Subjunctive

There is nothing so terrifying and liberating as confusion. Possibilities which simultaneously burden and encourage swarm above my head in a cloud of doubt and wonder and imagination. Painting ephemeral pictures of things that may be and will be and won't be. A visual subjunctive. Each possibility reigning me in or whipping with a certain sting of urgency and driving me forward both encumbered by the world and driven by it.

The Mandolin

Being a fish out of water is a bad metaphor. A fish out of water eventually dies. But then one must argue that a fish out of water has two options: to die, or to evolve and grow lungs and legs and other various and sundry accoutrement necessary for life on land. That would be, and probably has been, the argument. Robert and his brothers were fish in slightly different water. It wasn’t a change from fresh to brackish or vice versa, just a change in general. Like a Floridian catfish who strangely finds himself swimming in the clear, salmon filled waters of the North West instead of the red-brown mud bottom of the Apalachicola. In fact, the brothers were like these salmon-catfish. Before living in Missouri they lived in the deep woods of the panhandle of Florida. They lived with their grandparents in Estiffanulga while their mom and dad served as chaplains in the army in the Philippines. When the parents came back, somewhat unexpectedly, they swept up the boys and moved to the Midwest.

They didn’t forget Estiffanulga and visited often. The grandpa, or P.D. as he was known by his peers, was named Ponce Deleon. The famous Spanish conquistador perhaps rebirthed into the flesh and bone of this man of the earth. P.D. was adopted and no one knew exactly where he came from. In fact he was less adopted and more inherited. At age three he was found traipsing around the rare North Florida hills near the old Gregory place looking for grasshoppers. He was found and raised by Katie Elizabeth and Octavious. Being that he was simply found, P.D. had no birth certificate or other evidence that he was actually alive other than his own breath, blood, bone, and flesh. P.D. grew to be a dark, frowning man of most likely Seminole heritage whose only joy for most of his life was his mandolin.

Once after Katie Elizabeth and Octavious adopted him they went to a small music store in Blountstown. The store owner saw P.D. gazing at an old mandolin behind a case. While his parents were looking for tambourines for the church the store owner unlocked the case and handed the mandolin and a pick to P.D. The boy’s parents turned around as they heard him picking out chords on the little instrument.

“That’n theres a Straddy-Various,” said the store owner, rocking back and forth on his feet and snapping his suspenders with his meaty thumbs.

The boy’s grin was almost as big as his head. He didn’t know what a Straddy-Various was or that it might be valuable or that the store owner didn’t know what it was either. His parents couldn’t bare to rip the boy sized instrument out of his hands. Katie Elizabeth stayed and watched P.D. pick his way through the notes and chords, with a strained and focused look on his childface. Octavious put his arm around the store owner’s shoulders in the age old ritual of man-talk.

“Friend,” Octavious said (almost sang), “how much ye’askin’ fuh this hyeh lil geetar?”

“Reckon’at all depends on how much you willin’ to shell out.”

P.D. continued, “Well now, seein’ as how ‘em som’bitches at the rail road aint paid me yet, all I gots ten dollar in my back pocket.”

The store owner, eager to sell the old instrument said, “well, seein’ as how thangs aint exactly walkin off ‘em shelves yonda, I’ma go’n hafta take your offuh.”

The store owner gave Octavoius the case to the mandolin in exchange for two well worn five dollar bills. Octavious took the case and ushered his small family out the door to the packed dirt street. P.D. looked up at his dad with his eyes shining. Octavious looked back at the boy and smiled. He opened the passenger door of the T-model truck and tossed P.D. in the middle of the bench seat, and held the door open for Katie Elizabeth. Normally P.D. helped his dad grind the transmission into second and fourth gears, but now he was too busy exploring the frets of his mandolin.

The model T snaked with a new smoothness through the Floridian pine forest, over red, almost wine colored creeks, back to an old cracker house in the woods. Where music would now interrupt silence.

