Mask

I dashed out of the house and ran to the bus stop, clumsily arranging the thick scarf around my neck.
I had spent the last few hours stressing and obsessing over my attire. The annual office Christmas party was scheduled for today. An email had been sent yesterday, reminding everybody that the party was at the Four Seasons Hotel. We were all required to look “presentable.” The men were required to wear a coat and a tie. The women had to look just elegant enough without going past a certain invisible line. Not too much, not too little. Just enough.
This is where the ordeal started. I pulled out almost every outfit I owned, every last shoe, everything I could find in my closet. My cousin was on the other side of the video phone watching me as I tried on one outfit after another, approving and disapproving my choices with a clear discernment that I simply didn't have. I had no idea how to dress, what to wear and what not to wear. The subtle rules of this masquerade escaped my mind, I had never been privy to these intricate instructions.
I thought of this while I ran to the bus stop early in the morning. Why did I worry so much about what to wear?  Why was it so important to control how I looked, how others saw me? What was the meaning behind the requirement to look presentable? What did it say about me? What did it say about them?
Through a change in clothes, I would disguise my wild and chaotic nature, I would pretend to be in complete control of my own persona, my actions, my thoughts. I could be as normal and as mature as they were, as they seemed to be, as I assumed they were. There I would be, looking like them, wearing the uniform, part of the group. A question wrapped in a lie, a stumbling fish trying to swim over quickly drying mud.
I was gasping and stepping into the bus stop when I was suddenly greeted by the face of a dirty homeless man. He was so blonde and fair, and he was so happy, so happy I thought the sun had come down to say good morning through his wide open eyes.
"Look, look!" he said cheerfully, “A guy just dropped three thousand dollars in cash!"
I looked down at his hand. Between his dirt encrusted fingers there were rolls and rolls of $100 dollar bills, a package of myriad possibilities squeezed to the size of a fist. As I looked at him again, I saw him turn back into a dull, dirty old man. It was the bills that were shining like gold on his fingers.  
I realized he was probably right. To judge by the amount of bills he was holding, there was probably a good three thousand dollars there, or even more. 
"Put that back! Put that back” I told him, realizing suddenly that his appearance and the money didn’t go together, they would clearly stand out like a sore thumb in this mostly empty street.
He was putting himself in danger by boldly showing this treasure he had just found, this anonymous treasure that had just found him through some unknown random process that had now chosen to include me.
There was an obvious disagreement between his attire and such a large amount of money. Gold and rags, riches and dirt, power and weakness. People would stare, they might call the police, they might beat him up, they would accuse him of having stolen it.
“Please!” I asked again. “Put it away, don’t let anybody see it”.
He looked at me, suddenly realizing I was being serious. He sat on the bench and the smile faded from his face while his eyes were fixed on mine.
“I don’t care about the money.”
The tone of his voice had changed. He was no longer a homeless man, he was now a being detached from society, detached from this planet, detached from his mask. He was a kid, a grown kid who saw the world as a giant playground. He was once again shining brightly, he was the man I had seen first before I noticed his costume. The money in his hand turned into a dull plastic object, with no possible value.
Its only value was the adoration a child gives to a toy when he is playing with it, a gift freely given, a gift easily taken away. Only while playing would the toys shine with life, they would then be forgotten and cast away.
I saw him, my eyes wide open. I listened to him very attentively as he started to narrate his story: he once worked as a contractor, he made a lot of money. He used to live in San Diego, big house, two kids, a wife, a dog. His daughter was making good money now.
“Do you have any children?” he asked me.
“No.” I answered while gazing to see if the bus was coming.
“Do you make good money?”
“I make enough, I guess.” I said, while getting myself ready to board the bus that was now stopping next to me.
“Would you like a hundred dollars?” He said with a mischievous smile.
“No, I am ok,” I said, while slowly walking towards the door of the bus.
“Take it!” he said, “Just one bill!”
“No, thank you!” I said while smiling and walking up to the bus.
I sat next to a nicely dressed lady who was texting with her smart phone. I couldn’t help thinking of this man.
There was a clear disagreement between his shiny golden treasure and his dirty appearance. The mask didn't fit the event, the event cast an unflattering shadow on the mask. A man dressed in rags could not be so lucky, could not get so lucky, could not.
I looked down at what I was wearing, the costume I had worn to pass myself off as one of them, the lucky ones. I adjusted my scarf and slid backwards on the seat. I prepared my face for the masquerade that was waiting. One more among many. One more mask to hide a question I couldn't even begin to answer.

The Silent Call

The road crinkles with my word. I am the crown. The gold. I am the ears of a thousand men, a long lineage of horns and stinking goats and cups of blood. I am the road. I am the cave.

The road spins with my sweat, and I drip.

They are the seeds of my power, the spouting of a new fern, the joy of a new wisp of green.

I have seen the villages along the coast, on each side of the path. Always standing, always waiting for what will never come. They have heard my call, my cry, the horn. They have heard. Those with ears listen as though it was a passing wind, a kiss from a spring morn.

Though it is not. It is the call of the path, and only the children run, letting their buckets and yarn fall to the fields, forever losing the signs of their world. Their mothers look for them in barns, beneath the cows, in the stacks of hay and in the silver shop. They never return.

