of the wings that had pressed against her not too long ago. She turned around, away from the shore, and looked for the male pigeon that was still there, digging under a twig. When his eyes came to rest on her, she turned away once again and shivered and let out a quick song that bounced against the thick trunk of the nearest tree and got lost in the rolling waves of the lake.
The male pigeon stepped close to her once again and, while looking towards the emptiness that was the path, let his wing touch hers, as if by accident. She couldn’t help but jump up slightly and she let her body shake deeply and, once again, a sweet song came out of her, rising from the depths of her full round chest and vibrating out towards the trees like a tiny ray of hope bathed in gray and blue shadows. The male pigeon responded with a song of his own and the two songs met in the moist air between them, vibrant sounds lapping at each other like soft little hairs that tremble with the hint of human breathing. The male pigeon was then feeling very bold, and he came to rest right next the female pigeon, so close that the whole side of his body was pressing against hers.
For a moment, they were both quiet and still. In that moment of silence, they could both sense the big change that was then about to come upon them. Even if they lacked a way to describe it, they could feel the change like bolts of electricity that traveled through their soft feathers into their beating hearts. It was then a mix of sharp fear, like the teeth of silver knives, and hopeful emptiness, like soap bubbles that fly away on a lazy afternoon. The change then cradled them like warm loving hands and it lifted them away from the mud, even through their little bodies never left the ground. There was a sudden radiance that bathed the muddy ground in light and then the sound of giant footsteps and then more footsteps and then silence again.
The male pigeon pressed himself again against the female pigeon’s body, but this time she didn’t resist at all and instead, she pressed herself against him as well. The moment of change had passed and it had altered them forever, and its echoes would still be ringing through their feathers, long after the day became night and then day once again. Their bodies trembled together in the burning echoes of its passing.
The water still lapped softly at the muddy shore and the flamingo was still dipping its beak into the waves, but something had changed forever, something had touched the color of the leaves and the sound of the water, something had invaded the substance of the wind itself and made its cool touch a bit warmer. The male pigeon could feel it and he could also feel that his partner felt it too. They let their wings press softly against each other again and they simply shivered in the aftermath of the change, singing songs every so often that twirled in the shadows like many-colored ribbons.
A bit later, other pigeons came and looked for worms in this little secluded spot where the couple still stood, singing and trembling. By then, things were clear and established and, seeing that their little space was no longer theirs, they both flew away, side by side and only a few feet apart. They flew satisfied in the knowledge that, when they came back down to earth, there were wings nearby and, with them, their own wings would tremble once again.