Eunice

He walks into the gas station corner store and grocery in Three Points, Virginia and looks around. There are pies in display case and the specials of the day are written on a chalk board behind the front counter. The man more than half-way expects some Faulknerian character to come in with a black fedora resting lazily on his head, matching blazer slung over his left shoulder, and his tie loosened. He would sit down and quietly place a dime on the counter, "piece o' pie, Eunice," he'd say to the ancient fry-cook in the back. Then he would uncomfortably lift up one buttock and dig in his pocket. He'd toss a nickel on the counter, "some coffee, too."
The man realizes he might be a similar character, come in from town, not speaking with quite the same lilt. But not now. Gone are the days of slapping down a coin for coffee...

He passes the pies in the display case and asks the young looking woman at the cash register what is good that day.
"'At all depends on whatchee want," she says in a tired drawl.
"Grilled Texas Chicken Sandwich, please."
"Y'ant anything on 'at sammich?"
"What comes on it?"
"Nothin."
He orders the sandwich and a sweet tea, which he gets immediately. The sweet tea has been sitting too long. As he drinks the woman at the cash register is frantically writing numbers on the back of a receipt. After a minute or so of scribbling she throws her pen down on the counter and swears under her breath. She grabs a new receipt and scribbles more. Her eyes grow large as if she has just solved some numerical mystery. She lets out a victorious squeal just in time for the woman cooking in the kitchen to throw the Grilled Texas Chicken Sandwich on the counter. The girl settles temporarily and delivers the sandwich. She almost throws it on the table where the man is sitting and returns to her newly victorious task. The sandwich isn't good. Chicken, bacon, and a slice of that fake yellow cheese. And toasted white bread. With belly some-what full, and appetite less than quelled, the man stands up from the booth. He waves a hand towards the front and thanks the ladies in the store. "Have a good'n," the scribbling woman says without looking up. The man walks outside, slings his blazer back on around his shoulders, squints in the sun and puts his matching fedora squarely on his head. As he walks he tightens his tie.

Back inside, the restaurant continues with the normal clatter and hum. The woman from the back yells at the cash register, "Clara, what'na hell you doin' out yonder?"
"Ain't none o' your concern, Eunice, leave me be."

Luxury Trees

A tall and gangly hair-lipped Nahuat from southern Mexico saunters from the drivers seat of a 20 year old Chevy work van. His shirt and slacks are stained a bile-yellow from la goma del tabaco, pure nicotine which gives him nightmares. On his face his upper lip is more of a beak than a lip, and a jagged scar runs from behind his left nostril to the point of the beak. He speaks a muffled, nasal Spanish which makes him seem younger and more helpless than he is. He is Jaime.
I engage him in conversation and ask if I can speak with him and the rest of the workers. He disappears into an ancient white farm house nestled at the base of a massive silo to speak with the crew boss. He emerges from the house and asks if I have permiso del patron. I haven't spoken with the farmer and haven't gotten permission from him.

Gone are the days of bearded, disease ridden, gleaming demon-gods who gawk at the smoking of rolled chocolate leaves. Downpressing a class of people expendable as fossil fuel and creating an insatiable appetite for imaginary riches and and exotic crops of luxury like sugar and cinnamon and tobacco. And the residue of demon-gods with their war dogs and four legged monster-men? The same residue that stains Jaime's clothes each day. Though it won't come off in the wash. The residue is diluted with alcohol and machismo. It begins to eat away at the fabric of the mind and of the culture so much so that it is eventually ingrained into the two. For some, the thin vitriolic sheen of the old demon-gods is shed, if only for several months, once they return to their homes. For others it is both the construct in which they support their families, and a prison which keeps them separated
Jaime has a jovial nonchalance about him and his own situation. I ask questions about his contact information, telephone number of his house. No tenemos telefono de casa. His cell phone number, si, de hecho el patron me lo desconecto. He goes on to explain that the patron doesn't want him communicating with outsiders, which is why he had his cell phone disconnected. Jaime shakes his head: "son reglas que, no se..."
He looks over my right shoulder at the crops which blanket the rolling piedmont. A look perhaps as disconnected from this world as the phone line in his one hundred year old farm house. "They're rules that, I don't know, I don't agree with them. Pero no quiero meterme en problemas con el patron."
He doesn't want to get in trouble with the boss. Jaime could find no other work. The complexity of the situation is paralyzing and infuriating. I could spin myself into a cyclone of self-righteousness and desire for justice and remind the boss that Jaime is just as free as I am or he is. But is the boss protecting himself or Jaime? If Jaime looses his job how many people will feel the effects?

