MEMacías@hybridee

He was running fast! Scared out of his wits, the boy leaped and bounded – cartoon style – over the spots on the ground his instinct told him hid mines. The ceaseless pounding of explosives enveloped everything. He couldn’t stop running. He had to get away. His feet barely skimmed the soil, yet his lithe body was ruthlessly thrown about by violent explosions. It filled him with dread. His ears ached from repeated assaults.

And then, abrupt silence… But no, not entirely: the soothing crash of distant waves caressed his senses and sparked his imagination… There he was: submerged in turquoise blue waters! Above him, a seagull screeched as it flew overhead. Keeeaugh! He started and lazily opened one eye only to realize that the screech was actually coming from the bare legs of a rusty chair scraping the floor of the cheap restaurant where he sat with his head on a metal sheet table for a pillow. His gaze shifted to a half empty – Oh no, still half full! – bottle of mescal and a man’s taunt fist resting beside it. Like a hammer, thought the boy. Now his ears  focused on the man’s slow and steady snoring that – like the waves soothing the beach – made him feel at ease.

He shut his eye again before the sweet smell of the surf that still lingered in his nostrils morphed back into stale grease and alcohol. He desperately tried to return to the beach, but all he got was blackness and oblivion until the thundering sound of rocks free-falling suddenly opened to a scene in which he found himself hunched up against a boulder that sheltered him from the downpour. The smaller rocks would pitter pat down the mountainside heralding in small playful cotton balls of clouds across the sky. But soon, larger menacing rocks took over as they crashed by apparently drawing in black clouds that thickened the horizon. The din from the thunder became unbearable.

Too frightened to open his eyes, the boy covered his ears.   Then, all of a sudden and quite miraculously, the horrific pounding vanished. He slid out from under the boulder and looked up to a clear sky. A green mountaintop beckoned him. Still stunned by the rock storm, the boy felt too weary to climb so he quite naturally spread out his arms and simply flew up there with a powerful leap. At the top he found a crater, a valley of sorts full of grass, shrubs and a few trees. A waterfall filled the air with the sounds of peace. The boy felt home.

He was just breathing it all in when everything, including him, started to shake violently. He opened his eyes reluctantly to an empty bottle and the man who had passed out a couple of times while drinking it. The man stopped rattling the boy’s shoulder. Then he grabbed him by the arm, and hauled him out the door back to what they called home, where the man would sleep off the booze. The mid-morning sun hit the boy. He realized he was fully awake.

The Breakwater

Thank you Joyce and Lalo for your valuable input.

A new wave thundered onto the beach. The tide was rising. Funny how such an apparently deafening sound could lull you to sleep as you lay in your hotel room a short distance away.  Why some “resorts” insisted on blasting garish music at the guests who were attempting to relax beside the pool or on the beach was literally a mind-blowing mystery.

He sought refuge on the breakwater, climbing the not-so-steep pile of rocks as gracefully as his beer belly let him. He picked his way awkwardly, his right hand clutching a plastic ring he’d fashioned into a fishing device.

Once he made it to the top and steadied his feet he gorged on the moist oxygen-filled air. His smog-filled city lungs apparently OD’ed on the stuff because his grandpa’s soothing soft-spoken Spanish suddenly washed over him with the tide.

“Remember, coil the thread around the ring but not so tight, and stick the bait through the hook, así muchacho.”

“Sí, abuelo, yes grandfather” he nodded deep in reverie.

Some of our departed never really depart. They only become more alive to us with every year that brings us closer to meeting them on the other side.

The man cast the line out and almost immediately felt a tug.  Too surprised to focus, he almost lost his balance when his heel slipped on a loose rock. His hands automatically began to flip the ring over and over to pull the line in and whatever had bitten it out of the water.

Rays of afternoon sunlight struck the silver scales of a modest-sized sardine fiercely struggling to free itself. The man’s hands worked just as fiercely to wind it in.  Just then, out of nowhere, a white seagull with a striking black tail swooped down and tore the wiggling sardine off the hook.

“Why you crooook!” shouted the man at the bird just as it disappeared from sight. Abuelo chuckled in the wind. The man had to smile, amused.