They follow like the rats of fables, coming though they only heard the song and the promise of something buried within the melody. Blind as they are, they see more than the old maids in the kitchen, more than village after village, stuffed with priests, forever preaching about desires they cannot control.

I come with a sword of liberation. With the stain of blood, with cut throats and twisted bodies.
I come, though liberation is made by men, not kings.

The scepter,
the bones of ears and horns,
the purple cloak that promises in whispers.

Come to me, though you move like zombies through a thick gray haze. This is the time, the one chance to reach through tidal waves, through the mess of noodles and the window shrouded in time.

Come if your heart permits, if your mind, for once, cowers in the corners, unsure of direction. The compass stands steady in the center of your chest. Each chest.

Between white breasts.

Beneath a spurt of hair. Beneath the bones of both. Feel it though the cold wind blows.

I am calling.

And I call, though no answer is expected.

Though no body emerges from the fields of wheat and millet.

Though I hear no laughter and feel only silence.

I see the world, waiting at the horizon, waiting for death to emerge through the clouds. And I know,
it comes. It comes and I walk, sending out my call.

Nora

Sitting on the park bench, feeling the wooden planks eating into the mound of flesh that was the bare underside of her thighs, Nora watched the birds of gray and speckled black and white mutations chasing each other around in circles, kissing , and looking for crumbs. The fading light told her that it was time to go, but she stayed wondering about how common the pigeons painted like Dalmatians were becoming. She had never seen one like these in her childhood. Now they were prolific, popular with their peers.
The shift in the light was subtle, a thing one takes for granted in most cases, but Nora was accustomed to sitting on this precise bench from 3:30 to 4:30 each afternoon. For her, the shift in the atmosphere was quite noticeable as 4:30 rolled along. Usually it signaled her departure when the sky took on that desperate last gleam of brightness. On this day however, she remained, slightly enchanted by it. It was late spring and the days were longer and warmer. It would not be dark until 8:00.
There were very few people in the park. An older woman sat upon another bench further along the walkway. From where Nora sat, she could see beneath the bridge. A couple stood beneath its shadow, kissing. Two wrinkled old men were finishing a game of chess at a table situated 20 yards behind Nora, near the shade of the trees. Occasionally, their excited voices, as brittle as dried leaves and raucous as the cawing of crows, reached her ears.
A man that had once been a tiny speck far off on the path was drawing nearer. He glanced furtively here and there. As he drew closer she could see his peanut shaped nose resting over a fine brown cookie duster of a moustache. His brows were nearly as fine and thick, and they stretched out over his brown eyes like furry black caterpillars. If he had dared to don a cane and black suit or travel with an identical twin he would have been a Thompson and Thompson look alike straight from the pages of a Tin Tin comic book. He stepped passed her, stopping a yard away to peer into the distant shadows beneath the bridge. Then he returned to where she was seated upon the bench.
“Excuse me.” He said. “Excuse me, but I’m looking for someone and I wonder if you might have seen her. She’s a little bit taller than me and has short dark brown hair. Very slender, brown eyes.”
“Uh…” Nora’s eyes rolled around as if she would have to look backwards into her brain in order to remember. She squinted and nibbled her lip. She was fairly certain that she had seen the woman he was describing. When she had first arrived an hour ago, a woman that fit the description had been talking to the man that usually strolled through the park selling helium filled balloons. They had talked and laughed together and eventually strolled away in the direction of the bridge. Nora liked the man who sold the balloons. He was young and handsome with blond hair and a smooth broad face. He usually dressed in a uniform of white slacks and a sleeveless white dress shirt while selling the balloons and had an easy friendly manner. She wondered what this strange man’s relation was to the woman in question. Was this her father? Her husband? Would he be angry to learn that she had left with the man of the balloons?
“I’m not really sure.” Nora answered noncommittally, shrugging her shoulders and shaking her head slightly.
“Wait.” The man said and dug into his back trouser pocket. “I have her picture here.” As he withdrew the wallet, Nora could hear the cackling of the old chess players growing louder. She could hear their syncopated footsteps crunching upon the gravel pathway.
“You didn’t have to marry her!” one crowed.
“I did if I wanted to do what I wanted to do with her!” the other proclaimed and they booth hooted and slapped their knees.
“Here.” The man was saying, extending his open wallet for Nora’s inspection, “This is her.” But Nora was glancing behind him at the two old men who were endeavoring to pass behind him. The one nearest to them was laughing so hard that he careened on one foot and bumped into the mustachioed man. The wallet fell at Nora’s feet.
“Ah, ah, ha. Oh, excuse me.” The old man apologized.
“Don’t.” the other quipped, “There’s no excuse. At his age he should know how to walk!”
The strange man smiled over his shoulder at them while Nora bent and retrieved the wallet. She stood and handed it back to the man.
“I’m sorry I can’t help you.” She told him “I’ll be late for work if I don’t hurry. Good luck.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.” He said waving his wallet with a quick flick of the wrist and a nod.
Nora smiled. Pulling the strap of her purse over her shoulder, she started off ahead of the old men in the direction from which the stranger had come.
Hurrying up the path, she could hear him asking the older men,
“You wouldn’t happened to have seen this lady here today?”
“No. Sure wish I had. Pretty lady,” one answered and the other whistled. Then the pair laughed their raucous laugh together. As she keep on walking and they stayed behind, she couldn’t hear anything more, not even the sound of laughter.