Jaime's eyes enter back to the world of tobacco and gringos and distance from family, from a place perhaps imaginary and probably from the past. I notice and start asking him more questions.
Y ustedes trabajan en puro tabaco, o algo mas?
No, pues, cortamos estos arboles....he flattens his left hand and pans it across the trees growing in straight lines on the opposite side of the dirt road. They don't just work in tobacco, they work mostly for a tree farm. I ask Jaime what kind of trees they are:
Son arboles de lujo, no se, para la casa.
No dan nada de fruto?
They're trees of luxury he says. And they don't bear fruit.

Gone are the days of bearded, disease ridden, gleaming demon-gods who gawk at the smoking of rolled chocolate leaves; downpressing a class of people expendable as fossil fuel and creating an insatiable appetite for imaginary riches and exotic crops of luxury like sugar and cinnamon and tobacco?
Trees which bear no fruit.
Gone are these days?
Trees which bear no fruit.

sweet nothingness.

Eyes close. Sigh. Relief. Dark. Sheet pulled up. Sleep falls. That wonderfully comforting falling sensation in the nebulous land of pre-sleep. Sensation of falling in the most delightfully dark nothingness. The falling stops, the voices start. First a soprano sings a high constant beautiful tone. Never faltering. Without vibrato. The owner of the voice never seems to breathe. Steadily more voices are added. Alto, bass, tenor. Until the voices are innumerable yet mesh into one organism. The corporate voice sings open and beautiful major chords, with the perfect dissonance. The tuning is perfect and the overtones stack on top of one another like an image between two mirrors. There is a steady beating rhythm which is positively the heart of the dreamer. The bass life force of all this commands the corporate voice, which ebbs and flows and rises and falls like a fall leaf in a thermal draft. Bass voices gracefully clamber up octaves and sopranos mimic in the opposite direction, while tenors and altos sing a not quite melody of tenuous chords and arpeggios.
Its comfort and nothingness. Sustained and all encompassing, free to do what it will but always tied to the heart beat of the dreamer. Its a long embrace from a woman who loves. The kindest of words spoken outside of the sphere of reciprocation. The care of a father that is neither aloof nor inhibiting. It is...
Heart bass is faster. Pillowy darkness retreating. The corporate voices shatter into a thousand and glissando back to nothingness. Eyes open. Nothingness gone, everythingness....returned. Dreamer's feudal attempt to close eyes. The corporate voice dead, awaiting resurrection.

lost song bird

An anachronistic
song bird
sings in the fall.
She sings some archaic
strange word
that I don't understand at all.

I sit in the maple trees
with the wind
blowin' through her yellow leaves.
I have to wonder who's breath it might be.

You with the raven, dark hair.
You with the cold, blue stare.
You know the hearts of men.
Would you say, on a whim,
Is it the end?

This desert dust,
wont come off my guitar strings.
No matter how I play,
No matter how I sing.