It was cloudy the following morning, so annoying discotheque music started to blast out of the hotel speakers earlier than usual, apparently in lieu of sunshine. The man’s ungraceful climb up the water breaker was further aggravated by his balancing a cup of coffee in his left hand, and holding on to the fishing ring with his right.

Abuelo seemed absent that morning. Maybe because his middle-aged grandson was too excited about his successful, albeit frustrated, catch the day before to listen to him.  The man now expertly cast his line as if he were fly-fishing and had only to wait a few minutes before he felt an exhilarating tug on the line.

This time he was ready. Round and round went the ring in the Man’s hands, up and up went another silver sardine, then whoosh! Down came the black-tailed seagull to snatch away the man’s prey again!  He was at a loss for words. He could now hear Abuelo laugh uproariously in the breeze. He marched down the rocks in angry frustration. Nevertheless, he returned to the breakwater that very afternoon, his heart and mind set on making his catch his own. His eyes scanned the empty horizon. No sign of the bandit seagull.  He cast his line into the rising late afternoon tide.  It stirred. The man excitedly got to his feet to spin his ring.

In a matter of minutes the slight, silvery fish was in his hands. He raised his eyes triumphantly taking in the sweet air of success, but when he lowered them again to gaze at his prize he saw it: a drenched limp, yet still proud mass of white and black feathers on the sand below.  He looked again, carefully. Indeed, it was the bandit seagull that the waves had washed up ashore and now caressed lovingly with clear waters and foam.

He had to sit down. His speechless mind ran about frantically in his head trying to make some sense out of it all. “Death comes to all of us, man and beast alike”, echoed Abuelo’s voice from the depths of the past. The man recalled Abuelo saying that the day he lost Canela, his beloved pit-bull.

He had momentarily closed his eyes to the present, but once he returned, he noticed that the tide had re-embraced the fallen seagull and taken it back to sea.

“Dignity restored,” said Abuelo.

“A proper burial,” thought the man envisioning the seagull on the bottom of the ocean, spared from disgracefully rotting under the sun.

His feeling of accomplishment over the catch crept away from him, like tides creep away from the beach only to return in changed shapes and patterns. He looked at the increasingly limp sardine in his hands and released it from its hook.  He threw that fish back to sea certain that his action had somehow restored their respective dignity.

Desde pequeños a ambos les colocaron cristales frente a sus ojos débiles de constitución, portentosos en su vocación de leerlo y saberlo todo.

Cuando estos dos pares de ojos se contemplaron mutuamente por primera vez lo hicieron a través de los anteojos.  Literalmente como si sus almas se asomaran por ventanas de cristal.

(Ignoraron la chispa detectada desde entonces hasta muchos años después, cuando se quitaron los lentes para convertirla en llama y envolverse en ella.)

El advenimiento de las pantallas colocó una nueva ventana frente a sus ojos progresivamente debilitándolos más con su luz, que a cambio iluminó sus seres con noticias, conocimientos y la poesía de las palabras que se dedicaron mutuamente.

Ambos, así de separados y unidos, vivieron su propio paraíso sumergidos incontables horas y días en la lectura de todo cuanto pasaba frente a sus ojos, pues su vocación se había convertido en existencia.

Cuando finalmente sus ojos se agotaron y apagaron por completo unieron esas existencias leyéndose mutuamente el camino infinito de palabras que habían guardado en el inconmensurable espacio de sus memorias.

Cuando se tropezó con unos recuerdos del camino fue a dar con un pozo olvidado mucho tiempo atrás. Las aguas salinas, algunas salobres incluso, le exigieron abrir las compuertas para dejarlas salir. Realmente quiso hacerlo, pero ya no recordaba cómo llorar.

Una de sus primeras citas de amor había sido en un espacioso y verde cementerio de Los Ángeles, por lo que la vida consideró apropiado que uno de sus últimos encuentros con ese amor transcurriera en el gris y superpoblado Père Lachaise.

Ella lloró frente a la tumba de Abelardo y Eloísa yacentes lado a lado por el resto de los tiempos, como lloró frente a una lápida doble desde la que se proyectaba un brazo masculino vestido con mangas de siglos pasados del lado derecho unido al  brazo enjoyado de una dama que salía por el lado izquierdo. Las manos de ambos se entrelazaban después de la muerte unidas en la eternidad de la piedra. Las inscripciones dejaban testimonio de ello. Ella pensó entonces que esa clase de amor, como muchos otros dones, toca sólo a unos cuantos.

Huyendo de sus lágrimas y de todo lo que su amor no fue, salió en pos de la tumba de Jim Morrison siguiendo cuidadosamente el mapita de tumbas famosas que le habían dado en la entrada. Apresuró el paso y terminó por abandonar el mapa dejando que su propio espíritu la llevara. Así, conectada a la memoria de una frecuencia radiofónica silenciosa encontró la tumba rápidamente, adelantándose a una expedición de estadounidenses menores de edad que también recorrían el cementerio.

El busto en piedra* del Rey Lagarto lucía humilde en relación con los monumentos fúnebres de sus vecinos. Alguien le había desfigurado la nariz como a la Esfinge la habían dejado los soldados napoleónicos. Otro más, hambriento de trascendencia, le había aplicado un chorro de pintura verde en aerosol. No importaba. Jim había tenido una cara tan bella en vida que la imitación en piedra poca fidelidad podía ofrecer. Deformarla no era deformar a Jim, sino a una piedra.

El lecho, digamos, estaba cubierto de cajetillas de cigarrillos, botellas de whiskey y otros licores, así como de latas de cerveza vacías. Presumiblemente, ofrendas de Día de Muertos. Como había vivido en el mundo, Morrison vivía en la muerte. Ella observaba todo sin entender si estaba ante un homenaje o una profanación. Medio pronunciaba una oración sobre esa tumba, sobre ese recuerdo de una vida, cuando irrumpieron los adolescentes bebidos.

Violentada su intimidad se refugió en las tumbas aledañas que nadie reconocía, nadie cuidaba. Una chica rubia sacó una hoja de cuaderno doblada y comenzó a leer una elegía en alcoholizado inglés estadounidense. Incomprensiblemente lloraba emocionada por el poeta autodestructivo. Esto no tenía sentido si para cuando la rubia había entrado al mundo, Morrison tenía rato de haberlo abandonado. Cual familiares del difunto armados de un itacate el 2 de noviembre, los chicos depositaron su respectiva botella y colillas frente al busto de piedra. Oculta tras una tumba, la mujer intentaba definir si presenciaba un peregrinaje, o algún culto.

La escasa sabiduría que toca a algunos apenas llega con las canas, pero ella aún no tenía. Se llenó de rebeldía. Morrison era parte de su vida, de su generación y su redención para ese día. Pero antes de salir como pantera a reclamar los derechos que había asumido por su cuenta, la venció la cobarde prudencia: nunca debe alebrestarse a un borracho. Suspiró y se retrajo privada del consuelo de su encuentro con el poeta del rock.

Sumida en ese pozo comenzaba ella a degustar su inminente soledad vitalicia cuando la atrajo el interior de un monumento fúnebre derruido y olvidado. En algún momento éste había perdido la pared posterior y quedado al descubierto como una especie de mortaja. Un soldado desconocido había penetrado por esa desaparecida puerta de atrás y en su afán de inmortalizarse, había trazado en la pared interior del monumento destruido una letra de Morrison: Soul Kitchen.

Ella repasó los versos de ese alfabeto secreto escrito en marcador negro. El acetato cayó en la torna-mesa de su memoria y comenzó a girar. Escuchó la música y la voz hechizante del Lagarto. Inesperadamente, la aguja que recorría el disco tropezó con una mancha de polvo. La voz se quedó repitiéndole su canto: I light another cigarette, learn to forget, learn to forget, learn to forget** (Enciendo otro cigarrillo, aprendo a olvidar, aprende a olvidar, aprende a olvidar…)

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* En 1990, el busto de Jim Morrison fue robado del cementerio.

** Tomado de “Soul Kitchen”; The Doors, 1967.