Ignacio

East of El Paso thunderheads tower ominously as they threaten the vast west Texas landscape. The clerk in the gas station says they haven't had any rain, but everywhere else has. I get on interstate 20 and hit the storm. Long standing oil now hovers over the newly monsoon soaked desert roads. I hit a string of pot holes and my truck fishtails out behind me. I wonder what the hell I'm going to do after I crash in the wet desert. I down shift into fourth gear and right myself and continue on into the heart of the storm. Lightning strikes close by, and as the storm subsides dust covers the odd earth. The sun doesn't set until nine thirty. The land starts getting green and the weather more humid. I cross all of Texas. Louisiana. Mississippi. Alabama. I reach the Appalachian piedmont in Birmingham and start to feel closer to home than I have felt in a long time. In between Birmingham and Atlanta I receive a phone call from a number I don't recognize...
"Soy yo! Soy yo, Ignacio."
"Ignacio, que hay, como andas?"
"Pues, bien. Cuando vas a regresar aqui a Agua Prieta?"
"No se, hombre. Ya estoy en mi tierra..."

The conversation continues with pleasantries until Ignacio tells me the purpose of his call. He is a man from Guerrero that I met my last month of the border. He's wondering if I can make a delivery to his mother in Richmond, Virginia. Ignacio cannot see his mother because he lacks the proper piece of paper required to visit the woman who raised him.
This situation will forever be with me. I will not be able to shake it. I won't be able to forget the faces of Ignacio and the perhaps thousands of other men, women, and children I have met and served in a year.

I arrive home. I meet a church member who hears I spent a year in Mexico and promptly asks me what my favorite tequila is. "You must like that Jose Cuervo stuff." Middle aged awkward man-language designed to throw some humorous facade over his own discomfort on the subject. I eventually find myself sitting in the ocean alone, chest deep in salt water that looks something like sun tea. My mind wonders back to Baboquivari. Looking at the sacred mountain from the north end of the valley we just walked up. One hundred and sixty years ago the surrounding desert was Mexico. Then the United States fought Mexico after a conflict in the borderlands of Texas and Tamaulipas. Mexico lost more than half of its country in the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, for a price of 15 million dollars. Thats Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Utah, Nevada, and parts of Wyoming. Then the United States purchased most of Southern Arizona for 10 million dollars. This includes Tucson, and almost all the way up to Phoenix. 215 years ago the land belonged to Spain. 600 years ago, it was land that no European man had laid eyes on. Baboquivari is a sacred sight for the O'odham people, who were in what we now know as Arizona long before Joe Arpaio's parents immigrated (yep, immigrated) to the United States. Baboquivari watched over us as we walked the seventy five miles from Sasabe to Tucson.

Now remembering the walk its difficult to focus on what it really means, as I sit in a comfortable house with air conditioning and soft couches and cable television and a safe place to sleep. In the desert my hips were bruised from sleeping on hard, rocky, and earthen floor. Now I am consumed by comfort and its a strange relationship. Its easy not to worry. Its easy to be ignorant. But I fear for myself that I will forever fall into that abyss of non-knowing. A place where curiosity does not exist and where nothing that is heard is questioned. This is a dangerous place, but it is not a place dependent upon geography. This place can be anywhere.

The south is hot. It is unrelenting. The humidity is like a wet wool blanket. I can feel it in my shoes and on my skin and I can hear it in the woods. At night sleeping benevolent tree-giants throw shadows on the dark earth. The smell of the night reminds me of memories that I have long forgotten. The smell reaches some where in the caverns of my mind that have been archived for decades now. My mind still wonders in this night how I will bear my burden. How I will shoulder this weight of my brothers and sisters who crossed in a much harsher night; who perhaps crossed successfully to reunite with family members or to work, who perhaps died on a lonely mountain top or in a dry river bed. I musn't forget. I must never forget the comfort and privilege I have simply because of where I was born. Comfort and privilege that others lack and seek, knowingly risking their lives.
Question. Question everything. Question like an inquisitive child and don't settle for bullshit in your answers.

The walk through the desert and my home five miles from the coast now seem like different worlds. I sometimes feel like I am back behind a wall. I want to merge the worlds and smash the wall down to sand.